US Politics 47 - Biden Time (To Be Litigious)

[Martell Spy]

10 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I grew up around Republican brainwashing and mind game tactics so I'm calling something out now.

Some posters here have gone to absurd lengths to deny the obvious in that self-proclaimed socialists are really democrats and there is no attempt at a party take over despite Bernie campaigning on that and it being widely understood and treated by the democratic media as such.

The consistent, relentless and emotional denials of the obvious read like organized talking points and frankly, they smell like a rat. If the intent is to confirm Republican fear mongering of socialism, great job!

Or maybe you just hate socialists yourself and want them purged from the party. Trump clearly thought attacking Democrats as socialists was a brilliant political strategy. He also thought calling suburban women housewives was a great vote-getter.

[Kalbear]

In Florida it appeared to be a massive great. strategy to call Biden and dems socialists. Ultimately in the US a lot of these choices may not make a lot of sense for overall strategy but since you're only really competing in 8 states the message there matters more than anything. 

Again, as much as we might not like it socialism is a bad word and look in the US. It is a negative at least in the aggregate. That doesn't have anything to do with the idiotic framing of AOCs arguments as attempting to take over the party (her main suggestion was to have a better ground game and that the dem party lacks broad messaging agreement!), just on the socialism label. 

And Sanders calling himself that (as well as saying how awesome Castro was and having a soviet flag in his office and other things) hurts him nationally. Especially with older voters. 

[Lollygag]

Just now, Martell Spy said:

Or maybe you just hate socialists yourself and want them purged from the party. Trump clearly thought attacking Democrats as socialists was a brilliant political strategy. He also thought calling suburban women housewives was a great vote-getter.

I'm fine with AOC or anyone representing their district as I've said before. I have a huge problem with always being stuck with Republicans in my state because they really believe there's a socialist takeover and there's no action to deny that impression. Representing one's own is one thing, pushing it on others who have a different culture and history in ignorance and leaving them stuck with awful people is what I have a problem with. Major distinction between progressives and socialists here.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/white-women-had-doubts-but-they-voted-for-trump-anyway/

[Kalbear]

Just now, Lollygag said:

I'm fine with AOC or anyone representing their district as I've said before. I have a huge problem with always being stuck with Republicans in my state because they really believe there's a socialist takeover and there's no action to deny that impression. Representing one's own is one thing, pushing it on others who have a different culture and history in ignorance and leaving them stuck with awful people is what I have a problem with. Major distinction between progressives and socialists here.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/white-women-had-doubts-but-they-voted-for-trump-anyway/

Don't take exit polls as gospel, and ESPECIALLY dont take them as gospel in this election. Exit polls are done with people voting in person the day of the election and those were significantly weighted towards Republicans. It is almost certainly false that more white women voted for.trump as a % than last election given the results from the suburbs.

[OldGimletEye]

17 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I have a huge problem with always being stuck with Republicans in my state because they really believe there's a socialist takeover and there's no action to deny that impression.

I have known and lived around Republicans most of my life, In debating them about socialism, I usually find it helpful to have them define what they mean by "socialism" first. It's usually hard to talk about its pros and cons without nailing down what exactly is being talked about.

[Fury Resurrected]

41 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I assume the standard info they work off of and also what they're being told. If you want to quantify and qualify that, that's another matter and as this is fear-based and rooted deep in US culture and history and voting reasons are complex, I'm not sure that data you're asking for is available. Again, it's a favorite of the Republicans, and yo, it works.

It doesn't and I said as much as the article says it's too early. But we know how Trump campaigned and how Republicans generally campaign. Do the math.

One reason that Trump didn't want to run against Biden is that it's so difficult to rebrand a known entity with that much track record. That Biden is really a secret socialist doesn't sell, but that he's mentally weak, senile and the socialists are scary bully strongmen who don't allow dissent and are really in control of the Dems plays off the US's socialism takeover fear and it works sometimes. To what amount, who knows. But as I said, you only peel off a bit here, a bit there, and of course, socialism fear isn't your only game.

