U.S. Politics, November 2024: GARBAGE DAY!!

Ugh. Good going.

I'm still shaking.

(not)funny, my buddy reported a similar story about an east african uber driver who was rambling on about forced gender changes in public schools, perhaps that BS did have an effect on a certain demographic, despite polling saying it was a totally losing issue

Sorry that shit come your way, Alfred. I’ll never get it, I’ve got a relative in Chitown PD who is a right wing gay dude married to a Mexican immigrant and he’s fully onboard with Trump and it’s just insane to me, on multiple levels. The brainwashing runs deep and into the minds of some of those who have the biggest targets on their backs in some cases.

people keep reflexively saying "the anti-trans ads polled poorly" but they certainly seem to have worked well enough on enough people.

which just reinforces the 'cruel attacks against a marginalized minority = SUCCESS!', I'm sure we'll see even more as we slouch forward

no surprise at all, americans are, after all, americans

I’m sorry about your situation, Alfred. The next four years and probably beyond are going to be hell. I’ve already overheard such heinous conversations, I’m really seriously considering identifying as gay, although I’m not, to fuck with people’s pronouncements about the gay agenda.

All election postmortems are fanfic, confirmation bias (Dems lost because of my particular hobbyhorse), and “vibes”.

― The Whimsical Muse (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 27 November 2024 17:51 (yesterday) link

Yep. I get so annoyed with people (including my partner) condescendingly explaining to me "what the democrats should have done", which explanations somehow always seem to magically/coincidentally align with their pre-existing politics (which is not me saying I think they did nothing wrong) that I've fallen into the habit of asking people to explain why the lesson from the election isn't just for the democrats to be more like trump and lie shamelessly (I also don't actually think that)

I am wondering if the Peruvian and East African were evangelicals? They could have absorbed the anti trans stuff from there, not ads.

I'm sorry Alfred, what an asshole. Glad you reported him.

which just reinforces the 'cruel attacks against a marginalized minority = SUCCESS!', I'm sure we'll see even more as we slouch forward

Yeah, it just keeps working. There's a lot of juice in the old scapegoat game. The refocusing on trans people once it became politically less tenable to bash gays and lesbians was predictable and depressingly effective. And that's so much of what the right-wing information sphere is dedicated to, constantly identifying and demonizing new enemies to scare people with.

So sorry, Alfred. I hate that people are emboldened to say these things out loud.

A former President won a small margin over a deeply unpopular incumbent party that had to change candidates late because the President was sundowning at noon. 57% of Floridians turned out to defend abortion and minimum wage increases passed in Missouri and Alaska.

I don’t know that I’d read the election as saying anything in particular about Americans ideological views.

I'm not sure about the role of those ads specifically, but FWIW “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” polled highest (above inflation or immigration) in this survey among "swing" voters who broke for Trump as their reason for not voting for Harris:

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/

The above framing is interesting though. It's not the same as "I don't like trans people", it's really more this notion that politicians can care about cultural issues for specific interest groups or they can focus on broad-based economic issues, but they can't do both effectively.

Of course there is the ever-present irony that the party that is really focused on transgender issues is... not the Democrats. But maybe that's the point: that a portion of the electorate are more apt to believe that democrats can be "captured" by special interests and will more readily apply that framework.

It chimes in with some of the discussion in this piece (which is more focused on migration) about voters in parts of NYC who flipped to Trump this time:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-new-york-election-results-turning-red.html

But it's all pretty speculative.

There are a shit ton of adjectives describing Trump besides former President, and I think Americans voting for him regardless says a lot about their ideological views.

80 million voted for him out of an adult population of 260 million

Racist
Rapist
Felon
WINNER

as in “shut up losers.”

80 million voted for him out of an adult population of 260 million

So what? He still won. 80 million actively wanted him too, another 100 million couldn't be bothered to do the smallest thing to stop him. That really does say something about the views of most Americans.

This is exactly what I started typing James, thank you

So what? So it wasn’t 1984 or 1972, was it? It was a squeaker.

Deciding that Americans are inherently bad and hopeless and anti-trans ads were definitely super effective and that speaks to a national character are pretty bad takeaways.

If Democrats hadn’t spent years gaslighting voters about the great economy, if Biden doesn’t go balls out on genocide when he’s actually awake, if Democrats hadn’t bent the knee to Manchin and Sinema derailing their actually popular 2020 agenda, etc. maybe 1.7% of the electorate goes the other way.

