More like a Fortunate Son who's an adulterer, felon and burried his ex wife somewhere in the backyard.
I think the name-calling really hurt them.
Calling half the voting population bigots of some type just makes that half dig their heels in to give you a bloody nose.
If your main priorities, when running in a political race, does not match the main priorities of the voting masses, it's easier to change your main priorities than to change the main priorities of the voting masses.
For a long time now, the Dems have been trying to change the priorities of the voting masses instead of aligning with them.
They are so used to preaching at their voter base ("This is what a real man is, not what you think it is") that they forgot what the aim of running is - to win.
You can't change the world by losing.
Their primary goal should have been to win. The primary way to do that is to (ugh) pander to the voters' will.
It's because they are so out of touch that we are seeing the result that we see. Politicians that are disconnected and disengaged from the voting masses deserve to lose.
This was also the biggest problem of the Remain camp pre-Brexit.
It was too easy to label Leavers as stupid/racist/xenophobic, and that was a huge mistake.
Pretty sure this would work with "Trump" instead of "Brexit".
What do you want racists to do? Not vote? They're gonna vote for somebody after all.
As I pointed out in a different post, trying to shame people into silence doesn't magically change their vote.
Unfortunately, when you are going to call every Rep supporter a racist with no evidence other than who they voted for, they are going to stop answering your polls honestly.
Still not gonna change their vote though...
Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
They already know, they don't care, because that specific belief is not rooted in reason or rationality.
> Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
> Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
I somewhat agree with the first part[1], but vehemently disagree with the second: I don't think that eradicating racist thoughts will move the needle on who gets elected, as there are, IMO, simply too few racists around to influence an election.[2]
[1] IOW, I don't believe that education will change a racist's belief, but I do see value to society in eradicating discriminatory stereotypes and discriminatory actions, of which racism is merely one.
[2] There aren't even enough racists to form a party of their own, so I doubt that them moving from red to blue is going to be any difference from statistical noise.
I dunno how relevant it is to say "Well, Trump gets away with it" because he stayed on message with his name-calling: the economy. Calling someone a communist is just a hyperbolic way of saying that they don't care for the economy.
OTOH, calling half the voting population stupid has nothing to do with the platform the politician is running on.
I mean, as stupid as it sounds, something like "They're coming for yer guns!!!" is still platform-relevant, while "They're threatened by strong women" isn't.
I guess the takeaway is that targeted and on-topic insulting works but random digressions into personal attacks that have no relevance to the platform don't?
I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
Or abortion, or misogyny, or social justice, etc.
There was a big turnout, after all.
> I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
I don't know about the politics of your state, but in mine over half the ad campaign of the Republican senator who just won was focused on transgender issues. His losing Democratic opponent did not touch that issue.
> Or abortion
Statewide ballot measures aimed at abortion rights succeeded even in many states where Democrats lost.
Then maybe the Dems shouldn't have run on that as their major platform?
I mean, the message "Elect Me Because $ABORTION_RIGHTS" is pointless if the states are going to get their abortion rights anyway.
* Voters approved measures that would protect abortion in their state (with the exception of Florida, which only got 58% out of the 60%) needed. Said voters did not consistently vote for Kamala Harris.
* Another set of voters thought Kamala Harris was too progressive, and had no opinion on Donald Trump
* But at the same time, in local elections democratic candidates generally sweeped the ballots
I think ultimately the presidency is just an election purely on the basis of 'vibes' and whatever is directly in front of you. It doesn't matter if you can achieve your promises nor do said promises even really matter. And people vibe more with the reality TV president because they've already forgotten 2016-2020. Maybe Trump directly crashing the economy will be the thing to snap people out of it, maybe not.
JD Vance hopefully can 25th Amendment the Trump before senile behavior wrecks the office. But I'm worried that Trump stays in all 4 years and does irreparable harm.
25th Amendment powers have never been used before. So it's not clear how far Trump will degrade while still holding onto power.
That's the preferable option to letting Vance near the presidency, sadly.
A woman who worked at the hotel I was staying at had never visited the centre of the city the lived in, because she was afraid of being "knifed". This was Dayton, Ohio. Downtown Dayton is lovely.
A colleague who appeared reasonably intelligent and competent absolutely did not believe that Evolution occurred. I explained that this while this view might be common in the US - and it is - the rest of the world mostly considers this settled science.
Religion is absolutely far too influential a force in people's lives. This is decreasing, but it's still problematic I believe.
The Armed Forces are idolised. Airports have special lines for service personnel. You get to board early if you're in uniform. This is almost unique in the world, to the best of my knowledge.
Fact check: TRUE!
PS I'm not really a fact checker. I don't really have the truth either. I also don't think CNN/Google/Facebook have it. Fact checking is really just another part of the show. It's a prop to confirm a bias/opinion as it it is actually 'true' or 'false', when no such assessment can be made.
When your border is wide open allowing millions of people in each year, you don’t care as much about the political circus.
When your grocery bills 3x, you don’t care as much about the loose speech.
With very few exceptions I've never met people there who outwardly seemed like they'd like someone as a leader who habitually lies and tries to usurp democratic institutions for personal gain.
What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?