How big an impact did culture war issues have on Donald Trump winning the election? Here is recent public polling on a variety of hot button issues:
On the old warhorses of guns and abortion, liberals have long held an edge. Large majorities say abortion should be generally legal vs. generally illegal, and voting on abortion initiatives in the states confirms this.
But liberals are underwater practically everywhere else. Small majorities are uncomfortable with they/them pronouns, and building a wall along the border with Mexico has gotten more popular. It's now a majority view.
Other issues have swung harder in the conservative direction. Large majorities favor tougher policing, even among Black voters. Ditto for opposition to affirmative action. Trans issues are more nuanced: large majorities support anti-discrimination laws for trans people, but similarly large majorities oppose both the use of puberty blockers among teens and biological boys competing in girls' sports.
Views of the Middle East are complicated, but on the straightforward question of Israel vs. Hamas, Americans favor Israel by a huge margin. They also approve of Israel's bombing of Lebanon.
Finally, most Americans support some kind of path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but large majorities also say immigration is a very serious problem and we should reduce the level of immigration. Small majorities even favor mass deportation.
By itself, none of this dictates what either liberals or Democrats should do. But there's never any benefit to sticking our heads in the sand. We should at least acknowledge what we're up against.
“Views of the Middle East are complicated, but on the straightforward question of Israel vs. Hamas”
Wow, is that wrong. It’s Israel vs Palestine, it Jewish settler terrorists vs Hamas. How on earth did you conclude “one people vs the bad guys of the other” is a fair poll question?
Fair has fuck all to do with the subject, the poll question certainly is a framing that captures the vasty majority of the US population's understandings and thus reflects the actual political enviro faced.
Lefty denialism here is just self-harming.
For avoidance of doubt this is not to take a stance that such framing is "factually true" only not to self-deceive on wide underststanindg
I’m guessing that If the question was framed in way that asked if the IDF is justified in filling 50,000 innocent civilians mostly women, children and the elderly we would get a different answer.
But that would be intellectually dishonest because the number you cited is in dispute and casualties also include lots and lots of Hamas fighters...
Okay, how about "Is IDF is justified in filling 20,000 innocent civilians mostly women, children and the elderly?" Still singing the same old song? Well how about 10,000?
Thanks for generating yet a another stupid answer that is simply begging for a smart interrogative; you are, in your own way, a useful little git, Simplicio.
If the question is framed to achieve a result you want then yes certainly it will end up different
However Push Questions are not going to give you a read of your actual enviro.
Fair again has fuck all to do with this - the question posed without doubt captured a popular understanding, not what you desire (or perhaps even myself) but actual popular American understanding.
The bias of the question reflects America’s “popular understanding”. Kevin swallowed it without even noticing.
Exactly. Framing.
Let’s ask “Israel vs Palestine”, exclude any Jews and Muslims from the survey, and only accept answer from respondents that can answer basic historical questions about this conflict such as “Which country released the Balfour Declaration”.
Only if you can restrict the electorate to those people.
+1
Aww, the guy who supports killing more women and infants, the guy who lies about trans people, the guy who supported a murderer who planned to kill pedestrians with his car, shared his plan, drove several hours, threatened pedestrians in a crosswalk with his car, and then shot the guy who complained?
That guy is giving a plus 1 to the other guy who also supported a murderer?
If there was a rational way to do it, democracy would work better. But there isn’t, sadly.
WHOOOOOOSH!
In one breath, you assert that there’s no single reason for Democrats’ loss, while in the next, you attribute it to wokeness or whatever.
Have you considered the possibility that the United States is a vast country comprising diverse perspectives, loosely connected by geographical factors? That it functions as a representative democracy, and as such, the politics of a particular representative will reflect the views of their constituents?
+1
I do agree the framing inherent in the name Israel-Hamas War tilts the issue in many minds. A lot of people support Israel's right to defend itself but not the egregious actions of the Netanyahu government. Many support the Palestinian people but not Hamas. But hardly anyone polled on which side they support is going to say the terrorist organization.
The Harris poll isn't the only org calling it the Israel-Hamas War. That's what Wikipedia and the New York Times call it too. A campaign to find a better name might be a good idea, but the election is done. The direction of US policy is beyond public opinion now.
