From the article: I'm posting this in part because it does include the chart I mentioned here, without paywall. We can talk about unserved political factions until the end of the world, but this...
From the article:
I don’t really know why Kamala Harris lost. The best explanation I’ve seen is that Harris ran into a buzzsaw of anti-incumbent post-pandemic disillusionment that has played out across the developed world. You can add more strategic or tactical explanations about her candidacy — the timing of Biden’s exit, specific themes she pursued — but I am not sure it overwhelms this.
This sort of broad structural explanation is not terribly satisfying, especially if you are a pundit who is paid to have a take on what happened. And it turns out that the explanations for Harris losing correlate pretty well with the pundit’s pet peeves. And so, if you have been complaining about wokeness, or campus politics, for the past few years, it is obvious that this is at the heart of Trump’s win...
What is true: Trump, and the right, are very good at taking basic respect and empathy for other humans, and portraying that as dangerous: social justice, wokeness, diversity, equity and inclusion have all been converted into terms of mockery. Trump did not win because someone you were on a zoom call with used pronouns, or Latinx, or some college grad corrected you for using the word homeless. You might find all of those things annoying, but its not a reason to excuse truly radical politics in America. He especially did not win because Democratic politicians went all in on those themes, because they did not. It could be that Dems lost support because they did not throw vulnerable groups under the bus, but that is a different argument than claiming they campaigned on those topics.
I'm posting this in part because it does include the chart I mentioned here, without paywall.
We can talk about unserved political factions until the end of the world, but this year's election was about throwing out the status quo, regardless of the agenda of those in power or their opponents' policies.
This is the conclusion I've been coming to, that people are dissatisfied across the board, the reason is money, and are using their vote to say either "this is working" or "this is not". Can you...
This is the conclusion I've been coming to, that people are dissatisfied across the board, the reason is money, and are using their vote to say either "this is working" or "this is not". Can you really say more than yes or no in a binary system?
Also, telling people "the economy is actually good, you guys" is not a winning tactic when people are mad and when they know that you allowed the rich to get much, much richer in the same timeframe. They think, if you really understood my problems and wanted to fix them, you would have done it. You haven't delivered solutions so why should I let you stay? The other guy acknowledges my anger and frustrations; you tell me that they're imagined.
People have much to deal with and are not tuned in to politics or policy details. Many have not developed the critical thinking skills necessary to ask the right questions, find information, determine its reliability, and then evaluate and decide. It takes effort. Effort when people are exhausted and effort in a convenience economy.
I live in NC and looking at the outcomes here, people voted for the incumbent party (D) for governor (Cooper was term limited and Stein was already AG) and for AG (Jackson is a well-liked, even-keeled US Senator Representative that explains things and acts like he understands people's concerns). They also took away the supermajority in the legislature. If the state legislature wasn't severely gerrymandered, I'm guessing the incumbent loss would have been more stark. Again, more of a yes/no as to what's working and what's not. There's little policy awareness or evaluation happening beyond that.
Jackson was/is a representative, not a Senator (And yes generally well liked but pissed off a lot of people by talking on TikTok while voting to ban TikTok and then staying on TikTok which is one...
Jackson was/is a representative, not a Senator
(And yes generally well liked but pissed off a lot of people by talking on TikTok while voting to ban TikTok and then staying on TikTok which is one of the reasons I think the complaints about national security are overblown personally)
You're right and I resonate strongly with this. But I can't help but find the irony here when the answer here was to vote in a billionaire who ran on the exact same plan as something he did in...
telling people "the economy is actually good, you guys" is not a winning tactic when people are mad and when they know that you allowed the rich to get much, much richer in the same timeframe
You're right and I resonate strongly with this. But I can't help but find the irony here when the answer here was to vote in a billionaire who ran on the exact same plan as something he did in 2018. To the effect of costing America hundreds of billions in an unnecessary trade war.
And as of now he's making a new wing of government ran by the richest man in the world. The one who's solution to the last position he rose to is to layoff 90% (with no exaggeration) of the workforce. Who's taking our jobs again?
And yea, I get the point of the article. None of these "facts and logic" (ironic, a right talking point) even matter when people are so distorted by a narrative they want to believe.
FWIW, though, the incumbent party lost vote share in every election in a developed country that happened this year, even in places like India or the UK where conservatives were in power
FWIW, though, the incumbent party lost vote share in every election in a developed country that happened this year, even in places like India or the UK where conservatives were in power
Yeah, I wish we talked more about that in this article. That chart was the most interesting part of the piece, but it seemed to be treated more as a fun fact rather than a core talking point for...
Yeah, I wish we talked more about that in this article. That chart was the most interesting part of the piece, but it seemed to be treated more as a fun fact rather than a core talking point for the current status quo
Even if that's not the case, she lost around 5x as many votes. That is ramping up, because that means that there's a large % of people who don't vote unless they think there's an exciting...
Even if that's not the case, she lost around 5x as many votes.
That is ramping up, because that means that there's a large % of people who don't vote unless they think there's an exciting candidate for them, and hate voting for two status quo (in this case the guy from last time vs the establishment esque dem....summarizing a lot here )
What? She's expected to finish with around 75-76m votes, 5-6m less votes than 2020. Almost all of this drop will probably be outside of swing states, as in most swing states she's meeting 2020...
Even if that's not the case, she lost around 5x as many votes.
What? She's expected to finish with around 75-76m votes, 5-6m less votes than 2020. Almost all of this drop will probably be outside of swing states, as in most swing states she's meeting 2020 vote counts or modestly exceeding them.
I'm imploring people to stop coming up with these half baked narratives until we actually have all the data in front of us.
They aren't narratives, they are projections. And projections from people smarter than me were saying all thee things. Election's over, so there's no incentive anymore lie this blatantly. But...
I'm imploring people to stop coming up with these half baked narratives until we actually have all the data in front of us.
They aren't narratives, they are projections. And projections from people smarter than me were saying all thee things. Election's over, so there's no incentive anymore lie this blatantly.
But sure, this has been a year of completely off base projections, so I see where you're coming from. Being off base does not mean it's propoganda, though. We're just in very weird times.
A key aspect of the status quo argument that's overlooked is that Democrats have held congress for a generous 6 years of the last 34 (going back to 1990) and Republicans have held congress for 14...
