Outlaw83
4mo ago
So, despite what the other people are saying, I think what upsets the sort of anti-anti-Trump person that talks about 2012 the most isn't the just-so story about Romney being this honorable man the evil Democrat's attacks, that were so wrong and beyond the pale.
It's that 2012 was the first time the Democratic Party realized they had a national majority and acted that way in a national campaign. The reality is for the previous 30+ years, from Carter on, the Democrat's basically agreed with the Republican prescription of things, they just wanted a slightly kinder way of doing it - yes, crime is out of control. Yes, welfare is bad. Yes, government is too big, but the GOP are run by crazies who won't cut the right things. That was basically the Dukakis/Bill Clinton/Al Gore/even John Kerry argument.
Obama shifted that, but 2008 wasn't much of a nasty election because McCain liked Obama and vice versa, and people realized the GOP were doomed. But, in 2012, the Democrat's did thing they hadn't did in deciades - talked about how maybe, very rich people weren't perfect ideals of greatness who deserved all the credit for everything.
It helped that Mitt Romney said he liked to fire people, had shut down companies to get rich, and attacked half the population as well, basically 'deplorables' (unlike Hillary, who only attacked half of the Trump voters, so about 25%). People also forget in the post-2012 election, he basically blamed his loss on people (specifically minorities) wanting free stuff before he calmed down.
Now, I know the pushback will be "well, liberals love him now," and as the resident left-wing partisan Democrat, we don't love Mitt Romney, we just accept a right-wing neoliberal is better than a wannabee fascist, and Romney's one of the last Republican's who have actual ideas. Plus, 2012 Republican Nominee Mitt Romney wasn't really what Mitt Romney wanted to be, and he'd admit that to you today. He just couldn't run and win a primary as either 2006 MA Governor Mitt or current day pro-BLM pro-child tax credit anti-insurrection Mitt. I still don't think he's a good guy, I think his wealth should be taxed, and in a perfect world, his many, many children would not get much inheritance from him.
As for the rest, the petty BS people get hung up on happens in every Presidential election - Carter almost lost because he was slightly honest in a Playboy interview, the supposed liberal NYT turned Gore into some serial liar, and peopel already went over the Swift Boating of Kerry.
I also don't regret stopping him from massively cutting people's taxes, passing right-wing social policy, and so on. Be better than the petty wannabe fascist doesn't make you good. Respecting the will of the people isn't a high bar to clear, so I don't need to give him cookies.
But yes, to a certain brand of conservative who was used to the Democrat's being the Washington Generals, where they got most of their policies passed even when the Democrat's won, 2012 was the first time in their political memory the Democrat's actually punched back, and they've never forgiven Obama for doing so, which is why they'll talk themselves into supporting Trump, again.
Outlaw83
5mo ago
Shows bad the pre-Sexual Revolution society was to many people they'd put up with the weirdos.
But, do you think Led Zeppelin, Rick Springfield, and the dozens of other popular mainstream artists, actors, and such who engaged in what were the time, consensual relationships with teenage girls should have their records banned, and so forth, like you want to do with these intellectuals? Like, Robert Plant being a bit of scumbag doesn't make him a worse singer and many of these intellectuals have good arguments despite their preference for young teenage girls.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Here's the difference - yes, life was rough for men as well, but there were actually "mad men"-style accountants, there were brave slaves who became powerful in the Roman Empire, there was even the occasional peasant who became a knight, and leaders of worker's revolutions, and such. Sure, it was not incredibly likely, but it was still a much greater chance than anything happening for women.
Meanwhile, with women, unless you were born into power until basically last week historically, you weren't going to be much of anything, no matter how much some people try to push, no actually, women had secret power in the past within families - ignore the part where they had basically zero legal rights.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
1.) This is true, but they also support common sense reforms the GOP opposes. Like, a lot of working class white people, especially in rural areas where there are basically no minorities have had run-ins with terrible cops.
2.) I've seen no actual evidence of immigration support based on income.
3.) Sure, everybody is selfish. OTOH, I'm sure if I looked into local ordinancs and bonds and other things, I'd actually bet lower-income working class voters consistently support increasing taxes on themselves far more than rich people do.
