33
votes
The 2020 Democratic National Convention has concluded. What are your thoughts on it?
Share your thoughts and feelings on how the convention went, and what you think it means for the remainder of the race. Did it change how you plan on voting or participating in the election? Who were the stand out speakers that you would like to share with others? Will you be watching the Republican National Convention? What were the biggest stories to come out as a result of the convention?
Politics Disclaimer: As we discuss the sensitive topic of politics, please remember to comment with an open heart and remember the other person behind the screen. Be generous with your interpretations of others and realize you might have to agree to disagree. When in doubt, read the Tildes Code of Conduct.
I don't like that Kasich and Powell were given as much time as they were, especially given Kasich's comments about AOC. It seems to me that the campaign is walking a very fine line between not alienating the progressives and not alienating the people that the progressives alienate and they leaned a bit farther one way than I would have liked. Kasich and Powell should have gotten lip service at best and to give them time at the convention only reinforces their whitewashed images.
I want to soapbox a bit. I'm a socialist and I'm really sick of how a lot of people with anti-capitalist politics treat the Democrats. If you refer to the Democratic party as the DNC, stop doing that. When people hear DNC at this point, they hear "the Democrats cheated Bernie out of the nomination". The DNC is only the convention that just finished up. If you want to refer to the party, then call it the party. Calling it the DNC makes people who don't already agree with you care less about what you're saying. And to cover my bases if someone brings up tone policing and respectability politics: calling the party the DNC isn't civil or uncivil, it's inaccurate. It's like calling me a communist.
Stop saying the Democrats cheated in 2016. Hillary Clinton won by 4 million votes and there's no evidence that she or the Democratic party cheated in any way. If you have issues with the primary system (I certainly do) then say those. The argument about superdelegates tilting the election in Hillary's favor isn't a good one since they didn't do that in 2008. The Democratic party is not an all-powerful cabal the way that most people who use the word "establishment" would have you think. The "establishment" should have been behind HRC in 2008 because she had been a Senator for eight years, first lady for eight, and involved in the federal government for a decade before that. The Democratic party is just a group of people who have usually-similar goals and priorities, and people gain power in the party by building relationships with their colleagues. Hillary Clinton basically had the nomination lined up before the primaries even started in 2016 because she had spent her entire political career building relationships with people and there wasn't a once in a generation candidate the way her husband was in 1992 or Obama was in 2008. You can see that in the margins she had with black people, because she and Bill had spent decades reaching out to them and working with them on things they care about. You can see the same thing to a lesser extent in the way that Biden absolutely crushed the South Carolina primary.
Stop calling the Democrats corrupt, and especially stop using phrases like "the corrupt DNC" because adding adjectives like that is the equivalent of name-calling and does nothing to help your argument, and also stop doing it because that's what Trump does and we should all be better than that.
If Bernie Sanders wanted to make more headway, he should have been in the party the entire 25 years he had been in Congress at that point and working with them and making connections. Instead he did his own thing right up until he wanted to run for president, at which point he joined the party and then after claiming he'd stay with the party he went right back to being independent. This despite the Democrats having never run a candidate against him in his three Senate elections so far.
If you've been explicitly anti-capitalist for longer than I have, then Bernie Sanders's success after decades of the left being sidelined might be really meaningful to you, and I get that. His run four years ago has put a lot of things in the conversation that weren't there before, like Medicare for all and returning to 50s-70s levels of taxes on rich people. A lot of the momentum those ideas have now and the success of people like the Squad is in part to his run. So I get that it sucks that he didn't win last time and he didn't win this time, but it's far from over. We have a number of people in offices all across the country who have similar views, so we can't take our ball and go home whenever our person loses.
If you want to push the country left, you need to do it within the rules of the system, as much as they suck. Voting third party in a vast majority of cases isn't going to tell Democrats who lose that they should go farther left, it's telling them that they should go to the right because people on their left aren't going to vote for them anyway. If you want a politician to listen to you, you have to vote for them first. The 1.5 million people who voted for Jill Stein last time could have made the difference between a Clinton presidency where they have some small amount of say and a Trump presidency where they're being left to die because the Trump administration doesn't care about anyone who isn't a Republican. That being said, no Democrat who loses thinks "maybe I should have advocated for more left-wing policies" because left-wing people don't reliably vote. Serious efforts aren't being made to court the Jill Stein voters because there are far more votes to be gained by getting Democrats of all stripes to turn out.