As ever the Democratic Party cannot fail, it can only be failed, of course.

I think it's undeniable that the democratic party failed. This is really an argument over whose pre-existing diagnosis was correct.

(I tend to think the answer is "kind of all of them and none of them" is most likely to be correct, but it's also the least satisfying if the objective is to win the argument)

It was a squeaker because 100 million people didn't vote. Not voting is a meaningful choice, it has consequences.

i feel like it was death by a million cuts and it worked just enough for her to lose. she didn't lose the popular vote catastrophically, just enough.

I dunno if it was any one particular thing, maybe just a reminder of how differently people can process politics. I mean I think we are in our own little information bubble sometimes. But what's clear to me is that the things the Democratic campaign think are important are probably not important at all. All those ad spends, buying the Las Vegas Sphere, Ricky Martin and Oprah, perhaps even the campaign rallies themselves, it might be that none of that really matters. everyone hated the GOP's ads but maybe that didn't matter at all either. but manipulating Twitter to boost rightwing content maybe does, perhaps just lying about everything nonstop really is a fine political strategy since most people just hear what they want to hear. Americans don't really get a lot of free time these days, to spend it following this circus is uh...well, I'm regretting it myself

maybe it really is difficult to get people who don't engage with politics to understand the President of the United States does not set the cost of bananas. Or that there really aren't "two sides" to 99% of of the Trump stuff. He absolutely is the monster the woke mob says he is, and probably worse. some of the biggest chuds I know got really excited about Trump winning because it meant the Epstein list might become unsealed, like they don't know who's very very very likely to be all over it. they think it's all just a smear, because if their political enemies had photos with child traffickers they know exactly how they'd use them. the criminal stuff doesn't phase 'em either because if they were in charge they might be tempted to become a little fascist themselves, hell you'd be downright stupid to think it's not what those crooks are doing already, nobody knows this but me, I'm a smart guy in a world of morons

I'm so sorry Alfred. Fuck that asshole driver

Alfred, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.

So sorry, Alfred.

---

I think it's undeniable that the democratic party failed. This is really an argument over whose pre-existing diagnosis was correct.

― Tim F, Thursday, 28 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Not hearing of any consequences for people who ran Harris' campaign, or major figures in the Democratic party.

It was a squeaker because 100 million people didn't vote. Not voting is a meaningful choice, it has consequences.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 28 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

A lot of people in the UK and US just don't engage at all in the process. In Romania there was only a 50% turnout.

It strikes me as so weird that people don’t vote - I grew up in a first-tier suburb where electoral participation is something like 90 per cent, in a state where 75 per cent participation is a ‘low’ turnout.

Oh I totally get it - I am unlikely to ever vote again myself. There are lots of people where they see nothing changing in any way whatsoever.

So you get politicians and strategists chasing swing voters in marginal regions, with this mass of people just sitting there.

While thats true to a degree, voting was comparatively popular in the US this year, with the second highest percentage turnout of voter age population turnout since 1968. 2020 being the highest voter percentage turnout since 1932

I think voting is probably becoming more popular not less, at the presidential level at least. Local election turnouts tend to be lower I believe, though thats the case in most countries

In the US at least, its something of a different story in parts of Europe. Romania a good example of one where participation is declining not increasing

re: post-mortems, here’s Bernie with a pre-mortem on this election, back in 2003:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGd2o4Uka/

Democrats have lost no time making nice with Trump II: Let's Get Trumpier - Polis and RFK, Khanna and DOGE, Schumer's appellate court deal, all of them giving Rubio a pass, all of the centrists eagerly turning the racism dial. After running a campaign entirely about Trump being a threat to the existence of the United States as we know it, maybe those non-voters were a little right to be cynical about Democrats?

Yep. I get so annoyed with people (including my partner) condescendingly explaining to me "what the democrats should have done", which explanations somehow always seem to magically/coincidentally align with their pre-existing politics

Yes seeing the centrist op eds come pouring in, seemingly totally oblivious to the fact that the campaign that everything they wanted, I did have a moment of thinking "am I like this but with the left?". But when Corbyn lost I didn't go "he should have gone further left to win!", so afaict I'm not there yet.