A key aspect of the status quo argument that's overlooked is that Democrats have held congress for a generous 6 years of the last 34 (going back to 1990) and Republicans have held congress for 14 of those same years. For anyone under 40-45, Republicans are the establishment and status quo.
The idea that incumbent wins are down across the board is not unsatisfying at all. In fact, it's super interesting. It raises many questions and a desire to probe deeper. Why were incumbent...
The idea that incumbent wins are down across the board is not unsatisfying at all. In fact, it's super interesting. It raises many questions and a desire to probe deeper. Why were incumbent parties universally despised this term? Are there universal reasons? How much is related to post-pandemic issues? How much is related to actual economic issues (outside of those directly caused by the pandemic)? How much is caused by internal societal issues (Brexit in the UK, Subsidies in Germany, Inflation in the US)? How much is caused by dis/misinformation?
I think the widespread inflation of 2022 - 2023 accounts for the greater part of anti-incumbent sentiment. In the U.S., at last, the inflationary damage to people's well-being and the political...
I think the widespread inflation of 2022 - 2023 accounts for the greater part of anti-incumbent sentiment. In the U.S., at last, the inflationary damage to people's well-being and the political consequences are reminiscent of the massive 1980 defeat of President Carter by Ronald Reagan.
It is super interesting and I’m unsure if that makes me feel better or worse. Better maybe because this issue isn’t unique to the US right now, though we will likely have the most severe...
It is super interesting and I’m unsure if that makes me feel better or worse. Better maybe because this issue isn’t unique to the US right now, though we will likely have the most severe consequences of this trend. Worse because if this phenomenon holds water, that means we as a species kind of just hivemind voted out our incumbents this year (no matter their political affiliation) without paying attention to actual policy.
This article seems to draw a distinction between Harris and Trump as individuals vs party avatars. It says things like Harris didnt run on identity politics, and Trump did, but doesnt count all...
This article seems to draw a distinction between Harris and Trump as individuals vs party avatars. It says things like Harris didnt run on identity politics, and Trump did, but doesnt count all the non-Harris non-Trump discourse going on surrounding her. People arent voting for Harris or Trump in a vacuum, they are voting for the party as a whole. If there is discourse going on within the left wing that has turned people off, that is going to affect Harris in the polls even if she did not directly engage in any of it.
I don't know that I'd characterize state level races as going fine for Democrats. In this election, the Republicans just won the senate, and in 2022 they won the house -- right now it looks like...
I don't know that I'd characterize state level races as going fine for Democrats. In this election, the Republicans just won the senate, and in 2022 they won the house -- right now it looks like they are possibly building on that success, and they made large inroads in New York and California, Democrat strongholds. Harris may have underperformed the state elections, but the state elections themselves were not good for Democrats, and haven't been for a while.
Among the reasons I don't think this is going to be transient, is the gains in the latino and black communities. For a lot of those voters, the Republican party is really their "natural" home -- conservative, religious, not particularly pro-LGBT, but they've been voting Democrat for other reasons. I don't know that they're going to go back.
I disagree. The 2024 Senate map was always tough for democrats. Casey losing in PA sucks, but losing Montana was almost a given and Ohio was going to be close race. The House staying 222 vs 213...
I disagree. The 2024 Senate map was always tough for democrats. Casey losing in PA sucks, but losing Montana was almost a given and Ohio was going to be close race.
The House staying 222 vs 213 (projected currently, could change) despite Harris having 10 million fewer votes than Biden is pretty remarkable. It's not great, but it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been given the underperformance.
I did say mostly. If Democrats as a whole performed at Harris's level, we'd be looking at: the loss of Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin (+1 GOP senator) the loss of Elissa Slotkin in Michigan (+1 GOP...
I did say mostly. If Democrats as a whole performed at Harris's level, we'd be looking at:
the loss of Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin (+1 GOP senator)
the loss of Elissa Slotkin in Michigan (+1 GOP senator)
the loss of Jackie Rosen in Nevada (+1 GOP senator)
the loss of Ruben Gallego in Arizona (+1 GOP senator)
So 57 GOP vs 43 Dems, a huge swing from 51 Dems vs 49 GOP today (the 4 independents currently caucus with the Dems so I'm including them there).
The US House is expected to see the GOP maintain seats compared to 2022. The GOP won with 222 seats vs the Dems 213. If current leads and projections hold (big if, many states are still counting), the makeup remains the same, 222 vs 213.
Harris is currently 10 million votes behind Biden in 2020, with 71.2 million vs 81.2. It'd be pretty remarkable for Dems to hold their current seat count (and possibly expand it 1 or 2 seats) with those kinds of numbers and headwinds.
Yeah, I've said elsewhere that I think Harris ran a pretty bad campaign, so I'm not really shocked that there are some places where voters didn't vote for her but did vote down ballot... I'm just...
Yeah, I've said elsewhere that I think Harris ran a pretty bad campaign, so I'm not really shocked that there are some places where voters didn't vote for her but did vote down ballot... I'm just still mourning Sherrod Brown.
I will say though that this article is a perfect example of how frustrating and offputting modern politics can be. You can come out and directly say exactly what is bugging you personally and...
I will say though that this article is a perfect example of how frustrating and offputting modern politics can be. You can come out and directly say exactly what is bugging you personally and someone else will butt in and tell you that actually no the thing you are upset about isnt real according to statistics so you cant possibly be upset about it.
Im not saying that the term "BIPOC" made me vote for Trump or anything, but yeah it definitely is a thing Ive thought about before, and the fact that I could have predicted that dismissive response does contribute to a general feeling that the current left wing of politics is not looking out for my interests in particular.
I think BIPOC sticks out in my mind because its sort of an "unforced error". Nobody on the right forced people on the left to use terms like BIPOC or Latinx. So the fact that you still see people...
I think BIPOC sticks out in my mind because its sort of an "unforced error". Nobody on the right forced people on the left to use terms like BIPOC or Latinx. So the fact that you still see people using it is an example of a problem that could easily be solved but just isnt, because it doesn't matter enough to the group as a whole.
The reason I dislike BIPOC is because before that people used the term POC, which felt fine to me. Some people didnt like that one either, but it was plainly neutral and put everyone on equal footing. So to go from that to BIPOC, where it explicitly separates out two groups as being special and distinct, feels like a step backwards.