The way that you push the country left is that you vote for the one of the two most-likely-to-win candidates who's closest to your views, and then after they win you push them to do the things that you want. So you should vote for Biden in November regardless of where you are because we need every last vote we can to get Trump out because we know he's cheating, and then hold him accountable. Write to his office and tell him you voted for him and then talk about how important Medicare for all is to you, or getting to zero emissions is, or whatever topic is important to you. Due to the way our country's elections work for the most part, voting third-party does literally nothing. If that party gets enough votes that the Republican wins the election, then either one of the losing parties merges into the other in which case you're right back to where you started, or the Republican wins every single election.
That's not even getting into issues of good faith. Jill Stein was way too friendly with Russia in 2016 and spent more of her time attacking Clinton than she did Trump. This year's Green candidate, Howie Hawkins, appeared on RT in January. I don't care how important you think it is to get your message out, going on the state media of our enemy who has shown they want Trump to win and has spent time and money dividing his opponents is not worth it, even if you are sincere about your message and don't think Russia is using you. They are using you.
Despite all of the bitching and moaning about how both HRC and Trump were terrible, Stein and Johnson together didn't cross the 5% threshold to get into debates that people who vote third-party talk about. Biden isn't as hated as HRC was and I doubt the Green and Libertarian will get the same percentage of votes they did last time. Beyond that, it comes down to math. In the best case scenario, the Green candidate has 100% of the policies that you want, but they have a 0% chance of winning and so you can expect 0% of what you want to happen. Biden has 5% of the policies that you want (if you say he has 0% of the policies you want, you're not arguing in good faith) and a 50% chance of winning, so you can expect 2.5% of what you want to happen. The math on this will never, ever favor third parties.
Stop and think about how often you bash Democrats versus how often you bash Republicans. Stop saying that mainstream Democrats care more about Republicans than they do about the left because it's blatantly untrue. If you're on the left and spend more time hating on Biden than on Trump your priorities are misplaced. The country probably doesn't survive in the way that we've known it if Trump stays in power, and there isn't going to be a 1789-style revolution because 40% of the country still loves Trump and will vote for him. If you want to talk about how Biden's policies aren't what you want, go ahead, but don't talk about how the "establishment" gave him the nomination, don't bring up the 2016 primary, don't call him a centrist or a Republican or a conservative, and don't say "I don't think he's going to do what he says on his website" unless you have some good evidence to back that up because like it or not, there are only two sides to current politics and the Democrats are your side if you're on the left. I have not seen any evidence in history of accelerationism actually working. It didn't work after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, it didn't work after 8 years of W, and it's not going to work now.
No, Biden wasn't my first choice out of the Democrats who ran and no, I really don't like that he's giving Republicans any time of day, and yes, he is prone to saying dumb shit, but he's our last chance to stop Trump without it hurting a lot more than it will if we just do our damnedest to vote for him and to get everyone we know to vote for him. I would have liked Warren, Sanders, Harris, and maybe even Buttigieg to be president more than him, but this is the situation we have and we have to make the best of it. I think I've talked enough about my political beliefs on Tildes to show that I actually am a socialist of some kind and that I'm not just saying this as a moderate to get people to vote for Biden.
Just one counter point: DNC also refers to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party governing body. The DNC organizes the DNC.
Alright, that's fair.
I've made this exact point ever so many times and whenever I do so (I believe it's even happened on tildes), I get called out as a supporter of the status quo. It's... Frustrating, to say the least.
There isn't always a viable alternative to "respecting the shitty rules". And people voting third party, imagining their vote will be a viral call for revolution, are fooling themselves into a Trump win that will be a repeat of the last 4 miserable years.
I do think Biden will win this November. But I've been wrong once this cycle already.
I haven't had that happen to me here, thankfully. Unfortunately our options are to work within the rules or completely break them, which seems both less likely and more painful.