4.) Again, depends on the specific policy. Yes, coal miners in West Virginia are going to continue to support coal mining, but is a construction worker in Sheboygan? Probably not so much. Of course, everybody is selfish, but I guarantee you the vast majority of working class people do not want to go back to the pollution level of even the 90's, even if it meant working class jobs.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, I'm not sure I believe it totally, but I wouldn't totally throw out an argument that the reason why countries in Europe aren't at South Korean-levels of fertility are those programs, and if they had a less robust US-style welfare system, they'd even be lower. Obviously, impossible to prove a negative, but yeah, considering our increase religiosity as a country, etc., if the US had European-style welfare, I could see our TFR being a notch or two higher. Not high enough for natalists, but better overall.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Perhaps I've missed them, but I've never seen anyone here propose any laws that take away women's rights to choose their sexual partners.
Not this week, but a couple of weeks back there was plenty of talk of explicitly limiting women's access to higher education, etc. along with banning birth control, etc. Now, no, this isn't explicitly taking away women's right to do so, but come on.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
This isn't what happens - it's just even the increased teacher pay lags behind other white collar professions, so teachers feel underpaid. There are plenty of ways that a person could be upset with education spending, but administrators aren't stealing teachers' raises.
But yeah, many Republican's used the money for states in the American Rescue Plan to raise teacher's pay in many states (fully legally - not saying it was untoward that way), which is why in retrospect, as a partisan Democrat, the Democrat's should've not given largely Republican governors such a giant slush fund so they could look good to low-info swing voters (again, not a shot at low info voters, just a statement of fact), but instead maybe added a 2nd year of the expanded child tax credit, or something else along those lines. But, unfortunately, we overlearned the lessons of the 2009 recession where states and localities really did hit a massive funding crunch, which really didn't happen under COVID, something many people thought would happn.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
That's also why the crime dog didn't really hunt in the midterms - in actual urban areas, yes crime rose, but it's not 1989 out there. It's closer to the apocalyptic year of...1997. Which I thought there was nostalgia among the non-woke since it was the decade racism was killed before SJWs reignited it, so if it was such a great time, why are VC's on Twitter freaking out about it being as violent as it was when it was the time they have nostalgia for?
Outlaw83
28d ago
I mean, I think it's fine to have open discussion, but not everywhere has to be an open discussion. If you have a forum with lots of women, minorities, LGBT people, or whatever, and don't want to deal with people asking about IQ, Jew's, or the 2020 election.
Now, sure, actual prominent people should know right-wing arguments and be able to push back against them (Mayor Pete is actually really good at this), but I don't really care if the forum x that happens to have a politics section doesn't want a long argument about whether the Civil Rights Act was good or not. The other reality is most arguments in reality are both people with actually bad arguments with incorrect information - which is fine, mostly, because an argument on Facebook or your cousin's BBQ is not the end of the world.
Again, I'm fair about this - if some pro-life Facebook group doesn't want pro-choice people arguing in the comments, that's A-OK.
I'd also point out when you see people make better arguments than you can on topics, and nothing shifts, there's no reason to further argue. So, when the people with the 93 annotated links and actual statements from various court decisions can't push away somebody from various ideas about 2020, what am I going to do?
Outlaw83
28d ago
I don't think it's always duplicitous, but I think anybody who seriously thinks the reason why this place is more right-leaning is some belief that in a free and open debate with nobody limiting it, the right-leaning argument wins is kind of lying to themselves, when in reality, the way the right wins these supposedly open spaces is saying enough things that trigger basically the fight or flight part of people's minds.
I'm a nearing middle-aged white guy, so the silly to frankly, terrible things said in this forum brush off my back, but a lot of the current left are basically and I say this in descriptive way, The Other - single women, minorities, immigrants, non-straight people, etc. So yeah, I can see why many people if in a community where what they think is open racism/sexism/bigotry against them is accepted, they say bye, and leave that community. Some people will hang around and still fight, but the reality is, most black people in 1960's America didn't have to argue about whether they deserved to use the same bathrooms as white people, and likely would've left any group arguing that. Obviously, not zero, but most people aren't argumentative weirdos like we are.
So yeah, the general tilt of any community will eventually become more of that, one way or the other. Also, in many cases (this isn't true here), there's a silent majority that's not as extreme, but also are effected by the community. YT comments section are kind of a perfect example - in a lot of cases, they're utterly rancid, no matter the topic, even when a creator doesn't want that. Because somebody whose basic belief about a YT video is, "that was all right," isn't going to post.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
I agree - local places will ban such things. That's why you need state or federal preemption so politicians who aren't afraid of the 9 people who show up to every City Council meeting and complain about anything changing can actually write decent law.