The progressives are supposed to be all about dismantling heirarchies and confronting structural racism, but here they are establishing a racial heirarchy and putting people like me at the bottom. It feels like an unnecessary slight, and it feels like the kind of thing that people on the left in particular should be cognizant of.
You know, I had never really thought about that. That's fair enough. I've never actually heard anyone complain about the term before. I have heard people complain about Latinx before. In fact,...
So to go from that to BIPOC, where it explicitly separates out two groups as being special and distinct, feels like a step backwards.
You know, I had never really thought about that. That's fair enough. I've never actually heard anyone complain about the term before. I have heard people complain about Latinx before. In fact, I've rarely heard it used in any other context.
Yes, I think thats a big part of the underlying dynamics going on here. The vast majority of people have no real power in a decentralized political movement like "the Left". So if I get into a...
Yes, I think thats a big part of the underlying dynamics going on here.
The vast majority of people have no real power in a decentralized political movement like "the Left". So if I get into a conversation with a leftist and bring this up, what are they supposed to say in response? They cant actually do anything to change the fact that society as a whole uses this term, so if they acknowledge that my point is valid thats basically validating a reason for me not to support their side.
Instead what will happen is people will try to argue with me that the things that I am upset about or care about actually dont matter or dont exist. That there is no real reason for me to be upset to begin with. You can see this in the above article, where the writer tries to convince you that identity politics arent really a big thing in the Democratic party, so that cant be the real reason Harris lost.
This is frankly very tedious to have to deal with. I would not want to have a discussion about this with the writer of this article. It would be incredibly frustrating to have some political activist try and convince me that the things I care about shouldnt count or arent real. What this leads to is people just not being vocal about the things that are turning them off of contemporary politics. Which results in the party being generally out of touch with why they are losing support.
I think the reason LatinX gets talked about so much is that NPR has lots of recordings you can point to to prove that this is a real thing.
Can you please share some kind of personal experience you’ve had where you were ostracized for not using the term “BIPOC” or witnessed somebody else being ostracized for it? I just truly have no...
Can you please share some kind of personal experience you’ve had where you were ostracized for not using the term “BIPOC” or witnessed somebody else being ostracized for it? I just truly have no clue what you’re talking about right now. The word comes from sociological research which identifies a few different groups of people as experiencing very similar issues for very similar reasons and having a word to talk about all of them at the same time is just extremely convenient. Maybe you’re finding some lunatics on the Internet who don’t know anything about this stuff either that are misusing this language, but I certainly wouldn’t base your political opinions on what they’re doing, nor do I think it’s a good idea to allow yourself to develop prejudice against useful language either.
What is useful about BIPOC as a grouping? If you mean that black people and indigenous people have a very similar experience, then create a term that adds those two. If you mean that black people,...
What is useful about BIPOC as a grouping? If you mean that black people and indigenous people have a very similar experience, then create a term that adds those two. If you mean that black people, indigenous people, Latinos, and Asians have similar experiences, then POC already existed.
Why does someone who would identify themselves as BIPOC or Latinx need your approval to identify themselves? How does BIPOC "create a hierarchy" and put you at the bottom? And why does if feel...
Why does someone who would identify themselves as BIPOC or Latinx need your approval to identify themselves? How does BIPOC "create a hierarchy" and put you at the bottom? And why does if feel like an "unnecessary slight", or even a slight at all? What is the supposed alternative?
No one needs my approval to identify themselves with it. I just wouldnt think of that person as being an advocate for me or my needs, so they wouldnt get my support, unless there were other...
No one needs my approval to identify themselves with it. I just wouldnt think of that person as being an advocate for me or my needs, so they wouldnt get my support, unless there were other factors involved.
It feels like a slight because people took the previously used term, POC, and modified it to emphasize two subdemographics, Black and Indigenous, as being more deserving of special emphasis. There are two groups that are important enough that they need their own letter so that everyone remembers them, and then there are all the others where it doesnt really matter.
For what nothing it matters, I never heard the term BIPOC until this article. Also, the B is redudant since Black people are a good part of the reason for the C anyway. Dunno if that's a result of...
It feels like a slight because people took the previously used term, POC, and modified it to emphasize two subdemographics, Black and Indigenous, as being more deserving of special emphasis. There are two groups that are important enough that they need their own letter so that everyone remembers them, and then there are all the others where it doesnt really matter.
For what nothing it matters, I never heard the term BIPOC until this article. Also, the B is redudant since Black people are a good part of the reason for the C anyway.
Dunno if that's a result of me no longer being in that 18-29 demographics of this is simply a term used on "mainstream" social media which I pretty much abandoned by the pandemic.
What factors? Does every single need of theirs need to match yours in order to get your support, and vise versa? If the answer is no, then what is the problem of making the distinction of BIPOC to...
No one needs my approval to identify themselves with it. I just wouldnt think of that person as being an advocate for me or my needs, so they wouldnt get my support, unless there were other factors involved.
What factors? Does every single need of theirs need to match yours in order to get your support, and vise versa? If the answer is no, then what is the problem of making the distinction of BIPOC to capture the idea that they actually have some needs that are different and distinct from yours? How does that negate your needs at all?
As a Brazilian who is active in LATAM online spaces, no one wants or would call themselves "Latinx". It's completely alien terminology that makes absolutely no sense either in Spanish or...
As a Brazilian who is active in LATAM online spaces, no one wants or would call themselves "Latinx". It's completely alien terminology that makes absolutely no sense either in Spanish or Portuguese. I never saw anyone actually using it. It very much feels like something a select group chose thinking another very large group would love. It didn't work out that way. Our languages have grammatical gender and it's pretty obvious that Latinx was created with English-speaking sensibilities in mind. It feels 100% like an American imposition.
I'd guess that LATAM spaces probably don't use "Latino" to describe themselves either, since it's pretty much only a US thing. I can't speak for Portuguese since I don't know it, but I personally...
I'd guess that LATAM spaces probably don't use "Latino" to describe themselves either, since it's pretty much only a US thing. I can't speak for Portuguese since I don't know it, but I personally saw -x suffix as a gender convention in Mexico online and in political artwork well before Latinx in the English speaking world. I wouldn't say it's common, and the gender neutral -e suffix is will probably overtake -x in popularity, but -x is a language innovation that came from Spanish not the other way around.