Also, the role of the socialism demonization is not understood well. Maybe it's my (incorrect) impression, but I tend to see socialists (not progressives) de-emphasize or deny the influence of history, culture, demographic, urban/suburban/rural and general conscious and unconscious psychology on voting choices in favor of reaction off a checklist of issues. It's not just about any given issue checklist. It's about lizard brain fear appeals especially with the center and right, and especially in closed communities (rural folks, black folks, some latin communities, etc) who are naturally skeptical of outsiders not being what they appear, so the secret anyone or secretly controlled is a thing in itself.

I said I'm not making that point. I think the best strategy is to let folks campaign to and vote their districts and the leadership needs to be clear that they will be allowed to do so. Not an instant solution as it's a trust issue and will take time to earn. I admit bias here as I hate political parties in principle but I've seen some success in this form of campaigning for moderate Dems.

Socialism's behavior right now is making a push, a movement, a revolution, is authoritarian and that's *HUGE* in the pushback to it and the paranoia around it. I'm not sure the centrists are articulating this well, but if asked, I'd guess they'd say the perceived aggression is more of a problem than just a few rando socialists popping up. Folks link it with authoritarianism and when the complaints come up, the socialist ignore that which only makes people more suspicious given the behavior.

Maybe this is the cultural difference (you're French if I recall?) but I'm from a very conservative area and asking for data about socialism being controversial and unwinnable in most areas feels like asking for data confirming the sun rose today.

I think you’ve just bought into the right wing talking points here. 
 

Many parts of our system today and key parts of the Democratic Party platform are socialist. Here’s a big scary list-

—public highway systems

-fire departments

-public social services

-health departments

-labor unions

-labor laws

-social security

-Medicare 

-public school

moving on from what we already have, here’s pretty mainstream democratic policy goals-

—nationalized healthcare/Medicare for all/public option

- student loan forgiveness

-free college tuition

 

Its laughable that these ideas ARE revolutionary in this country because they are supported by the right wing parties pretty much everywhere else. It’s not authoritarian and your claim that it is just exemplifies the ridiculous fear monger if about socialism- which is a very successful campaign bankrolled by HMOs and drug manufacturers to keep us paying the highest healthcare costs in the world.

[Lollygag]

1 minute ago, Killjoybear said:

Don't take exit polls as gospel, and ESPECIALLY dont take them as gospel in this election. Exit polls are done with people voting in person the day of the election and those were significantly weighted towards Republicans. It is almost certainly false that more white women voted for.trump as a % than last election given the results from the suburbs.

What I'm pinging on is that white women polled as anti-Trump and then a significant percentage at the last minute so to speak went back to him.

I don't put a lot of stock in exit polls. I tend to see voting as more based in psychology and culture than actual policy and that makes polling being somewhat about how they rationalize their vote to themselves and others, but maybe not how the actual choice was made.

 

[Lollygag]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I have known and lived around Republicans most of my life, In debating them about socialism, I usually find it helpful to have them define what they mean by "socialism" first. It's usually hard to talk about it's pros and cons without nailing down what exactly is being talked about.

Agree, that does help, especially pointing out that soc sec and medicare are socialism. After that, I seem to hit cognitive dissonance and they start to descend into crazy to try to make it all work out. Hometown is really red and really rural.

It doesn't help that my own definitions don't go beyond pointing to Canada/Europe or Cuba/Venezuela.

[DMC]

29 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

This part I'm extremely interested in, as I'm wondering about this international trend. I have several questions:

1. Was Trump's election part of an international trend, or was it solely an American thing?

2. If an international trend, do you see it abating?

3. Is there generally a growing divide between the "places that don't matter"(ie rural and post-industrial regions) and more successful urban areas?

1.  The former, the beginnings of these international trends among "western" nations were identified at least a quarter-century ago.

2.  I'm decidedly not optimistic in it abating anytime in the foreseeable future.  And I try very hard to be as optimistic as possible.

