Outlaw83
1mo ago
The problem with 'returning it to the states' is if you're a purple state Republican, you get questions about what Alabama is doing, and how can we trust you not to do the same?
The normal voter does not care about federalism.
All they know is they hear a lot about Republican's wanting to ban abortion, and perhaps more importantly, every prominent Republican, outside of the 10 most liberal states, have talked their whole careers about abortion. It's kind of hard for a voter to suddenly believe candidates they only want reasonable exceptions when they've desperately tried to get the endorsement from every organization that talks about all abortions being murder since Roe v Wade.
It also doesn't help that those restrictions may be popular in theory, but not when people believe they're the first step to total bans.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
You basically hit on all the major parts. An erotic thriller was an actual big deal, even in 1991, especially if you were say a married middle-class man who couldn't really get away to watch porn on your own, while today, that same married middle class guy has a world of porn at his fingertips. But also yes, if you're selling to a worldwide audience, you can't upset anybody.
I will point on the celebrity thing, another thing is if you're a famous woman, you have alternatives to be sexual, where you make the money. For instance, instead of posting for Rolling Stone or whatever, Rhianna makes her own lingerie line, is one of the models for it, and so on. The actual reality is, the actual amount of nudity and sexuality among famous women is about the same as in 1993, it's just centered about celebrities who actually want to do it, as oppose to those felt they are forced to do it to get a roll.
Which explains Game of Thrones or more accurately, many cable dramas. There'll be far more sex scenes and nudity in the first season or two, because the actresses don't have the power to say no to a gratuitous nude scene. Even if you aren't well-paid by the 2nd or 3rd season, you're now plot important to a show that has a plan, so you have the leverage to say no. Also, even putting that aside, there's no need for the random nudity to bring people in at that point.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
Yes, this past decade or so has been that very specific political moment I'm talking about. By 2028, it'll be over, outside of Trump.
If Hillary had done a little better on Super Tuesday in '08, maybe she's the nominee, picks Obama, and either she loses in 2012 in Romney and Obama comes back to win in 2016 or she's a two-term incumbent, Obama's the obvious nominee, and so on.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
Lots of fairly educated middle-class women in comfortable air-conditioned suburbia with nothing to do, meant there was far more time to start reading Betty Friedan (or becoming her in the first place), because your house is comfortable, you have less housework to do, and there's no danger of ending up with six kids.
I think though, this is somewhat overrated - like OK, you hate modern feminism, fine. But, even the vast majority of tradcath mothers with six children in rural Iowa would find the America of say, 1970 insanely sexist. So, I'd say the conditions were ripe, especially in a society with the founding myth of equality America has.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
There won't be nostalgia for the bad things, just like there's no nostalgia over the Rodney King riots or the OKC bombing, but for the aesthetic, and how it was better for reasons. It'll just be nostalgia for Fortnite, whatever shows on Netflix teens like these days, maybel Marvel, and the styles of the time.
As a side note, nobody was under lockdown for 3 years in the US. I'm in one of the most blue parts of America, and even here, things were fairly normal by summer/fall of 2021 as far as places being open and being able to go to them. Yes, mask mandates were longer and concerts checked for vaccines longer, and you can dislike that, but saying there were three years of gov't lockdown is just a lie.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
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.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
From the outside, that was maybe more true under this place's prior home, but I think there are far more just out and out right-wingers or more accurately, people who have become more right-wing over time. Sure, there are some Grey Tribe or whatever people still here, but many of the comments here, policy-wise, when American politics come up, are just a more erudite version of the comments under any National Review or Federalist article.
No, it's mostly a bunch of weird situations and specific political moments.
In 2028, yes, if Trump doesn't win in 2024 is alive and out of prison (or maybe if he is in prison), he'll run again.
Otherwise, on the GOP side, you'll have a bunch of normal-aged politicians like DeSantis, Noem, Kim Reynolds, Stefanik, Abbott, Vance, on the GOP side who are all normal politicians ages.
Same thing on the DNC side - Kamala, Whitmer, Shaprio, Walz, Newsom, AOC.
Again, like or don't like these people, but they're all normal politicians ages. Same thing with the House & Senate leadership. Jefferies & Mike Johnson are normal political ages. Schumer & McConnell will be both are on their way out in the next 2-4 years.
Putting aside Trump, outside of him, I'll bet you a Trading Spaces dollar both nominees are under 70.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
I think the complaints about gerontocracy by left, centrist, and right-leaning people are more a picture of some odd timing than a long-term issue that people try to pretend it is.
In the House, it's already fixed itself. Jefferies is the leader of the Democrat's, and Mike Johnson is the Speaker, and even if he gets knifed, another normal-aged Republican will replace him, eventually. Before that, Pelosi only lasted as long as she did, because her preferred successor got beaten in a primary by AOC, and it was thought she was the only one who could keep the House majority together, and her new preferred successor needed some seasoning.
In the Senate, McConnell's stepping down after his term is over, and Schumer likely will pretty soon as well.
Biden only ran in 2020, because he thought he was the only one who could defeat Trump, and thought the same in 2024.