Latino/a/x in English is just one of the few Spanish words in which Americans have also imported gendered variants, so it's likewise one of the few -x Spanish import words in the English speaking world. The people I know in the real world that use/have used Latinx all speak Spanish.
I'd say it makes less sense in English than it does in Spanish. In English it really only makes sense on a surface level. For someone that doesn't identify as a man or a woman, the grammar in Spanish forces them to do so. I think English misses the blunt, ugly protest against gender that replacing o/a with an x does in Spanish.
Not the guy you replied to, but it's not specific about the term BIPOC. However, that is the term that best illustrates the point. It's prescriptive and insistent language change. All that effort...
Not the guy you replied to, but it's not specific about the term BIPOC. However, that is the term that best illustrates the point. It's prescriptive and insistent language change. All that effort wasted there instead of elsewhere.
A similar story that I can't vouch for (because it was before my memory starts) was the coordinated rebranding of GLBT advocacy organizations to LGBT rights campaigners. Millions were spent on rebranding consultants and new stationery. For what gain?
There are a few theories about the specific reason (lesbians help in the gay rights movement in the 70s, lesbians help and care taking during the 80s/90s AIDS pandemic, or 3rd wave feminism), but...
I never considered that, and you're $💯% right. Ell-gee-bee-tea has a natural crescendo through the L into the G, while Gee-ell-be-tea is a forced sforzando.
LGBT is easier to say than GLBT
I never considered that, and you're $💯% right. Ell-gee-bee-tea has a natural crescendo through the L into the G, while Gee-ell-be-tea is a forced sforzando.
I agree. Average voters intuitively “know” that Democrats are the party of race and gender issues. The discourse may not be present for president, or even for down ballot races, but it is present...
I agree. Average voters intuitively “know” that Democrats are the party of race and gender issues. The discourse may not be present for president, or even for down ballot races, but it is present at activist levels, both inside of and external to the party apparatus.
As for the question the headline posits (congrats for not fulfilling the Betteridge criteria), if you can win on idpol, you can run on it. If you can’t, you can’t.
I strongly agree with you. The people who point out that the Harris campaign (or the Dems as a whole) did not focus on idpol nonsense have the same definitional myopia as those who point out that...
I strongly agree with you. The people who point out that the Harris campaign (or the Dems as a whole) did not focus on idpol nonsense have the same definitional myopia as those who point out that YoY inflation has been tamed. A focus on precision in language usage leads them to mask sticking their fingers in their ears by spilling ink about words and their definitions.
It simply doesn't matter that none of the official Harris ads focused on idpol issues; that annoying co-worker (and his 5,000 closest online friends) who can't stop ranting about voting blue to help elevate more black folx to the C-suite will conflate in the minds of many to be part of the left. It doesn't matter that the racial justice in the boardroom ranter and the blue MAGA bot were separate people, it all gets mixed together, even when the official party apparatus has strict message discipline.
It's increasingly clear to me that the most likely to be effective way to counter an accusation is to undermine or just straight-up mock the person making the claim, rather than try to refute it (even if your refutation is true).
I mean, the FEDs can fix inflation. Harris can't fix the internet or whover decided to campaign while aligning left. Feels like an odd burden of responsibility (odd, but not uncommon for D...
have the same definitional myopia as those who point out that YoY inflation has been tamed. A focus on precision in language usage leads them to mask sticking their fingers in their ears by spilling ink about words and their definitions.
I mean, the FEDs can fix inflation. Harris can't fix the internet or whover decided to campaign while aligning left. Feels like an odd burden of responsibility (odd, but not uncommon for D candidates).
that annoying co-worker (and his 5,000 closest online friends) who can't stop ranting about voting blue to help elevate more black folx to the C-suite will conflate in the minds of many to be part of the left.
Enough of those micro-interactions to sway an election farther than anything since Carter v. Reagan? I'm not sure I believe that without some signifigant evidence? Those people existed in 2020, 2016, 2012, etc.
the most likely to be effective way to counter an accusation is to undermine or just straight-up mock the person making the claim, rather than try to refute it
Sounds like a way to lose more of your votes. Mocking trans rights or other idpol stuff won't shift the right to the left.
So when Charlotesville happens and Trump doesn't take a hard fist down on white nationalism, he isn't held responsible. But when some people argue on twitter about their issues it's all on Harris?...
but doesnt count all the non-Harris non-Trump discourse going on surrounding her.
So when Charlotesville happens and Trump doesn't take a hard fist down on white nationalism, he isn't held responsible. But when some people argue on twitter about their issues it's all on Harris?
I know, Right never played fair. But this is just a shame.
You can come out and directly say exactly what is bugging you personally and someone else will butt in and tell you that actually no the thing you are upset about isnt real according to statistics so you cant possibly be upset about it.
I thought the right was the one with the narratives of "facts and logic" that was doing this whenever people talked about their issues? This seems to happen so much more about minority rights.
There are actual issues with men, but men are "the default". Their issues generally were caused by other men anyway.
It took a while before I was able to get the spoons to read this but I am glad I did because it’s given me many more spoons than I had to spend. I have been flabbergasted for years at how much...
It took a while before I was able to get the spoons to read this but I am glad I did because it’s given me many more spoons than I had to spend.
I have been flabbergasted for years at how much right wing ideology has poisoned our communication. The idea of identity politics being a bad thing is utterly insane for the exact reasons this author explains. Elections are won by building coalitions, and how the fuck do you do that if you don’t address those coalitions and the concerns they have? It is one of the most fundamental building blocks that describe how our democracy works!
Literally every time I have ever commented about identity politics, it has been to talk about the importance of it and why we need it, and I kind of feel like searching out in all social media and going back to find the people arguing against it and telling them “see what happened because of this shit?” The anti-IdPol rhetoric has always been a right-wing talking point because whenever it got brought up it never applied to white people or rural people. No, it was an appeal to racism and sexism.
