Election 2024 Part III: Out with the old!

[sylvanllewelyn]

She apparently put the question out to those voters as to why and the responses seemed to be mostly that they saw her and Trump both as populist, Washington "outsiders".

Good point. Obama was considered a relative outsider when he won his two terms.

 

[Zardnaar]

I just saw a video discussing how AOC got a bunch of votes from MAGA voters. They split their ticket, ie., voted for Trump, but also for AOC. She apparently put the question out to those voters as to why and the responses seemed to be mostly that they saw her and Trump both as populist, Washington "outsiders".

EDIT: Thinking about it... Does that mean AOC is going to win if she runs next cycle/2028? @Hygro, any thoughts?

She has future run stamped all over her. When idk.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

'They had all the reasons not to vote for one candidate but no reasons to vote for the other'

 

[Angst]

'They had all the reasons not to vote for one candidate but no reasons to vote for the other'

the weird thing is that, on a broad scale, like.

so most american are liberal capitalists. they like the best deal within that system. no? like, even the republicans' well-marketed protectionism and dirty industry operates within that logic. talking, like - post smith. it's all liberal capitalism. at the same time, they want change. they want the same, but different. understand that "radical" change-oriented people like bernie still operate well within a capitalist system, the issue then is selling it. and while the democrats failed rhetorically, they did not do so in regards to presenting substance on a pure logos level. i'm sorry, they just didn't.

this guy, who's probably very famous and such but whom i don't know, is very charismatic about it, and his point is basically that the democrats failed to make claims for change and address anxieties. however, there's some issues here.

first off, when americans want things to be different, they usually still operate within liberal capitalism. so they actually don't. their vote depends still on the policy within that system. so it's about making the best offer, if that was the only issue.

harris was very explicit about the concrete policy they were going to do. like, a lot. they talked about it all the time. on a broad level, they wanted to increase taxes on the wealthy, implement a number of tax breaks for small businesses, make (more) cost control through sheer legislation, there was minimum wage talk. it's actually consistently annoying that the shpiel about how the democrats failed is that they understated or ignored marketing their economic policy, as well as adressing anxiety. they did that. they did that a lot. but it didn't connect. and there's a few reasons for this to me.

so this guy loudly asks "what are her policies", while making a hand smack for emphasis, and i think this was frustrating to follow throughout the campaign, because most people had the same impression as this guy (even if his impression is performative, again, i don't know him; he clocks it). the default impression is that it's the reps that are pro-business, while dems, being pro-regulation, are somehow bad for business. harris consistently turned out with a laundry list of concrete implementations she planned to do, and while she often talked around the questions provided, make note of that: she had to document plan upon plan on what they were going to do while trump could literally rant about a guy's scrotum for 15 minutes and still be trusted on economic policy. it's a big optics issue for the democrats, that they have to overcome while the reps can just vaguely rant about immigrants while still being trusted on this.

people said over and over again that she wasn't talking economic policy; and i'd like to ask anyone curious to watch some of the rep outlets talk about her economic policy, because this was particularly fascinating. they kept asking "but what is her actual policy?" "how does she plan to counteract inflation?" while her campaign touched on that daily. they would ask, get an answer, turn around, and then ask each other, "but what is her economic policy?"; the soundbytes hit so hard i still have them echoing in my brain, even if i rationally know she talked about this stuff all the time and had to carefully answer with concrete percentages and affected demographics each and every time.

so there wasn't an issue of economic policy, or not even stating it. while i hold the democrats have very much made their own bed, there is a big part of the equation that has to do with media out of their control. mr rural driving his semi truck is on talk radio hearing these soundbytes over and over again. the host can even cite harris literally talk policy and then discuss with a guest whether she has made her policy explicit. it happened all the time. it's mental.

now, there's a second part of the equation, and it's in the cross section between tariffs and taylor swift (as ranted about in the short video here). as a celebrity, swift indeed draws clicks in media, but as we saw, it didn't translate into votes. she's already succesful, and not in a way that particularly helps the democrats increase their voter margin. at least irt economic policy. say what you will about musk, but he is at least understood as a businessman at some level. so when it comes to selling economic policy, musk clicks ensures votes better than swift. then there's tariffs. as completely bonkers banana pants trump's tariff policy is, specifically because of its bonkersness, it does three things very well; 1 - it is a liberal capitalist policy, so it tells you you're safe and things won't change; 2 - it is bonkers, so people talk about it, which is free marketing; 3 - its bonkersness means that it means some form of change, with the implication of radical. now, this is all incongruous, but i'm saying that on an impulse level, it sells well, because it markets itself, and then it's both completely comfortably safe while being a radical hail mary. stuff like that is exciting to vote for, while feeling comfortable enough that the murican life won't be different. discussing intricacies of tax policy just doesn't sell as well. it's why us infrastructure is horrible. everyone knows it's good for you, but at the booth, it's just granular money allocation over boring asphalt.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