Revolution should be a last resort. I don't think the momentum is there for it now regardless. Between 20 and 26 million people showed up to at least one night of protesting the last few months, and that number would go way down if you asked them to sustain a general strike or any sort of revolution. The path of least resistance right now is to work through the rules. Republicans have spent the last 50 years doing it, so can we.
These kind of quote-scoff-quote-scoff replies that pull a bunch of individual sentences (and partial sentences) out of context to quibble with them never lead to worthwhile discussion.
Politics threads are consistently the worst topics on Tildes and require removals/locks far more than any other subject, but this one had been going relatively well. Please don't be the person that starts this one's downfall by pushing it towards antagonism and condescension.
Use the principle of charity and respond to the overall messages a comment is trying to convey, not tiny fragments of it in isolation.
Apologies. I should probably stop writing posts after 9 PM.
I appreciate it. I had a conversation with a friend about this last night. He talked about building a movement similar to BLM for ending capitalism and seems to consider getting people into office an afterthought. I told him I see supporting Biden as a "stop the bleeding vs we all die" debate and he said he sees it as a "the world gets worse very quickly vs the world gets worse quickly" debate, which is still basically admitting my point. One of the candidates doesn't want me to exist and one is ok with me existing, so I feel like voting for the one that doesn't want to kill me is pretty important.
Beyond that, putting more left people in office seems to me the easiest and least painful way to do it. If Republicans can spend 50 years to make themselves unaccountable, we can spend 50 years on effective universal healthcare, ending capitalism, etc. Of course that gets a lot more complicated when you factor in climate change, but it's still less painful than revolting. Any sort of massive revolt is going to have strong, strong opposition and is probably going to throw the country into chaos which is worse for everyone in the long run.
The much better Sanders reconciliation? In 2016 it really sounded like he was gritting his teeth and doing what he thought was best, while he at least sounded like he had his heart into his endorsement in the beginning.
And, to be honest, Clinton did not lose the election because she didn't have the left's vote. She lost it because of white, non-college education americans in the rustbelt. From a strategic point of view, there's no reason to entice anyone to the left of Biden. Even if she had more of the bernie bro's vote, that would just push her popular vote win more ahead, it wouldn't help in the electoral college.
And, to the Biden campaign's credit, he actually has moved to the left. For one, even surprisingly the media forgot or something, but Harris is one of, if not, the most left voting senators among the democrats. Yes, she's an establishment democrat, in that she very much believes in acting within the political system, but she also consistently votes on the side of the most liberal ballots. That's not an exaggeration; she is super leftist in voting record. Secondly, the meeting with the Bernie squad has concretely changed his planks to the left.
According to ProPublica she voted 93% of the time with Bernie, you can compare records at this link if anyone is interested in seeing where they differed.
https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/H001075-kamala-harris/compare-votes/S000033-bernard-sanders/115
Throwing something else in here... Clinton would have been the least liked presidential candidate (pretty much in history) if it weren't for Trump source. On the other hand Biden appears to be somewhat normal in terms of approval while Trump continues to be holding steady at around 40-44%.
4 years of (proto-)fascism.
Exactly; this is the political embodiment of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Under Trump, the judiciary has become more conservative, and at the top, Republicans have all but guaranteed a generation of a conservative Supreme Court. A second Trump term could extend that to two generations. Maybe the proceeding decade after could be led by progressives, but their efforts would be meaningless if they're stymied by a conservative, activist judiciary.
Yes, this.
I don't disagree, but you also should understand that the left is used to hearing this and it's an awful lot like the boy who cried wolf.
Meanwhile the left feels powerless to halt the drift rightward that has been going on for nearly 40 years.
Having said that, we have ranked choice voting in my state (thank GOD) so I can put Hawkins as my first choice without helping Trump. Biden will be #2.
Hi, I'm part of the left and have no qualms about voting for Biden.
