The implication is that one major political party has eaten of the forbidden fruit of no-bottom populism. Power at any cost, and who cares if it means we rile up rubes by telling them whatever they want to hear - sympathising with whatever dumbass thing they believe in (without actually saying we believe it too). Everyone in the RNC that went along had the delusion that they could control this golem of their own making. Recent events provend them wrong, and a whole bunch of them just had their "oh shit" moment. So no, the Republicans aren't dumb. They just got too greedy. Gerrymandering wasn't enough. Voter disenfranchisement laws weren't enough. They had to " go there" - where many, many other political movements have gone before. Take one poor, struggling, powerless mass of people, and relentlessly feed their ignorance, victim-hood, desire for some control in their lives. And do so dishonestly, carelessly and with no thought for the outcome or those people themselves.

As a long-time Black Sabbath fan, the RNC's actions in recent days remind me of the lyrics of this song: https://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/black+sabbath/too+late_2001932...

EDIT: It occurs to me that the DNC has done this _to an extent_ with people of colour. However I do believe there is a qualitative difference. Think Bolsonaro vs Ardern.

You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement.

This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

I'm starting to believe down-voting has gotten more useless and should be removed. Perhaps up-voting is sufficient, but maybe not.

Unfortunately, Facebook demonstrates that only positive feedback tends to cause problems.

I do agree that downvoting (especially on political threads) is not working very well.

I’ve been on HN for years and still can’t downvote.

I believe your "karma" has to be above 500.

Maybe list of downvoters and upvoters should be public

> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

I don't even want to be doing this. Trump supports coal. Ajit Pai. He's a pathological liar. Trump sucks.

But a lot of the things he gets wrong actually help him in swing states. There is a lot of coal in Pennsylvania. So lazy opponents can't easily use those things to attack him because it would only get him more votes in places that matter.

And then we end up in a situation where the majority of people hate Trump for reasons that are actually lies, because the truth translates inconveniently to the electoral map and too many people care more about winning no matter the cost.

> You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement.

downvotes are the voice of the unheard.

> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

its common on both sides because its part of the human condition. However hn is one of the few places on the internet where it is even possible to achieve this, despite the downvotes.