people said over and over again that she wasn't talking economic policy; and i'd like to ask anyone curious to watch some of the rep outlets talk about her economic policy, because this was particularly fascinating. they kept asking "but what is her actual policy?" "how does she plan to counteract inflation?" while her campaign touched on that daily. they would ask, get an answer, turn around, and then ask each other, "but what is her economic policy?"; the soundbytes hit so hard i still have them echoing in my brain, even if i rationally know she talked about this stuff all the time and had to carefully answer with concrete percentages and affected demographics each and every time.

I think it's a matter of perception.

And you stated it as well. "her campaign touched on that daily". But in the high profile interviews she gave, she did go "yeah but Trump" too often. And the right wing media seized on t

But he doesn't state it's the reason she lost. Check 1:49


edit: oh, btw, never heard of this guy either.

 

[Arakhor]

If you don't get the bit, he's a comedian playing a political commentator, who will give his 'real' (often sweary thoughts) after his 'piece to camera' ends.

 

[Angst]

If you don't get the bit, he's a comedian playing a political commentator, who will give his 'real' (often sweary thoughts) after his 'piece to camera' ends.

oh that makes sense. i literally cut off the last 30 secs after he calmed down. watching, brb in an edit.

edit: the video cuts off ):

 

[Voidwalkin]

oh that makes sense. i literally cut off the last 30 secs after he calmed down. watching, brb in an edit.

edit: the video cuts off ):

Dems have a trust issue. That distrust doesn't originate from economic policy, imo. It's wrong to mistake cluelessness or ignorance as the cause. The voter has already reached the conclusion Dems cannot be trusted and is looking to demote them.

The solution to both a lack of trust and cluelessness is much greater proximity. Candidate would achieve this through media appearances. Harris didn't wanna do that.

Originally, it didn't seem like there was compelling reason to. Polls trended her way for a long while. As it got tighter, it didn't seem like she went all out. Dunno the thinking. Doesn't seem like she thought she was good at it.

 

[Narz]

Left-wing conspiracy now that Musk used starlink to hack the vote.

But not many talking about it (which is what Trump and Musk 'counted on' according to the conspiracy)

 

[Gorbles]

Left-wing conspiracy now that Musk used starlink to hack the vote.

But not many talking about it (which is what Trump and Musk 'counted on' according to the conspiracy)

The only outlet that seems to be claiming said conspiracy was "left-wing" is the Telegraph, which is famously right-wing. The source seems to be a couple of posters on Instagram's / Meta's Threads app, at least according to Al Jazeera and others (when they even provide a source, which this one doesn't). User "wmrdc" seems to be Wayne Madsen, a conspiracy theorist popular enough to have their own Wikipedia page. I can't deny that his positions seem rooted in some kind of anti-US or otherwise (historic) leftist slant, but the conspiracies themselves are very extremely out there (he claimed Obama is gay), which I think doesn't really signify any real left-wing association beyond a vague overlap in terms of general anti-US sentiments these days.

Here's another one. The Instagram user is "cherijacobus1", who seems to describe themselves as an "ex-Republican" and "NeverTrumper". Truly, a left-wing conspiracy

There's also a TikTok, but I don't use TikTok and lost patience after looking up the two I mentioned above.

Certainly, I think liberals and other folks who dislike Trump would've jumped on this. But I don't think there's much, if anything, "left-wing" about it. It seems comfortably liberal / "NeverTrumper" centrist, with whatever weirdness this Madsen dude is throwing in with his general attitude and politics.

This would also explain why many aren't talking about it (beyond the articles I linked refuting the accusations). From my own use of social media, anecdotally, this kind of demographic doesn't have a huge amount of overlap with the online left. Or maybe it's because I'm a stick in the mud who doesn't like Instagram and has never had the patience for videos (even back in my Facebook days).

