Democratic (Party) Direction

I suspect third grade teachers are responsible for closer to zero deaths than any billionaire.

I thought this was good:

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/17/21369922/democratic-convention-dnc-speeches-lineup

― jaymc

i know yglesias' name and know that people here have opinions on him, don't know what they are

but i did think that was an interesting article

what it made me think of was the concept of delayed gratification, the way i was taught it, and the racial biases surrounding the way i was taught it

i guess i'm a little bit of an anomaly because by the criteria yglesias lays out in the article i ought to be a high-trust voter. i'm white, educated, professionally employed. and yet i am a low-trust voter. so when people try to dismiss my views by saying i'm unrepresentative, there's probably something to it? but i also see a lot of people around me who, ordinarily, one would expect to be high-trust voters engaging in speech and behavior that codes to me as low-trust. so there's a certain amount of uncertainty there.

it really does seem like the democrats' platform is based entirely on winning over voters who are ordinarily high-trust, and went over to trump, and i don't know, it might be me, but i just can't understand why someone who voted for trump in 2016 would vote for biden now. that's my challenge. maybe their data reveals vast seas of suburban moms who like and respect kasich but like yglesias points out their data perhaps has some flaws.

(i got like two paragraphs into the new york interview he clicked and had to turn it off, both the interviewer and the interviewee come off as particularly vile and reprehensible human beings and the fact that new york magazine found it really important to interview somebody who just got fired from his job for being a racist piece of shit about the election tells me a lot about their editorial focus.)

and so this kind of... is it wrong of me to find it funny? probably, i guess it's not a matter of right and wrong, but i find it hilarious the way liberals are clinging to the same fucking polls that told them clinton was going to whoop trump's ass. it's like, yeah, but how did the literary digest call the _1940_ presidential election?

(it didn't of course because the literary digest didn't exist in 1940, yet somehow all of the institutions that predicted a clinton win are still hanging around doing the same thing, putting out the same bullshit. i can only surmise that people were smarter in 1937 than they are now.)

anyway the moderates are right in that pandering to an electorate who are incapable of delayed gratification is somewhat unlikely to produce greater results than we have currently. the dnc's major mistake is in believing that there's anybody else left to pander to.

I think there are lots of middle of the road people that placed their bets on Trump, and then realized they'd made a horrible mistake.

I think there are lots of middle of the road people that placed their bets on Trump,

yes

and then realized they'd made a horrible mistake.

would believe this more if i'd heard more than, like, three of them in the past four years say "oh my god, what a horrible mistake i've made"

that's not what i'm hearing from trump voters. instead i hear "grumble grumble you just can't trust politicians"

four years from now they'll flatly deny to you that they ever voted for trump

these are the sorts voters biden is going for

To be fair he only needs like 80,000 of them to change the outcome of the election. it doesn’t seem like the easiest way to win votes when there are millions of people who didn’t vote last time, but it’s not a long shot.

"oh my god, what a horrible mistake i've made"

i feel like this is something i also highly desire, hearing people say this. but most people rarely do. i think i tend to hang out with people who are more apt to occasionally (or frequently, too much so) admit that they made a mistake, so i expect it more from everyone. but no...i think a century of Public Relations-influenced culture has resulted in a lot of people who think their best option is to never admit defeat. better to just press on and drop it, counting on everyone else's disinterest, forgiveness, or forgetfulness.

like, you think all those climate change alarmists are going to make me admit i was wrong about global cooling? well...we'll have to see. we will have to see...

*15 years pass*

it's 2020 now...and we will still have to see...we will just have to see...