If I had to guess why leftists ate it up, I would have to guess because of how well it was cleaned up and brought across the aisle in the form of ”objective” news op-eds and proliferated through social media. This is why I have been telling people for years that centrist news sources are no longer to be trusted. In politics there is no longer an objective truth to be had. The right is living in a fantasy world where it’s ok to vote in a disgraced convicted felon and rapist as president. If we do not want to live in their world we need to stop taking their opinions seriously. There have been plenty of signs to prove this point before, but I hope this election will finally be the one to open people’s eyes.
I think part of the problem is that Coalitions are less common in the US governing system due to the problems with the two party system. Rather than communicating to create a coalition to pass...
I think part of the problem is that Coalitions are less common in the US governing system due to the problems with the two party system. Rather than communicating to create a coalition to pass policy's, too much of our politics is "wait until we have the majority"
I'm gonna be cynical here. I think there's a lot more racism/sexism in the D side than we think. It's just part of what we inhited due to Trump being so dumb with various non-social issues durign...
If I had to guess why leftists ate it up, I would have to guess because of how well it was cleaned up and brought across the aisle in the form of ”objective” news op-eds and proliferated through social media
I'm gonna be cynical here. I think there's a lot more racism/sexism in the D side than we think. It's just part of what we inhited due to Trump being so dumb with various non-social issues durign his administration. Those kinds of people may not care about abortion and even supports kicking immigrants out (hence why Harris was so tiptoe-y on the issues), so they may have decided to shift back in the 11th hour for various reasons.
I also think this is a lot of talking points while ignoring Occam's razor: less people voted in 2024 than 2020 based on projections. Maybe the anti-mail ballots worked in some states, maybe people were just disinterested compared to a time when people were dying and they were stuck indoors. But something much more fundamental changed in 4 years as opposed to the last 20.
Trying to imply that the bushes are a political dynasty but that the Clintons are not elites reeks of favoritism and makes it very hard for me to take this seriously. Kerry was also HYPER wealthy...
Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
Lets unpack this a bit. Dukakis was the son of immigrants who ran against a scion of an American political dynasty. Gore and Kerry lost to the next generation of that dynasty. Second-term Barack Obama defeated a hedge-fund leader whose father was a Governor. Clinton lost to a man who lived in a golden mansion.
To run for President certainly implies some elite status. But relative to who they were running against, the Democrats Dowd lists are not “avatars of elitism” by any stretch of the imagination, unless elite is drained of any signifier of political or economic power. Which of course is the point. The elites today are not the billionaire President or his plutocrat backers, but the adjunct faculty member who talks about Latinx people.
Trying to imply that the bushes are a political dynasty but that the Clintons are not elites reeks of favoritism and makes it very hard for me to take this seriously. Kerry was also HYPER wealthy while Gore is "only" at around 300m estimated net worth.
In an age where "elite" can mean "can afford a house and two kids comfortably" depending on the context, then yes, the 6 figure speaking deal democrats are Elites.
They are NOT "adjunct faculty member's who talk about Latinx people" by any stretch, but even still yes that gets called "elite" in traditional politics because the argument really boils down to "people who live in the 'real world' vs those that 'don't'"
This gets into all sorts of common, and well documented, issues with academia talking about hypothetical ideals rather than real world environments (which personally speaking i've see cause tons of harm to the local education system), "normal workers" not understanding more complex or naturally unintuitive topics like econ/diplomacy/game theory/whatever.
I don't think the nitpiks matter When Trump is literally the richest president since Washington himself. And by such a margin it's kind of disgusting:...
Really shows how quickly and abruptly Big Business took over America. He's compared to Reagan a lot, but seeing Reagans's net worth shows they aren't even in the same dimension.
Quick glance suggests that it woulda been better to focus on Trump than make any real calls on "republicans make more money". It seems pretty even, and the founding fathers originally designed voting for rich white landowners. There's no real narrative here that the American dream means anyone could become president one day. Not back then, not now.
issues with academia talking about hypothetical ideals rather than real world environments "normal workers" not understanding more complex or naturally unintuitive topics like econ/diplomacy/game theory/whatever.
They understand it, but Acedemia's ideals are either thinking long term, or trying to discover a new bipartisan "core point". Being isolated from society lets them think in ways that aren't immediately appealing to the people, and I think this is for the better, usually.
They almost got it with better educating the masses, but the crazy college inflation and Red shift to attacking education ruined that.
Haven't read the essay yet, but the graph in it doesn't necessarily mean this isn't a statistical fluke. You'd have to compare distributions of different years, and not just the ones with five or...
Haven't read the essay yet, but the graph in it doesn't necessarily mean this isn't a statistical fluke. You'd have to compare distributions of different years, and not just the ones with five or more elections, to see whether this year's results have different enough distributions to be deemed statistically significant.
From the article:
I'm posting this in part because it does include the chart I mentioned here, without paywall.
We can talk about unserved political factions until the end of the world, but this year's election was about throwing out the status quo, regardless of the agenda of those in power or their opponents' policies.
This is the conclusion I've been coming to, that people are dissatisfied across the board, the reason is money, and are using their vote to say either "this is working" or "this is not". Can you really say more than yes or no in a binary system?
Also, telling people "the economy is actually good, you guys" is not a winning tactic when people are mad and when they know that you allowed the rich to get much, much richer in the same timeframe. They think, if you really understood my problems and wanted to fix them, you would have done it. You haven't delivered solutions so why should I let you stay? The other guy acknowledges my anger and frustrations; you tell me that they're imagined.
People have much to deal with and are not tuned in to politics or policy details. Many have not developed the critical thinking skills necessary to ask the right questions, find information, determine its reliability, and then evaluate and decide. It takes effort. Effort when people are exhausted and effort in a convenience economy.
I live in NC and looking at the outcomes here, people voted for the incumbent party (D) for governor (Cooper was term limited and Stein was already AG) and for AG (Jackson is a well-liked, even-keeled US
SenatorRepresentative that explains things and acts like he understands people's concerns). They also took away the supermajority in the legislature. If the state legislature wasn't severely gerrymandered, I'm guessing the incumbent loss would have been more stark. Again, more of a yes/no as to what's working and what's not. There's little policy awareness or evaluation happening beyond that.Jackson was/is a representative, not a Senator
(And yes generally well liked but pissed off a lot of people by talking on TikTok while voting to ban TikTok and then staying on TikTok which is one of the reasons I think the complaints about national security are overblown personally)
You're right. He was in NC Senate and then US House and I got mixed up. Not even going to touch the whole TikTok thing.