 

[Sommerswerd]

If her credibility as an "outsider" is somehow still intact after basically selling her soul to the Party establishment over the past year or so then maybe she can be the standard-bearer? Idk

Lex that's EXACTLY what I want to hear about. Trump won, we lost... assuming that Trump does not install himself as dictator... which...

 

[Ordnael]

AOC on her way to the border now that fences are bad again

View attachment 709126

Reminds me of

 

[Lexicus]

I haven’t followed—what did she do that ruffled your feathers?

It's less about ruffling my feathers and more like how long she will keep "outsider" status when the GOP is cutting ads of her throughout July 2024 saying Biden needs to stay in the race. There is too much video footage of her praising the administration. The only Democrat right now with a national platform that did not gratuitously dickride the administration is Rashida Tlaib, and afaict this country is so racist against Palestinians that she can't run for President with any realistic hope of winning.

I think back to 2020 and...idk...it feels like any of the other centrists would have been better than this. Nominating Biden in 2020 really was a historic-level fudgup: not sure whether it was his or his wife's narcissism that kept him in the race so long, but it sucks for him that he dropped out and will still be known as the guy whose stubbornness gave Trump a popular vote win. Amply deserved of course, Biden deserves to be remembered for giving Trump the keys to the fudging kingdom. I hope he dies haunted by all the blood he spilled and by the fact that Bibi played him for a complete chump. But the question is whether the Dem primary voters who put Biden in there will learn anything from this whole experience. The lessons are that the Democratic establishment cannot be trusted to protect us from the GOP and "Standing with Israel" means clutching the viper to your breast.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Mainly make lots of excuses for the Biden admin and broader Democratic establishment supporting Israel pretty much unconditionally while they do genocide

Not fully accepted by corporate Dems nor the Gaza crowd is ideal outsider positioning. Neither group is popular with the larger public.

She has future run stamped all over her. When idk

Way of speaking conveys heartfelt desire to do good. Very long winded but still comes across that she feels she needs to be that. The sense that she takes positions because she believes it to be best, rather than tactical insincerity(the public expectation), is there. Girl can establish trust in classically human ways many politicians can't.

A run next cycle is a longshot but not outta the question. Trump is probably going to crash and make Republicans unpopular. Dem field is clear in a way that hasn't been seen since Obama vs Clinton. The Obama era is done. The figures who could carry some of his weight into a primary are gone. Gonna be wide open.

 

[Joij21]

dickride

Precisely why she has a chance.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Tom Homan: How will the 'border tsar' approach immigration?

Homan has described the US border as "the biggest national security vulnerability" the nation has seen since 9/11.

www.bbc.com

Deporting families together​

Homan played a role in Trump’s controversial "zero tolerance" policy, which separated thousands of migrant children from their parents.
The policy sparked backlash when children were sent to shelters while their parents were prosecuted with no plans to reunite them.
Homan has said he didn’t write the policy memo that led to the separations, but he was one of three officials who signed it. He said he signed it “hoping to save lives”.
Homan indicated that he would not seek to re-instate that policy.
Rather, he has said families could be "deported together", when asked whether deportations could be carried out without separating families.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4984740-trump-border-czar-tom-homan-immigration-ice-deportation/

According to The Atlantic, in 2014, Homan proposed family separations as a deterrent to Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who shot the idea down as “heartless and impractical.”

But Homan’s idea gained traction in 2017 under Trump, leading to the separation of more than 4,000 children from their parents.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I just saw a video discussing how AOC got a bunch of votes from MAGA voters. They split their ticket, ie., voted for Trump, but also for AOC. She apparently put the question out to those voters as to why and the responses seemed to be mostly that they saw her and Trump both as populist, Washington "outsiders".

EDIT: Thinking about it... Does that mean AOC is going to win if she runs next cycle/2028? @Hygro, any thoughts?

I just finished a book called American Carnage about the populist takeover of the GOP, and in it there's an interview with Thomas Massie in which he shares his disappointed realization that people were voting for him (and Rand and Amash) not because they were passionate libertarians, but because they wanted feisty anti-establishment types.

 

[amadeus]

It's less about ruffling my feathers and more like how long she will keep "outsider" status when the GOP is cutting ads of her throughout July 2024 saying Biden needs to stay in the race. There is too much video footage of her praising the administration.

Alright, thanks for the explanation.

Do you think she has political ambitions beyond her seat in the House? I think she does, but doesn’t have the right skillset to be on the national stage.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Continuing to read various perspectives on the Harris loss. I read the articles, but I spend more time reading the comments. It's deliberate. I wanna see where the people are, not the intelligentsia.

