Already tired of all the blamecasting on the Democrats side.
You ever notice that the GoP doesn't seem to do much of that.. or pay attention to the bit of it that they do? Remember those autopsies they did and then totally ignored--in fact did the opposite of?
People, especially pundits and political consultants, treat the people as this m…
Already tired of all the blamecasting on the Democrats side.
You ever notice that the GoP doesn't seem to do much of that.. or pay attention to the bit of it that they do? Remember those autopsies they did and then totally ignored--in fact did the opposite of?
People, especially pundits and political consultants, treat the people as this malleable, easily persuaded mass that, if you follow the right recipe, you win... so if you don't win, you obviously had the wrong recipe. So it is your fault.
The mass of people is okay going along with this because it basically absolves them of the responsibility for their bad choices.
The devil made me do it. I was bamboozled/fooled/tricked. Not my fault.
The thing is, persuasion does not actually work that way. People are not that easily persuaded about a lot of things (especially things that touch upon identity), it is actually very hard in many cases to change peoples' minds.
I can convince you to buy the blue car rather than the red car (sometimes), but the reality is that you are gonna buy a car, because you WANT to buy the car. You showed up "just looking," but you were there to buy whether you realised it or not. You WANTED. All I had to do to make the sale was show you a car you wanted and show you that you COULD buy it. We'll make the numbers work ;)
You can tinker around the edges a bit, shade choices slightly, but you are not going to get massive change--not in something like a political campaign or ad camapign that takes place over a limited time period and with limited reach.
Looking at the Harris campaign, they did not make any real missteps or major mistakes. There are some things that they could have done differently--but I think we would still have gotten very much the result we did.
Why?
1) A substantial number of Americans think that the country is going in the wrong direction (these people do not agree on the direction to go, but agree that whatever it is the current government is doing is wrong);
2) A substantial number of white Americans is worried about the future, worried about losing control of the country. Worried about the collapse of "morals" (that they are also willing and eager participants in, for some reason)--the general tenor is negative;
3) Most people have no idea what will work (economics and policy) and do not believe that what they do, think, or say will have much of an impact, there is a general feeling of (almost) hopelessness--combined with the impression that the government is not doing much for them and won't do much for them;
4) There seems to be a natural human tendency to raise up authoritarian figures in such circumstances (look at history) with a sort of general understanding that the authoritarian isn't going to change much for the people at a personal level, but that oder and coherence will emerge through the exercise of the will of the authoritarian--ya, there might be some ugly stuff, but it will happen to those Other People and the corrupt elites--who will get what is coming to them.
When you plug this general malaise into the equation and raise up a candidate who is one of those Other People, I think you are kind of destined for defeat.
So the biggest and only real change that the Democrats could have done would have had to have been done in 2020--that is setting up a process to get a 2024 nominee who could capture the votes of the disaffected (who was also not a woman, was straight, and white)--the problem being that no such person was on the horizon.
Keep in mind we are talking PERCEPTIONS here, not reality.
People want to see that the government is doing something for THEM. White people do not think it is. Straight people do not think it is. Religious people do not think it is. They think too much attention and effort is spent on those Other People.
These people are tired of hearing about the travails of those Other People, about pronouns... all of that woke stuff. The troubles and oppression of those Others are either not real (it is hard to see/understand/feel oppression when you are not subject to it or are one of the oppressors) or are actually deserved.
People are scared that those Other People are going to take over their country and make them a minority... and this isn't an American thing, it s a world-wide thing.
People are mad that things cost more and blame the government (for no good reason).
Building that sense of malaise took decades. It will take decades to undo it, IF it can be undone (I think climate change and the resulting world-wide disruptions will make that next to impossible--plus energy costs are going to keep going up).
Our culture is bad.
Our sense of entitlement and self-obsession is off the charts.
Our government and justice system are the obvious tools of the monied class.
No wonder we got what we got--and the most perfect Harris camapign in the universe would not really have made a difference.
It will take years, maybe even decades, but climate change (CC) will gradually force the GOP to stop lying about science. They could had have healthy debates on what should be done about CC, but so far, lying is the easiest (& sleaziest) way to fool the masses and win votes. Because they lack the data and know it, they can't even agree on how to lie, (some insist there's no global warming at all, others concede there is but insist it's not human caused). But that's not yet a problem given science illiteracy, which is disproportionately high among GOP voters. GOP politicians have been lying about science for decades, starting with evolution, where peddling irrational denial is a cheap way to win evangelical votes. There too, they know they lack the evidence, so they learned to say as little possible about the "better explanation," counting on voters to assume it's one of the mutually-contradictory, long-debunked literal interpretations of Genesis. When the refutations become too hard for them to address, they invariably fall back on baseless accusations of "conspiracy" of scientists. Musk is the interesting one. He has long admitted human-caused CC, AND the urgency to combat it. Now that he sold out to the MAGA cult, will he backpedal and start lying? Stay tuned.