I guarantee the home you live in was not wanted by somebody in the neighborhood when it was built.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
I highly, highly, highly doubt this. For all the talk online about men finding more pliant traditional women in foreign countries, in real life, in a very blue city, no women even in a roundabout way is upset about it happening. Some sympathy for the women who don't know the type of guy they're marrying, but that's it.
I hate to break this to you, but most of the men who have to order in wives from poorer, less successful countries have to do so for a reason.
In a country w/ 350 million people, even allowing all of the women from foreign countries who want to come in is not going to affect the ratio, as much as you think. That's not even getting to the part where it turns out, all the foreign women moving here aren't going to be 9/10 tradwives who want to become homemakers and raise good traditional children.
Outlaw83
8mo ago
The difference is, in the US, for a long time, you didn't need your ID in most places, and calls for ID's only came when a certain group of people began voting in far higher numbers.
Now, personally, I'd be fine w/ voter ID, as long as it was a national ID, given out for free, sent out as an update to your SS card.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, that sounds like a problem with modern conservatism if their audience wants them to say things than get them sued.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, I'm somebody whose to the left of like, 95% of the population, and while I'm obviously not happy with the current situation, it's far better than it was ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. Now, when I was twenty, I was more upset, just like 20-year-olds are now. That's the job of 20-year-olds. But, you get older, and you don't change your views, you just get smarter about implementing them.
The kid gap is somewhat overrated, and even then, we'll just bring in more immigrants (totally legal and unionizable), who will end up voting left-leaning for a few generations because the Right's voting base will require their politicians to be mean to them.
Now, I don't think it's going to be a KO win for us on the left, just like radical abolitionists didn't get everything they wanted, nor did socialists in the 1910's, MLK or Malcolm, or various other left-leaning leaders. But, I think while everything is dangerous in the short term, in the medium and long-term, everything you just listed makes it incredibly difficult to actually have a unified political movement.
On a purely political level, I'll take the trade of 3 high-propensity middle to upper-middle class voters in the suburbs over a rural low propensity low to moderate-income voter not only because they're far more likelier to turn out, but because in 2023, they're far more likely to actually be more left-leaning on economics and social views. Hell, there are thousands of those voters that just made sure abortion will be legal in Wisconsin, and there might be something resembling legislative democracy on the state level as well, whom previously might have voted for Scott Walker a few times.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, the alternative is usually, people die out, and so do their views. Like, there used to be a major Anti-Masonry party in many states in the US. Nothing was really done on a national level to appease those people. It's just that their kids and grandkids didn't really care.
Same thing w/ interracial marriage. Well, there were obviously some shifts by people, if you look at Gallup polling, which goes back to World War II, you see a steady rise until the 80's, then a big jump during that time. Which makes sense - a lot of people who would've been in their 40's by time Civil Rights were a live issue (post-World War II/Humphrey convention speech/Truman desegregation) were dying off, and being replaced by a bunch of Gen Xers who were like 95/5 for interracial marriage.
Ironically, the only issue where the win condition has happened because of actual shifts in people's views, as opposed to generational rollover is gay marriage. Obviously, there was some bit of 85-year old gay marriage opponents being replaced by pro-gay marriage 18 year olds, but the shift happened too quickly to be that.
But yeah, in another generation and a half or so, most of the current Fox News audience/Trump base is going to be worm food. At that point, just like the Right stopped with the overt racism, sexism, etc. in the 70's and 80's to win over younger voters (including winning the youth vote in '84 and '88), the GOP will either have to figure out how to appeal to a largely currently Democratic voting-base (again, yes, Millennial's are voting at lower rates for Democrat's than they did in 2008, but if I remember right, it's about D+8. That's still death for the GOP if the largest voting bloc is even D+4 or D+5, when the smaller, younger voting blocks are even more D-leaning), or they do actually die, outside of the Senate seats they'll hold in depopulating states, and then things get interesting.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
What you call a conspiracy in the Democratic primaries is called...people of the same general political ideology getting behind whom they believed was the strongest candidate. The moderates actually got along, while Bernie got knifed in the gut by Warren staying in the race. Even though, actual polling showed Biden as the 2nd choice of many Warren voters.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Speaking personally, I'm not that worried about Andrew Tate. Partly because a lot of what Tate says was far more mainstream only a few decades ago, just in a slightly different language, and second of all, Tate's audience isn't 20-something incels. It's horny 14 & 15 years olds. Now, as a former horny 14-year-old boy, of course, they're frustrated.
