Outlaw83
7mo ago
OK, guess I have to speak up as probably the only actual social democratic partisan Democrat here -
The reason Joe Biden is running for reelection is because he's the incumbent President and wants to run for reelection, and primary challenges agains incumbent President's go badly, and most importantly, nobody would beat him. Like, contrary to popular opinion, there is no secret Deep State Cabal of Obama, Hillary, and whomever running the country. No, it's the codgy old guy, the people who have been around him for years, and a bunch of former Warrne staffers. Secondly, even if he did step down, Kamala's the nominee because she's the VP, still has good approvals among Democrat's, and so on.
Now, we're probably going to disagree on the fundamentals on who's smart or not, but going to the bench - the thing people miss is much of the current Democratic bench is in the states - Whitmer in Michigan in the same state Biden barely won, wins by ten, and also turns the Michigan legislature entirely blue for the first time in decades, Shapiro in PA wins by a landslide, Pritzer in Illinois's a little more controversial but you beat a bad billionaire with a good class traitorous billionaire, there's Governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina who has won two terms in a light-red state, while running as a standard issue liberal, Andy Beshear in Kentucky is a pro-choice and pro-LGBT Governor of that state about to win reelection, Tim Walz has been a solid governor of Minnesota, and for more well-known folks, there's Newsom in Cali, and for the more moderates/neoliberals, Polis in CO. In the Senate, even then, there's Raphael Warnock, a pretty down-the-line liberal Senator who won in Georgia.
Like, on pure electoral talent, 2022 shows the Democrat's have plenty of it, simply looking back at the historical record of midterms.
I also, frankly, think people have gone so over the board underestimating Kamala, that they'd assume she'd lose in some 40-state landslide. As a social democrat, she wouldn't be my preferred candidate in 2028 (Whitmer or Warnock for me), but at worst, Kamala loses the EC 312-226, and even then, still only narrowly loses the popular vote, and that's if the GOP doesn't nominate somebody Trump-adjacent or somebody with no charisma like DeSantis. So yeah, a boring ticket like I don't know Brian Kemp/Kim Reynolds probably wins that election that way, but Tucker/Vivek, or something like that - Kamala can totally win because people will choose cringe they're embarrassed guy by the weirdos, and as seen by some of the right's reaction to the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce thing, they're entirely too much the weirdos.
Finally, probably most controversially, Fetterman. He outran Biden in Pennsylvania and has the look much closer to the median American than anybody else. Hell, polling showed the stroke made voters more sympathetic to him, as the elite media was telling him to withdraw, savaging his debate performance, and so on.
I'm not somebody who says the GOP can't win in 2024 or 2028, but this weird idea, because Biden's the nominee there is no bench is simply false, and I'd make the opposite argument for the GOP. Whose somebody that can win a primary with a Trumpian base, that can actually win a national election?
Outlaw83
1yr ago
"Notice that these discussions were not serious intellectual inquiries about the past, they were more of light topics when you shot out random questions."
This is the basic issue - for women and frankly, many minorities, the past before, let's say, 1980 is not a light topic. Like, yes, even as a left-wing dude, I have thoughts about going back to random time x, because there's entertaining possibilities or thoughts about changing the past, even though, rationally, I know I'd be dead of a disease or whatever fairly soon. But, it's still a nice fantasy.
OTOH, for 99% of women, even well-off educated women, what's the thing they can fantasize about doing in 1740's France, Sweden during the Viking Era, or the height of the Roman Empire?
Women couldn't get credit without their husband or father co-signing until the 70's. It's not shocking that they have no great fantasies, outside of a bodice ripper or two, about going back to the time x.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I have to say, it's amusing to me the way pro-Russian/anti-American people online have turned Victoria Nuland into the modern-day Bismarck, able to take down governments and change the political winds with a single visit.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I'd argue the "people in conservative households, etc." are happy comes from two main sources -
1.) Self-selection - all the people who'd be happier under more conservative living arrangements are in tha form of life, and people who want a more liberal situation are living that kind of life. Like, we tried this before, and when try to force people into this kind of life and allow even mild forms of mass communication, you get the 60's eventually, everywhere. Hell, Iran is dealing with this right now. I realize the median opinion on this site appears to be that women just need to get married at 22, start having babies, and they'd be much happier, but again, that happened. It turned out, a lot of people weren't happy with that arrangement.
2.) A more cynical interpetation is that ignorance is bliss. Of course, a bunch of religious people who think this is all God's will and that they can't change anything accept their lives and all that (unless of course they disagree, then weirdly they're happy to organize.)
