it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
Sure, some people are, but the broader trend is people following their perceived material interests.
😑
I don’t know why I’m bothering. It’s always this “should” nonsense. It’s completely irrelevant to understanding voter behavior.
It did not have the impact you want it to have because people vote according to their material interests, and Trump’s various antics did not make them change their minds about which candidate was in line with their material interests. Because they were directly, materially affected by inflation, and not by “Trump dancing.”
Of course I do. Those “top advisors” are the same incompetent morons that bungled the Clinton campaign.
You have to provide an alternative explanation to the right’s narrative. When things are bad, people look for who to blame, the right tells them to blame immigrants, while liberals tell them not to blame anyone because things are fine, actually. It’s no wonder people go with the narrative that actually tracks with their lives experience of material conditions. The solution, the way to answer the right’s narrative, is to blame the rich, the billionaires who are hoarding wealth and price gouging and who were (in part) actually responsible for inflation. The democrats don’t want to do that though because they would risk alienating their rich donors.
Even if they weren’t willing to do that, Kamala was directly asked what she would do differently than Biden on the economy and had *absolutely no answer," which was an extreme political fumble. Saying virtually anything would be better than that. She is a terrible politician with poor political instincts, which is why she bombed out of the 2020 primaries despite being the frontrunner.
What I’m saying is that reality and the current state of US politics should be recognized for what it is. And it’s impossible to do that if you keep injecting your ideas about what should be into analysis of what is.
Because you can. You just have to view things through a materialist lens rather than an idealist one.
I don’t know why I bother. They didn’t vote according to the REALITY of their material interests you dumbass, they voted according to their MISINFORMED INTERPRETATION of their material interests. WHY YOU ASK? Because the administration did objectively well MATERIALLY and NOBODY CARED. Trump is also OBJECTIVELY BAD for their MATERIAL INTERESTS, this is proven by both the FACTS of his first term and the DOGSHIT or NON-EXISTENT PLANS for his second term.
This is just a dogshit tankie take. Trump filled his cabinet with billionaires and was supported by the richest man on earth. Nobody cares about this “blame the rich” nonsense, evidently. It’s clear that you just see everything through this trash tankie lens which is why it feels like I’m talking to a schizo. Hilarious that you genuinely think that you would’ve been better at coming up with a successful strategy for Kamala than people who do that shit for a living.
Ah yes, I know that in your world of non-existent morality this would’ve had an easy counter. But shitting on your current boss by making up nonsense about how he actually did things poorly (when he didn’t) doesn’t come easily for people who are more genuine/honest than you. Also, isn’t the obvious answer to anything Kamala could say “why didn’t you do/push for that policy as the vice president?”
I do recognize it as the piece of shit it currently is yes.
Engaging in and furthering the decay just to win isn’t the way to go. Clear out the trash so that democracy can actually function. Ridding ourselves of this dogshit disinformation environment and returning to normal politics isn’t “idealist”, we’ve been there not too long ago.
I guess Bernie Sanders is a tankie now 🤣
I already explained this. When the options are, “You are struggling, and the reason you’re struggling is minorities” vs “You’re not struggling, it’s all in your head, the economy’s doing fine actually,” people are inclined to listen to the narrative that tracks with their lived experience. If you want to actually compete with that narrative, you need another explanation of why people are struggling, ideally a simple one, and that’s where a leftist narrative is necessary.
The idea of Kamala Harris being more genuine/honest than me is too absurd to even take offense at, it’s just hilarious.
I guess you got what you wanted then. Kamala chose to fall on her sword and “do the right thing” and now you can pat yourself on the back for being on the side of the good guys while the right takes power and fucks up all the stuff you claim to care about. If we keep getting such “noble” people, then the right’s dominance is assured for the foreseeable future. How important is stuff like Ukraine to you, really, if you’re fine with that result? Seems to me you’re fine with them being sacrificed as long as your side keeps it’s hands clean.
Not that it would even “dirty her hands” to simply offer some kind of policy. The Biden/Harris administration was constrained by a divided government, she could’ve said they wanted to go further with stuff but were held back. Is that not the truth?
Also, for the record, my position is not that morality doesn’t exist, just that you have to set it aside when assessing the world as it actually is.
Because the vice president doesn’t have much power? Obviously.
Yes, we were there not long ago. And then we proceeded from that state into this one. Even if we could somehow return to that state, the root causes that pushed us into this one would still remain.