Kevin puts Israel vs. Hamas in red for "progressive views." That's not fair to progressives (though a share are dumb enough to actually voice support for Hamas), and in the context of the election, it's certainly not fair to the Biden record or to Harris's campaign, which were not at all what gets labeled "progressive." Biden-Harris were actually more representative of American public sentiment than Trump or the Free Palestine movement.
They're all wrong.
'Police' = Democrats are for responsible policing, not less.
'Affirmative action' = This has only ever been lied about, and no Democratic elected official ever supported it. And none are advocating it today.
'Trans puberty blockers' - This is a lie about kids in crisis having access to medicine for a few years. They don't take it for five years, let alone ten, most don't at all! I took these thirty years ago before going on hormone replacement. It's neither new nor is it allowed without months and years of therapy.
'Boys in girls sports' = Another lie. There are no boys in girls' sports, except trans boys. And all of the trans girls that are in sports have taken blockers for a year or more, and don't do better than the other girls.
'Immigration serious problem' = This aligns mostly with bigotry. Also, it's Republican policy to make it worse.
Lastly, and perhaps the cherry on this dessert of push polls, no Progressive supports Hamas. But weirdly, the fact that Israel has killed 40 civilians for every one who died on Oct 7th seems to be elided here.
When affirmative action first came into practice, it meant such things as advertising education and employment opportunities in media widely read/seen by minorities showing up and recruiting in minority neighborhoods, and similar. It included targets but not quotas, nor favorable treatment of one group over another. The meanings people attach to it nowadays are quite different; I wouldn’t be surprised that most of those expressing opposition assume it means discrimination against white people, especially white men.
Why did you say that Trump agrees that abortion should be generally legal and then give as evidence that having appointed the Supreme Court that stopped abortion from being generally legal, tried to change the subject whenever abortion came up. That is not what somebody does when they hold the popular view. Trump's most common claim about abortion was the obvious lie that everybody wanted Roe overturned. As a voter in Florida he wouldn't even say that in Florida abortion should be generally legal.
But then you are pretending that opposition to gay rights ended in the 90s even though Republicans put referenda to outlaw already illegal gay marriage in 2004. Making gay marriage double dare illegal didn't help when the Supreme Court recognized this as bigotry.
But it sure is unreasonable for today's trans to want people who don't know them to stop interfering with their medical treatment. Note the absurdity of people objecting to puberty blockers in teens as if one can block puberty after the teen years. But it is certainly unreasonable of those teens to think they should be able to choose their treatment with their families and doctors when you find it icky.
Notice that the persecution of gay people went of for centuries before those loud gay people made an issue of it. How silly to blame them for the hatred of gay people.
A view from the UK,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/us-voters-kamala-harris-donald-trump-republican
Wow, a decent review.
It has been painfully evident to any non-Progressive (as such is hardly "liberal" even in a US sense) that the Left-Progressive uni educated cultural change agenda was extremely in over-reach.
Evidently this helped contribute (amongst other factors as a mono-causal view is fallacious analysis) to you lot inflicting Trump II on the world. Thanks, what joy.
Oh FFS. The people responsible for inflicting Trump II on the world, you massive d**che, are the Republican voters who nominated him and the spineless GOP establishment that rolled over for him. Dems and everyone else are a way distant third.
In 2020, something like 81,283,501 Democrats and others went to the polls to either vote for Biden or at least against Trump, who garnered something like 74,223,975 votes.
Four years later, Trump garnered something like 74,346,900 votes and roughly 70,420,892 Democrats and others went to the polls to either vote for Harris or against Trump.
So it may be comforting to place the blame on the Republican voters and the GOP establishment, but you still have to ask yourself what happened to 11-odd million Democrats and others willing to vote that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
Put the word conservative in front of Democrat and I think you'll have your answer.
Please, let's stop with comparing today's preliminary vote tally to the final vote tally of ~3 years, 11 months ago (since yes, ridiculously, it takes way too long to get the final vote tally).
11 M haven't disappeared. Maybe 1 M have, and 5 M switched their vote from D to R in the presidential race.
If we're going to argue over the causes. let's at least try to get the facts straight. And that's going to take a little bit of time yet.