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, what you just imagined is nothing new. It's just the culture war that was being probed back then has disappeared so you don't notice what the story is about anymore. After all, the Wizard of Oz was basically agit-prop for silver coinage, but it doesn't really matter in 2023 that the Wizard was supposed to be McKinley.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, personally, as a left-winger, I'm glad some of our bloated defense department budget is finally get put to use for a good reason for once. If we have to "spend" (ie. send basically our leftover equipment in the back of the garage to Ukraine) a stupidly small amount of GDP to turn Russia into a wreck, win-win.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
You're not going to find the kind of pulpy novels Correia and Torgersen were complaining were overlooked*.
That's the complaint I never got - to quote Mad Men, "that what the money was for." The other stuff, even if I disagreed, I at least understood why they were upset, even if I thought they were silly, but mid-tier pulp in any genre has never really won awards. But yeah, before most people currently complaining about the state of sci-fi were even alive, sci-fi prizes had gone away from military sci-fi or the type of stuff supposedly being locked out by the SJW's, because it was old hat.
I also think you're right the whole Puppy business not only pushed away a lot of 'centrist' voters to stop getting involved, but activated a whole new group of voters who frankly, saw a bunch of whom they saw as assholes trying to steal awards, and get involved to stop it.
Let me start this by saying Trump could totally win with a hiccup in the economy, Biden looking old at the wrong moment, something going really bad in foreign policy, or something else off.
But, where are you seeing this idea the Democratic ground game in shambles? In reality, in basically every special election for the past few years, plus the midterms, the Democrat's have run past their prior margins, including just this past week, winning a Trump +1 state legislative seat in suburban Huntsville by twenty five points.
In addition, Biden just raised $25 million in one night, with a plan to actually get a healthy bit of funding out to state parties, all while many Republican state parties, including swing states like Michigan and Arizona, are either in feuds with each over who is actually in control of the state party, is basically in a deep fundraising hole, or in some cases, both.
Also, Trump's own small donor fundraising has fallen apart, which is why, along with the whole needing money for legal bills, is why all of the sudden he's friendlier with Chamber of Commerce types, and has done things like talk about being OK with entitlement cuts, and totally flipped on TikTok, once a billionaire with a stake in ByteDance got close to him.
Plus, on the actual primaries, even in closed primary states after Haley dropped out, she was still getting 15-20% of the vote in some of these places. Now, I don't that's representative of actually 20% of the GOP voter base, but in a close election, you need every voter you can possibly get.
As far as the polling goes, it is interesting - all the polls are showing the biggest shift since the Civil Rights Act with Trump supposedly winning 25-30% of the black vote, straight up winning the Hispanic vote, and either winning or getting close with the youth vote, but the other thing people don't mention because it make things look even weirder, is these polls usually show, because otherwise Trump would be up by like 10, is Biden is somehow turning around 30 years of movement, and winning older white voters.
Now, maybe that's happening.
But, we're not seeing this shift among non-white voters in special elections, and even in 2022, the only real shifts to the right happened in Florida, along the Texas border, and in some deep blue parts of NY & CA, all while the national vote for both African-American & Hispanic voters basically stayed steady from 2020.
In addition, polls that oversample black, Hispanic, and youth voters to get more than just a subsample with a higher margin of error show numbers much closer to 2020 & 2022.
Again, Trump can win. I even think he could get to 15% of the black vote and 45% of the Hispanic vote. The issue is, in places like the Atlanta, Dallas, Milwaukee, etc. suburbs, the bottom is falling out of the suburban vote, especially among women who are turned off by Trump, then got turned off by Dobbs. Plus, there's a new generation of 30-something's coming to the suburbs, and they're more diverse, and less conservative than the prior generation.
But, my personal belief, is here are the actual most likely results of the 2020 election.
-
2020 redux - it turns out, most people haven't shifted their views
-
Trump inside straight redux of 2016 - slight turnoff shift by minority voters, youth vote dropoff, etc.
-
Big Biden win - what happened to rural voters among Democrat's in the past few decades happens to the GOP among suburban voters, there's more Haley voters/supporters who decide not to turnout, Trump's non-voter base that he turned out in 2016 & 2020 have gotten bored, and the Genocide Joe types are overstated on Twitter, and it turns out young single women care more about abortion than whether Biden is old or Doordash delivery is more expensive.
Outlaw83
5mo ago
Why do school libraries need explicit sexual material?
