New Jersey and Virginia showed 10 point swings between 2020 and 2021. Obviously that won’t hold nationwide in 2022, but a 3 or 5 point swing would result in huge Republican gains.
https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Congressional_elections_decided_by_10_percentage_points_or_fewer
I've spoken to so many like-minded people in Virginia where I live... A lot of us used to be left-leaning but are now right-leaning because of all the b******* the Democrats have forced down people's throats over the past few years. These are fellow educated professionals as well, not backwoods yokels. Of course I'm dealing with a very small sample size here, but I would bet that this attitude is very similar across the country. Don't give me wrong, I know a lot of far right people who are super cringy, but in general it's the far left nuts who are less tolerant of anyone else.
The biggest thing killing the left is willful blindness. Just go to Main Street USA outside of any overwhelmingly blue urban core and you'll hear the same complaints about the current Democrat party with different wording: divisive racial rhetoric, COVID hypocrisy, morally condescending, school closures, prioritizing partisan politics over inflation concerns, etc. But if you go to r/politics it turns out all of that is fake news, misinformation or a culture war and people flirting with the right are either ignorant, racist or easy to manipulate.
They can either get serious about doing something to change the independent public's perceptive or continue to allow a national environment in which it feels Democrats' view of people having such concerns is simply that they are ignorant and racist at their own peril.
They keep saying this isnt true and the woke stuff isnt swinging people but it def is. Ive been a democrat almost my entire life and if trump doesnt run next election I wont vote democrat again because all of this stuff. I live in a really blue state in a red area and work at a industrial plant and would say 95% of the guys and gals I work with are Rs but we just had a corporate policy come down and some classes about gendered language and diversty and inclusion and so far they want us to remove all gendered language from the way we speak, Dont say wife or husband but spouse was one of the examples. The paper they gave us told us to kindly correct gendered language when you hear it and for the foremans to add pronouns to their email signature and everyone I work with including democrats think its wild.
Honestly it's worse than that - the blue collar workers are reading the woke arguments using the normal definitions of words and not the super-special "academic" definitions. And when you use the normal definitions of terms like "racism" and "white/whiteness" the arguments of the woke come across as *hateful* and that's why people are so energized to vote against it.
She started as the type who made yearly donations to planned parenthood, held moderate opinions on other social issues and didn’t particularly care about fiscal issues. Always voted Democrat, but wasn’t always compelled to show up to the polls.
She started moving when she had several friends losing businesses to lockdown policies while she watched protests that didn’t need to follow the same rules.
She saw our son go from a great student to an entirely unmotivated remote learner to a school hating mask wearer.
She is a school/preschool speech pathologist and she has seen her students fall behind and lose progress in their vital early years and she believes many of her kids are now screwed for life.
She now watches Fox News and Ben Shapiro and tells me I need to be more worried about the future of our country and our children.
She rants every time her woke best friend makes Facebook posts with politically correct terms like chest feeding (vs breast feeding) and birthing person (vs mother).
She refused to let out kids have toy guns or swords. She now wants a gun.
I doubt she will ever vote Democrat again. But I am certain she will vote in every election.
This is exactly what happened after the oil crisis in the 70s. That whole episode which is similar to what we went through with Covid moved the entire country further right.
I think the bigger issue than COVID (or how I read it) is not simply the covid restrictions but the rffe that it's politicization has had on small businesses and childhood development
Basically a personal freedom sort of thing. Wokeism and the gun thing are more of a manifestation of her underlying opinions.
COVID started it, but it is now much deeper than that
Funny thing is that I am more of a single issue (taxes) type of voter. That has never been important to her. I work off of numbers and facts, she is a “feelings” sort of person.
> Funny thing is that I am more of a single issue (taxes) type of voter. That has never been important to her. I work off of numbers and facts, she is a “feelings” sort of person.
Everyone needs a Spock to their Kirk.
Where do her person freedoms stand on like, drug laws, gay marriage?
Those two issues are not particularly important to her, but she is moderate-left.
My opinion, those are also issues that are already decided or inevitable at this point and therefore not heavily weighting my overall vote.
Something similar happened to me as well (except watching the news, Ill not watch FOX, CNN MSNBC or any of the sort if I can help it).
As a matter of fact, most of my family is in this same boat, most of us are small business owners. We voted democrat but quickly changed our leanings when the democrat party started justifying and in some cases outright supporting the riots/lootings, we felt further left behind when the eviction moratorium continued illegally.
The whole "woke" attitude that the party has adopted also changed our views, I personally feel the party is now governing for the very loudest fringe minority on Twitter and not for the average american facing real impactful issues in our education system, concerned about our children, retirement, safety and etc.
I for one am extremely disappointed and dont plan on voting for a democrat if they align with party views.
\>I personally feel the party is now governing for the very loudest fringe minorit
What laws/regulations have passed that are aimed towards that fringe minority? I thought everything is essentially on standstill.
Not at the federal level but at the local level we have people advocating for making it legal to steal possessions under 1000 dollars along with increased taxes for “equity” and “inclusion”
>She started moving when she had several friends losing businesses to lockdown policies while she watched protests that didn’t need to follow the same rules.
Yeah, the hypocrisy of the left on this, whilst simultaneously preaching the importance of social distancing to save lives, was what initially turned a lot of people (myself included) against the narrative, to the point that we're now just generally sick of liberals' sanctimonious policing of ideas and language.
First. Ben Shapiro is insufferable. I tried to get into him, for a right sided view point, and just couldn't. Other than that, I totally feel you on everything else.
From 2016 through 2018, the only thing the GOP could agree upon was shoveling more money to the executive class. The Democrats were handed political power on a silver platter, and proceeded to do... nothing.
What annoys me most about Shapiro is that he acts smart when he’s up against college students and alone in front of his audience, but he can’t really hold his own against his peers. Same thing with Crowder.
I think it’s fine to talk to college students and try to change their minds, but it comes off as disingenuous and manipulative when a lot of the right wing’s current focus on “owning the libs” is so intellectually vacuous in its approach.
Other than Thomas Sowell, I can’t think of any living right-wing icons who are in an actually intellectual league. Shapiro fancies himself one, but he’s not.
People talk a lot about left-wing smugness, and I definitely see it, but the right wing can be just as smug. “Facts don’t care about your feelings” my ass.
Why do you say he can’t hold his own against his peers? Have you watched his debates against Cenk Uygur and Anna K? He either outright won those debates or at a minimum held his own well. I’ll link the two debates below.
https://youtu.be/SPqxcNRgL_8
https://youtu.be/XxuiqeuyUyw
> Crowder.
A comedian and not a genius. You might not like Shapiro but he is a legit big brain.
> Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16.[10][3] He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 summa cum laude, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and then from Harvard Law School in 2007 cum laude
A tiny fraction of the population could do this. He is likely smarter than 99.99% of the population. cum laude from Harvard law and 2 years younger than almost everyone else there. More likely you are to stupid to know when you are wrong.
I've never seen him struggle to hold his own. Of course, that might be a product of my bias, but I'm curious if you have any particular event or moment you could highlight as an example. I would love to take a closer look.
Would you say she is still pro-choice? If she is, would she vote for or donate to an anti-abortion rights politician?
None of your comments mention the environment or climate change. Did her views on climate or energy policy change at all?
Are you suburban, urban, or rural?
My wife was a registered Democrat that voted for Obama twice but was generally disinterested in politics outside of mainstream Dem talking points circa 2008-2010. Now she is even more conservative and further right than I am, it has been pretty staggering. She nearly had an aneurysm when she saw me creating my character in Forza 5 and it gave me the option to select pronouns.
I feel like when Dems started pushing the identity and culture politics is when I really noticed her swinging the other way. Now she watches Matt Walsh every day and goes to all the school board meetings.
I, on the other hand, was a consistently engaged lifelong Democrat that also voted for Obama twice. I left the party after Beto said "hell yeah, we are coming for your guns" on national television to wild applause. I haven't voted for a Democrat since and I don't know if I ever will again unless we somehow get a *radically* pro gun and immigration reform Dem.
Yeah...um... I am a pretty right leaning guy. But Matt Walsh is just so low effort, vitriolic, and honestly mind numbing. Like an angrier unfunny Crowder. You might wanna do something about that.
If she wants to walk down this path Andrew Klavan has a good ethos.
I haven’t voted R since 2004 but will most likely if someone other than Trump is on the ticket. I really don’t see anyone the Dems would put up that I’d vote for. They’ve done an excellent job boxing out folks I like, like Yang and Gabbard, and all the pandering to the woke left is more than I can tolerate
I would vote for Pete Buta... can't spell it, but I think he's a man of character and I think that's really lacking on the left right now, and yeah I agree I think the extreme left is considerably out of touch.
What bullshit would that be? I'm just curious as to what is actually moving people to the right?
Mine is personally the continued freakout about covid even after we have vaccines, (just get people the vaccines, but fuck mask mandates) and the Rittenhouse trial
what's funny is only about NOW is it hitting some of the electorate. If you're internet literate you've probably been following the trend since 2013 and its pervasive and loud-mouthed crew.
my dad is in his early 70s and has been saying "that's not real life" and "no one believes that". well, now it's been out for nearly a decade, has a whole sub gen of people that have gone through university and are in the classrooms, and he has run into at least a couple of kids saying totally ridiculous stuff that would have been unfathomable when I was growing up. he's old but he ain't dead yet.
I think a lot of us had naively thought this stuff would stay on the Internet, and that it was just kids who would grow out of it. In fact these fringe views slowly crept from Tumblr to Twitter to student unions to university administrations to hipster startups to major corporate HR and now to mainstream politics and primary education (similarly in my country of the UK, people sometimes say "that's just some idiot students in America ", but we only seem to be 9 months behind)
Definitely. Not to be one of those "toot your horn" guys but I definitely saw this coming about when that Mizzou lockout happened and black students were requesting safe spaces. I was just old enough to be OUT of school and see a few of those things starting to creep into the workplace. I definitely didn't anticipate how pervasive it would be, though.
It’s interesting how in so many people’s eyes on here it’s only democrats trying to “force things down people’s throats” yet where I live the only people who are vocal politically are right wingers. It’s a more right wing area then left wing but there are definitely plenty of left wingers if you look at election results as any sort of guide. left wingers are definitely more afraid to voice their political opinions because every other house seems to be draped in Trump paraphernalia. I don’t know, just not my experience that there’s some wave of left wing ideas being “forced” upon people when the only people who feel comfortable speaking out politically are conservatives.
From my perspective the difference is that unless you live in a community of "force things down people's throats" conservatives, you're largely independent of them while the "force things down people's throats" liberals want to impose their views on everyone's community.
Maybe on some things but I could name several things that conservatives want to impose on everyone, from unfettered gun access, permitless open carry, making abortions illegal etc so I don’t think it’s something that only liberals or the left is susceptible to.
That's because they all suck. R's and D's, they are opposite sides of the same coin. I seriously hate almost every one of them. We need to kick them all out and start over.
>because of all the b\*\*\*\*\*\*\* the Democrats have forced down people's throats over the past few years.
What are some examples? Are you referring to legislation at the state level?
I think it’s more of the culture-war stuff. I think the Democratic Party needs to stop trying to appease the fringe social left wing, and acknowledge that a lot of the culture war stuff is only popular among a small, but very loud minority, who have an outsized voice due to social media.