You're right and I resonate strongly with this. But I can't help but find the irony here when the answer here was to vote in a billionaire who ran on the exact same plan as something he did in 2018. To the effect of costing America hundreds of billions in an unnecessary trade war.
And as of now he's making a new wing of government ran by the richest man in the world. The one who's solution to the last position he rose to is to layoff 90% (with no exaggeration) of the workforce. Who's taking our jobs again?
And yea, I get the point of the article. None of these "facts and logic" (ironic, a right talking point) even matter when people are so distorted by a narrative they want to believe.
That has been the case with every election starting with Obama. It’s just ramping up.
FWIW, though, the incumbent party lost vote share in every election in a developed country that happened this year, even in places like India or the UK where conservatives were in power
Yeah, I wish we talked more about that in this article. That chart was the most interesting part of the piece, but it seemed to be treated more as a fun fact rather than a core talking point for the current status quo
Is it ramping up? Trump lost votes compared to 2020. And his people should be more motivated to vote when he’s not the incumbent.
This is false.
He will probably have added 4-5 million votes when the count has finalized.
Even if that's not the case, she lost around 5x as many votes.
That is ramping up, because that means that there's a large % of people who don't vote unless they think there's an exciting candidate for them, and hate voting for two status quo (in this case the guy from last time vs the establishment esque dem....summarizing a lot here )
What? She's expected to finish with around 75-76m votes, 5-6m less votes than 2020. Almost all of this drop will probably be outside of swing states, as in most swing states she's meeting 2020 vote counts or modestly exceeding them.
I'm imploring people to stop coming up with these half baked narratives until we actually have all the data in front of us.
They aren't narratives, they are projections. And projections from people smarter than me were saying all thee things. Election's over, so there's no incentive anymore lie this blatantly.
But sure, this has been a year of completely off base projections, so I see where you're coming from. Being off base does not mean it's propoganda, though. We're just in very weird times.
A key aspect of the status quo argument that's overlooked is that Democrats have held congress for a generous 6 years of the last 34 (going back to 1990) and Republicans have held congress for 14 of those same years. For anyone under 40-45, Republicans are the establishment and status quo.
The idea that incumbent wins are down across the board is not unsatisfying at all. In fact, it's super interesting. It raises many questions and a desire to probe deeper. Why were incumbent parties universally despised this term? Are there universal reasons? How much is related to post-pandemic issues? How much is related to actual economic issues (outside of those directly caused by the pandemic)? How much is caused by internal societal issues (Brexit in the UK, Subsidies in Germany, Inflation in the US)? How much is caused by dis/misinformation?
I think the widespread inflation of 2022 - 2023 accounts for the greater part of anti-incumbent sentiment. In the U.S., at last, the inflationary damage to people's well-being and the political consequences are reminiscent of the massive 1980 defeat of President Carter by Ronald Reagan.
And just like last time, we're well poised to have decades-long ramifications of the knee jerk reaction.
It is super interesting and I’m unsure if that makes me feel better or worse. Better maybe because this issue isn’t unique to the US right now, though we will likely have the most severe consequences of this trend. Worse because if this phenomenon holds water, that means we as a species kind of just hivemind voted out our incumbents this year (no matter their political affiliation) without paying attention to actual policy.
This article seems to draw a distinction between Harris and Trump as individuals vs party avatars. It says things like Harris didnt run on identity politics, and Trump did, but doesnt count all the non-Harris non-Trump discourse going on surrounding her. People arent voting for Harris or Trump in a vacuum, they are voting for the party as a whole. If there is discourse going on within the left wing that has turned people off, that is going to affect Harris in the polls even if she did not directly engage in any of it.
This is what I’m coming to think: this election result was less about Trump vs Harris and more a repudiation of the Democrats and the left in general.
If that is true, why did other state level races go mostly fine for democrats? Harris under performed state level races in every single swing state.
I don't know that I'd characterize state level races as going fine for Democrats. In this election, the Republicans just won the senate, and in 2022 they won the house -- right now it looks like they are possibly building on that success, and they made large inroads in New York and California, Democrat strongholds. Harris may have underperformed the state elections, but the state elections themselves were not good for Democrats, and haven't been for a while.
Among the reasons I don't think this is going to be transient, is the gains in the latino and black communities. For a lot of those voters, the Republican party is really their "natural" home -- conservative, religious, not particularly pro-LGBT, but they've been voting Democrat for other reasons. I don't know that they're going to go back.
I disagree. The 2024 Senate map was always tough for democrats. Casey losing in PA sucks, but losing Montana was almost a given and Ohio was going to be close race.
The House staying 222 vs 213 (projected currently, could change) despite Harris having 10 million fewer votes than Biden is pretty remarkable. It's not great, but it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been given the underperformance.
State-level races certainly didn't go fine in my state -- we lost a Democratic senator who's been in office since I was little.
I did say mostly. If Democrats as a whole performed at Harris's level, we'd be looking at:
So 57 GOP vs 43 Dems, a huge swing from 51 Dems vs 49 GOP today (the 4 independents currently caucus with the Dems so I'm including them there).
The US House is expected to see the GOP maintain seats compared to 2022. The GOP won with 222 seats vs the Dems 213. If current leads and projections hold (big if, many states are still counting), the makeup remains the same, 222 vs 213.
Harris is currently 10 million votes behind Biden in 2020, with 71.2 million vs 81.2. It'd be pretty remarkable for Dems to hold their current seat count (and possibly expand it 1 or 2 seats) with those kinds of numbers and headwinds.
Yeah, I've said elsewhere that I think Harris ran a pretty bad campaign, so I'm not really shocked that there are some places where voters didn't vote for her but did vote down ballot... I'm just still mourning Sherrod Brown.
I will say though that this article is a perfect example of how frustrating and offputting modern politics can be. You can come out and directly say exactly what is bugging you personally and someone else will butt in and tell you that actually no the thing you are upset about isnt real according to statistics so you cant possibly be upset about it.
Im not saying that the term "BIPOC" made me vote for Trump or anything, but yeah it definitely is a thing Ive thought about before, and the fact that I could have predicted that dismissive response does contribute to a general feeling that the current left wing of politics is not looking out for my interests in particular.