If 5 million switched, then we’d expect Trump to show rather more votes by this point than from 2020. And we would also need to ask where a few million of Trump’s 2020 supporters went.
70.4/(81.3-5) ~ 0.923
74.3/(74.2+5) ~ 0.938
Current estimate is that about 93% of the vote is in.
It's pretty damned close to 5 M switched.
That's not how those numbers work.
With 110 million non-votes...
Innumeracy runs rampant...
Yes final to final and as you have provided, with numerate analysis.
... Says the innumerate blighter living in his mother's basement.
+1
And it's also all our fault because we "look down on them" - as if it's all about education levels & resulting snobbishness, but NEVER the result of their off-the-wall bigotry, & their resulting lies, association with/approval of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, ("former?) Communist Putin & fan of a writer who convinced him that the Nazis actually were better at ruling the the Bolsheviks, as well general lunacy.
And yet their people are so willfully ignorant that Marjorie Greene & has called Democrats Nazis, Socialists, and Communists - while others may opt to use only one or two of those incorrect labels!
Kinda hard to "get the messaging right" when dealing with so many whose own messages are undeniably those of lies, bullying, and physical attacks on individuals, our Capitol, and our Constitution. See the equivalence there?!
Those who are willfully ignorant have made a choice and therefore are unreachable, short of a conversation akin to that of Saul on the road to Tarsus.
+1
Sorry -returned to change "conversation" to "conversation" - but somehow brought up a copy of my posting instead, posted below? How can this occur?
Yes. The American people have failed liberals. We need a better people, and since Hispanics are going Republican we can't import them from Latin America. Maybe we should annex Canada?
Ideology can never fail, it is only failed by the unworthy popu;ations... Such is the perrenial lesson of ideologues.
Perish the thought that one has to win the votes over, rather than voters need to convert to proper thinking...
Ideology is one thing, bigotry and racism are another. if a voter thinks that racism and misogyny are fine, then yes, they are wrong. no one is going to win that voter over unless that voter changes the way they think.
also, I have no problem with anyone "looking down" on a racist. it's not about winning votes in that case. it's about calling out an a**hole.
So if only half the population would just disappear then the country will again be safe for progressive d**che baggery? Sounds Totally right to me.
110M voting age eligible people didn't vote.
I have no idea how they would vote, but spare me this "half the population" nonsense.
You lot are responsible as well.
Of which your endless excuse making.
Elections need to be won by winning over electorates, not bloody pieties, Academy based hair splitting and tone deaf denialism (as inflation)
You people Lost against a bumbling incompetent senile hamburgler.
That is on you.
as a quote from WP is usage
“We did okay on the product marketing. We moved the needle in those battleground states but the brand problems persist when people think the country is on the wrong track and are feeling the headwinds of inflation,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who worked for Future Forward, the largest Democratic-leaning super PAC, and other groups. “The best field goal kicker in the world can’t get through the uprights if they are kicking from their own 20-yard line.”
Harris given the time she had to work with I think did fine - the distinction made in this quote between the Product Marketing (the campaign) and the Brand is useful
Brand is established from overall - a product (the campaign) is but a piece.
While any effort as a human effort is always imperfect - the small errors one can point to Harris on, comparative weakness in speaking to economy, not splitting with Biden - with the time she had on hand probably made not real difference and were minor
The only major one is the major one not of herself but of the Democrats, of going on and on about Trump and fascism and felony - messages that had no resonance outself of the Pre Sold - where the Democrats needed to address their own brand problem to expand the reach, get New Sales not re-sell to the already sold.
But this messaging as evident even in this very thread came profoundly from the autism of the bohemian bourgeousie Left, blind to the labouring class sensibilities (or worse utterly dismissive as evident here as well).
Noted: All the 'brand problems' you list are fucking lies.
Harris was out campaigning with Liz Cheney
But sure, keep going with the hippie punching
How has that been going for you people since 2016? well?