No consensus. It's like the fall of Rome. So many explanations. Sexism in my estimation is the most often speculated reason for defeat, but it's not by much. It's 1/16th, with the next most frequent 1/20th.

What comes across commonly amongst the various reasons is basically despair not at Trump, but America. A deep loss of confidence appears to have occurred. The snide, one word "lmao" comments, a former mainstay, are absent, as if in recognition that Trumpism is a movement that can no longer be classified outside the realm of serious discussion.

Something in the wind has shifted, but it's very difficult to know what form it's taking.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It's less about ruffling my feathers and more like how long she will keep "outsider" status when the GOP is cutting ads of her throughout July 2024 saying Biden needs to stay in the race. There is too much video footage of her praising the administration. The only Democrat right now with a national platform that did not gratuitously dickride the administration is Rashida Tlaib, and afaict this country is so racist against Palestinians that she can't run for President with any realistic hope of winning.

Do you think AOC is going full centrist, or is she just trying to move into a more powerful position where the people she will need to support her in a Senate and/or POTUS run won't just outright oppose her, like what happened to Bernie?

You think that she will lose the "outsider" vibe based on videos, evidence, proof and such? Are the kind of voters who voted for Trump, but would also vote for her, the kind of voters that will change their feelings based on some negative ads?

I agree with you about Tlaib not having a chance.

I think back to 2020 and...idk...it feels like any of the other centrists would have been better than this. Nominating Biden in 2020 really was a historic-level fudgup: not sure whether it was his or his wife's narcissism that kept him in the race so long, but it sucks for him that he dropped out and will still be known as the guy whose stubbornness gave Trump a popular vote win. Amply deserved of course, Biden deserves to be remembered for giving Trump the keys to the fudging kingdom. I hope he dies haunted by all the blood he spilled and by the fact that Bibi played him for a complete chump. But the question is whether the Dem primary voters who put Biden in there will learn anything from this whole experience. The lessons are that the Democratic establishment cannot be trusted to protect us from the GOP and "Standing with Israel" means clutching the viper to your breast.

Throughout the Biden presidency I was pretty sure that Biden's ego would never allow him to step down from the Presidency and I kept saying as much. So I was pretty shocked/impressed when he dropped out. In fact I kept sort of mocking the notion that he would drop out or be forced out because of how extreme a step it would be and how savage/ruthless someone in the Party would have to be to come for him like that. I analogized it to Biden being Frodo and refusing to give up the ring and Pelosi being Sméagol having to jump him and literally bite it off.

It just seemed so unbelievable to me that he would ever step aside, that when he did, I was ready to crown him with laurels just for that. So while I get what people (like Pelosi) are now saying, complaining that he should have dropped out sooner, especially since he promised to only serve one term in the first place (which I never believed for one second would be the case) ... it seems a little ironic to me to blame Biden now and lay the loss at his feet when everyone was holding up "Thank You Joe" signs at the convention. When we thought Harris could win, he was the hero, but now that it didn't go our way, he's the villain? I don't know...that doesn't seem right. Its a catch 22. If he'd stayed in, its his fault we lost, but he dropped out and its still his fault? Its especially rich coming from Pelosi, since she was the main one who talked him into dropping out. In retrospect, since she eventually did anyway, she is the one who should have acted sooner and more strongly. If she's pointing one finger at Biden then that's three fingers pointing back at her.

In retrospect, it feels like scapegoating... its Biden's fault Harris lost... really? I get that if Biden had kept his (in my view, preposterous) promise to only serve one term, then Democrats could have had a competitive primary, but who would have won that? Bootyjudge? Klobuchar? Warren? I doubt Harris would have won a primary. Like I said to you previously, Harris got a big gift in terms of basically getting to skip the campaign/primaries so she had the task of motivating the voters to turn out for her. She failed. That's not Biden's fault. Did you follow through with your plan to not vote for her? If so, do you consider it to be Biden's fault that you didn't vote for her?

Biden got 81 million votes, Harris latest total is 71.9 million. Trump only got about 1 million more than in 2020. So where did all those votes go and why? Sure maybe the Democrats lost some votes to Trump, but even if they lost two or three million why couldn't Democrats retain the other six or seven million?

I think you have a point about Israel... Democrats lost, so what was it all for? They could have lost putting more pressure on Netanyahu and possibly even forcing a ceasefire... but I've got to point out that this is all 20/20 hindsight.