Already tired of all the blamecasting on the Democrats side.
You ever notice that the GoP doesn't seem to do much of that.. or pay attention to the bit of it that they do? Remember those autopsies they did and then totally ignored--in fact did the opposite of?
People, especially pundits and political consultants, treat the people as this malleable, easily persuaded mass that, if you follow the right recipe, you win... so if you don't win, you obviously had the wrong recipe. So it is your fault.
The mass of people is okay going along with this because it basically absolves them of the responsibility for their bad choices.
The devil made me do it. I was bamboozled/fooled/tricked. Not my fault.
The thing is, persuasion does not actually work that way. People are not that easily persuaded about a lot of things (especially things that touch upon identity), it is actually very hard in many cases to change peoples' minds.
I can convince you to buy the blue car rather than the red car (sometimes), but the reality is that you are gonna buy a car, because you WANT to buy the car. You showed up "just looking," but you were there to buy whether you realised it or not. You WANTED. All I had to do to make the sale was show you a car you wanted and show you that you COULD buy it. We'll make the numbers work ;)
You can tinker around the edges a bit, shade choices slightly, but you are not going to get massive change--not in something like a political campaign or ad camapign that takes place over a limited time period and with limited reach.
Looking at the Harris campaign, they did not make any real missteps or major mistakes. There are some things that they could have done differently--but I think we would still have gotten very much the result we did.
Why?
1) A substantial number of Americans think that the country is going in the wrong direction (these people do not agree on the direction to go, but agree that whatever it is the current government is doing is wrong);
2) A substantial number of white Americans is worried about the future, worried about losing control of the country. Worried about the collapse of "morals" (that they are also willing and eager participants in, for some reason)--the general tenor is negative;
3) Most people have no idea what will work (economics and policy) and do not believe that what they do, think, or say will have much of an impact, there is a general feeling of (almost) hopelessness--combined with the impression that the government is not doing much for them and won't do much for them;
4) There seems to be a natural human tendency to raise up authoritarian figures in such circumstances (look at history) with a sort of general understanding that the authoritarian isn't going to change much for the people at a personal level, but that oder and coherence will emerge through the exercise of the will of the authoritarian--ya, there might be some ugly stuff, but it will happen to those Other People and the corrupt elites--who will get what is coming to them.
When you plug this general malaise into the equation and raise up a candidate who is one of those Other People, I think you are kind of destined for defeat.
So the biggest and only real change that the Democrats could have done would have had to have been done in 2020--that is setting up a process to get a 2024 nominee who could capture the votes of the disaffected (who was also not a woman, was straight, and white)--the problem being that no such person was on the horizon.
Keep in mind we are talking PERCEPTIONS here, not reality.
People want to see that the government is doing something for THEM. White people do not think it is. Straight people do not think it is. Religious people do not think it is. They think too much attention and effort is spent on those Other People.
These people are tired of hearing about the travails of those Other People, about pronouns... all of that woke stuff. The troubles and oppression of those Others are either not real (it is hard to see/understand/feel oppression when you are not subject to it or are one of the oppressors) or are actually deserved.
People are scared that those Other People are going to take over their country and make them a minority... and this isn't an American thing, it s a world-wide thing.
People are mad that things cost more and blame the government (for no good reason).
Building that sense of malaise took decades. It will take decades to undo it, IF it can be undone (I think climate change and the resulting world-wide disruptions will make that next to impossible--plus energy costs are going to keep going up).
Our culture is bad.
Our sense of entitlement and self-obsession is off the charts.
Our government and justice system are the obvious tools of the monied class.
No wonder we got what we got--and the most perfect Harris camapign in the universe would not really have made a difference.
It will take years, maybe even decades, but climate change (CC) will gradually force the GOP to stop lying about science. They could had have healthy debates on what should be done about CC, but so far, lying is the easiest (& sleaziest) way to fool the masses and win votes. Because they lack the data and know it, they can't even agree on how to lie, (some insist there's no global warming at all, others concede there is but insist it's not human caused). But that's not yet a problem given science illiteracy, which is disproportionately high among GOP voters. GOP politicians have been lying about science for decades, starting with evolution, where peddling irrational denial is a cheap way to win evangelical votes. There too, they know they lack the evidence, so they learned to say as little possible about the "better explanation," counting on voters to assume it's one of the mutually-contradictory, long-debunked literal interpretations of Genesis. When the refutations become too hard for them to address, they invariably fall back on baseless accusations of "conspiracy" of scientists. Musk is the interesting one. He has long admitted human-caused CC, AND the urgency to combat it. Now that he sold out to the MAGA cult, will he backpedal and start lying? Stay tuned.