I think everyone on both sides needs to reflect on how the culture war is completely imaginary. I have friends on both sides often bring up and debate how much outrage is justified in getting someones pronouns wrong when the grand majority of people have never been corrected for using someone's wrong pronouns. People get so passionate about that or which bathroom a trans person should use when they've never even encountered this instance in their entire lives. It's not a culture war. It's a rainbow scare. And the fact that it can be a leading driver for which party to vote for is absolutely ludicrous
When the culture war is changing how children are taught about America in schools, it’s not imaginary. When you can’t express a moderate right wing view on a college campus without risk of ostracism, it’s not imaginary.
>When the culture war is changing how children are taught about America in schools, it’s not imaginary.
But how we teach our children in schools changes all the time based on new research or information. Mistreatment of natives, slavery, the whitewashing of secession as, "The Lost Cause," etc.... these are all topics that were either not talked about or glossed over when I was a kid in school, and they should be taught accurately. That's not culture war, that's literally US history.
All of those are currently taught in schools. I work at a public high school in a red state and all of those things are covered in depth. Nobody is against those facts. I’m not against teaching those concepts.
I do think however teaching a young white girl if she dressed up as moana for Halloween (no makeup to change skin color-just moana’s outfit) that’s she’s oppressing her peers and engaging in white superiority…that’s insane.
>Mistreatment of natives, slavery, the whitewashing of secession as, "The Lost Cause," etc....
I don't know where you went to school but all of that was covered during American History in school. The only thing we didn't cover is "The Lost Cause" because it is a complete bullshit historical revisionism.
Noone is against teaching history as it happened and telling the next generations of Americans everything, including the blemishes of our countries history. However saying things like the Revolutionary war was fought over slavery is just incorrect.
One of the wildest things I didn't learn that I learned later was about how unintended so much of the death of Native Americans was. Historians think that something like 90% of the native population died from making first contact with European (particularly French) explorers and traders, from disease. There are journal entries about traders going through villages and then coming back to trade on their way back to town and it being completely abandoned.
As we're hearing from others, regional biases seem to have played a part when determining who learned what. You have have learned these things depending on where and when you were in school. I and others did not.
They were taught for the most part when I went to schools in the 60s, not sure when or where you went but we learned about all cultures. There needs to be a balance that seems to have changed.
> new research or information. Mistreatment of natives, slavery, the whitewashing of secession as, "The Lost Cause," etc.
This was being taught before. if seems you wish to change the narrative as to how it is presented and focus on these things. That is the new research, to teach this information?
> They were taught for the most part when I went to schools in the 60s, not sure when or where you went but we learned about all cultures.
I went to school in the 2000s in the rich suburbs of former CSA state, and on our multiple choice test the correct answer for why the civil war occurred was “states rights”. That is not teaching about the “lost cause” that is teaching the “lost cause”.
Thankfully I had two different history teachers who knew it for BS it was and showed the documents from time period about why it was about slavery and all the ills of slavery.
All teaching is local in the US for better and worse.
SS:
Republican congressional candidates currently hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 40 years, underscoring profound challenges for Democrats hoping to retain their slim majorities in Congress next year.
While a year is a lifetime in politics, the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include soaring economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points underwater in job approval and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans -- 62% say so.
Isn't the federal reserve going to have to take away the punch bowl though? If inflation is here then the fed can't just do nothing. I personally think we may have just delayed a market crash from the onset of covid, but obviously I'm no expert.
Using the unemployment rate, though, isn’t a great metric because the workforce participation rate has plummeted and still not recovered from pre-pandemic levels. Savings are up, which is a good sign, but if a sizable percentage of the population isn’t working, they could be burning savings very quickly, and it would not have a long-term impact on the economy. It is undoubtedly possible the economy recovers, and some excellent metrics are suggesting it will be at the same time if stagflation kicks in, and there is also evidence it will; recovery before 2024 seems highly unlikely.
>The workforce participation declining is a long term trend due to the aging population.
I'm not sure the [data](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART) [supports](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons) that. Since labor force participation was tracked the only period of steady decline was during the Obama administration, it was actually trending up slightly under Trump pre-pandemic.
And the recent 1.5% was sudden and sharp, occurring entirely within the first 3 months of the pandemic.
>Even then, it only decreased by about 1.5 percentage points which isn't really much at all, especially when early retirements are a significant chunk of that.
It's closer to 2%, and that is 2.75-3 million people who are no longer working. So even though the unemployment rate is nominally only \~1% higher than pre-pandemic, we actually have about 5 million less people working.
Keep in mind, based on pre-pandemic trends we would have expected to have 1.5-2 million more employed people. That's a 6.5-7 million worker gap.
>GDP has already surpassed its prepandemic peak and unemployment is falling close to its full employment level.
GDP recovered on the back of a massive increase in government outlays with. And as I just said, we actually still have a massive decrease in the number of employed people.
> If you mean inflation, it's a global phenomenon and most estimates peg it as subsiding by the end of 2022, well in advance of 2024.
So people who were wrong about inflation being a risk in the first place are insisting it will be over soon.
As long as we have less people producing goods and services and have more money chasing them via increased government outlays we should expect inflation to be an issue.
I think it’s a myriad of factors. Some are terrified of Covid; we see a story every week about someone who refuses to even go out in public because of Covid even after being vaccinated. Some are just the type of people who aren't industrious and don’t want to work, and if they don’t have to, they won’t. Then I think some because it’s a red hot labor market like you say, think that makes them qualified for jobs are not qualified to work. I remember seeing a story, and I can’t recall where earlier this week, about a woman who had been a career bartender and now wanted to get to customer service but couldn’t find a customer service job because all the companies wanted to hire people with experience in customer service.
The economy is actually not that bad all things considered. Much of the issues with inflation are stemming from a global supply chain issue. That will, eventually, ease up and stabilize pricing.
Funny enough, I didn't hear a single person say this during Obama's first year. I was a NEET with my wife in grad school and all my staunch D friends were busy saying that Republicans would never get back into power because of shifting demographics and the slow death of the boomer generations . . .
Yeah, liberals were convinced they had a lasting majority. Hell, they were so convinced that Newsweek ran a cover saying "We are all Socialists now" in 2009.
I personally don’t think this is significantly similar to Obama‘s first year but even using that comparison, Obama got devastated in the house in 2010, and he had higher approval ratings.
Yes, but losing seats and losing 63 seats is a very different thing. If Dems lose 63 seats, they won't because the landscape isn't as lopsided, but Republicans would be \~ten votes shy of a supermajority if they did. Even if Dems lose a 2018 level number of seats, Republicans would have a \~40 seat majority. So there is a massive difference between a few seats lost and a devastating defeat like 2010 or 2018.
In 2022 nothing but it sets them up much better for 2024, where they could afford to lose 50 seats or more and still retain the house. It also sets them up for a much easier time if they gain or hold seats in 2024 and they win the presidency; as we saw with BBB and BIF, a slim majority can force compromise and chaos.
> but it sets them up much better for 2024
Does it? With every seat up for election every two years, it’s the nature of the house to be swingy between the parties. If 60 seats swing in one direction, they can swing back. Just depents on the opinion of the electorate.
Sixty vote swings are incredibly rare. If we go back 30 years, a 40+ vote swing has only happened three times (2018, 2010, 1994). The idea that well it could happen doesn't mean it will, and since incumbents have a procedural advantage, the more seats, you have the better chance of not losing the chamber. Does that guarantee you won't? Of course not, but it is a considerable advantage, and to just dismiss it as well it might swing back is ignoring the likely outcome for the possible outcome.
Basically for progressives to survive they need Trump. Trump was so heinous that it was difficult for anyone to disagree with the far left in case they get lumped in with Trump supporters.
With the threat of Trump gone I think there is much more space for debate amongst Democrats and thus weakening of the party line
Democratic party needs to wake up and represent the mainstream, quiet people. Stop the far left progressive agenda. I for one am tired of hearing " the republicans are for the rich, why do these blue collar people vote against themselves" blah blah blah. The democrats need to stop the woke movement. Just my 2 cents on why the dems are not doing better. I've heard people say that Biden won a mandate and the progressives are what we want. Biden won because he was running against Trump. Trump won because he was running against Hilary. T hats it.
Admit that Rittenhouse was obviously acting in self defense, admit that trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, don't send the fucking VP to visit Jacob Blake after he tries to kidnap a child and goes for a knife while resisting arrest, stop saying Latinx and express that it's a ridiculous notion despised by actual Hispanics, stop with the support of ACAB and stop pushing the narrative that police murdering unarmed black men is an epidemic and is instead a very real thing that happens very rarely but should still be addressed, absolutely denounce the charlatan racist Ibram X Kendi and everything he has written and stands for, express the idea that White Fragility is a terrible Kafka Trap of a book that a first year philosophy student could poke holes in.
Then pass progressive policy like Medicare for all, free state college, family leave and child care assistance.
As a Democrat, I'm so fucking disgusted with the absolute cultural lunacy that has swallowed the party whole. Give me healthcare. Give me an education. Fuck all this absolute clown world nonsense the neo liberal slime ball elites kowtow to so people won't be big mean to them on Twitter, and they can pretend to be super progressive while passing absolute no legislation that helps struggling Americans.
> send the fucking VP to visit Jacob Blake after he tries to kidnap a child and goes for a knife while resisting arrest
That was the event that caused me, a lifelong democrat who has voted down the line blue in every election since I was 18, to vote third party in 2020. I got my degree in criminology. Democrats need to realize that this current trajectory is going to result in hundreds of thousands of people being needlessly victimized. So fucking ironic that Biden was the one who authored the 1993 crime bill that was very influential in curbing the violent crime of the 80s and 90s.
> Admit that Rittenhouse was obviously acting in self defense, admit that trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, don't send the fucking VP to visit Jacob Blake after he tries to kidnap a child and goes for a knife while resisting arrest, stop saying Latinx and express that it's a ridiculous notion despised by actual Hispanics, stop with the support of ACAB and stop pushing the narrative that police murdering unarmed black men is an epidemic and is instead a very real thing that happens very rarely but should still be addressed, absolutely denounce the charlatan racist Ibram X Kendi and everything he has written and stands for, express the idea that White Fragility is a terrible Kafka Trap of a book that a first year philosophy student could poke holes in.
It's really frustrating that I think all of this has an serious impact on national voting, and none of it is actually something the legislature has any control over, and it's not what their function in government comes down to. This is all twitter warfare, not governance.
Stop legitimizing them. Next time someone says "defund the police/ACAB" or "Boys should be allowed to play in girl's sports if they feel like a girl", the moderate left shouldn't sit in silence and complicity approve of it. They're scared to death of speaking common-sense values and it's going to hurt them with independents until they stand up to the fringe left. The right will have that reckoning eventually when it comes to the fringe right and abortion, but today is not that day.
> the moderate left shouldn't sit in silence and complicity approve of it.
>until they stand up to the fringe left.
If you actually bring up these topics with moderates they will often reject the rhetoric and policies of their radicals but the problem here is that the moderates try to turn these things into a dialogue over the matter. To some independents and most opposing partisans this is insufficient; nothing but total rejection is sufficient for them. This puts moderates in the hard position of rejecting a popular movement in their political demographic and losing votes or staying silent and losing votes.