But, the reality is, most of these 14-year-old boys will have some sort of relationship in high school. Guess what, once the option is a makeout session/handjob/etc. or continuing to watch Tate or some other dumb streamer, guess what the horny teenage boy is going to choose? Like, it's obviously not great, but I don't think it's the crisis people think it is.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Yup, this is the thing. Would it be even worse for your friend if he was overweight, etc. Absolutely. But, I think, unfortunately, too many people actually believe an SNL skit is actually real life. Also, the secret is that a lot of people are coded as 'assholes' because they're good-looking, charismatic, and dress well (for their subculture/etc.).
Yes, there are the typical a-hole guys in a club, or horny drunk guys late night at a bar, but they're nowhere as successful as people think they are. OTOH, yes, they are more successful than somebody who basically spends all their time either in male-dominated spaces or by themselves.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Detroit is probably the most corrupt city in the US, or at least in the top 5 for machine politics. 95% Dem? Really?
I mean, yes. That sort of voting pattern has been consistent in Detroit for decades. It seems people don't really get there can be very red and very blue areas in this country. Like, there are countries in the rural part of Texas, et al that vote 90%+ Trump. I don't think there's any fraud there.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Yup, people claim this, but all around the world, even where the fairly right-leaning government were also fairly pro-COVID measures, in almost all cases, the pressure to lessen COVID restrictions and against masks came from the right. Hell, by most measures, everybodies favorite NatCon leader Orban has COVID restrictions that would make Gavin Newsom blush, but even he felt pressure from his right to loosen them eventually.
One kind of sad thing is Trump seems to be dropping support of one of the few unequivocally good things he did (Operation Warp Drive) because the GOP base is so crazed on vaccines.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Ironically, this is somehing that's missed in the cancel culture discourse. Now, sometimes the person does admit they were wrong, and things continue, but far more, it's person does or says x, people get upset about it, then there's the backlash to the backlash, then the 'why won't group y forgive person x', and usually, person x still thinks they're in the right. Now, that might be fine and dandy, but then, there should be no discourse about forgiveness or group y moving on, even if you think person x is correct, or shouldn't be sanctioned for what they said or did.
For IRL example, take Eddie Murphy. He said what could be considered by a lot of people some terrible jokes about gay people and women in his 80's specials, that were hugely popular. So, why doesn't a Tweet along w/ a video clip of some joke from Raw never get any traction? Because Eddie doesn't do that kind of comedy anymore really and he's admitted that stuff was shitty to say. So, there's nothing to cancel, because Eddie admitted what he said was dumb, and everybody moved on, which pushes against the idea that's pushed that you'll be shamed forrever if you ever do anything wrong.
People just have to actually believe you're sorry for saying or doing what you did.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, yes, I agree, and I think every Justice on the Court, even the ones I think are terrible and are making the country worse are well-qualified in that they know the law, etc. Like, I think Clarence Thomas has done irreparable harm, but I'm also sure he's smart enough to figure out arguments to get what he wants in an opinion.
If you go through the arguments and opinions of every single Justice in history, they all make mistakes or get caught up in a bad argument, because they're not robots.
if anything, due to the bias toward judges w/ elite credentials, the Supreme Court today has far more well-qualified people than when it was explicitly a place for political favors, whether it was former Congressman who were never judges, or anything else. It wasn't until the Nixon era the idea that the Supreme Court was a place for elite legal minds to put down judgement was even something thought of by many people at all, considering even Eisenhower named Earl Warren to the Court, basically to get his support at the RNC in 1952.
As a leftist mostly open borders, we mostly just don't care, dude.
Like, by the standards of the supposed secret left-wing plan to import a new citizenry to outvote the Old Stock, or whatever, because of the drop in support for the Democrat's among Hispanic voters, there should be some shift in support for amnesty, immigration reform, refugee status, etc., but there hasn't been.
Outside of a few jokes about since Florida is gone, Biden should reverse the Cuban import ban and invited Raul Castro to a state dinner next year, there's been no shift in elected or non-elected support, which seems odd if we're all in on a plan to get rid of whitey.
OTOH, if it turns out we're all bleeding-heart lefties who think America is, has, and always been a land of immigrants where the Old Stock freaked out over being "replaced" since approximately 1776, then there should be no surprise. The Anglo Stock got replaced by the Germans, Swedes, and such who came over. Then those people got scared of the Irish and Italians. Then, those people are currently scared of the Hispanic's and Asian's. In another 40 years, there will be El Savadoran's and Hmong Republican's scaring people about I don't know, Bangladeshi and Cameroonian immigrants taking their jobs, or whatever. As is tradition.
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