Abstention has been super high in Portugal as long as I can remember, the idea of getting outraged at ppl not voting is so alien to me. Recently had the lowest rate since 1995 (34%)...which is entirely due to there now being a far right party to vote for.

Also, not voting IS a form of voting, and a structurally important one - we look at turnout for a reason. I think the problem comes with attributing a collective motive to non-voters. But then the same is done with so called moderates or median voters, when moderates are just as disparately wild as non-voters

But this is part of a larger problem in the way things are looked at. If 51% of a group does something its treated as though 100% did

I'm so sorry Alfred. Fuck that asshole driver

Yeah, I don't know what to say beyond I'm so sorry Alfred.

I’m sorry, Alfred.

Thanks, all! If my registered complaint gets this well-reviewed driver removed, well, that's capitalism, buddy.

I celebrated by going to bed at 9 p.m.

hope you slept well, alfred.

all of the centrists eagerly turning the racism dial. After running a campaign entirely about Trump being a threat to the existence of the United States as we know it, maybe those non-voters were a little right to be cynical about Democrats?

calling pelosi it's time to sistah souljah milo

I'm not sure about the role of those ads specifically, but FWIW “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” polled highest (above inflation or immigration) in this survey among "swing" voters who broke for Trump as their reason for not voting for Harris:

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/

The above framing is interesting though. It's not the same as "I don't like trans people", it's really more this notion that politicians can care about cultural issues for specific interest groups or they can focus on broad-based economic issues, but they can't do both effectively.

Of course there is the ever-present irony that the party that is really focused on transgender issues is... not the Democrats. But maybe that's the point: that a portion of the electorate are more apt to believe that democrats can be "captured" by special interests and will more readily apply that framework.

This is in the Atlantic, and based on work done by a group called "More in Common" (which appears to mean exactly what you would expect), so take it with however many grains of salt you need, but this piece premised on a large post-election survey suggests the same broad conclusion:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-defined-progressive-issues/680810/

One way to think about all these issues in a way that squares the circle somewhat is that it's not a choice between "Democrats lost because of trans issues" and "Democrats lost because they didn't run on a Bernie-style economic populist platform" but a more subtle combination of the two: Democrats lost because too many voters concluded that the party was not sufficiently invested in helping them in particular but were captured by the minority special interests (of which trans issues are just one example).

The obvious counter-argument - the Biden administration was the most left-wing economically in living memory - still needs to be addressed.

For my part, I can readily accept a large chunk of Faiz Shakir / Sanders' broad position that to win over the working class you have to campaign on economic populism in a pretty full-throated way, rather than just point to your administration's legislative achievements, while also feel like economic populists' talking points on how they would have persuaded working class swing voters not to worry too much about inflation or immigration can seem a little jejune.

But Shakir might say in response that if we're dealing with voter perceptions then it's all jejune (as the naive faith so many repose in Trump demonstrates) - if you don't get to the point of at least persuading voters that you care about their economic concerns, then whether those concerns are entirely valid and (assuming they are) whether your plan to address them is credible hardly matters.

I'm struggling to articulate this but will give it a go anyway - there's a funny thing I slip into sometimes, a kind of arrogant attempt at divining the Popular Mood after an election - or even before, but especially right after - as if it's somehow divorced from myself, and the way I think about things, like I'm Marco Polo venturing into exotic mindsets, which is ridiculous, because I read a lot and I care about politics but I'm not that different from most people I run into, even my brainwormed father in law. We both think big business and banks have too much power. We both think the government just doesn't deliver for people. We both think elites are full of shit. Flip a coin. I don't mean to imply there aren't specific, historical factors at play, and powerful interests working overtime to shape perceptions in order to further their own agendas and divide us from each other, so that we don't realise our common power.

I guess I'm saying, we understand each other better than we think we do. "Polarization" exists but is also deliberately overstated, like a shadow cast larger onto a wall, for several reasons probably, because competition is largely how we imagine society, but also because it's a useful way to make people feels hopelessly divided. So ironically, the very hopelessness in the system, and the uselessness of what's been on offer nationally, is somethingthat cuts across classes and inherited ideologies. So like uh, we got that goin for us lol

The obvious counter-argument - the Biden administration was the most left-wing economically in living memory - still needs to be addressed.

https://www.crisesnotes.com/one-election-takeaway-voters-hate-temporary-safety-nets/ this is a detailed piece that gets into how and why that was not enough