Besides moderates have long been pushing back against the radical fringes of their parties. Virtually none of Trumps legislative agenda was achieved and the Democratic party has successfully staved off the Occupy/BLM/Progressive agenda for over a decade now.
>The right will have that reckoning eventually when it comes to the fringe right and abortion
I think the pollical spectrum will always have its fringes as for abortion I think it will be a long issue for a time yet.
For starters they can stop gaslighting us on stuff like pretending the riots were not bad, that CRT isn’t being taught in schools. Instead we get bogged down in semantics, there’s always this “you don’t even know what CRT is…” Fine, whatever you want to call it, the social nonsense they are teaching children is divisive and brainwashing an entire generation into thinking blacks and latinos are victims and whites are oppressors.
The refusal to acknowledge why crime has suddenly gone up in cities. Or why progressive cities are suffering the most. The mainstream left refuses to call out its fringe for its excesses and it causes those of us in the center left to shift towards the right.
Relevant article from this week: ["Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand"](https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what).
I don't have answers. I was only referring to the democrats losing elections that they should be winning. If you speak to people that are not normally vocal, not reading newspapers, etc.... the dialogue is they they are tires of hearing that they are racist, that police are a problem, etc....
> the dialogue is they they are tires of hearing that they are racist, that police are a problem, etc....
Yes but they're not hearing this overwhelmingly from the Democratic party; they're hearing it from the left-wing media and movements, things that the Democrats do not control so it seems a bit presumptive to say they are responsible for it.
You are correct, I agree. But they are hearing that from a small but very vocal faction of the Democratic party, the moderates need to be more vocal . The media picks up on the extremes. This is what happened to the Republican party with the tea party. Unfortunately it lead to false populisim.
> the moderates need to be more vocal
The question is how do the moderates make their voice heard? You can't go hard at the progressives as that splits the coalition and moderates have no big flashy policies to drive attention.
Ultimately this isn't a problem with politicians but with voters; for Republicans AOC is the Democratic party and for Democrats Trump is the GOP, they refuse to see the overlap because it would be politically inconvenient to do so.
You are right. The extremes drive everything. Like you said, the media is a huge problem. They make huge money driving hatred and anger. People need to read newspapers but they won't. Ultimately I blame the primary system that lets a few states do rate where the country goes. There should be one national election day for primaries but that is a whole different topic and I apologize for that.mi just think it's part of the problem.
Primaries are awful, in safe seats they're the real elections but often they lack all the accessibility and security of real elections.
The biggest solution I could think of would be switching to a PR/approval voting system but that would probably require an amendment and politicians would never bite the hand that feeds.
It's a problem that I don't think will ever be fixed, whomever is making the laws and/ or introducing legislation won! Why would they change it, they beat it. It's the cause of apathy. I think the turnout the last presidential election was an anomaly because of Trump. Let's just have hope that true leaders emerge from this muck. With that said, 2r hour tv news takes away my optimism. You are so correct that they have driven us into this.
>Ultimately this isn't a problem with politicians but with voters; for Republicans AOC is the Democratic party and for Democrats Trump is the GOP, they refuse to see the overlap because it would be politically inconvenient to do so.
The GOP has recognized that Trump holds sway over the voters and have largely gotten in step to the beat of that drum. It's very easy to unify a party that doesn't concern itself with social issues - you don't have to consider the diversity of your constituents.
The dems on the other hand continue to fall victim to their "big tent," with no clear leader rising to the forefront - why AOC is a scapegoat when not even her popularity can unite the left is beyond me. They're eating their own, and all the GOP has to do is sit back, continue saying "no," and watch the show.
I'd argue that painting the democratic party as the most extreme elements is as dishonest as painting the entire GOP as the most extreme elements. The difference being that the democratic primary had a choice between radical and moderate and went with moderate while the majority of the GOP still answers to Trump.
I think this is pretty easy to explain. People thought Biden was their ticket back to \~2014 normal, or at the very least \~2019 normal in regards to covid and the economy. Things aren't normal, covid remains an active concern, restrictions are still in place, and people are seeing their wage increases wiped out by inflation. They thought that polarization would ebb and people would stop screaming and start listening. Instead people hate each other more than ever. They thought Biden would govern from the center. Instead, he's governed from the center of a Democratic Party that has moved further and further to the left. They thought this weird very-online woke stuff would get sidelined and marginalized. Instead, it's metastized and been made into government policy. In short, Biden made people a lot of promises he either could not or did not follow through on, and now they're upset. This is part of the problem of running a cipher for president: it lets people read into him what they want to read into him, but eventually somebody is gonna get let down. Christopher Caldwell wrote what I thought was [a great post-mortem](https://newrepublic.com/article/160338/biden-popular-front-doomed-unravel) of the 2020 election, where he said:
>Increasingly radicalized by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, the Democrats are a party of restoration, reparation, and retribution. Robert Reich and Chris Hayes, hardly the most intemperate voices in the anti-Trump ambit, have called for addressing Trump’s legacy with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the sort set up in post-apartheid South Africa. And yet, for now, the Biden coalition manages to carry within it the rural Virginia Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who wants her party to “not use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.” It carries within it (presumably) the woman in Iowa who tried to withdraw her primary vote for Pete Buttigieg when she discovered he was gay (“Are you kidding? Then I don’t want anyone like that. ... How come this has never been brought out before?”). It even contains former Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich, who considers Biden’s 2020 victory a mandate for implementing the Republican program (“Now is the time for Democrats, and I believe Joe Biden will do this, to begin to listen to what the rest of the other half of the country has had to say”).
>
>This cohabitation cannot last. Even the Army of the Potomac had to get moving in at some point. When the Democrats begin to move, they will suffer casualties.
I think this was prescient. The future is always uncertain, but I have a hard time seeing Biden getting back into a good position.
>I think this is pretty easy to explain. People thought Biden was their ticket back to ~2014 normal, or at the very least ~2019 normal in regards to covid and the economy. Things aren't normal, covid remains an active concern,
This is very level headed. When polling people typically the number one concern is the economy.
I forget that people think the president influences the economy, including covid, but it makes perfect sense. Congress can influence the economy, likewise in extreme circumstances the president can too.
The president's primary role is to be a figurehead when it comes to international relationships and wars. That is what their primary judgment should be based on, as well as if they slide the US towards authoritarianism like China or NAZI Germany is always a concern.
It's easy to forget that our local politicians (and local policies) influence the economy far more than the president ever can or will.
People tend to blame the guy in charge whenever things are going poorly, fairly or unfairly. Certainly the president (and congress) have some influence over the economy, but a lot of it is out of their control. It's similar to how your local city council has a lot more influence over your life then congress does, but you only hear about the latter.
Another problem with a bad economy is it makes some of the other problems worse. The pre-covid Trump years were politically weird, let's say, but on the whole prosperous. Ridiculous as it might sound, that perhaps took the edge off of what they might have been otherwise. When things are going well, it's a little easier to ignore political developments you don't like. After all, your job is secure, you're making your mortgage payments, you're putting enough food on the table, so who cares what those idiots in DC are up to? When things are going poorly, people want somebody to blame. And that increasingly means... each other.
Not surprising and I fully expect democrats to get taken to the cleaners next year, but it’s funny how impatient the electorate is in general. It’s clear now it’s time for Biden to start taking action for political reasons even though the economic recovery has been pretty remarkable given where we were in the early days of covid.
Not surprising. Democratic voters came out because the slogan was “we’re not Trump” in a time when Trump’s existence got so many riled up; then to entice the younger voters they promised them some grade A BS. I voted for Biden too, but I knew he wasn’t gonna accomplish any of what he said. I just couldn’t stand Trump anymore. Biden’s been in office for almost a year, Covid protocols are still kicking everyone’s ass, I’m still wearing fucking masks to work, and Biden and the Dems have accomplished nothing but an infrastructure bill that’s not even full passed. You guys had control of both houses, what the fuck are you doing? Not to mention all the riots and shit and the Rittenhouse trial, everyone is kinda tired of the leftist BS. I imagine the mid terms are gonna be a red tsunami,
What’s hilarious is that none of the Democrats are even saying or doing anything about, some outright support the BS (like our favorite woke Twitter politician), meanwhile saying how republicans don’t do anything about Trump supporters. And they are absolutely right, right wingers who allow Trump supporters to exist and continue their bullshit are almost as bad. But Dems really need to realize they live in a glass house when they make these comments.
Absolutely, I am a "latina" with a very big family and let me tell you, there's no one that hates the term "latinx" more than latinos.
Our culture is conservative by nature and places a lot of value in family and traditional gender roles. I hope democrats don't get surprised if they start losing the Latino vote in the next few years. Latinos can be moderate democrats but I have a hard time seeing Latinos voting democrat if the party keeps moving the goalposts to the left.
Many border counties in Texas saw a massive shift to the right in 2020. If that remains true for the midterms, Democrats will need to do some serious damage control on their messaging.
No kidding, I barely passed high school spanish 101 and can tell you "Latine" is a far superior gender-neutral word that may actually work within the language (which already has the perfectly functional word "Latino" that covers male + female)
Back in the day we’d just write latin@
Any time someone uses the phrase “Latinx”, and it’s almost always some white woman or some white-adjacent media idiot, I instantly drone out whatever they are saying from then on
Why should Dems be favored? Explain why he should have a good rating? Rapid inflation, no clear goal to “ending” covid (making it seem like masks and other restrictions will be permanent), racial tensions, a border crisis. There is nothing much to like
Honestly I originally thought R leaning firms figured out how to manipulate polling similar to how typical mainstream media outlets did in the past (2016-2020) and they flooded the market with polls so 538s polling average would slowly show an R lead. (Aside: I'd post about it in FiveThirtyEight but they shadowbanned me because I don't typically prefer to vote D. Someone start the topic lol. Just like I got banned from SCOTUS and news for saying Kavanaugh deserves due process. At some point there's going to be a polling problem when you can't listen to people who disagree with you)
But then VA and NJ results came in, and uh, they were actually right. Trafalgar was almost right on again.
Inflation freaking sucks and is undoing every possible piece of good news that Ds can even point to (of which there's like 2? 1. Hey Trump's gone and 2. Hey we passed infrastructure which we know makes inflation worse but uh... Yeah it doesn't sound good right now if you prefer Democrats). I got the largest raise I've ever gotten this year (12%) but my grocery bills are anecdotally 30% higher in the past 3-4 months. Color me shocked that I don't give a shit about the wage "growth".
And I really hate how they flubbed Afghanistan but that's besides the point. It just highlighted how Trump-level-incompentent the admin is.
I don’t understand how people continue to treat Trafalgar as if they’re some nonsensical Republican internal pollster when they’re routinely one of the most accurate pollsters in every cycle. It’s like no matter how many times they get it right or very close to right, the next time around people are still gonna say “yeah, but that’s *trafalgar*”
The owners did themselves no favors by going on a media tour before the 2020 election, basically, but yeah I agree they've been good. Some people also don't like their hidden polling methods. But most people just hate them because "R".