GWB was unthinkably bad for everyone who cares about the two wars we've been involved in for the last twenty years that have left thousands of United Statesans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans (is that the right demonym? Wiki says yes) dead and their countries destroyed. Not to mention the creation of ICE, DHS and the TSA, No Child Left Behind, the terrible handling of Katrina, Guantanamo Bay, the corruption in his administration including guys like Cheney, Chertoff, etc. None of that happens if Gore is president. 9/11 still happens maybe, but I can guarantee you we wouldn't be in Iraq and Afghanistan 19 years later.
Trump is an idiot, and he might have doomed us considering his reversal of climate policies, intentional neglect of the ongoing pandemic, ramping up of election fraud that's been a Republican favorite since the 60s, use of unmarked federal officers at protests, legitimization of white nationalism and the Q bullshit, repeatedly saying he wants a third term, and dismantling every part of the federal government that doesn't hurt his enemies or make him and his friends richer. Even if we get out of this without him becoming president for life, in four years he has done damage to our diplomatic abilities and our reputation abroad that will take decades to recover even in the best possible circumstances. If Hillary Clinton was president right now, tens of thousands of people would still be alive who are dead. There were 36,000 excess deaths because of slow lockdown measures in May, let alone how many there are now. The pandemic team in China wouldn't have been disbanded, the federal government wouldn't have sabotaged states' responses or intentionally let people who voted for their political opponents die.
And that's not even getting into what happens if Trump wins. He's already repeatedly said he wants a third term, he's already admitted to sabotaging the post office because it hurts his re-election chances, and he's already effectively unaccountable. Our last chance of pushing back against him before our only option is mass protest and violence is to vote his ass out and by diminishing what he's done you're increasing the chance that he's going to win. If he stays in power by any means people are going to continue to needlessly die of covid. He's said he's sending out the feds on election day and if that pays off he's going to do it any time there's unrest, any time there's an election, any time it's useful for him to do so. He wants a third term and at this point there's no reason to think he's just saying things.
If he wins "legally", people aren't going to protest in any form in the numbers that it would take to push back against him. I'm not entirely convinced that they would even if he outright said he cheated or if Biden wins and he refuses to leave, but that's beside the point. People on the left talk about a general strike all the time, and I support it, but we only got about 20-26 million people who attended a protest at least once in the last few months, and most of those people probably aren't going to risk their livelihood by participating in a strike for weeks on end. If it comes to the point that we have to be out in the streets to get Trump out, you better believe I'll be there, but we shouldn't be relying on it.
It's incredible to me that people can still claim Bush and Gore are the same with 12+ years of hindsight, and that Trump hasn't been that bad after the last 3 and a half years. It's inexcusable to say that the way things are right now.
I think it's okay to hate Biden but still know that you have to vote for him because Trump is so much worse.
Sure, but be careful that you're not poisoning the well in the way that you talk about it and how much you do. I have friends who spend most of their political thoughts on hating him.
Don't worry. I'm not one of those people who throws out "but what about Biden!?" all the time. I mostly just silently hate him, and sometimes say something if somebody is going off about how great he is.
This is exactly the reason people have invented better voting systems than the poorly engineered one that we use here in most of the US. Our first past the post system rewards and reinforces a "vote for the lesser evil" two party system. We should have a better system such as STAR or RCV voting where you do some form of ranking the options. That way you get to express how much you like a candidate, party, or option on the ballot, not just pick the one that you think will hurt you the least.
Star voting: https://www.equal.vote/starvoting
RCV: https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
Props to your state. Also, the fact that the GOP is getting more and more batshit insane and therefore every election, it gets more and more important to kick them to the curb is not complete hogwash. Every new election can be the most important one to date.
Particularly when you consider the rightward drift you described. But the presidential election is not the place to rectify this problem. The primaries and general political activism are much better suited.
This here is exactly why the accelerationist argument never works.
When things are chaotic and unstable, people reach for safety. Nobody is going to be open to radical change when things already seem upended. People will be willing to take a chance on ambitious or bold policies if they feel like they're on stable enough footing to take a few risks. Political power is unitary. You are always either adding to it or diminishing it, and opting out only ever diminishes.
Fair. Though there tends to be a certain momentum gain by some far-left policy goals. Some of the stuff that was seriously debated on the campaign trail is stuff that (one might argue) be completely off the table in any other election year. That doesn't mean these policies will immediately be enacted. But they become more normalized.