Harris did a quite reasonable campaign and in the end as I have made consistent commentary - I feel she did quite a fine job as a candidate given the cards she was handed. In fact I changed from being a Harris skeptic to rather quite liking her - although she suffered from weak areas of carrying Biden's political deficit from the Progressive Overreach you types forced out of cycle, and her weak area in communication was exactly unfortunately the weak point in the ecyle - Working Class economics. She was not great in speaking there - more time might have changed that.
CAMPAIGNS are not the core issue here - the long-game politics are.
Presidential cycle after presidential cycle over approx two decades you have shown a pattern of bleeding out support in working class which you can not afford. Variations by cycle have been long used by you all as pretence and hand waiving excuses, but now it is not just the unloved white labouring class men, - terrible vulgarians with incorrect views - but spreading to Latin and Black.
Overreach, you say, not mentioning any.
Weak are, you say, listing not a single speech where she was weak.
I'm sorry, did we give out too much to the working class or not? You literally said both contrary things were true.
Bugger you can't even complement a Democratic candidate without throwing a catch-22 for them to be embroiled in.
Ahh, yes, slide back in the moved goalpost.
Does everybody but progressives really think in vacuous terms like "uni educated cultural change agenda". It should be noted that the shift in Trump's direction was actually smaller in the swing states that were inundated with anti-Trans ads.
Immigration as a serious problem is definitely immigration of brown people as a serious problem. The people I've met who are most up in flames about immigration as a serious problem live over a thousand miles from the Mexican border and are not at all affected by immigration. Everything they know about it is from FOX or social media.
Something like half of undocumented US residents arrived here legally on visas, which they then (illegally) overstayed. But a lot of them aren’t scary brown people, so this never got talked about during the campaign.
Is there any reason to think that Trump won’t try to fulfill his mass deportation promises? The only thing I see is liberals saying he won’t do it because it is too difficult and businesses won’t like it. I find that unconvincing. It was the cornerstone of his campaign. I think he will try to do it and will start in places he and his minions don’t like, like California and Oregon. I do think he will call a national emergency and will use the military’s to accomplish his aims. I think it will be very ugly. I hope I’m wrong.
Since he has now made it known that he intends to deport those who were allowed in under asylum laws, but whose final status has not proceeded to citizenship, the military should refuse to defy both US and international law to round up an deport all in that category.
He's targeted immigrants with citizenship ship before.
Abbot of all people is already walking back mass deportation. Sorry the military simply does not have a clue how to do mass deportation which is probably illegal anyways.
"Businesses won't like it" is a delicate way of saying "it will decimate America's food supply." It's not really a secret that our agricultural sector is dependent on these people. When supermarket shelves are empty, will Fox News find a way to blame it on Democrats?
As with his wall he will do something that he can claim is an attempt to fulfill the promise. It will almost certainly contain a measure of cruelty to satisfy his strongest supporters.
He would likely have to hollow out the military to get rid of the leadership that respects the military too much to become domestic police. It certainly will be ugly if he tries to get the Texas National Guard to carry out police actions in California against the wishes of California. I see California is bringing its legislature back into session to prepare to prevent such a thing.
But even the sycophants around Trump have to know that making it impossible for farmers in California to employ illegal immigrant labor will rise prices in supermarkets. And I doubt Trump really wants to bring back inflation that quickly. And that is not even counting his threatened tariffs.
The point of being a sycophant is it's irrelevant what you "know." You always say yes.
Well the point of being a sycophant is to get something from being a sycophant. If being a sycophant is a losing proposition Trump loses his sycophants.
Remember his sycophantic crowds booked at the idea that Trump did a good thing in developing the COVID vaccine, so he stopped talking about it. The idea that people should trust science to save their lives was a bridge too far.
Lindsay Graham is talking about prosecuting Jack Smith for the crime of investigating Trump, or possibly suing him in civil court. That is about as sycophantic as one can imagine from a man who used to have principles. But will his reelection really be easier if Trump ushers in unnecessary inflation?
+1
And it's also all our fault because we "look down on them" - as if it's all about education levels & resulting snobbidhness, but NEVER the result of their off-the-wall bigotry, & their resulting lies, association with/approval of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, ("former?) Communist Putin & fan of a writer who convinced him that the Nazis actually were better at ruling the the Bolsheviks, as well general lunacy.