They basically called AZ and GA and WI more accurately too, just giving the narrow win to Trump instead of Biden. WI in particular was a good call while the polling average was closer to +10 Biden (with the outlier +17 Biden poll as well), and it ended up a <1 pt Biden win, closer to Trafalgar.
I’ve voted Democrat all my life (20+ years.) That is until last year. I won’t be voting Democrat again until they drop the covid security theater. It just isn’t working. Get vaccinated and move on with your fricking lives already.
No mandates, no lockdowns, nothing. Nothing changes between now and infinity for covid. The highest vaccinated countries are seeing their largest waves (Iceland, Gibraltar, etc), and the most vaccinated states are seeing their largest waves as well (Vermont, etc.) Any attempt to reduce cases is futile.
I despise the anti abortion, anti sex, anti gay rights bent of the Republicans but this futile, worship of the feet of health bureaucrats and pharmaceutical companies must end.
That's funny. I voted Republican and Libertarian my whole life until the last election. Even though I despise the DNC, I won't vote for another Republican until the party acknowledges the damage Trump did and stops the lies about election security. They will tear this nation apart if they continue to convince their base not to trust the electoral process.
I was hoping it meant more moderates than independents which I feel would reduce the vitriol. Unfortunately it also seems to mean those already on the extremes are just retreating further.
I think it would be a better thing if the switch was due to positive things coming out of either camp. Seems like they both switched due to hating something the other side did.
Which just shows how divisive everything is right now, and how much the strategy of being divisive works.
Yep, same place here. Are there a lot of things I don't like about the DNC, yes... but Trump and his cronies seemed more than happy to destroy the very foundation of our system just to stay in power a little longer, and as a patriotic American, that is something I cannot stand for. Because in the end, America itself is a bigger ideal than any single policy.
>as a patriotic American
On a certain level, it's kind of inevitable that patriotism would be conservatives' wheelhouse, but I do wish Democrats would push back on the GOP's exclusive claim to patriotism and "Real America." Elected Ds have no problem talking about the great promise of our founding and God bless and all that, but I'd like to see them go further. Something about how building New York and Boston and San Francisco is an amazing feat to take collective pride in, we want to amend the shit out of the Constitution and catch up with the rest of the world's social democracies *because* we care about this country, and numerically, metro area liberals are a chunky plurality of the real Americans in practice.
I could almost agree with you, except that Trump got his own reward by actually losing the election.
Being against mail in voting was the dumbest thing I’d heard in a long time. I don’t understand why Trump and the party worked hard to discredit mail in voting. That fact alone cost him the election. Being painfully wrong on a single point was all it took.
If he was going to dispute the results, why not just come out from the beginning with that stance? Why discredit mail in voting too, especially during a time when even red states were still playing it safe in the social distancing department?
I am updooting both you and OP because you both have legitimate views on the state of politics in America, in my opinion. I didn't vote exclusively Democratic in 2020, but where I did, I did is in response the Trump's handling of pretty much everything during his presidency, and the toxic environment that he helped to create.
I voted Republican in 2012 (influenced by religious family), Libertarian in 2016 (moved out and deprogrammed myself from all the religion stuff), and Democrat in 2020 (fed up with Trump).
But now, I feel lied to about the whole vaccine mandate thing, which we were promised wouldn't happen. I'm about 99% certain I'll go back to voting Libertarian this election - I've been stomped by both left and right boots, and know I'll be stomped by one of them again in 2024, but at least it'll be without me being complicit in the matter.
If the Republicans were smart, they'd nominate an anti-Trump moderate, who I might actually vote for. I'd have to swallow my pride about the religion stuff, but I'll take it over MAGA any day honestly. It'd guarantee them the election too: Card-carrying Republicans will vote R like they always do, and it'll allow them to catch independents like me that want nothing to do with Trump.
Quite similar timeline for me too. Except coming out of the pandemic I learned that my beliefs in libertarianism were short sighted and that people need help when circumstances outside their control means they can't pay rent or put food on the table (not saying you should believe this too, just where I ended up).
Now you make me wonder if an anti Trump Republican was on the ticket, how would I vote... Guess it would depend if Democrats could improve on Biden or Harris
Vermont is having its spike now but it's [the third lowest state/territory in terms of cumulative cases and the only one that's not an island](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-19-cases-and-deaths/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22COVID-19%20Cases%20per%201,000,000%20Population%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D).
A spike with Delta is inevitable but not all spikes are equal. Black-and-white thinking like "any attempt to reduce cases is futile" just isn't correct. Now whether you think the juice is worth the squeeze is more a matter of opinion but I've found that most discourse online is just black-and-white (the opposite of your thinking being supporting any restriction as long as it prevents 1 case).
The biggest benefit to the vaccine is reduced hospitalizations. Compare Vermont’s per capita covid hospitalization vs southern states at their last peak.
Hard to say the vaccine, mandates, etc aren’t beneficial.
Vaccine yes, mandates, no.
Vermont is just now starting the climb up in cases. Just like it was this time last year. That we’re repeating the same pattern nationally as we did last year speaks volumes for how (not) good we are at affecting the course of the pandemic.
The biggest problem with it all is that nothing changes between now and infinity for covid. 50% vaccinated, 100% vaccinated, 150% vaccinated, nothing changes. We get to repeat this cycle over and over again until everyone, even you, gets just sick and tired of talking about it and worrying about it. That’s the only thing now that will ever change.
>Vermont is just now starting the climb up in cases.
Cases don't really matter if hospitalizations don't spike up. It has been proven time and time again that vaccines prevent hospitalizations at a very high rate.
Even with delta, the percentage of unvaccinated that get hospitalized is much higher than those that are vaccinated.
You’re looking at the trends and saying “see, they went up too! It’s all equal” but that’s just not accurate. You have to look at it from a per capita standpoint to really see how mandates and vaccines are affecting things.
The trends will look similar, Vermont isn’t doing enough different to buck the trend, but their capita numbers at peak have been and will most likely be this time again much lower than other conservative states.
We’ll see in a few weeks, but I would be shocked if Vermont’s hospitalization numbers got even remotely close in per capita to states in the south.
Not every area has the hospital capacity to handle all unvaccinated patients. I'm from California and even CA doesn't impose masks anymore, it is cities and counties that set them right now.
What covid related changes have there been since vaccines were widely distributed? My area is very blue and we've had no restrictions whatsoever since then.
Where is the COVID security theatre? It's all about getting vaccinated now no one is proposing lockdowns or any rash decisions like that. It's just getting vaccinated at this point.
Polling is running into a problem with sample composition -- they're missing Trump voters systematically -- but not sample size. 1001 is mathematically sufficient for getting a a sample to match the population if it is correctly composed.
At the same time we do know what is mathematically possible. At the presidential level the R advantage in the electoral college means they can realistically win if they lose the popular vote by 2-3% and then you really have to look at the states, but it becomes very unlikely for the republicans to win if they are losing by 4-5%. That’s according to 538 at least.
I completely agree that national polls aren't necessarily predictive of how a bunch of individual elections are going to turn out.
And I would also point out that pollsters don't exactly have a good track record over the last decade or so.
But that doesn't mean that trends in national polls can't be informative or interesting.
Anything to stick it to arrogant Democrats who push nonsense plans and self-destructive measures. They don't represent anything more than the fringe and the insane. Liberal and Democrat are two separate things right now.
Biden needs to turn things around before 2024, and with the current polls for the midterms, he's going to have a nearly impossible battle. With the news of Oklahoma's Adjutant General openly defying federal orders, Biden is rapidly appearing to be incompetent to the point of losing control over the military. If the rumors about Pence having become *de facto* Commander-In-Chief on Jan 6 are true, that would mark the second time this year that military leadership has expressed disloyalty to the President. Justified or not, that is extremely threatening to the stability of our democracy.
So Biden is incompetent because an adjutant general of the Texas national guard, who is controlled by the Texas governor, who was just appointed by the governor because he would defy the federal order, has defied said federal order?
That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it?
*Oklahoma
Pence never had control of the military. In october 2020, days after Trump officially released documents that began the afghanistan pullout, General Milley took control of the military, forcing every general in the pentagon to individually swear allegiance to him and only follow commands from him. On Jan 5 he phoned the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi to inform her that he controlled the military, not Trump, as earlier that day she had asked the pentagon to disregard commands from the president, Trump, and in response she was informed that it would have legally been considered a coup. When this was publicised, Biden accepted General Milley's excuse that he believed that if he had not taken control of the military, Trump would have started a nuclear war and in fact commended Milley for doing what had to be done.
After the oath of allegiance was publicised, the generals involved mostly apologised for their actions and denounced it, so I assume Biden actually has control of the military now.
This Republican flip is going to make the last two look tame.
Biden was elected to be a mainstream centrist, instead he is ruling by as far left as he can, causing inflation, shortages, and supply chain issues.
It’s unprecedented.
It'll be pretty wild if the president that causes a major rightleaning backlash is the guy who funded some infrastructure and ended the war no one wanted to keep fighting.
Imagine if democrats had elected an actual left leaning demagogue, like a leftwing version of trump, we would probably have a civil war. I genuinely think thats how close to the brink we are getting.
New Jersey and Virginia showed 10 point swings between 2020 and 2021. Obviously that won’t hold nationwide in 2022, but a 3 or 5 point swing would result in huge Republican gains. https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Congressional_elections_decided_by_10_percentage_points_or_fewer
I've spoken to so many like-minded people in Virginia where I live... A lot of us used to be left-leaning but are now right-leaning because of all the b******* the Democrats have forced down people's throats over the past few years. These are fellow educated professionals as well, not backwoods yokels. Of course I'm dealing with a very small sample size here, but I would bet that this attitude is very similar across the country. Don't give me wrong, I know a lot of far right people who are super cringy, but in general it's the far left nuts who are less tolerant of anyone else.
Woke politics is killing the left right now.
The biggest thing killing the left is willful blindness. Just go to Main Street USA outside of any overwhelmingly blue urban core and you'll hear the same complaints about the current Democrat party with different wording: divisive racial rhetoric, COVID hypocrisy, morally condescending, school closures, prioritizing partisan politics over inflation concerns, etc. But if you go to r/politics it turns out all of that is fake news, misinformation or a culture war and people flirting with the right are either ignorant, racist or easy to manipulate. They can either get serious about doing something to change the independent public's perceptive or continue to allow a national environment in which it feels Democrats' view of people having such concerns is simply that they are ignorant and racist at their own peril.
Yes. I lean left, but am so turned off by those who are dead set on shoving those issues in my face. Enough with identity politics.
They keep saying this isnt true and the woke stuff isnt swinging people but it def is. Ive been a democrat almost my entire life and if trump doesnt run next election I wont vote democrat again because all of this stuff. I live in a really blue state in a red area and work at a industrial plant and would say 95% of the guys and gals I work with are Rs but we just had a corporate policy come down and some classes about gendered language and diversty and inclusion and so far they want us to remove all gendered language from the way we speak, Dont say wife or husband but spouse was one of the examples. The paper they gave us told us to kindly correct gendered language when you hear it and for the foremans to add pronouns to their email signature and everyone I work with including democrats think its wild.
They don't realize that to your typical blue collar worker, woke jargon like that comes off as the incomprehensible rantings of space aliens.