Or maybe not, I can certainly see your point.
Is that due to crisis or due to the ideas reaching a certain level of development? It's not as if these things weren't circulating in 2016 or even 2008. It just took time for them to gain force, largely as the underlying economic system's weaknesses become more evident to regular people. It's not like Trump being gone makes the gig economy or the healthcare system, just as examples, any less bad. So the driving forces behind wanting to correct those things wouldn't have gone away. We'd have maybe gotten there in fits and starts instead of having to rapidly fix things verging on collapse, but being in a position of having to throw together hotfixes while in crisis mode isn't exactly an ideal situation to be in when you want to build a program that's intended to last.
Precisely.
I was a "Never Biden" guy since 2 months before he entered the race. My #1  picks flip-flopped between Warren & Sanders the whole time. In 2016, I was a "Never Clinton" with Sanders/Warren my top 2 picks.
So I sympathize.
But pretty much since the Democratic Establishment annointed him, Biden has both courted and aggressively moved towards the Left. And it doesn't seem like just lip service. It really seems like he is trying to build a platform that unifies as many people as humanly possible.
Until he's elected and actually starts doing stuff, it's all just campaign promises, but compared to both 4 months ago and 4 years ago, I'm feeling surprisingly optimistic about old Sleepy Joe.
I think a lot of people got invested in politics as celebrity, politicians as public persons, just like other celebrities, CEOs, sportsfolk, entertainers etc. and wished politicians and politics was more entertaining, and more like other celebrity stuff.
I think 4 years of Trump have shown very clearly that politics is and should be something very different. Why couldn't the US of A have a more flashy CEO, a lot of people asked themselves. Trump shows very clearly why that's not a good idea.
It wasn't in the convention itself, but definitely take a look at Biden's proposed policies and you'll see the Bernie influence. His positions have substantially changed, especially on economics, and I think the strategy is that highly left wing people will vote for Biden based on these, and that Trump is a constant reminder of what will happen if they don't. They wanted to use the widely covered convention to drive turnout from the young, the moderates, and the small share of conservatives we've picked up, because they're less likely to do so but absolutely critical to Biden's success, especially the conservatives because a vote from them isn't just a +1 to Biden, but a -1 to Trump, making their vote effectively twice as powerful. And I mean, for me at least, seeing the diverse spectrum of people at the convention and the proposed policies is enough for me - I can't wait for a future where it's reasonable that the House passes a liberal law and the Senate does too. It's been so long since that's happened I can honestly scarcely remember.
The convention, like all conventions, is focused on motivating the people who are most likely to volunteer/donate and people who haven't been paying close attention until now. Neither of those include groups that are significantly to the left of Joe Biden.
The fact is that paying close attention to politics at all is extremely weird in the grand scheme of things. And having politics far outside the mainstream while paying attention is even weirder still. A primetime TV event isn't the place you're going to find someone speaking for it, they're going to focus on people who watch primetime evening TV who are basically the definition of conventional.
I didn't watch the whole convention, but Obama's speech on the situation is a must-watch. Mainly because he is not trying to be or sound happy or hopeful. He, like us, sounds fucking horrified.
This article is a pretty good review: Barack Obama is scared
One takeaway that I had was that the Dem party was really emphasizing religion and faith, in an effort that I would suspect is aimed towards courting the evangelical vote. They had various segments where the reference to, "One nation, under God", was mentioned. Plus they talked extensively about Joe Biden's faith throughout the entire convention.
I think moves like this are pretty smart as the evangelical armor that the Republican party wears could use as many dents and dings in it as we can muster. Anecdotally, I know a ton of Christians who are flat out disgusted by Trump and were solidly in the Republican-voting bloc before Trump. Having a resounding defeat of Donald Trump in November is key, and the Democrats want to do it with as many voting blocs as possible.
There are also plenty of left-wing or Democratic-leaning Christians who simply don't get as much news coverage as the loonier denominations. Even Mormons are pretty disgusted with Trump, if Mitt Romney's pronouncements reflect the Church consensus. If they have to be told the Democratic Party's tent is welcoming even with the fundamental disagreements on policy, then the gesture has been made.