What's wrong with the term BIPOC and why does it make you feel that your interests are being ignored?
I think BIPOC sticks out in my mind because its sort of an "unforced error". Nobody on the right forced people on the left to use terms like BIPOC or Latinx. So the fact that you still see people using it is an example of a problem that could easily be solved but just isnt, because it doesn't matter enough to the group as a whole.
The reason I dislike BIPOC is because before that people used the term POC, which felt fine to me. Some people didnt like that one either, but it was plainly neutral and put everyone on equal footing. So to go from that to BIPOC, where it explicitly separates out two groups as being special and distinct, feels like a step backwards.
The progressives are supposed to be all about dismantling heirarchies and confronting structural racism, but here they are establishing a racial heirarchy and putting people like me at the bottom. It feels like an unnecessary slight, and it feels like the kind of thing that people on the left in particular should be cognizant of.
You know, I had never really thought about that. That's fair enough. I've never actually heard anyone complain about the term before. I have heard people complain about Latinx before. In fact, I've rarely heard it used in any other context.
Yes, I think thats a big part of the underlying dynamics going on here.
The vast majority of people have no real power in a decentralized political movement like "the Left". So if I get into a conversation with a leftist and bring this up, what are they supposed to say in response? They cant actually do anything to change the fact that society as a whole uses this term, so if they acknowledge that my point is valid thats basically validating a reason for me not to support their side.
Instead what will happen is people will try to argue with me that the things that I am upset about or care about actually dont matter or dont exist. That there is no real reason for me to be upset to begin with. You can see this in the above article, where the writer tries to convince you that identity politics arent really a big thing in the Democratic party, so that cant be the real reason Harris lost.
This is frankly very tedious to have to deal with. I would not want to have a discussion about this with the writer of this article. It would be incredibly frustrating to have some political activist try and convince me that the things I care about shouldnt count or arent real. What this leads to is people just not being vocal about the things that are turning them off of contemporary politics. Which results in the party being generally out of touch with why they are losing support.
I think the reason LatinX gets talked about so much is that NPR has lots of recordings you can point to to prove that this is a real thing.
Can you please share some kind of personal experience you’ve had where you were ostracized for not using the term “BIPOC” or witnessed somebody else being ostracized for it? I just truly have no clue what you’re talking about right now. The word comes from sociological research which identifies a few different groups of people as experiencing very similar issues for very similar reasons and having a word to talk about all of them at the same time is just extremely convenient. Maybe you’re finding some lunatics on the Internet who don’t know anything about this stuff either that are misusing this language, but I certainly wouldn’t base your political opinions on what they’re doing, nor do I think it’s a good idea to allow yourself to develop prejudice against useful language either.
What is useful about BIPOC as a grouping? If you mean that black people and indigenous people have a very similar experience, then create a term that adds those two. If you mean that black people, indigenous people, Latinos, and Asians have similar experiences, then POC already existed.
Why does someone who would identify themselves as BIPOC or Latinx need your approval to identify themselves? How does BIPOC "create a hierarchy" and put you at the bottom? And why does if feel like an "unnecessary slight", or even a slight at all? What is the supposed alternative?
No one needs my approval to identify themselves with it. I just wouldnt think of that person as being an advocate for me or my needs, so they wouldnt get my support, unless there were other factors involved.
It feels like a slight because people took the previously used term, POC, and modified it to emphasize two subdemographics, Black and Indigenous, as being more deserving of special emphasis. There are two groups that are important enough that they need their own letter so that everyone remembers them, and then there are all the others where it doesnt really matter.
For what nothing it matters, I never heard the term BIPOC until this article. Also, the B is redudant since Black people are a good part of the reason for the C anyway.
Dunno if that's a result of me no longer being in that 18-29 demographics of this is simply a term used on "mainstream" social media which I pretty much abandoned by the pandemic.
What factors? Does every single need of theirs need to match yours in order to get your support, and vise versa? If the answer is no, then what is the problem of making the distinction of BIPOC to capture the idea that they actually have some needs that are different and distinct from yours? How does that negate your needs at all?
As a Brazilian who is active in LATAM online spaces, no one wants or would call themselves "Latinx". It's completely alien terminology that makes absolutely no sense either in Spanish or Portuguese. I never saw anyone actually using it. It very much feels like something a select group chose thinking another very large group would love. It didn't work out that way. Our languages have grammatical gender and it's pretty obvious that Latinx was created with English-speaking sensibilities in mind. It feels 100% like an American imposition.
I'd guess that LATAM spaces probably don't use "Latino" to describe themselves either, since it's pretty much only a US thing. I can't speak for Portuguese since I don't know it, but I personally saw -x suffix as a gender convention in Mexico online and in political artwork well before Latinx in the English speaking world. I wouldn't say it's common, and the gender neutral -e suffix is will probably overtake -x in popularity, but -x is a language innovation that came from Spanish not the other way around.
Latino/a/x in English is just one of the few Spanish words in which Americans have also imported gendered variants, so it's likewise one of the few -x Spanish import words in the English speaking world. The people I know in the real world that use/have used Latinx all speak Spanish.
I'd say it makes less sense in English than it does in Spanish. In English it really only makes sense on a surface level. For someone that doesn't identify as a man or a woman, the grammar in Spanish forces them to do so. I think English misses the blunt, ugly protest against gender that replacing o/a with an x does in Spanish.
Not the guy you replied to, but it's not specific about the term BIPOC. However, that is the term that best illustrates the point. It's prescriptive and insistent language change. All that effort wasted there instead of elsewhere.
A similar story that I can't vouch for (because it was before my memory starts) was the coordinated rebranding of GLBT advocacy organizations to LGBT rights campaigners. Millions were spent on rebranding consultants and new stationery. For what gain?
There are a few theories about the specific reason (lesbians help in the gay rights movement in the 70s, lesbians help and care taking during the 80s/90s AIDS pandemic, or 3rd wave feminism), but they all boil down to putting women/lesbians first so they are also seen. I appreciate it. It could also be that LGBT is easier to say than GLBT, and that's just smart marketing.
I never considered that, and you're $💯% right. Ell-gee-bee-tea has a natural crescendo through the L into the G, while Gee-ell-be-tea is a forced sforzando.