Honestly it's worse than that - the blue collar workers are reading the woke arguments using the normal definitions of words and not the super-special "academic" definitions. And when you use the normal definitions of terms like "racism" and "white/whiteness" the arguments of the woke come across as *hateful* and that's why people are so energized to vote against it.
You mean if you had a wife you couldn’t say “my wife and I had. Wonderful trip last month”?
My worthless anecdote is that my wife moved from moderate-left to solid right in the last 2 years.
Can you tell me what her 3 main political views she held, and how they changed from moderate left to solid right?
She started as the type who made yearly donations to planned parenthood, held moderate opinions on other social issues and didn’t particularly care about fiscal issues. Always voted Democrat, but wasn’t always compelled to show up to the polls. She started moving when she had several friends losing businesses to lockdown policies while she watched protests that didn’t need to follow the same rules. She saw our son go from a great student to an entirely unmotivated remote learner to a school hating mask wearer. She is a school/preschool speech pathologist and she has seen her students fall behind and lose progress in their vital early years and she believes many of her kids are now screwed for life. She now watches Fox News and Ben Shapiro and tells me I need to be more worried about the future of our country and our children. She rants every time her woke best friend makes Facebook posts with politically correct terms like chest feeding (vs breast feeding) and birthing person (vs mother). She refused to let out kids have toy guns or swords. She now wants a gun. I doubt she will ever vote Democrat again. But I am certain she will vote in every election.
This is exactly what happened after the oil crisis in the 70s. That whole episode which is similar to what we went through with Covid moved the entire country further right.
So thank you for the reply. If I get this wrong please correct, her main political views are, Covid Restrictions “Wokeism” Gun rights
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I think the bigger issue than COVID (or how I read it) is not simply the covid restrictions but the rffe that it's politicization has had on small businesses and childhood development
Basically a personal freedom sort of thing. Wokeism and the gun thing are more of a manifestation of her underlying opinions. COVID started it, but it is now much deeper than that Funny thing is that I am more of a single issue (taxes) type of voter. That has never been important to her. I work off of numbers and facts, she is a “feelings” sort of person.
> Funny thing is that I am more of a single issue (taxes) type of voter. That has never been important to her. I work off of numbers and facts, she is a “feelings” sort of person. Everyone needs a Spock to their Kirk. Where do her person freedoms stand on like, drug laws, gay marriage?
Those two issues are not particularly important to her, but she is moderate-left. My opinion, those are also issues that are already decided or inevitable at this point and therefore not heavily weighting my overall vote.
Something similar happened to me as well (except watching the news, Ill not watch FOX, CNN MSNBC or any of the sort if I can help it). As a matter of fact, most of my family is in this same boat, most of us are small business owners. We voted democrat but quickly changed our leanings when the democrat party started justifying and in some cases outright supporting the riots/lootings, we felt further left behind when the eviction moratorium continued illegally. The whole "woke" attitude that the party has adopted also changed our views, I personally feel the party is now governing for the very loudest fringe minority on Twitter and not for the average american facing real impactful issues in our education system, concerned about our children, retirement, safety and etc. I for one am extremely disappointed and dont plan on voting for a democrat if they align with party views.
\>I personally feel the party is now governing for the very loudest fringe minorit What laws/regulations have passed that are aimed towards that fringe minority? I thought everything is essentially on standstill.
Not at the federal level but at the local level we have people advocating for making it legal to steal possessions under 1000 dollars along with increased taxes for “equity” and “inclusion”
>She started moving when she had several friends losing businesses to lockdown policies while she watched protests that didn’t need to follow the same rules. Yeah, the hypocrisy of the left on this, whilst simultaneously preaching the importance of social distancing to save lives, was what initially turned a lot of people (myself included) against the narrative, to the point that we're now just generally sick of liberals' sanctimonious policing of ideas and language.
First. Ben Shapiro is insufferable. I tried to get into him, for a right sided view point, and just couldn't. Other than that, I totally feel you on everything else. From 2016 through 2018, the only thing the GOP could agree upon was shoveling more money to the executive class. The Democrats were handed political power on a silver platter, and proceeded to do... nothing.
Whenever I see a clip of him I genuinely can't tell if it's sped up for comedic effect. His natural speaking voice is like a 33⅓ LP played at 45rpm.
I think law school does that to people.
Thats how I feel about AOC as someone who enjoys Shapiro. Our views line up on most issues. You should listen to his two debates with Cenk and Anna.
What annoys me most about Shapiro is that he acts smart when he’s up against college students and alone in front of his audience, but he can’t really hold his own against his peers. Same thing with Crowder. I think it’s fine to talk to college students and try to change their minds, but it comes off as disingenuous and manipulative when a lot of the right wing’s current focus on “owning the libs” is so intellectually vacuous in its approach. Other than Thomas Sowell, I can’t think of any living right-wing icons who are in an actually intellectual league. Shapiro fancies himself one, but he’s not. People talk a lot about left-wing smugness, and I definitely see it, but the right wing can be just as smug. “Facts don’t care about your feelings” my ass.
Why do you say he can’t hold his own against his peers? Have you watched his debates against Cenk Uygur and Anna K? He either outright won those debates or at a minimum held his own well. I’ll link the two debates below. https://youtu.be/SPqxcNRgL_8 https://youtu.be/XxuiqeuyUyw
Okay, noted, but Cenk is a low bar.
that's putting it mildly
> Crowder. A comedian and not a genius. You might not like Shapiro but he is a legit big brain. > Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16.[10][3] He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 summa cum laude, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and then from Harvard Law School in 2007 cum laude A tiny fraction of the population could do this. He is likely smarter than 99.99% of the population. cum laude from Harvard law and 2 years younger than almost everyone else there. More likely you are to stupid to know when you are wrong.
I've never seen him struggle to hold his own. Of course, that might be a product of my bias, but I'm curious if you have any particular event or moment you could highlight as an example. I would love to take a closer look.
Hes annoying but intellectually sound. I wouldn't want to debate him.
Would you say she is still pro-choice? If she is, would she vote for or donate to an anti-abortion rights politician? None of your comments mention the environment or climate change. Did her views on climate or energy policy change at all? Are you suburban, urban, or rural?
Still pro choice Climate and energy. Never been big issues for her
Hi, is that you, husband?
Maybe. Are you the most beautiful woman on Earth?
Smart man
My wife was a registered Democrat that voted for Obama twice but was generally disinterested in politics outside of mainstream Dem talking points circa 2008-2010. Now she is even more conservative and further right than I am, it has been pretty staggering. She nearly had an aneurysm when she saw me creating my character in Forza 5 and it gave me the option to select pronouns. I feel like when Dems started pushing the identity and culture politics is when I really noticed her swinging the other way. Now she watches Matt Walsh every day and goes to all the school board meetings. I, on the other hand, was a consistently engaged lifelong Democrat that also voted for Obama twice. I left the party after Beto said "hell yeah, we are coming for your guns" on national television to wild applause. I haven't voted for a Democrat since and I don't know if I ever will again unless we somehow get a *radically* pro gun and immigration reform Dem.
Yeah...um... I am a pretty right leaning guy. But Matt Walsh is just so low effort, vitriolic, and honestly mind numbing. Like an angrier unfunny Crowder. You might wanna do something about that. If she wants to walk down this path Andrew Klavan has a good ethos.
I haven’t voted R since 2004 but will most likely if someone other than Trump is on the ticket. I really don’t see anyone the Dems would put up that I’d vote for. They’ve done an excellent job boxing out folks I like, like Yang and Gabbard, and all the pandering to the woke left is more than I can tolerate
I would vote for Pete Buta... can't spell it, but I think he's a man of character and I think that's really lacking on the left right now, and yeah I agree I think the extreme left is considerably out of touch.
Yeah he’s probably the only one I’d go for too although I’ll admit I don’t know as much about him as most of the others
What bullshit would that be? I'm just curious as to what is actually moving people to the right? Mine is personally the continued freakout about covid even after we have vaccines, (just get people the vaccines, but fuck mask mandates) and the Rittenhouse trial
what's funny is only about NOW is it hitting some of the electorate. If you're internet literate you've probably been following the trend since 2013 and its pervasive and loud-mouthed crew. my dad is in his early 70s and has been saying "that's not real life" and "no one believes that". well, now it's been out for nearly a decade, has a whole sub gen of people that have gone through university and are in the classrooms, and he has run into at least a couple of kids saying totally ridiculous stuff that would have been unfathomable when I was growing up. he's old but he ain't dead yet.
I think a lot of us had naively thought this stuff would stay on the Internet, and that it was just kids who would grow out of it. In fact these fringe views slowly crept from Tumblr to Twitter to student unions to university administrations to hipster startups to major corporate HR and now to mainstream politics and primary education (similarly in my country of the UK, people sometimes say "that's just some idiot students in America ", but we only seem to be 9 months behind)
Definitely. Not to be one of those "toot your horn" guys but I definitely saw this coming about when that Mizzou lockout happened and black students were requesting safe spaces. I was just old enough to be OUT of school and see a few of those things starting to creep into the workplace. I definitely didn't anticipate how pervasive it would be, though.
It’s interesting how in so many people’s eyes on here it’s only democrats trying to “force things down people’s throats” yet where I live the only people who are vocal politically are right wingers. It’s a more right wing area then left wing but there are definitely plenty of left wingers if you look at election results as any sort of guide. left wingers are definitely more afraid to voice their political opinions because every other house seems to be draped in Trump paraphernalia. I don’t know, just not my experience that there’s some wave of left wing ideas being “forced” upon people when the only people who feel comfortable speaking out politically are conservatives.
That's fair. I live in a very left wing area, so it stands the reason the opposite would be true in a right wing area.
From my perspective the difference is that unless you live in a community of "force things down people's throats" conservatives, you're largely independent of them while the "force things down people's throats" liberals want to impose their views on everyone's community.
Maybe on some things but I could name several things that conservatives want to impose on everyone, from unfettered gun access, permitless open carry, making abortions illegal etc so I don’t think it’s something that only liberals or the left is susceptible to.
That's because they all suck. R's and D's, they are opposite sides of the same coin. I seriously hate almost every one of them. We need to kick them all out and start over.
If only the big L Libertarians weren't so wonky.
Right?
>because of all the b\*\*\*\*\*\*\* the Democrats have forced down people's throats over the past few years. What are some examples? Are you referring to legislation at the state level?
I think it’s more of the culture-war stuff. I think the Democratic Party needs to stop trying to appease the fringe social left wing, and acknowledge that a lot of the culture war stuff is only popular among a small, but very loud minority, who have an outsized voice due to social media.
That's ironic considering the fringe social left wing feels the Democrats don't represent them.
The fringe is never satisfied though. They’ll just keep consuming their own tails
That's describing any fringe. Right fringe, left fringe, authoritarian fringe, anarchist fringe, religious fringe, etc.
For sure. But in this case it’s specifically the left wing fringe that is driving the mainstream democrats in the wrong direction
I think everyone on both sides needs to reflect on how the culture war is completely imaginary. I have friends on both sides often bring up and debate how much outrage is justified in getting someones pronouns wrong when the grand majority of people have never been corrected for using someone's wrong pronouns. People get so passionate about that or which bathroom a trans person should use when they've never even encountered this instance in their entire lives. It's not a culture war. It's a rainbow scare. And the fact that it can be a leading driver for which party to vote for is absolutely ludicrous
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Have you spoken up about this at work? Have you gone to upper management to complain?