In 2028, on the GOP side, there will either be Trump, or a bunch of Republican leaders of normal politician age - DeSantis, Noem, Cruz, Vance, Stefanik, et all.
Same thing on the Democratic side - Bernie isn't running again, but Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker, Kamala, maybe AOC, etc.
Again, have your own personal views on all those people, but their all within standard issue politician age ranges.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
I mean, even if this is true, the main reason isn't some evil feminists being in charge, it's that it's far easier to garnish a person's wages than to pay enough people to make sure all visitation rights are followed to the letter. You could put this message board in charge of America, and guess what, you'd still see this.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Except the divorce rate is going down consistently. The main reason there was such a high level of divorce in the 70's and 80's is a lot of bad marriages finally had valve releases, and a lot of people headed for the exists. Now, you can think that was a bad decision or whatever, but I doubt even many conservative-leaning people are going to be OK with, "let's go back to 1955 norms about marriage."
Outlaw83
4mo ago
I think there are a lot of guys who women think are in a relationship, but the guys aren't having sex with anybody else because nobody is directly approaching them, and the woman is good enough. Ironically, this is far more likely than what many online MRA/incel/PUA types are worried about, which is a chad swooping in and stealing your girlfriend via Instagram DM's or whatever.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Except, even a lot of smokers were disgusted with being smokers before there was much social pressure at all. Considering more and more people are childless, and most of that is choice, going to be kind of hard to get people to tax themselves to help people they largely politically disagree with happier.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
I mean, that might explain the drop in rural America (along with longer-acting contraceptives like IUD's and shows like 16 & Pregnant), but not in other previously less-educated countries. I realize there's a meme in communities like this that education is just signaling and OK, fine, I'll believe you when it comes to high-level college education and such if it'll help you listen to my point, but on the lower levels, no access to it is pretty impactful.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Iran & Saudi Arabia are having big drops in fertility. The only places that aren't are Israel (who has a national story about being attacked on all sides) and some very poor African countries. That's it.
You can educate women + have accessible modern medicine or you can have high fertility. That's it. It's not society or anything else, it's that it turns out the number of women who become even mildly educated and want to have lots of children isn't that large.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
How do European grandmas pull it off, then?
Pretty much because many Europeans, especially in more dense city centers, and even in the suburbs (which are more dense in many cases than American suburbs) don't go to the supermarket once a week and get an ungodly amount of food. There's a local market, or at least a much closer supermarket they can stop by daily or maybe three times a week, get what they need quickly, and then go home.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Yeah, it's interesting that a lot of people's annoyance with a rematch and politics being dominated by old people will basically be done by 2028 - regardless of your views of any of them, all of the possible 2028 candidates in both parties (except for I guess Trump, if he loses in 2024), are all of normal politician age (40s to 60s), and even Congressional leadership will be younger as Pelosi has been replaced McConnell has been replaced, and there's a decent shot Schumer may retire in 2026, or step back from leadership.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
The actual reality is that 95% of "COVID voters" that existed in any large numbers were type B, and that's one of many reasons DeSantis died on liftoff - people don't want to think about COVID. That's why the Loudon County School Board went back Democratic and Moms for Liberty types have been largely failures outside already bright red areas. If the Virginia Governor race had been in March of 2022 instead of Novemeber of 2021, Youngkin probably loses, and he's basically the only real right-leaning victory that ran on COVID stuff, when it came to school closures and the like. The temporary allyship they had with center-left to center-right parents upset over school closures ended when the schools basically all reopened by fall of 2021, and life was back to normal for the vast majority of people, outside of the 5% of always maskers and 5% of people who think being forced to make sacrifices for other people you disagree with is the same as a concentration camp.
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
No, Trump is legitimately popular among the base. WTA delegate rules are dumb, though.
But, by "party scheming," you mean Obama called up people and said, "hey, sure seems you all agree with each other, so support Joe since he's our best shot." Like, Twitter joked about moderate voltron when MSNBC did it in polling, then was very mad when it happened. The Iowa & SC is just whining - the number of people shifted by Pete "winning" as opposed to Bernie couldn't fill up a Starbucks, and again, yes, you have to appeal to actual voters in a state to win, and guess what in South Carolina, that's the supposed "uneducated" black voters.
That just shows, and I say this, as a left-wing social democrat, how united the moderate wing was, and how weak and divided the left-wing of the party was, and how much a failure Bernie was, when between 2016 & 2020, he lost support in many working class areas he'd won in 2016 and failed to reach out to black voters in the South, that he needed to win.
Also, by fundamental calendar changes, you mean, making more contests actual democratic primaries instead of weird caucuses, yeah, they did that, and that was a good thing if you think the party nominee should actually have popular support.
The actual problem dead-enders who still think Bernie was screwed over don't get is that a lot of people like Bernie, but they liked Biden too, but they made a choice they thought Biden had a better chance of winning.
The median Bernie voter is the girl from this news story - (https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/10/19/boston-woman-dunkies-fenway-voting-video/) - who said she was voting for Joe Biden. She said she would’ve voted for Bernie Sanders but “it’s a team sport," not upset doomer blackpilled folks on Twitter.