And yet their people are so willfully ignorant that Marjorie Greene & has called Democrats Nazis, Socialists, and Communists - while others may opt to use only one or two of those incorrect labels!
Kinda hard to "get the messaging right" when dealing with do many whose own messages are undeniably those of lies, bullying, and physical attacks on individuals, our Capitol, and our Constitution. See the equivalence there?!
Those who are willfully ignorant have made a choice and therefore are unreachable, short of a conversion akin to that of Saul on the road to Tarsus.
Et voila the very example of the snobbery about the unclean heathen mass with the incorrect views
It is your fault as you fucking lose sans such votes.
And here the Lout outs himself when he (yep, it's always a he) says calling someone a racist POS because they loudly, publically, repeatedly proclaim that persons of color are subhuman is just another elite snob talking down to people whose opinion they disagree with.
You make this so easy yet you're trying so hard. Although I must admit that you're in thinking I do deem you my intellectual and moral inferior ... not that this is a terribly high bar to clear.
Wasn't Saul on the road to Damascus?
I would like to add that these could be labeled as popular perceptions of progressive positions. I suppose we could also ask for a definition of ‘progressive.’ Dems have been saddled with the defund the police bullshit when, except for leftist wackos, nobody supports this. People’s perceptions of the economy mattered more than the reality of the economy.
They'll try deporting any undocumented (or documented) person reporting criminal activity. Wage theft?--deported. Harassment?--deported. Robbery?--deported.
Remember, cruelty is the point.
Is the progressive view to send more 2000lb precision guided bombs to Israel???
Trump won because vibes. In a vibes election, a celebrity attention whore has an advantage. This was a vibes election.
Since 1984, I have voted for Mondale, Dukakis, B Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, H Clinton, Biden and Harris. All but Gore have law degrees; all but Bill Clinton and Obama are law-school types from central casting. Really pretty cookie-cutter.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the 5 two-term presidents since 1980 have been Reagan, Trump, GW Bush, Clinton and Obama. Only the last two have law degrees. All are basically celebrities more than politicians.
The GOP has stumbled onto a truth: The era of candidates who look and act like they've aced a lot of blue-book exams is over. The Democrats need to bar law-school graduates from their primaries and recruit candidates from reality TV, hip-hop, entertainment and the tabloids. Choose only people who pull all eyes and cameras in the room toward them: Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, Eminem, J. Lo - no personal life too trashy, no past too messy.
Pete Buttigieg is well-spoken and quick, with good ideas. If I have to vote for him in 2028, I will vomit: "Oh, look! Another xerox-copy standard-issue law school overachiever who has carefully ticked boxes all his life!"
"Choose only people who pull all eyes and cameras in the room toward them: Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, Eminem, J. Lo - no personal life too trashy, no past too messy."
The guy who won the election four years ago was Joe Biden. The GOP guy running in four years may well be JD Vance. One is an eminently qualified candidate, the other very much the opposite, but both are likely to put you to sleep. Maybe something to consider before Dems go out and recruit Hulk Hogan.
He’s a bit on the older side but the clear answer for Dems in 2028 is Bruce Springsteen. Big time celebrity, didn’t go to college, popular with blue collar voters. Could probably self finance, too.
I'm voting for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho next time around.
absolutely wild to think about that the fact that, in a country where we just elected a fascist and his supporters are already talking about picking cotton and that women are property and that federal prosecutors should be executed, millions of people in the world's richest country, including many in this thread, are still obsessed with a tiny handful of trans girls competing in high school sports.
None of this is remotely new. All were operative in 2020 and before. R's push culture war issues to deflect attention from their actual agenda, which people abhor. Any bets on the first bill in the new congress? My money is on tax cuts for corporations and wealthy people. And people will be shocked...shocked to find that their faces are being eaten. Lather, rinse, repeat.
+1
"Large majorities say abortion should be generally legal vs. generally illegal"
So does Trump...
The Trump Platform is not secret:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform
Note nothing there about abortion.
Trump also, BTW, has nothing against gays.
EVERY freaking time I try to inform you lot that this is not the GOP of the 90s and 2000s, you just will not listen. Unfortunately (for you) the electorate are not so bloody-minded and insistent that they know everything.