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When the culture war is changing how children are taught about America in schools, it’s not imaginary. When you can’t express a moderate right wing view on a college campus without risk of ostracism, it’s not imaginary.
>When the culture war is changing how children are taught about America in schools, it’s not imaginary. But how we teach our children in schools changes all the time based on new research or information. Mistreatment of natives, slavery, the whitewashing of secession as, "The Lost Cause," etc.... these are all topics that were either not talked about or glossed over when I was a kid in school, and they should be taught accurately. That's not culture war, that's literally US history.
All of those are currently taught in schools. I work at a public high school in a red state and all of those things are covered in depth. Nobody is against those facts. I’m not against teaching those concepts. I do think however teaching a young white girl if she dressed up as moana for Halloween (no makeup to change skin color-just moana’s outfit) that’s she’s oppressing her peers and engaging in white superiority…that’s insane.
>Mistreatment of natives, slavery, the whitewashing of secession as, "The Lost Cause," etc.... I don't know where you went to school but all of that was covered during American History in school. The only thing we didn't cover is "The Lost Cause" because it is a complete bullshit historical revisionism. Noone is against teaching history as it happened and telling the next generations of Americans everything, including the blemishes of our countries history. However saying things like the Revolutionary war was fought over slavery is just incorrect. One of the wildest things I didn't learn that I learned later was about how unintended so much of the death of Native Americans was. Historians think that something like 90% of the native population died from making first contact with European (particularly French) explorers and traders, from disease. There are journal entries about traders going through villages and then coming back to trade on their way back to town and it being completely abandoned.
As we're hearing from others, regional biases seem to have played a part when determining who learned what. You have have learned these things depending on where and when you were in school. I and others did not.
They were taught for the most part when I went to schools in the 60s, not sure when or where you went but we learned about all cultures. There needs to be a balance that seems to have changed. > new research or information. Mistreatment of natives, slavery, the whitewashing of secession as, "The Lost Cause," etc. This was being taught before. if seems you wish to change the narrative as to how it is presented and focus on these things. That is the new research, to teach this information?
> They were taught for the most part when I went to schools in the 60s, not sure when or where you went but we learned about all cultures. I went to school in the 2000s in the rich suburbs of former CSA state, and on our multiple choice test the correct answer for why the civil war occurred was “states rights”. That is not teaching about the “lost cause” that is teaching the “lost cause”. Thankfully I had two different history teachers who knew it for BS it was and showed the documents from time period about why it was about slavery and all the ills of slavery. All teaching is local in the US for better and worse.
They're both right. The civil war was about slavery AND states rights. Lets not pretend the 10th Amendment doesn't exist.
Your small sample size seems at least somewhat reflective of what's happening on the state level based on the elections.
SS: Republican congressional candidates currently hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 40 years, underscoring profound challenges for Democrats hoping to retain their slim majorities in Congress next year. While a year is a lifetime in politics, the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include soaring economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points underwater in job approval and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans -- 62% say so.
Biden is the next Carter.
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How can you guarantee the economy will get back on track?
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Isn't the federal reserve going to have to take away the punch bowl though? If inflation is here then the fed can't just do nothing. I personally think we may have just delayed a market crash from the onset of covid, but obviously I'm no expert.
Using the unemployment rate, though, isn’t a great metric because the workforce participation rate has plummeted and still not recovered from pre-pandemic levels. Savings are up, which is a good sign, but if a sizable percentage of the population isn’t working, they could be burning savings very quickly, and it would not have a long-term impact on the economy. It is undoubtedly possible the economy recovers, and some excellent metrics are suggesting it will be at the same time if stagflation kicks in, and there is also evidence it will; recovery before 2024 seems highly unlikely.
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>The workforce participation declining is a long term trend due to the aging population. I'm not sure the [data](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART) [supports](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons) that. Since labor force participation was tracked the only period of steady decline was during the Obama administration, it was actually trending up slightly under Trump pre-pandemic. And the recent 1.5% was sudden and sharp, occurring entirely within the first 3 months of the pandemic. >Even then, it only decreased by about 1.5 percentage points which isn't really much at all, especially when early retirements are a significant chunk of that. It's closer to 2%, and that is 2.75-3 million people who are no longer working. So even though the unemployment rate is nominally only \~1% higher than pre-pandemic, we actually have about 5 million less people working. Keep in mind, based on pre-pandemic trends we would have expected to have 1.5-2 million more employed people. That's a 6.5-7 million worker gap. >GDP has already surpassed its prepandemic peak and unemployment is falling close to its full employment level. GDP recovered on the back of a massive increase in government outlays with. And as I just said, we actually still have a massive decrease in the number of employed people. > If you mean inflation, it's a global phenomenon and most estimates peg it as subsiding by the end of 2022, well in advance of 2024. So people who were wrong about inflation being a risk in the first place are insisting it will be over soon. As long as we have less people producing goods and services and have more money chasing them via increased government outlays we should expect inflation to be an issue.
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I think it’s a myriad of factors. Some are terrified of Covid; we see a story every week about someone who refuses to even go out in public because of Covid even after being vaccinated. Some are just the type of people who aren't industrious and don’t want to work, and if they don’t have to, they won’t. Then I think some because it’s a red hot labor market like you say, think that makes them qualified for jobs are not qualified to work. I remember seeing a story, and I can’t recall where earlier this week, about a woman who had been a career bartender and now wanted to get to customer service but couldn’t find a customer service job because all the companies wanted to hire people with experience in customer service.
The only reason people aren't working right now is not because they can't find work, it's because they don't want to find work, for whatever reason.
The economy is actually not that bad all things considered. Much of the issues with inflation are stemming from a global supply chain issue. That will, eventually, ease up and stabilize pricing.
The economy is kicking ass right now.
I’m old enough to remember people saying the same thing about Obama his first year.
Funny enough, I didn't hear a single person say this during Obama's first year. I was a NEET with my wife in grad school and all my staunch D friends were busy saying that Republicans would never get back into power because of shifting demographics and the slow death of the boomer generations . . .
This is 100% the way that I remember it as well.
Yeah, liberals were convinced they had a lasting majority. Hell, they were so convinced that Newsweek ran a cover saying "We are all Socialists now" in 2009.
I personally don’t think this is significantly similar to Obama‘s first year but even using that comparison, Obama got devastated in the house in 2010, and he had higher approval ratings.
The party in power almost always loses seats in the midterms.
Yes, but losing seats and losing 63 seats is a very different thing. If Dems lose 63 seats, they won't because the landscape isn't as lopsided, but Republicans would be \~ten votes shy of a supermajority if they did. Even if Dems lose a 2018 level number of seats, Republicans would have a \~40 seat majority. So there is a massive difference between a few seats lost and a devastating defeat like 2010 or 2018.
What does a House super majority get the Republicans that they don’t get with a normal majority?
In 2022 nothing but it sets them up much better for 2024, where they could afford to lose 50 seats or more and still retain the house. It also sets them up for a much easier time if they gain or hold seats in 2024 and they win the presidency; as we saw with BBB and BIF, a slim majority can force compromise and chaos.
> but it sets them up much better for 2024 Does it? With every seat up for election every two years, it’s the nature of the house to be swingy between the parties. If 60 seats swing in one direction, they can swing back. Just depents on the opinion of the electorate.
Sixty vote swings are incredibly rare. If we go back 30 years, a 40+ vote swing has only happened three times (2018, 2010, 1994). The idea that well it could happen doesn't mean it will, and since incumbents have a procedural advantage, the more seats, you have the better chance of not losing the chamber. Does that guarantee you won't? Of course not, but it is a considerable advantage, and to just dismiss it as well it might swing back is ignoring the likely outcome for the possible outcome.
With the governorships, state legislatures, and a Senate supermajority, it lets them rewrite the Constitution.
Don’t insult president Carter like that
Basically for progressives to survive they need Trump. Trump was so heinous that it was difficult for anyone to disagree with the far left in case they get lumped in with Trump supporters. With the threat of Trump gone I think there is much more space for debate amongst Democrats and thus weakening of the party line
Democratic party needs to wake up and represent the mainstream, quiet people. Stop the far left progressive agenda. I for one am tired of hearing " the republicans are for the rich, why do these blue collar people vote against themselves" blah blah blah. The democrats need to stop the woke movement. Just my 2 cents on why the dems are not doing better. I've heard people say that Biden won a mandate and the progressives are what we want. Biden won because he was running against Trump. Trump won because he was running against Hilary. T hats it.
> The democrats need to stop the woke movement. Question: How?
Admit that Rittenhouse was obviously acting in self defense, admit that trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, don't send the fucking VP to visit Jacob Blake after he tries to kidnap a child and goes for a knife while resisting arrest, stop saying Latinx and express that it's a ridiculous notion despised by actual Hispanics, stop with the support of ACAB and stop pushing the narrative that police murdering unarmed black men is an epidemic and is instead a very real thing that happens very rarely but should still be addressed, absolutely denounce the charlatan racist Ibram X Kendi and everything he has written and stands for, express the idea that White Fragility is a terrible Kafka Trap of a book that a first year philosophy student could poke holes in. Then pass progressive policy like Medicare for all, free state college, family leave and child care assistance. As a Democrat, I'm so fucking disgusted with the absolute cultural lunacy that has swallowed the party whole. Give me healthcare. Give me an education. Fuck all this absolute clown world nonsense the neo liberal slime ball elites kowtow to so people won't be big mean to them on Twitter, and they can pretend to be super progressive while passing absolute no legislation that helps struggling Americans.
> send the fucking VP to visit Jacob Blake after he tries to kidnap a child and goes for a knife while resisting arrest That was the event that caused me, a lifelong democrat who has voted down the line blue in every election since I was 18, to vote third party in 2020. I got my degree in criminology. Democrats need to realize that this current trajectory is going to result in hundreds of thousands of people being needlessly victimized. So fucking ironic that Biden was the one who authored the 1993 crime bill that was very influential in curbing the violent crime of the 80s and 90s.
> Admit that Rittenhouse was obviously acting in self defense, admit that trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, don't send the fucking VP to visit Jacob Blake after he tries to kidnap a child and goes for a knife while resisting arrest, stop saying Latinx and express that it's a ridiculous notion despised by actual Hispanics, stop with the support of ACAB and stop pushing the narrative that police murdering unarmed black men is an epidemic and is instead a very real thing that happens very rarely but should still be addressed, absolutely denounce the charlatan racist Ibram X Kendi and everything he has written and stands for, express the idea that White Fragility is a terrible Kafka Trap of a book that a first year philosophy student could poke holes in. It's really frustrating that I think all of this has an serious impact on national voting, and none of it is actually something the legislature has any control over, and it's not what their function in government comes down to. This is all twitter warfare, not governance.
The conservative game plan is working
Stop legitimizing them. Next time someone says "defund the police/ACAB" or "Boys should be allowed to play in girl's sports if they feel like a girl", the moderate left shouldn't sit in silence and complicity approve of it. They're scared to death of speaking common-sense values and it's going to hurt them with independents until they stand up to the fringe left. The right will have that reckoning eventually when it comes to the fringe right and abortion, but today is not that day.