There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of books in every single school library with graphic descriptions of physical violence, blood, gore, and destruction. Yet, somehow, reading about two gay people having sex is more explicit? As long as kids can check out a book and read about the aftermath of World War II in Europe, the world won't end if they get some masturbation instructions as well.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
If you actually look at nuclear development, electricity deregulation made it impossible to do the long-term funding to build nuclear reactors, because the time to get your money back is such a long tail.
It's not a surprise that France, the only country that continued to basically directly control nuke reactors via the gov't were the only ones to continue to really build them. Ironically, in a situation where a New Dealer like Hubert Humphrey was POTUS, nukes might've been better off.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I'm no expert, but I think the Donbass is highly likely, but Crimea is pretty unlikely.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Why is it affront to liberalism to name a well-qualified person to the Court who also happens to make sure the Court better reflects what the nation looks like? Like, I'm pretty sure for the entirety of it's existence, there existed Jewish judges that were qualified enough to be on the Court, because, the idea there is a most-qualified person to be on the Court just isn't true.
Outlaw83
28d ago
So, the thing about self-described user belief is most people, right, left, centrist, libertarian, reactionary, whatever are sometimes quite self-deluded about their own positions, and relative position within the wider world.
Like, I'm a left-wing social democrat with what would be described as pretty SJW/woke/whatever views on most social issues - but I'm well aware my combination of wanting mandatory union votes for all employers over 10 non-family employees yearly plus abortion 'til birth puts me to the left of 95-96% of the population. Unfortunately, too many of my leftie friends have outsized views on what people support.
Another is salience.
A thing some people try to do, and I'll charitably say for non-prominent people is they're unaware they're doing this, is there are a lot of people who'll describe their views as centrist or liberal, and when defending themselves, go over the various issues they're center-left on, but the only time they mention those issues is when they're defending themselves against attacks they're not a right-winger.
For prominent people, that's how, as a left-wing social democrat who doesn't mind reading opposing views, is how I figure a "the left is going too far" person's griftiness. For example, Matt Yglesias is cranky about some things and thinks the non-profit complex in DC and nationwide is hurting various causes, etc. but also regularly talks about how the GOP wants to ban abortion nationwide and cut Social Security & Medicare.
OTOH, there are various other pundits who anytime a left-leaning person (especially a liberal coded MSNBC-type) criticizes them, goes into the whole, "now, I'm the true leftist because I call for x, y, and z", but then they never talk about x, y, and z again, and go back to complaining about kids on campus or whatever." Honestly, I prefer the reactionaries and right-wingers here who are honest about their beliefs, as opposed to the pundit lying about what they truly care about.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Oh, you're somebody who thinks everybody is rigged. Never mind then.
But, to anybody reading, what he describes is called typical coalition politics. Nobody is honor-bound to continue to run for office if they think by dropping out and getting something in exchange, or because they prefer that candidate over the other, somebody will have a better chance. Like, it's not going to be corrupt when Vivek drops out and supports the guy closest to him - Trump. Like, why did people expect the other candidates to just allow Bernie to win the primary with 35% of the vote and do nothing about it? Plus, much of the moderate voltron didn't get anything or use racial politics - Amy Klobuchar got nothing. She's still Senator of Minnesota, and she was before that. She was the other major part of the moderate voltron, and the reality is, Mayor Pete was a strong enough candidate that he would've gotten a gig in the Bernie administration, just like ironically, everything points to Kamala being Bernie's VP choice.
Again, Biden had things to offer candidates w/ views closer to him. The issue is, Bernie (and his supporters) upset the one person somewhat close to him, not that it would've mattered in the long term, as even during the primary, Biden was actually enough Warren's supporters 2nd choice that Biden would've still won
I think a popular candidate will win regardless of the rules. Trump was that, Bernie wasn't. Unfortunately. But, to a certain extent, it's his own fault. He and his supporters didn't realize much of his support in 2016 was anti-Hillary, not ideological, and when somebody like Biden showed up, those people would move to him, and like I said, he did virtually nothing to try to win over black Southern Democrat's in the four years between 2016 & 2020.
"require motivated voters and ground game to win the day, something Bernie was exceptionally good at"
Yes, I believe in one person, one vote, not some votes being worth more because they care more. Which is why I oppose caucuses, and support primaries with same-day registration. What you wanted was a minority of the party to win the nomination. Sorry, Charlie.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Because "straight white guys" aren't a group. Now, even in my deep blue super-SJW city, there are Irish festivals, there are Polish festivals, there are Norwegian festivals, where all the things those people did as immigrant groups or whatever can be hailed.