There's a subreddit devoted to these people, called r/Trumpgret:

https://i.imgur.com/v2issJV.jpg

https://i.redd.it/ohuzlf9vubn01.png

https://i.redd.it/ji6y2h8qaqq31.png

https://i.redd.it/2t63fiwsbkw41.jpg

lol @ this one too:

https://i.redd.it/wdnjwyolb8s31.jpg

on the same tip, this twitter account is either soothing or maddening: https://twitter.com/trump_regrets?lang=en

ha this is reassurance porn

I think maybe I shld start my day with these for the next few months

I mean it’s just a bunch of IRANIAN BOTS but fantasy is healthy

reassurance porn is a great term for it

See also:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/miles-taylor-video-donald-trump-dhs-biden-2020-election-border-a9675001.html

so is AOC still just getting a minute?

did they have a target audience in mind for this convention opening video, or are we just supposed to let it wash over us without feeling any emotion like i am?

Isn't that the general idea? I've never known anybody of any age who watches conventions.

I'm watching Murder, She Wrote, in which Jessica Fletcher delivered a spectacular monologue.

To be fair he only needs like 80,000 of them to change the outcome of the election. it doesn’t seem like the easiest way to win votes when there are millions of people who didn’t vote last time, but it’s not a long shot.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek)

this is a... generous intepretation of the facts, given that there are certain confounding variables here

for instance, the entirety of the last four fucking years

How do exactly?

How *so

well, for instance, i voted for hillary clinton in 2016 in indiana. in the intervening four years i have moved to oregon and i plan on abstaining from voting for president in 2020.

that's one data point. how many people were in america in 2016? how many of them voted, and who did they vote for? how many of them have died? how many people became eligible to vote between 2016 and 2020?

now, i guess you can discard a lot of that data, because fortunately for pollsters votes in most states don't actually count towards determining the outcome of an election. indiana wasn't a decisive state in 2016, oregon isn't going to be a decisive state in 2020. so really, you only have to determine all of this individual data in the so-called "swing states". assuming you can correctly predict what those states will be.

how does one generalize this data into predicting an election? what tools do we have to do this? what models do we have to do this? ok, everybody predicted strongly that clinton would win in 2016, and everybody was wrong. do we know why everybody was wrong? do we know how we can correct for those errors? (i believe the answer to this one is "no".)

how do we factor in the structural changes that have occurred in america since 2016? how do we factor in the effects of the incumbent openly and blatantly trying to rig the election on turnout? how do we factor in the knowledge that election results in at least one state have been hacked, and that no safeguards have been put in place to prevent them from being hacked again?

there are a lot of things that are uncertain right now. one of the few things that's not uncertain: biden can't "change the outcome of the election", because he's not running in the 2016 election, because it is not in fact 2016, although he doesn't really appear to have any knowledge or understanding of this.

I wouldn't overthink it. There is clearly a national majority of voting Americans who are more liberal than conservative. That majority is not perfectly distributed and its concentration in certain places puts it at a disadvantage in a system that gives weight to real estate as well as population. Still, the gaps aren't as vast as they seem. I live in a massively red state, but you actually only have to flip one vote in 10 to make it a draw. My state will certainly stay red this year, but there are lots of states that are totally winnable to change the 2016 result.

I know that anxiety is not a voluntary state, but the best reason I know not to overthink the possible results of a national election which is months away is that such thinking will not alter those results. I would suggest that, rather than worrying about how the variables and unknowns will eventually sift down, it makes more sense to project your situation under each result (there are only two which are necessary to consider as likely) and try to imagine your own best course of action under each result.

This is not to say imagining what to do would be simple or easy, but it would return the problem to a dimension where your thoughts and desires matter to the outcome, whereas your personal desires cannot affect how 180,000,000 people will vote in roughly 55 different jurisdictions.

this is an oversimplification, but I look at it like this: the states that went for HRC are probably not swinging over to Trump in November. The 2016 election was won by extremely thin margins in a small number of swing states. An increase in Democratic turnout plus some defections from those MOR voters would be enough to turn those decisive states over to Biden. Biden is currently polling ahead in a number of states beyond those 2016 swing states.