But you don’t seem to have any actual plans for achieving the change you want in the first place. You just seem to want politicians to fall on their swords for no reason so they can be heroic martyrs and you can revel in your “correctness” about things. I guess I owe you an apology, when I tried to explain to you what could’ve been done differently in order to win, it was under the assumption that you actually wanted to. If you just want to whine about things not being the way you want them to, idk what to tell you, you do you ig.
If you’re suggesting that she should’ve thrown Biden under the bus in her response, then it’s not absurd at all.
Ah yes, all of a sudden voters are aware of the facts “oBviOusLy” lmao. Let’s just pretend that whatever real or imagined failures of the Biden admin weren’t successfully thrown onto her during the campaign. zzzzzzzzzz
It’s more like “You are struggling, and the reason you’re struggling is minorities” vs the basic facts of how the country is actually performing and what actually caused inflation all over the world. Too many Americans are just too dumb and misinformed, that much is clear.
As I explained, she wouldn’t have had to throw Biden under the bus, unless you consider “distinguishing herself from him in literally any way” to be “throwing him under the bus.”
It was very easy to associate her with the real or imagined failures of the Biden campaign because she did nothing at all to distinguish herself from them.
Almost as if complex economic explanations either go over people’s heads, don’t reach them, or they don’t believe them. I wonder if there’s some kind of simpler, but also true narrative that would acknowledge people’s struggles while blaming them on people much more responsible for the situation than random minorities. Something like, blaming the rich. But no, can’t do that, because Bernie Sanders is too tankie for you.
Again, what is your actual strategy for addressing the problem of uninformed voters? I just gave you mine, yours seems to be “lose, but it’s ok so long as you were right.”
should be easy for you to give an actual example then.
No, it was easy because people are dumbasses and don’t know basic facts like “the VP doesn’t have much power”. Again, she can’t real distinguish herself much from her own administration if troglodytes aren’t even aware of what a VP can or can’t do. Trump literally just copy/pasted his critiques of Biden onto her and people ate that shit up lmao.
basic facts like how the economy is performing and covid caused global inflation is “complex economic explanations” now?
An example of her… not doing that? I already did, when she was asked in an interview what she would do differently.
Again, what’s you’re plan to account for people being dumbasses? If people are dumbasses, and you want politicians to keep running campaigns as if they weren’t, then the inevitable result of what you want is that you lose.
Yes. How “the economy” is performing doesn’t necessarily reflect on the average person’s lived experiences as they watch prices go up and don’t own enough stocks to really benefit from that. I don’t recall Kamala ever actually bringing up covid as the reason for global inflation, which was probably smart doing so probably would’ve just increased covid skepticism, it would’ve played right into their hands. It’s no surprise that the right was able to cut through that rhetoric by talking about the price of eggs and such.
I really feel like you’re underestimating the challenge of communicating ideas to a broad population. Any message you want to communicate, you should imagine someone acting in complete bad faith trying to present you in the worst possible light and shouting over everything you say, because that’s what cable news is, and it’s also what political content on platforms like Twitch and YouTube are like, except then they don’t even have to bring you on at all, they can go through clips and shit cherry-picking and taking things out of context. I can shout “YOU DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY BECAUSE THE BILLIONAIRES TOOK IT” and that’s a lot more likely to get through than like, “You don’t have any money, but you could have even less money, and actually if you compare our inflation levels to the global median you’ll see that it was actually unavoidable,” which can easily be distorted and shouted down.
An example of how she could’ve distinguished herself successfully…
I’m not trying to present a plan. I’m trying to explain the sources of disinformation and how people were manipulated by them. The media environment needs to be fixed, but people have already been successfully manipulated into distrusting traditional media and trusting Russian bot farm accounts on Twitter instead. How to fix this environment now? God knows
I feel like I’m highlighting that, if anything.
I already did. She could’ve said that the administration wanted to do more about inflation but was held back by Republicans in Congress. She could’ve also pointed a finger at the rich and say that she would do more to confront them and stop price gouging.
Ok, well some of us actually do have ideas on how to win and haven’t resigned ourselves to this defeatist martyrdom nonsense. So, like, maybe we should toss out your ideas at least for a while and give mine a try, since they involve a practical, coherent strategy adapted to the present situation which you have no answer for.
Like why on earth would I ever come around to your position if you can’t even come up with a theoretical solution to the most important political questions of our time? If even you see your political project as a sinking ship, I’m sure as hell not coming aboard.