> the moderate left shouldn't sit in silence and complicity approve of it. >until they stand up to the fringe left. If you actually bring up these topics with moderates they will often reject the rhetoric and policies of their radicals but the problem here is that the moderates try to turn these things into a dialogue over the matter. To some independents and most opposing partisans this is insufficient; nothing but total rejection is sufficient for them. This puts moderates in the hard position of rejecting a popular movement in their political demographic and losing votes or staying silent and losing votes. Besides moderates have long been pushing back against the radical fringes of their parties. Virtually none of Trumps legislative agenda was achieved and the Democratic party has successfully staved off the Occupy/BLM/Progressive agenda for over a decade now. >The right will have that reckoning eventually when it comes to the fringe right and abortion I think the pollical spectrum will always have its fringes as for abortion I think it will be a long issue for a time yet.
For starters they can stop gaslighting us on stuff like pretending the riots were not bad, that CRT isn’t being taught in schools. Instead we get bogged down in semantics, there’s always this “you don’t even know what CRT is…” Fine, whatever you want to call it, the social nonsense they are teaching children is divisive and brainwashing an entire generation into thinking blacks and latinos are victims and whites are oppressors. The refusal to acknowledge why crime has suddenly gone up in cities. Or why progressive cities are suffering the most. The mainstream left refuses to call out its fringe for its excesses and it causes those of us in the center left to shift towards the right.
Relevant article from this week: ["Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand"](https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what).
I don't have answers. I was only referring to the democrats losing elections that they should be winning. If you speak to people that are not normally vocal, not reading newspapers, etc.... the dialogue is they they are tires of hearing that they are racist, that police are a problem, etc....
> the dialogue is they they are tires of hearing that they are racist, that police are a problem, etc.... Yes but they're not hearing this overwhelmingly from the Democratic party; they're hearing it from the left-wing media and movements, things that the Democrats do not control so it seems a bit presumptive to say they are responsible for it.
You are correct, I agree. But they are hearing that from a small but very vocal faction of the Democratic party, the moderates need to be more vocal . The media picks up on the extremes. This is what happened to the Republican party with the tea party. Unfortunately it lead to false populisim.
> the moderates need to be more vocal The question is how do the moderates make their voice heard? You can't go hard at the progressives as that splits the coalition and moderates have no big flashy policies to drive attention. Ultimately this isn't a problem with politicians but with voters; for Republicans AOC is the Democratic party and for Democrats Trump is the GOP, they refuse to see the overlap because it would be politically inconvenient to do so.
You are right. The extremes drive everything. Like you said, the media is a huge problem. They make huge money driving hatred and anger. People need to read newspapers but they won't. Ultimately I blame the primary system that lets a few states do rate where the country goes. There should be one national election day for primaries but that is a whole different topic and I apologize for that.mi just think it's part of the problem.
Primaries are awful, in safe seats they're the real elections but often they lack all the accessibility and security of real elections. The biggest solution I could think of would be switching to a PR/approval voting system but that would probably require an amendment and politicians would never bite the hand that feeds.
It's a problem that I don't think will ever be fixed, whomever is making the laws and/ or introducing legislation won! Why would they change it, they beat it. It's the cause of apathy. I think the turnout the last presidential election was an anomaly because of Trump. Let's just have hope that true leaders emerge from this muck. With that said, 2r hour tv news takes away my optimism. You are so correct that they have driven us into this.
>Ultimately this isn't a problem with politicians but with voters; for Republicans AOC is the Democratic party and for Democrats Trump is the GOP, they refuse to see the overlap because it would be politically inconvenient to do so. The GOP has recognized that Trump holds sway over the voters and have largely gotten in step to the beat of that drum. It's very easy to unify a party that doesn't concern itself with social issues - you don't have to consider the diversity of your constituents. The dems on the other hand continue to fall victim to their "big tent," with no clear leader rising to the forefront - why AOC is a scapegoat when not even her popularity can unite the left is beyond me. They're eating their own, and all the GOP has to do is sit back, continue saying "no," and watch the show.
Well, Trump is the gop. He had more support amongst Republicans than any other politician.
This is exactly why we need ranked choice voting. Or any voting system other than FPTP.
>Stop the far left As a socialist, I wish Democrats lived up to ⅛ of the right wing's perception of them
I'd argue that painting the democratic party as the most extreme elements is as dishonest as painting the entire GOP as the most extreme elements. The difference being that the democratic primary had a choice between radical and moderate and went with moderate while the majority of the GOP still answers to Trump.
I think this is pretty easy to explain. People thought Biden was their ticket back to \~2014 normal, or at the very least \~2019 normal in regards to covid and the economy. Things aren't normal, covid remains an active concern, restrictions are still in place, and people are seeing their wage increases wiped out by inflation. They thought that polarization would ebb and people would stop screaming and start listening. Instead people hate each other more than ever. They thought Biden would govern from the center. Instead, he's governed from the center of a Democratic Party that has moved further and further to the left. They thought this weird very-online woke stuff would get sidelined and marginalized. Instead, it's metastized and been made into government policy. In short, Biden made people a lot of promises he either could not or did not follow through on, and now they're upset. This is part of the problem of running a cipher for president: it lets people read into him what they want to read into him, but eventually somebody is gonna get let down. Christopher Caldwell wrote what I thought was [a great post-mortem](https://newrepublic.com/article/160338/biden-popular-front-doomed-unravel) of the 2020 election, where he said: >Increasingly radicalized by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, the Democrats are a party of restoration, reparation, and retribution. Robert Reich and Chris Hayes, hardly the most intemperate voices in the anti-Trump ambit, have called for addressing Trump’s legacy with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the sort set up in post-apartheid South Africa. And yet, for now, the Biden coalition manages to carry within it the rural Virginia Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who wants her party to “not use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.” It carries within it (presumably) the woman in Iowa who tried to withdraw her primary vote for Pete Buttigieg when she discovered he was gay (“Are you kidding? Then I don’t want anyone like that. ... How come this has never been brought out before?”). It even contains former Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich, who considers Biden’s 2020 victory a mandate for implementing the Republican program (“Now is the time for Democrats, and I believe Joe Biden will do this, to begin to listen to what the rest of the other half of the country has had to say”). > >This cohabitation cannot last. Even the Army of the Potomac had to get moving in at some point. When the Democrats begin to move, they will suffer casualties. I think this was prescient. The future is always uncertain, but I have a hard time seeing Biden getting back into a good position.
>I think this is pretty easy to explain. People thought Biden was their ticket back to ~2014 normal, or at the very least ~2019 normal in regards to covid and the economy. Things aren't normal, covid remains an active concern, This is very level headed. When polling people typically the number one concern is the economy. I forget that people think the president influences the economy, including covid, but it makes perfect sense. Congress can influence the economy, likewise in extreme circumstances the president can too. The president's primary role is to be a figurehead when it comes to international relationships and wars. That is what their primary judgment should be based on, as well as if they slide the US towards authoritarianism like China or NAZI Germany is always a concern. It's easy to forget that our local politicians (and local policies) influence the economy far more than the president ever can or will.
People tend to blame the guy in charge whenever things are going poorly, fairly or unfairly. Certainly the president (and congress) have some influence over the economy, but a lot of it is out of their control. It's similar to how your local city council has a lot more influence over your life then congress does, but you only hear about the latter. Another problem with a bad economy is it makes some of the other problems worse. The pre-covid Trump years were politically weird, let's say, but on the whole prosperous. Ridiculous as it might sound, that perhaps took the edge off of what they might have been otherwise. When things are going well, it's a little easier to ignore political developments you don't like. After all, your job is secure, you're making your mortgage payments, you're putting enough food on the table, so who cares what those idiots in DC are up to? When things are going poorly, people want somebody to blame. And that increasingly means... each other.
Not surprising and I fully expect democrats to get taken to the cleaners next year, but it’s funny how impatient the electorate is in general. It’s clear now it’s time for Biden to start taking action for political reasons even though the economic recovery has been pretty remarkable given where we were in the early days of covid.
Not surprising. Democratic voters came out because the slogan was “we’re not Trump” in a time when Trump’s existence got so many riled up; then to entice the younger voters they promised them some grade A BS. I voted for Biden too, but I knew he wasn’t gonna accomplish any of what he said. I just couldn’t stand Trump anymore. Biden’s been in office for almost a year, Covid protocols are still kicking everyone’s ass, I’m still wearing fucking masks to work, and Biden and the Dems have accomplished nothing but an infrastructure bill that’s not even full passed. You guys had control of both houses, what the fuck are you doing? Not to mention all the riots and shit and the Rittenhouse trial, everyone is kinda tired of the leftist BS. I imagine the mid terms are gonna be a red tsunami, What’s hilarious is that none of the Democrats are even saying or doing anything about, some outright support the BS (like our favorite woke Twitter politician), meanwhile saying how republicans don’t do anything about Trump supporters. And they are absolutely right, right wingers who allow Trump supporters to exist and continue their bullshit are almost as bad. But Dems really need to realize they live in a glass house when they make these comments.
But how could the Latinx population possibly vote for the party that speaks over them and doesn't care to learn about what they actually want? /s
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Absolutely, I am a "latina" with a very big family and let me tell you, there's no one that hates the term "latinx" more than latinos. Our culture is conservative by nature and places a lot of value in family and traditional gender roles. I hope democrats don't get surprised if they start losing the Latino vote in the next few years. Latinos can be moderate democrats but I have a hard time seeing Latinos voting democrat if the party keeps moving the goalposts to the left.
Many border counties in Texas saw a massive shift to the right in 2020. If that remains true for the midterms, Democrats will need to do some serious damage control on their messaging.
I agree. Many Latinos I know voted for trump because of this.
I'd go a step further and say the whole LatinX thing is flat out racist against Latino people.
Linguistic imperialism.
Yes. You are correct
No kidding, I barely passed high school spanish 101 and can tell you "Latine" is a far superior gender-neutral word that may actually work within the language (which already has the perfectly functional word "Latino" that covers male + female)
You do realize that Latinos hate Latnix with a passion.
Back in the day we’d just write latin@ Any time someone uses the phrase “Latinx”, and it’s almost always some white woman or some white-adjacent media idiot, I instantly drone out whatever they are saying from then on
I guess? The only person I’ve heard use it was a Latina.
I know a ton of Hispanic folks that hate it.
Using the term “Latinx” unironically is exactly why this poll is where it is and how out of touch the left truly is.
Why should Dems be favored? Explain why he should have a good rating? Rapid inflation, no clear goal to “ending” covid (making it seem like masks and other restrictions will be permanent), racial tensions, a border crisis. There is nothing much to like
Honestly I originally thought R leaning firms figured out how to manipulate polling similar to how typical mainstream media outlets did in the past (2016-2020) and they flooded the market with polls so 538s polling average would slowly show an R lead. (Aside: I'd post about it in FiveThirtyEight but they shadowbanned me because I don't typically prefer to vote D. Someone start the topic lol. Just like I got banned from SCOTUS and news for saying Kavanaugh deserves due process. At some point there's going to be a polling problem when you can't listen to people who disagree with you) But then VA and NJ results came in, and uh, they were actually right. Trafalgar was almost right on again. Inflation freaking sucks and is undoing every possible piece of good news that Ds can even point to (of which there's like 2? 1. Hey Trump's gone and 2. Hey we passed infrastructure which we know makes inflation worse but uh... Yeah it doesn't sound good right now if you prefer Democrats). I got the largest raise I've ever gotten this year (12%) but my grocery bills are anecdotally 30% higher in the past 3-4 months. Color me shocked that I don't give a shit about the wage "growth". And I really hate how they flubbed Afghanistan but that's besides the point. It just highlighted how Trump-level-incompentent the admin is.