Even the issue of trans is (more or less deliberately) misstated by the Dems. The Rep position, like the bulk American position, is that they could not care less if some people want to call themselves ladyboys, intersex, or the third gender. But that is not enough for the zealots on the other side, they demand to be called men (or women) and treated as such in every context (most notoriously prison and women's sports). This could all be defused tomorrow, by accepting a third term and fumbling our way to a set of laws and conventions around that third term. But *one side* will not yield on this point, they would rather play the martyr than negotiate a compromise.
This is very much analogous to the gays of the 70s (I've referenced before the GLF in the 1970s. We start with something like
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/stonewall-and-its-impact-on-the-gay-liberation-movement/sources/1411
in 1970 which looks fine and reasonable, and was probably acceptable to the majority of Americans even in 1970. But within 2 years this has metastasized to https://thecambridgeroom.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/bostons-gfls-10-point-demands-to-the-democratic-convention-1972/
and now it's not just about gay's living their lives, it's about the destruction of every element of society, from family to clothing, the end of capitalism and the war in Vietnam.
It was only when a new generation of gays in the 1990s told the old guard to STFU and limited their demands to very specific GAY-RELATED issues like Gay Marriage that the hostility engendered by this 1972 lunacy ended.)
This happens to every protest movement in America. The initial (program-specific) demands are reasonable and most Americans are fine with them. But, within a year or two, crazy leftists take over, insist that the *only* way to be a legitimate member of the protest is to hate everything about America; then pretend to be surprised that 90% of America rejects their movement.
Trans have lit this particular fire, and just like with the gays, they will not get a second chance till a generation has passed, AND if the replacement generation do not insist on being 100% dicks.
BTW remember this
https://jabberwocking.com/the-federal-government-is-coming-to-rescue-asheville/
in which we were told it was all Fox News hysteria claiming that FEMA were ignoring aspects of the hurricane? Oh what a difference one election makes...
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/09/fema-fires-employee-who-told-relief-workers-to-skip-trump-supporters.html
Doubtless the usual crowd will leap in to insist that there was nothing *technically* wrong with anything they said, and that *technically* Fox News was actually wrong on X, Y, and Z. And who knows, they may even be correct. The thing is, normal people DO NOT GIVE A FSCK. We do not see every human interaction as a legalistic confrontation; we see the point of communication as conveying the essence of a particular issue. And on this particular issue, Fox News got the essence correct even as the liberal media insisted on denying the essence.
That is what the MSM and Dems have achieved over the past 4 years, convinced even people like me that if Fox say something and the NYT says the opposite, well, let's hear Fox out!
And that is the background to why Trump won this week; ordinary people are so damn sick of being lied over and over again. The D communication philosophy is straight out of law school debate, that all that matters is "winning" by saying things that are technically true no matter how misleading. They're so deep into this that they cannot understand how deeply repulsive this is to the average voter, especially when it forms the content of everything they see in the MSM.
Abortion, gays, hitler, concentration camps! This stuff all had an effect, but not the effect you think. And when people say this then, day after the election, act very much like they do NOT expect the second coming of hitler and eminent genocide, well "so you were in fact lying, deliberately lying, all that time? you're a journalist, your only worth to society if if you are trusted, and yet you chose to engage in this deliberate lie?"
Yes it's an absolute mystery why most people have contempt for the MSM and rejected everything they said this election. You people are perfectly willing to see this in other contexts -- you think Poland rejected Communism because of *Inflation*, not because of the constant official lies? -- you think you were so clever talking about message of the The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- but you absolutely refuse to see it in your home context!
Congratulations! You’ve been nutbagged!
Nutbagging is a propaganda tactic of taking one person’s behavior and extending it to the whole group. Conservative media, and especially Fox News, uses this tactic to great effect, as your post indicates.
Read your own citation. One liberal said something ridiculous, and was held accountable for it. What they said had no real-world impact, because they people were helped anyway.
You took the exact wrong message from this: liberals hold each other accountable, Republicans do not
An absolute mystery why you're here lying, name99.
Oh wait, it's not a mystery: Everything the right wing does is about lying.