The Cool-Media Approach to Conventions - James Fallows
I never watch conventions because they seem like big commercials. I assume the newspapers will tell us if anything important happened.
From a Washington Post article, it seems that they got out front on the stuttering thing, which is nice. Apparently Yang got to joke around a little. Here's a transcript of his remarks.
Respectfully, I think people missed out if they didn't watch any of it. I would recommend going back and listening to the speeches from Michelle Obama and Jill Biden in particular.
I was still lukewarm on the convention until Monday/Tuesday, but with each day, I got more and more into it. By last night, I couldn't tear myself away from Joe Biden's closing remarks. The convention was great viewing without cutaways to talking heads for spin or waiting on crowd applause during speeches. I learned some things about Joe Biden's life and record I didn't know before, and I came out of it having found some hope and enthusiasm in voting for Biden rather than the sheer reluctance I had up to this point.
Credit to the Party for putting on a great event. Not everything they chose to do "worked", but it was an entirely new format during a pandemic. There were always going to be aspects that didn't work as well as others.
Especially this virtual version, I assume it was going to be mostly democratic advertising. I have enjoyed watching select peices after though. Obama's speech from Wednesday night was quite good. The roll call vote that went through all the states and territories one by one was also interesting.
I loved the roll call vote. What a great and motivating reminder that there is more to America that's good than the trash fire that's been made of it.
I found it especially poignant when the delegation from American Samoa reminded the audience that while they're happy to participate in nominating the Democratic nominee, they aren't legally allowed to actually vote for President so you should, because you can.
It still baffles me that this is allowed, legally and morally. The country that literally fought a war and separated itself from England over (among other things) the concept "no taxation without representation", still has several territories that are not actually formal states, lack actual representation in Congress, and can't participate in national elections.
I get that Joe Biden is the great white hope for the Democratic party to capture the mythical margin. I get that it's easier to polish him up for a general audience then any of the newcomers he consumed to get the top spot. I get that his super power is making the most progressive ticket run in modern times look mundane and reasonable, and I get that Trump has got to go for the safety of the world, let alone the union.
I just can't help feeling like I'm Charlie Brown, going to kick that football again, for the good of America, and Lucy is going to pull it out from under me and let me fall on my ass.
Because the best case scenario is four more years of Republicans hanging "you couldn't have won without us, bro" over this administration's head, and using that as the spear point for more "but guys, what about the deficit?" stalling, needling the Dems over their brand new position of "limiting executive power for reals this time," emphasizing the power in the courts that they spent the past four years priming and fast noping any policy reversion, subversion or incursion that doesn't confer to their preferred convergence, while the Dems get to bask in everyone in their tent working together as Martyrs for Democracy while enabling Republicans to get most everything they want because that's how compromise works. And that's the return to the good old days everyone wants?
I don't want to dragged into the double digit reply thread that's a point by point rebuttal to fact and logic my concerns, because these are my concerns and that is your facts and logic. I just wanted to say my piece.
The total focus on winning over Republicans is sad to me. According to Gallup, Trump's approval rating among Republicans is 91%, so trying to pick off Republicans seems really unproductive.
It's not at all a "total focus" though. Out of 4 convention days, only day 1 included remarks from Republican politicians. A total focus would have involved shifting the party platform further right to cater to conservatives. Biden did the opposite of that. His competition dragged him so far left over the course of the primary that he embraced the Green New Deal.
You have to remember that most parts of the convention aren't aimed at you if you are a reliable Democratic voter. They're trying to shave off as many demographics as possible from Trump's voting bloc that are most likely to flip, and I'd say that dedicating some time on day one of the convention to a handful of Republicans is reasonable. We lost 2016 by <80k votes. A good number of traditional conservatives are tired of Trump even if they don't agree with our policies, so we need to bring those people into the fold. If you watch the convention through this lens, you'll see how much of it is tailored to give certain types of voters a permission structure to support Joe Biden.
Honest question that just occurred to me: Could one of the reasons his approval rating is so high be that a chuck of Republicans no longer identify as Republican?