Also, you fall into the problem that a lot of straight white males don't have any interest in the "cultural traditions" a lot of other straight white males do, unlike say, African-American's, where even very conservative religious African-American men like Tim Scott are a tick to the left of all of his fellow Republican's on how great the police are.
The reason why white straight men aren't allowed to organize as a group is the same reason why brunettes don't - because they're not an actual cultural group.
As far as building a civilization goes, it turns out, a lot of people have differing views on what that actually means, and in a world with less gatekeeping, people with more varied views can gain a voice, as oppose to those who want to give all the credit to a small group.
Outlaw83
8mo ago
My view is the data was always kind of meh, COVID really messed with it, and maybe this new data is OK, but maybe it's just as bad, but it shouldn't have been used or be used as proof there's an incel crisis or Tinder had destroyed gender relations or whatever.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
They can make a point after the guest leaves to say that person is wrong about everything, Biden won the 2020 election fairly, and they will not be inviting them back.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
That's people who work for those companies, not the companies themselves.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
If you look actually at what the NATO account posted, they were posting a quote from a Ukrainian journalist turned soldier who said that. Here's a link to the start of the Twitter thread -
https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1628687934000885760
Now, you can disagree w/ any of this soldier's statements, but this isn't official NATO propaganda, in the way you're stating it is.
OTOH, yes, why are you shocked people point to widely known cultural artifacts as symbols. Far more people will know the Nav'i or Han Solo than some random underdog force.
It's cringe, but most change in society happens because normies w/ cringe views get on the same side as activists.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
As mentioned below, Nancy Pelosi has more protection, but she wasn't there, and since historically, with very few exceptions, violence against politicians in America is 'crazed weirdo with barely coherent thoughts who does it in public', nobody thinks somebody is going to try to break-in to a prominent politician's home and commit violence.
Hell, even at the height of political violence in the 70's, while Italian Prime Ministers were getting kidnapped, our violence left-wingers...bombed some post offices and office buildings, but made sure the bombs went off when nobody would be there.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
As an actual group, SBF and his partner gave $32 million to Dem's and $24 million to the GOP. This idea he was some Democrat-only donor simply isn't true.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
Depends on your definition of didn't follow up. Also, it's bad politicking to say, "if we get elected, and a big enough majority, and nothing changes economically, we're going to do x and y." This is true for Republican's and Democrat's - I'm not being partisan here.
Now, do politicians sometimes sign on to various things from pressure groups in a primary, then basically ignore or hope it doesn't come up? Yeah, but again, it's still better than in the past, when politicians were supposedly better. No, there's just more coverage of it than there was in 1986.
Like, personally, as somebody very rare here - a pro-Democratic Party partisan social democrat, I'm basically fine with everything Biden did, as everything he said he'd do, but couldn't was a combination of Manchin & Sinema, or factors outside of his control. Maybe is there stuff at the edges, that lefties on Twitter sometimes claim he'd be able to do, but most of that is wishcasting.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
Does everybody involved in 'ripped from the headlines' that Law & Order made more salacious deserve 500k then? Because there are plenty of otherwise unknown people that L&O, and L&O:SVU adjusted stories about. Hell, SVU was even crazier at times, due to it being about sexual violence cases.
Also, as a white male, I don't feel portrayed as a Nazi, because other than my skin, there's nothing connecting me with Daniel Perry, and unless I missed something, there was no implication white men are like this, generally. On the other hand, OK, if you're a reactionary who thinks urban streets need to be cleaned up like an 80's Death Wish sequel, then you might feel aggrieved.
I'm going to be blunt here - the reason why there's current nostalgia for the 90's, is that is now the age where middle-aged people were now children. Shockingly, about a decade ago, there was nostalgia for the 80's, including I'm sure paens to how the culture was better then as well, because everybody, even libs, didn't like the Commies or whatever.
Also, as somebody who was alive during the 90's, there were many, many, many, many social conservatives upset about the current state of things at the time, and looked toward the prior generation of pre-11/22/1963, just like the current middle-aged people look to a pre-9/11 age. Oh, wow, groups of people looking back around 30 years to an imagined past. Weird how that continually happens.
There will be people upset about whatever in 2050, who will talk about the 2020's as a golden time. Hell, there was nostalgia for the Depression as people freaked about how teenagers had freedom and such in the late 50's and early 60's.
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