You notice the difference between my comments and the other comments? I include an argument, I include uncertainty in my statements, and I include links...
None of this is an accident.
There are multiple possible analyses as to how the parties have reconfigured, and none of these is the single one correct interpretation; anything involving millions of humans has millions of moving parts. However one of the more interesting interpretations of what has happened to the parties is this:
https://x.com/devon_eriksen_/status/1855663441115013489?s=42
It's a long argument, but leaving out the evidence and explanation, the summary is:
"
The neo-democrats are the party of television.
The neo-republicans are the party of the internet.
The neo-democrat path to power is to control the media.
The neo-republican path to power is to shape the narrative.
The 2024 vote split broke into
- People Who Believe What Their TV Tells Them vs.
- People Who Look Shit Up On The Internet.
"
This framing explains many elements of the election, both the obvious (single white women) and the less obvious (old voters). You might want to ponder it...
...Is that why Trump hires only people who believe it should be illegal?
Why his Supreme Court has mostly ruled to allow more women and infants (infants! Not fetuses) to die?
I am not sanguine about Trump's new administration, but I've heard "no guardrails" way too many times. There are guardrails!
*blue state governments (our own lesbian governor won over 70% of the suits she filed against Trump last time when she was our AG)
*A free press (Pro Publica is already sharpening its knives)
*the Deep State (you know, like the military leaders who remember and honor their oaths -- like LAST TIME)
*Liz Cheney, et al -- not gonna shut up
*world leaders who, while terrified of what Trump might do, actually want the US to do the right things
*some cynical GOP MOC who would like to get off the Crazy Train, but are on the Gravy Train, and will do all they can to stick to keeping the GOP from going completely off the rails so that they lose their general elections.
Finally, it's not a guardrail, but Trump has the imagination and attention span of a Drosphilia, so while he can create lots of chaos, he's not really good at policy or its implementation.
None of these "gaurdrails" can cause Trump himself any damage, which means he can try whatever he feels like to undermine them.
Impeachment and the need to win the next elections were the only effective guardrails against presidents, and neither is applicable to Trump.
The main limit of what previous presidents did was respect to the constitutional order, which in the case of Trump is of negative value.
His deteriorating health is the only defence that US democracy has now.
He’s lazy as well. He built about 50 miles of actually new border wall, 0 miles of which were paid for by Mexico; then lied and said it was 500. And his cult goes right along with the lies. So he’ll maybe deport a few thousand people, then tell his worshippers it’s millions, and they’ll be OK with that. That will be bad enough, but I doubt he’ll put any more effort into deportation than he did into infrastructure. He doesn’t pay a price for failing to do stuff, any more than he’s had to pay for his crimes.
"but large majorities also say immigration is a very serious problem"
And again, I ask "why?" If they don't like or want more immigrants, fine. But what is the nature of this "problem"? How many voters actually have and direct interaction with undocumented immigrants, let alone have any negative impact from them?
Exactly. If you ask, they talk about something that either isn't happening or is a direct result of Republican policy.
Over at Salon, they present it as gaslighting:
https://www.salon.com/2024/11/09/six-big-lies-that-won-the-election-how-donald-gaslit-america/
Look at the "issues". Trans rights? Very important to that small community--but it basically has no direct effect on most everyone. And that becomes "they're mutilating YOUR children in grade and high schools".
Police? Trump wants to pardon those who attacked the police, Biden funded the police.
Build the wall? Trump couldn't do it during his first term, and didn't want Biden to do anything so he'd have something to run on. But Biden really should have addressed the problem at the border sooner. Granted dealing with Covid and repairing the mess at the border created by Trump did take a lot of time and resources.
etc., etc....
This.
Puberty blockers in teens? WTF? Do people realize that puberty blockers are used in cis children? In much greater numbers? To slow or halt early onset puberty syndrome?
The poll is here, phrased in a bigoted manner.
Nobody’s forcing these on parents and their teens. Definitely got to bring Governor Walz in on this: “Mind your own damn business!”
This is interesting but also irrelevant, as the median voter is profoundly ignorant of what most of these actually mean in policy terms, or living on another planet in terms of their information bubble.