Perhaps?
I'm not sure what that amounts to however. Most of these people are almost certainly right economically and probably still right culturally.
But that kind of implies then that the strategy of winning over moderate republicans works. Or rather, has already worked. Now it's about keeping them where they are and mobilizing the rest of the population.
I don't really think so, not long term. They're still right-wing, so when their numbers are large enough the Democrats just become Republicans of the Past.
So where does that leave everyone else? In the marginalized left.
If you can't beat Republicans in a Democratic primary for control over the Democratic Party, how would you beat Republicans in a general election for control over the country? If the Left really does end up marginalized by expanding the population of people hearing its message, then the Left was never a viable political force to begin with.
Not really. Most voters don't have coherent ideological beliefs and are significantly cross pressured on a number of issues.
Maybe not coherent, but they are often fanatical. I don't see much swapping in my social circles, if any, outside of 'get rid of incumbant' mentality.
Dunno about you, but my social circles include at least 5 Republican college-educated women who now reject the party whole-heartedly due to Donald Trump, and will vote for Biden.
They're never going to be comfortable with the Democratic Party's platform in its entirety. But they're very cognisant that the party they've adhered to, often life-long, has become unrecognizable and abhorrent. They recognize the value of stable and functional institutions in a democracy. They're utterly horrified by incompetence and naked corruption. To the extent that the convention extolled the virtues of well-considered and executed policy, they'll be satisfied.
edit:sp
I get that, and it makes sense. But, if that group becomes large enough, it gets to dictate the Democratic Party's platform and become more comfortable there.
I well and truly hope I'm wrong on all of this.
This is self-selection. You're unlikely to be hanging out with committed centrists if you're not one yourself. If you're hanging out mostly with knee-jerk contrarians (as in, get rid of the incumbent) that's basically the opposite of people who are mostly thinking things are going fine.
Not really...I came from a deep-red background. I'm the only lefty. A few are center, but most are, at best, right-libertarian. None really cross isles unless they have one of their party they really want to oust.
The 5 I'm closest to all vote Democrat (to my knowledge). They don't cross aisles, they generally despise Trump. Here's some of their varied beliefs to which they hold on to tightly:
Court these people all you like, but do so at your own peril. If/when they gain control, because swaying them away from these beliefs is hard, say goodbye to actual progress. It happened to the Republican party with the Southern Strategy. It'll happen to the Democrats with 'Vote Blue no matter who.'
Like I said before, people who talk or care about politics at all are profoundly weird. It would be a mistake to allow your intuitions about what the electorate is actually like to be informed by such people. If you're hanging out with people who are, at best, right-libertarian, you're talking about an extremely unrepresentative group of voters.
The Southern Strategy was an active attempt to court the votes of White Racists in opposition to the Civil Rights act. "Vote Blue no matter who" is something leftists recite to mock people who believe in supporting the Democratic nominee for President on the basis that the worst Democrat is still better than the best Republican. These two things aren't analogous at all.
That's not how I interpreted seeing it. From the beginning of the 2020 campaign season, it almost seemed to be shouted from every pro-bernie/warren thread as if to say 'you better support us no matter what.'
Yes, I know they are fundamentally different. But being the party of 'Not Trump' is not exactly better long term. Hell yea it's better now. But unless that gets turned into actual progress to prevent "Trump 2.0: Now with the ability to conceal the bad!", it's not sustainable.
Because, ultimately: Fuck it. I'll support you this time, because it's really that bad. But bring some real change to the table. Do for the Left what the Republicans have done for the Right. Otherwise you've just created another disenfranchised voter because the Democrats shout almost as loudly as Republicans: "Nothing will fundamentally change." I'll just nope the fuck out and join the other 60% of the non-voters. I'll bet I'm not alone.
I don’t really see how any part of the convention‘s messaging was “party of not Trump.” There’s way too many attempts at weird scorekeeping and Kremlinology surrounding this discourse.
There's no reason for you to be listened to if you don't vote. As you've said, you'll be added to the 60% of non-voters, which is not anyone that Republicans or Democrats care about turning out / catering to at all.