I say this all as somebody who voted for Bernie twice, but both times, saw massive flaws in how he and his team were approaching the primary, including his manager saying all they needed to worry about was winning 1/3 of the vote.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Basically, nobody on the Internet supported Joe Biden, but he was the Democratic nominee easily.
I'm not saying Haley is going to do that, but the loud online people are all Trumpian, just like the loud people online in 2020 were all Bernie supporters. It's just Trump also has more support among the rest of the party.
Haley at say, 20% is not a shocking number, and ending up at say, 35-40% in New Hampshire, a very moderate state that Haley is putting a lot of time into wouldn't be surprising at all. So, a few outlier polls currently showing her within 5 or 10 in New Hampshire aren't out of line.
I also think you're likely in your own bubble. The type of people who support Haley, are likely not on media you show, or in areas where you are. Also, NYT polling isn't polling NYT readers, it's usually polling people who watched the debate.
But, as somebody else noticed, the type of person who likely supports Haley at the moment is a combination of college-educated center-right voters, normie suburban voters, and such, that for obvious reasons, don't mention their politcal beliefs on the Internet a lot, because they'll get called RINO's by most of the party, but also are too conservative to ever be Democrat's.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
No, like JD Vance & Josh Hawley have ideas, too. They're dumb ones, but they do.
But, folks like Tuberville, MTG, Boebert, and the rest of the newly arriving Trumpian Senators and Representatives just don't. Like, at the top of each party, the knowlesge level is similar, bu even the most down the line hacky Democratic politician could tell you a decent amount about their pet policy, whether it's ya' know, health care or child care or taxes or whatever.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
The people who will stop Chinese hypersonic missiles will be, and I am only slightly being hyperbolic, are trans furry military members in some bunker in Nevada piloting drones or other military gear, not some guy who signed up for reasonable reasons like access to college or career training or the darker reasons.
We already saw this in Ukraine - lots of hype over the true non-woke military, and it's regularly getting shredded by missiles that are largely being guided by a they/them army.
The actual thing that'll probably stop Chinese hypersonic missiles is a combination of they probably don't really exist in the way that anti-woke people hype them up online in the obsessive way they tend too, a corrupt Chinese procurement process that makes the US process look clean and normal, and the fact we've probably got stuff we're working on that we don't have to hype up the way the Chinese do to look strong.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
Eh, this whole talk of 80% of men being sexually invisible is incel/PUA bullshit. Again, if you look at actual studies of this stuff, yeah, the top 20% are having a lot more sex, but it's with each other. Which hey, be jealous, but this hasn't really changed since the 60's when the Pill was invented. This idea of some random guy with a six-pack swiping right and banging a a homely girl with a low body count who'd be married to a normal nerdy guy if only society was framed differently, doesn't exist, except in very anecdotal evidence. 80% of people continue to have, I think, less than five partners lifetime and that's both sexes (so in that sense, 80% is invisible, but it's 80% of women too), and if we look at the kind of bad data set of the GSS, the percentage on younger people having sex is back to even between the genders after a few weird years probably caused in part by #MeToo backlash, younger single women being more COVID-averse, and frankly, probably some not great data.
I think what's happened in the middle is what has happened with both genders - there's easy access to entertainment that's better than dealing with a bad match. On the male side, why waste a night going out, buying women drinks, to end up with a girl who will be a dead fish in bed who you're not overly attracted too, than who will still either ghost you or be clingy, when you can play Baldur's Gate for 6 hours, then masturbate to high quality OnlyFans/amateur HD porn of any kink you have. On the female side, why waste going out, getting hit on by a bunch of weirdo and douchey guys, maybe end up going home with somebody who won't try for an orgasm or will only not last that long, and then either be really weirdo clingy or stalker-ish afterwards, when you can just watch six hours of Real Housewives, then pull up some Amazon Kindle smut and get off with a really high-quality sex toy?
As far as the CW goes, Second-tier network that was full of dramas full of pretty people - it was the home of Gossip Girl, Riverdale, all of the DC Comics superhero shows, Supernatural. If you were insanely good-looking but mediocre as an actor, it's where you ended up until recently when many of those shows ended due to a change in ownership. As another example, look at Hallmark Christmas movies - all very pretty people, many of whom are objectivally better looking than many celebrities were in the 70's and 80's, because they all do yoga, don't eat steak five times a week, don't smoke, et al, but they also aren't giant stars, the same way a relatively untalented, but very pretty person like say, Farrah Fawcett was in the 70's.
I mean, the problem for pro-lifers is the vast majority of moderates are OK with "oops, the condom broke or I forgot my birth control" when it's their daughter, sister, et al whose about to go to college, and tells them they missed their period. Which is why in every single vote on the matter, no matter how extreme the pro-choice bill is written, it passes. Even in places like Kentucky, Kansas, and Montana.
Because yes, American's may not like 'up 'til birth' extremists like me (because I trust women and doctors not to be crazy), but if given a choice between me or the median pro-lifer who wants to ban abortion after six weeks, they'll choose no limits every damn time.
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