I've heard the tariff lament and tax cuts lament and the immigration lament, but what I want to know is what happens to the economy when the cog of the undocumented immigrant worker is removed from that machine?
Also Mother Nature doesn't give a squirt of piss about our culture wars...
"but what I want to know is what happens to the economy when the cog of the undocumented immigrant worker is removed from that machine?
This all depends on where the economy is headed when the undocumented immigrant workers are removed. If the economy is growing removing the UI from the machine slows the machine down. If the machine is already slowing down removing the UI will cause the machine to stop or slow to a crawl.
If Trump does what he thinks he will do on Day 1 the hurt to the economy will be minimal because those workers - especially in agriculture won't be in great demand for months. Now you take them out of the fields during harvest time and the affect is felt immediately.
What will be interesting is the car manufacturers. 66% of foreign cars are assembled here in the US so just how much will a tariff hurt? Hard to say. I think individual product categories will be hurt badly ( foreign lumber, foreign grown fruits and vegetable etc) and prices will rise. Overall I think inflation raises its ugly head again. If the FED remains independent they will have to raise rates - but if Trump gets his way and the FED is pressured by the party in the WH then all bets are off.
We are looking at much slower population growth in the next decade if not a small decline in population. (Ask Japan how thats working for them)
Someone somewhere will make the connection, and illegal immigration will not be a big issue in the future. That can happen overight. Look at election integrity and honesty. It was a problem until Trump won. Now you haven't heard a peep outta Bartiromo, Bannon, and others. Immigration will be the same. When in doubt - declare victory and move on!!!
This is the classic tell for the white liberal elite who only knows activist Blacks (if that), "Large majorities favor tougher policing, even among Black voters."
Police stop criminals, every sane person knows this. There's no bat car full of liberal activists who will come to your door when you are being terrorized by a criminal. Liberals need to be the party of "better policing, better for communities, better for police". Stop this demonization of cops even if some are horrible There is no reasonable policy that derives from this perspective.
Weird way of framing umm... a position no one has.
Legally, no cops are required to come save you from criminals, either. Maybe, I dunno, fix that.
It occurred to me not long ago that the job of the firefighter is to show up after a fire starts. Fire prevention is the responsibility of fire marshalls, fire codes, building inspectors; mitigaiton of fire damage and deaths comes from researchers and engineers who have given us fire-retardant materials, smoke detectors, etc. The job of cops is to deal with crimes in progress or already committed. Who are the analogous people responsible for crime prevention? It's a much less well-defined community, and responsibilities are far less clear. We need to work on that, and it starts with recognizing that the whole responsibility should not be laid on police. Police training can certainly be expanded, especially in techniques of de-escalation and dealing with people in crisis. But preventing confrontations needs interventions by others; social workers, therapists, substance-abuse treatment specialists, etc.
I'm surprised Kevin didn't deem the legalization of marijuana worthy enough to include it in his list 'culture war' issues. It's got a certain hermeneutic whiff, if you know what I mean.
Why do you have things which aren't happening, 'boys in girls sports' on the list? It's not a Progressive issue. None of these are progressive issues except gender neutral language.
Why take bigoted poll results - and taking questions about bigoted ideas are bigoted polls - at face value?
Drum is not wrong to make these points. Although what to do with these facts is less clear. Should trans people wait until after puberty to get their puberty blockers? Or I suppose they should just let bigots make their lives more miserable because ick trans people. But then the attack ads Republicans ran included Dr Rachel Levine who gave solid advice during the recent pandemic in PA while Trump was pushing ineffective patent medicine. She did not get the puberty blockers or play girls sports. As an adult she decided to stop living a lie. And that doesn't free her from Republican hate.
It is true that US understanding of the Palestinian/Israeli situation is racist to the core. One may wish it wasn't. There are things politicians and the media could do to decrease this. But the fact is that it is. And that matters in elections.
Drums point is that winning elections isn't always about what is right, but rather about what is believed. Of course the idea of Democrats becoming Republican light on these issues seems to be a loser. Note that gay marriage is not on the list above, although it would greatly favor the Democrats. But that is because the left pushed the issue rather than rolling over and playing dead.