But that's how you win elections: You inspire that non-voting moderate base. At least that's what everyone keeps telling me. It makes sense, because getting 2% more to turn out is a far bigger swing than anything else.
Nobody is switching from R to D and back. It's all about inspiring non-voters. Obama got elected that way, so did Trump.
In the big scheme of things, hypothetical swing voters and undecided are non-factors.
And the reason to peace out: I'm told my views are a non-factor in voting, so I might as well make it a reality, stop worrying about politics, and live in ignorant bliss until the world ends in flames.
I should clarify what I mean by non-voters since I didn't do that at all. My understanding is that the base that both Democrats and Republicans try to turn out isn't necessarily moderate, it's people who are sympathetic to them and have voted for them in the past but maybe don't show up every election. I did a small amount of digging and it seems that non-voters have about the same political preferences as the population at large, so they're not necessarily moderate.
I agree completely that swing voters and undecideds are non-factors unless the election is super close like the last one was. I just didn't clarify what I meant by non-voters, sorry.
I use non-voter for both of those categories, as the barrier to voting is (should be?) very low. Register and go vote.
Any non-voter can register with less 5 minutes of work. Anybody motivated can vote (again, assuming no artificial barriers). Therefore it is 100% down to inspiration and motivation of your base. Not swaying your opponent's base.
Even in close elections, they're fundamentally a non-factor. For every swing/undecided, there are 3x or more people in the non-voting base. Yes, the swing voter might 'choose' the winner, but only in the sense that the loser failed to get 1-2 more people in their base to show up.
Definitely, and I didn't mean to imply that non-voter actually means one or the other, I just meant I wasn't specific enough.
That's definitely interesting, thanks for finding that. It seems unlikely that a lot of conservatives would switch parties outright, so the thing I'm most curious about is how many now identify as unaffiliated or independent.
That seems to be the case, but it's not clear how many of these people are indeed politically independent or are just economically right and culturally left (see new era reps) or vice-versa (see devout and diverse/Christian left) and are poorly represented by either party (or are politically disengaged/unaware, that happens).
You might also want to see this for Republican groups less satisfied with the GOP.
I don't see them as necessarily trying to pick off Republicans as much as they're hoisting up Republican dissent to demonstrate to center and right leaning independents that criticism of Trump isn't partisan, like Trump and the GOP really want everyone to think.
I mean, what reliably left leaning voters still need convincing or motivation at this point, even people who don't like Biden, when Trump is the alternative? There's more to gain by focusing on centrists.
People self identify their party in polls based on how they're feeling that day. People who are ashamed to be Republicans are not going to tell the pollster that they're Republicans and vice versa, so this metric is always going to be really lopsided.
While I'm sure that's a factor, it's not necessarily a huge factor. Here are George W Bush's approval ratings among Republicans over the years (midway down the page). From 2006 and beyond, Bush's approval rating among Republicans was largely 60-70s%.
Edit: Wrong link
That would just suggest to me that Bush didn't make people ashamed to be Republican to the extent that Trump does. The real tell is how the n-size is split between Republicans and Independents.
Small personal take: There are very few things the Democratic party could do to make me hate them more than this fucking rehab of John Kasich. John Kasich is a terrible fucking person and one of the worst things to happen to Ohio, and we have Jim fucking Jordan.
More general take: This was.... fine I guess? The stutter speech was a nice heartwarming moment. Nothing I saw really changed how I feel about Biden, Harris, or the Dem party. I haven't talked to many people in the community or communities around me since it (clarifying: it == the dem convention) started but I don't really think anything said is going to change their views. The people who were voting for Biden out of desperation are still going to, and the people who feel both Dems and Reps have abandoned them to the wolves are going to feel the same. Though who knows how many watched the convention to even care about what was said.
I only caught some of the first day, when they aired the borderline exploitive 'feel-good BLM' ad. I get what they were trying to do, but it really felt out of touch in the 'now we care' variety.
The followup moment of silence was far better, getting closer to the tone I would have liked to see:
On a lighter note...why was a Desperate Housewife hosting? I could think of a dozen better choices.