I agree. Average voters intuitively “know” that Democrats are the party of race and gender issues. The discourse may not be present for president, or even for down ballot races, but it is present at activist levels, both inside of and external to the party apparatus.
As for the question the headline posits (congrats for not fulfilling the Betteridge criteria), if you can win on idpol, you can run on it. If you can’t, you can’t.
I strongly agree with you. The people who point out that the Harris campaign (or the Dems as a whole) did not focus on idpol nonsense have the same definitional myopia as those who point out that YoY inflation has been tamed. A focus on precision in language usage leads them to mask sticking their fingers in their ears by spilling ink about words and their definitions.
It simply doesn't matter that none of the official Harris ads focused on idpol issues; that annoying co-worker (and his 5,000 closest online friends) who can't stop ranting about voting blue to help elevate more black folx to the C-suite will conflate in the minds of many to be part of the left. It doesn't matter that the racial justice in the boardroom ranter and the blue MAGA bot were separate people, it all gets mixed together, even when the official party apparatus has strict message discipline.
It's increasingly clear to me that the most likely to be effective way to counter an accusation is to undermine or just straight-up mock the person making the claim, rather than try to refute it (even if your refutation is true).
I mean, the FEDs can fix inflation. Harris can't fix the internet or whover decided to campaign while aligning left. Feels like an odd burden of responsibility (odd, but not uncommon for D candidates).
Enough of those micro-interactions to sway an election farther than anything since Carter v. Reagan? I'm not sure I believe that without some signifigant evidence? Those people existed in 2020, 2016, 2012, etc.
Sounds like a way to lose more of your votes. Mocking trans rights or other idpol stuff won't shift the right to the left.
I think they meant mock the person accusing Dems of being woke.
So when Charlotesville happens and Trump doesn't take a hard fist down on white nationalism, he isn't held responsible. But when some people argue on twitter about their issues it's all on Harris?
I know, Right never played fair. But this is just a shame.
I thought the right was the one with the narratives of "facts and logic" that was doing this whenever people talked about their issues? This seems to happen so much more about minority rights.
There are actual issues with men, but men are "the default". Their issues generally were caused by other men anyway.
It took a while before I was able to get the spoons to read this but I am glad I did because it’s given me many more spoons than I had to spend.
I have been flabbergasted for years at how much right wing ideology has poisoned our communication. The idea of identity politics being a bad thing is utterly insane for the exact reasons this author explains. Elections are won by building coalitions, and how the fuck do you do that if you don’t address those coalitions and the concerns they have? It is one of the most fundamental building blocks that describe how our democracy works!
Literally every time I have ever commented about identity politics, it has been to talk about the importance of it and why we need it, and I kind of feel like searching out in all social media and going back to find the people arguing against it and telling them “see what happened because of this shit?” The anti-IdPol rhetoric has always been a right-wing talking point because whenever it got brought up it never applied to white people or rural people. No, it was an appeal to racism and sexism.
If I had to guess why leftists ate it up, I would have to guess because of how well it was cleaned up and brought across the aisle in the form of ”objective” news op-eds and proliferated through social media. This is why I have been telling people for years that centrist news sources are no longer to be trusted. In politics there is no longer an objective truth to be had. The right is living in a fantasy world where it’s ok to vote in a disgraced convicted felon and rapist as president. If we do not want to live in their world we need to stop taking their opinions seriously. There have been plenty of signs to prove this point before, but I hope this election will finally be the one to open people’s eyes.
It probably won’t, but I hope nonetheless.
I think part of the problem is that Coalitions are less common in the US governing system due to the problems with the two party system. Rather than communicating to create a coalition to pass policy's, too much of our politics is "wait until we have the majority"
I'm gonna be cynical here. I think there's a lot more racism/sexism in the D side than we think. It's just part of what we inhited due to Trump being so dumb with various non-social issues durign his administration. Those kinds of people may not care about abortion and even supports kicking immigrants out (hence why Harris was so tiptoe-y on the issues), so they may have decided to shift back in the 11th hour for various reasons.
I also think this is a lot of talking points while ignoring Occam's razor: less people voted in 2024 than 2020 based on projections. Maybe the anti-mail ballots worked in some states, maybe people were just disinterested compared to a time when people were dying and they were stuck indoors. But something much more fundamental changed in 4 years as opposed to the last 20.
Trying to imply that the bushes are a political dynasty but that the Clintons are not elites reeks of favoritism and makes it very hard for me to take this seriously. Kerry was also HYPER wealthy while Gore is "only" at around 300m estimated net worth.
In an age where "elite" can mean "can afford a house and two kids comfortably" depending on the context, then yes, the 6 figure speaking deal democrats are Elites.
They are NOT "adjunct faculty member's who talk about Latinx people" by any stretch, but even still yes that gets called "elite" in traditional politics because the argument really boils down to "people who live in the 'real world' vs those that 'don't'"
This gets into all sorts of common, and well documented, issues with academia talking about hypothetical ideals rather than real world environments (which personally speaking i've see cause tons of harm to the local education system), "normal workers" not understanding more complex or naturally unintuitive topics like econ/diplomacy/game theory/whatever.
I don't think the nitpiks matter When Trump is literally the richest president since Washington himself. And by such a margin it's kind of disgusting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_net_worth
Really shows how quickly and abruptly Big Business took over America. He's compared to Reagan a lot, but seeing Reagans's net worth shows they aren't even in the same dimension.
Quick glance suggests that it woulda been better to focus on Trump than make any real calls on "republicans make more money". It seems pretty even, and the founding fathers originally designed voting for rich white landowners. There's no real narrative here that the American dream means anyone could become president one day. Not back then, not now.
They understand it, but Acedemia's ideals are either thinking long term, or trying to discover a new bipartisan "core point". Being isolated from society lets them think in ways that aren't immediately appealing to the people, and I think this is for the better, usually.
They almost got it with better educating the masses, but the crazy college inflation and Red shift to attacking education ruined that.
Haven't read the essay yet, but the graph in it doesn't necessarily mean this isn't a statistical fluke. You'd have to compare distributions of different years, and not just the ones with five or more elections, to see whether this year's results have different enough distributions to be deemed statistically significant.