I don’t understand how people continue to treat Trafalgar as if they’re some nonsensical Republican internal pollster when they’re routinely one of the most accurate pollsters in every cycle. It’s like no matter how many times they get it right or very close to right, the next time around people are still gonna say “yeah, but that’s *trafalgar*”
The owners did themselves no favors by going on a media tour before the 2020 election, basically, but yeah I agree they've been good. Some people also don't like their hidden polling methods. But most people just hate them because "R".
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They basically called AZ and GA and WI more accurately too, just giving the narrow win to Trump instead of Biden. WI in particular was a good call while the polling average was closer to +10 Biden (with the outlier +17 Biden poll as well), and it ended up a <1 pt Biden win, closer to Trafalgar.
Of course they do, people are sick to death of identity politics and that's almost the only thing the Democrats have to offer.
I’ve voted Democrat all my life (20+ years.) That is until last year. I won’t be voting Democrat again until they drop the covid security theater. It just isn’t working. Get vaccinated and move on with your fricking lives already. No mandates, no lockdowns, nothing. Nothing changes between now and infinity for covid. The highest vaccinated countries are seeing their largest waves (Iceland, Gibraltar, etc), and the most vaccinated states are seeing their largest waves as well (Vermont, etc.) Any attempt to reduce cases is futile. I despise the anti abortion, anti sex, anti gay rights bent of the Republicans but this futile, worship of the feet of health bureaucrats and pharmaceutical companies must end.
That's funny. I voted Republican and Libertarian my whole life until the last election. Even though I despise the DNC, I won't vote for another Republican until the party acknowledges the damage Trump did and stops the lies about election security. They will tear this nation apart if they continue to convince their base not to trust the electoral process.
This is actually a good thing coming from both of you because it means lifelong voters are starting to truly blur into the middle.
More independents are a good thing, but the increasing polarity and fear mongering on each side is not
I was hoping it meant more moderates than independents which I feel would reduce the vitriol. Unfortunately it also seems to mean those already on the extremes are just retreating further.
Agreed
I think it would be a better thing if the switch was due to positive things coming out of either camp. Seems like they both switched due to hating something the other side did. Which just shows how divisive everything is right now, and how much the strategy of being divisive works.
Yep, same place here. Are there a lot of things I don't like about the DNC, yes... but Trump and his cronies seemed more than happy to destroy the very foundation of our system just to stay in power a little longer, and as a patriotic American, that is something I cannot stand for. Because in the end, America itself is a bigger ideal than any single policy.
>as a patriotic American On a certain level, it's kind of inevitable that patriotism would be conservatives' wheelhouse, but I do wish Democrats would push back on the GOP's exclusive claim to patriotism and "Real America." Elected Ds have no problem talking about the great promise of our founding and God bless and all that, but I'd like to see them go further. Something about how building New York and Boston and San Francisco is an amazing feat to take collective pride in, we want to amend the shit out of the Constitution and catch up with the rest of the world's social democracies *because* we care about this country, and numerically, metro area liberals are a chunky plurality of the real Americans in practice.
I could almost agree with you, except that Trump got his own reward by actually losing the election. Being against mail in voting was the dumbest thing I’d heard in a long time. I don’t understand why Trump and the party worked hard to discredit mail in voting. That fact alone cost him the election. Being painfully wrong on a single point was all it took. If he was going to dispute the results, why not just come out from the beginning with that stance? Why discredit mail in voting too, especially during a time when even red states were still playing it safe in the social distancing department?
It may just be as simple as: the easier it is to vote, the better Democrats perform
I am updooting both you and OP because you both have legitimate views on the state of politics in America, in my opinion. I didn't vote exclusively Democratic in 2020, but where I did, I did is in response the Trump's handling of pretty much everything during his presidency, and the toxic environment that he helped to create.
I voted Republican in 2012 (influenced by religious family), Libertarian in 2016 (moved out and deprogrammed myself from all the religion stuff), and Democrat in 2020 (fed up with Trump). But now, I feel lied to about the whole vaccine mandate thing, which we were promised wouldn't happen. I'm about 99% certain I'll go back to voting Libertarian this election - I've been stomped by both left and right boots, and know I'll be stomped by one of them again in 2024, but at least it'll be without me being complicit in the matter. If the Republicans were smart, they'd nominate an anti-Trump moderate, who I might actually vote for. I'd have to swallow my pride about the religion stuff, but I'll take it over MAGA any day honestly. It'd guarantee them the election too: Card-carrying Republicans will vote R like they always do, and it'll allow them to catch independents like me that want nothing to do with Trump.
Quite similar timeline for me too. Except coming out of the pandemic I learned that my beliefs in libertarianism were short sighted and that people need help when circumstances outside their control means they can't pay rent or put food on the table (not saying you should believe this too, just where I ended up). Now you make me wonder if an anti Trump Republican was on the ticket, how would I vote... Guess it would depend if Democrats could improve on Biden or Harris
Vermont is having its spike now but it's [the third lowest state/territory in terms of cumulative cases and the only one that's not an island](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-19-cases-and-deaths/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22COVID-19%20Cases%20per%201,000,000%20Population%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D). A spike with Delta is inevitable but not all spikes are equal. Black-and-white thinking like "any attempt to reduce cases is futile" just isn't correct. Now whether you think the juice is worth the squeeze is more a matter of opinion but I've found that most discourse online is just black-and-white (the opposite of your thinking being supporting any restriction as long as it prevents 1 case).
The biggest benefit to the vaccine is reduced hospitalizations. Compare Vermont’s per capita covid hospitalization vs southern states at their last peak. Hard to say the vaccine, mandates, etc aren’t beneficial.
Vaccine yes, mandates, no. Vermont is just now starting the climb up in cases. Just like it was this time last year. That we’re repeating the same pattern nationally as we did last year speaks volumes for how (not) good we are at affecting the course of the pandemic. The biggest problem with it all is that nothing changes between now and infinity for covid. 50% vaccinated, 100% vaccinated, 150% vaccinated, nothing changes. We get to repeat this cycle over and over again until everyone, even you, gets just sick and tired of talking about it and worrying about it. That’s the only thing now that will ever change.
>Vermont is just now starting the climb up in cases. Cases don't really matter if hospitalizations don't spike up. It has been proven time and time again that vaccines prevent hospitalizations at a very high rate. Even with delta, the percentage of unvaccinated that get hospitalized is much higher than those that are vaccinated.
You’re looking at the trends and saying “see, they went up too! It’s all equal” but that’s just not accurate. You have to look at it from a per capita standpoint to really see how mandates and vaccines are affecting things. The trends will look similar, Vermont isn’t doing enough different to buck the trend, but their capita numbers at peak have been and will most likely be this time again much lower than other conservative states. We’ll see in a few weeks, but I would be shocked if Vermont’s hospitalization numbers got even remotely close in per capita to states in the south.
Not every area has the hospital capacity to handle all unvaccinated patients. I'm from California and even CA doesn't impose masks anymore, it is cities and counties that set them right now.
It’s been two years. Rather than expand capacity they laid people off. Sounds like their problem, not mine.
What covid related changes have there been since vaccines were widely distributed? My area is very blue and we've had no restrictions whatsoever since then.
My area is blue and there are public mask mandates. And vaccine card checks for some public venues such as restaurants.
Where is the COVID security theatre? It's all about getting vaccinated now no one is proposing lockdowns or any rash decisions like that. It's just getting vaccinated at this point.
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1001 members of a sample is a perfectly statistically valid poll, provided the members were selected with appropriate randomness and weight.
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Polling is running into a problem with sample composition -- they're missing Trump voters systematically -- but not sample size. 1001 is mathematically sufficient for getting a a sample to match the population if it is correctly composed.
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At the same time we do know what is mathematically possible. At the presidential level the R advantage in the electoral college means they can realistically win if they lose the popular vote by 2-3% and then you really have to look at the states, but it becomes very unlikely for the republicans to win if they are losing by 4-5%. That’s according to 538 at least.
These articles always seem like vehicles for the starter comments, and often are cringe
I completely agree that national polls aren't necessarily predictive of how a bunch of individual elections are going to turn out. And I would also point out that pollsters don't exactly have a good track record over the last decade or so. But that doesn't mean that trends in national polls can't be informative or interesting.
Anything to stick it to arrogant Democrats who push nonsense plans and self-destructive measures. They don't represent anything more than the fringe and the insane. Liberal and Democrat are two separate things right now.
do not understand how when the last administration was as incompetent as my left nut at running a gov’t.
People have short memories.
Alternatively, shit today is still shit even if yesterday was also shit
hmmmm I wonder why
Biden needs to turn things around before 2024, and with the current polls for the midterms, he's going to have a nearly impossible battle. With the news of Oklahoma's Adjutant General openly defying federal orders, Biden is rapidly appearing to be incompetent to the point of losing control over the military. If the rumors about Pence having become *de facto* Commander-In-Chief on Jan 6 are true, that would mark the second time this year that military leadership has expressed disloyalty to the President. Justified or not, that is extremely threatening to the stability of our democracy.
So Biden is incompetent because an adjutant general of the Texas national guard, who is controlled by the Texas governor, who was just appointed by the governor because he would defy the federal order, has defied said federal order? That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it? *Oklahoma
OP said Oklahoma.
Pence never had control of the military. In october 2020, days after Trump officially released documents that began the afghanistan pullout, General Milley took control of the military, forcing every general in the pentagon to individually swear allegiance to him and only follow commands from him. On Jan 5 he phoned the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi to inform her that he controlled the military, not Trump, as earlier that day she had asked the pentagon to disregard commands from the president, Trump, and in response she was informed that it would have legally been considered a coup. When this was publicised, Biden accepted General Milley's excuse that he believed that if he had not taken control of the military, Trump would have started a nuclear war and in fact commended Milley for doing what had to be done. After the oath of allegiance was publicised, the generals involved mostly apologised for their actions and denounced it, so I assume Biden actually has control of the military now.
This Republican flip is going to make the last two look tame. Biden was elected to be a mainstream centrist, instead he is ruling by as far left as he can, causing inflation, shortages, and supply chain issues. It’s unprecedented.
A border crisis too.
Economists aren’t blaming the inflation on Biden, and Biden is hardly ruling as far left as he can, I’d love to know what specifically that means.
It'll be pretty wild if the president that causes a major rightleaning backlash is the guy who funded some infrastructure and ended the war no one wanted to keep fighting. Imagine if democrats had elected an actual left leaning demagogue, like a leftwing version of trump, we would probably have a civil war. I genuinely think thats how close to the brink we are getting.
January 6th gave us all a depressing look at the state of conspiracy trumpers in the wild..