The electoral college is essentially gerrymandering writ large. It gives Republicans a natural advantage, but it rests upon extremely thin margins, and falls apart in the face of enthusiasm, even negative enthusiasm.

it makes more sense to project your situation under each result (there are only two which are necessary to consider as likely) and try to imagine your own best course of action under each result.

this makes sense to me. it's an interesting question, the idea of believing in something and believing that your actions make a significant difference on the the outcome. it's difficult because yes, your actions do make a difference, at some multiple of an infinitesimal scale. what you think and do and act out publicly does have a small effect. but on the whole, unless you're some named figure in the media, your actions don't amount to much. which means it does just come down to your reaction (possibly a binary) to the results, rather than what you did to change the results

Seems like volunteering at your local polling precinct could be a meaningful action this time around.

Dang

No I’m sorry but they did not address racism. They showed a lot of beautiful pictures of POC and made references to BLM, but there was not one mention of an actual policy to help end systemic racism. It’s like binge watching a Marriott commercial.

— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) August 18, 2020

Local races are very susceptible to one's taking personal action to sway the result. I've often phone banked for state and local races and always felt good about it. It is also reasonable to think that state, county and municipal governments have an even greater impact on one's local area than the presidency.

I used to think that

sometimes the roulette ball falls into 0 or 00

To be fair he only needs like 80,000 of them to change the outcome of the election. it doesn’t seem like the easiest way to win votes when there are millions of people who didn’t vote last time

I think the people who run the Convention had the same thought which is presumably why there was 3 minutes of Republicans saying "even Republicans like me can't resist Joe, a decent god-fearing man!" and 15 of Michelle Obama saying "I get why you didn't vote last time and I am asking you to vote this time." I don't know if it'll work, but the potential non-voters are for sure who she was targeting (I would say this about Sanders too)

the open, caring vision of change we need

https://i.imgur.com/gYeOLKv.jpg

i don't understand. shouldn't that info be presented on a squarespace grid for my viewing pleasure?

*massive fart*

the aesthetic directions of the modern political movements are pathetic

the wheel of progress grinds ever onward

August 13, 1996: John Kasich and Susan Molinari address Republican National Convention.

August 17, 2020: John Kasich and Susan Molinari address Democratic National Convention. pic.twitter.com/OC2skT8MDq

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 18, 2020

Eighty days and counting into protests against the sanctioned murder of George Floyd, it's good to see that they've had a thrilling influence on the makeup of speakers the DNC chooses to represent itself

https://i.imgur.com/ubgUMrX.jpg

Ok, Laura Ingraham and George Zimmerman speaking at the DNC is a bridge too far. C'mon man!

Can’t watch these outtakes enough times pic.twitter.com/9VmfCPh0Oy

— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) August 18, 2020

Michelle's line that Trump's 'in over his head' is a good way to take it in a Facebook convo with a relative imo. it wouldn't provoke the same kind of immediate knee-jerk defensiveness. it's like... yr boy.. he's not up to it.

As ever, laying bare his weakness and incompetence and cowardice instead of painting him as 'evil' is the surest course of action, rhetorically speaking.

very very much agree.

however, it would have a lot more punch if the alternative wasn’t uh Joe Biden

Michelle's line that Trump's 'in over his head' is a good way to take it in a Facebook convo with a relative imo.

counterpoint: nuh uh, she's over her head

President Donald Trump had more to say on Tuesday about former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention the night before, during which she said Trump was “clearly in over his head.”

“No, she was over her head,” Trump told reporters during a White House event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.

Literally "I know you are but what am I." What a rhetorical wizard this guy is (said Chris Cilizza, to no one).

No puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet.

some of you may be tempted to observe that the president is clearly a 5-year-old child. beware, as this is one of the first symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome

You're just saying that because you can't handle winning THIS big.

Marianne Williamson otm, but then "policy" is inside baseball For Lifers Only

POC are automatic Lifers, whether they like it or not

Lol I definitely did not mean to imply that an effective strategy for countering Facebook relatives was quoting Michelle Obama with attribution

The electoral college is essentially gerrymandering writ large. It gives Republicans a natural advantage, but it rests upon extremely thin margins, and falls apart in the face of enthusiasm, even negative enthusiasm.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles)

this was exactly why everybody told me hillary clinton would win