3.  Yes.  For timely and salient reinforcement of this reality, it's rather apparent the rural-urban divide drove the shift towards Trump this cycle among Latinx voters:

Quote

Across the rest of the nation, Trump’s gains came in more rural areas, like Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. He scored 43 percent of the vote in Cameron County, 11 points higher than his 2016 vote share. He grew his vote share to 41 percent in Hidalgo County, up 13 points from four years ago. In Starr County, where Clinton won about 80 percent of the vote in 2016, Trump trailed Biden by just five percentage points.

“This is just the beginning,” said Mayra Flores, a Republican activist who oversees Hispanic outreach in Hidalgo County. “Eventually, we’re going to flip South Texas if we continue.”

More granular data from metropolitan areas that are not majority Hispanic show the Latino vote in urban cores favored Biden overwhelmingly. In Phoenix, Tucson and Philadelphia, precincts with high concentrations of Latino voters favored Biden by a three-to-one or four-to-one margin. Democratic vote shares in heavily Latino precincts in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio rose by four to seven points.

“A majority of Latinos in the U.S. live in counties that are not majority Latino,” said Matt Barreto, a political scientist at UCLA who conducted polling among Latino voters for the Biden campaign. “There does appear to be less support in rural areas.”

 

19 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

Exit polls are done with people voting in person the day of the election and those were significantly weighted towards Republicans.

For the third time, Edison Research changed its methodology specifically to attempt to account for this change.  Whether those attempts were successful very much remains to be seen, but please stop parroting an inaccurate description of their exit polls.

[Mindwalker]

18 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

In Florida it appeared to be a massive great. strategy to call Biden and dems socialists. Ultimately in the US a lot of these choices may not make a lot of sense for overall strategy but since you're only really competing in 8 states the message there matters more than anything. 

 

I really think things are more complicated. For example, I remember a couple of days ago, one of the network election guys mntioned that in Miami-Dade, young LatinX men (they didn't specify further) were not afraid of Dem socialism (like e.g. some oldr Cubans)-- they simply felt more aligned with Republicn views. No idea whether he got that from exit polls or somewhere else.

I just wonder if we'll ever get reliable data...

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

3.  Yes.  For timely and salient reinforcement of this reality, it's rather apparent the rural-urban divide drove the shift towards Trump this cycle among Latinx voters:

Okay, just to be clear. Is this a US thing or common internationally, at this juncture. My understanding is that more rural areas tend to vote for Putin. And then, I'm under the impression East Germany tends to vote for more nationalist right parties. And then, there is the whole Brexit thing.

[Martell Spy]

21 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

In Florida it appeared to be a massive great. strategy to call Biden and dems socialists. Ultimately in the US a lot of these choices may not make a lot of sense for overall strategy but since you're only really competing in 8 states the message there matters more than anything. 

Again, as much as we might not like it socialism is a bad word and look in the US. It is a negative at least in the aggregate. That doesn't have anything to do with the idiotic framing of AOCs arguments as attempting to take over the party (her main suggestion was to have a better ground game and that the dem party lacks broad messaging agreement!), just on the socialism label. 

And Sanders calling himself that (as well as saying how awesome Castro was and having a soviet flag in his office and other things) hurts him nationally. Especially with older voters. 

It was a great strategy in a limited area, in a state by the way that didn't decide the Presidential election. And it wasn't just like the Trump camp simply tagged Biden with the socialist label to Cuban-Americans, there was massive outreach and effort made. Massive outreach, attention, and listening are effective on many communities. 

And Biden lost by many hundreds of thousands of votes in Florida. It was a nice stunt, but it looked like Trump was already going to win that state. Meanwhile, Latino activists were busy turning Arizona in to a blue state.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

Is this a US thing or common internationally, at this juncture.

I'm very confident it's an international trend, but I'm not an authority on the internal politics of any other country.

[Lollygag]

11 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I think you’ve just bought into the right wing talking points here. 
 

Many parts of our system today and key parts of the Democratic Party platform are socialist. Here’s a big scary list-

—public highway systems

-fire departments

-public social services

-health departments

-labor unions

-labor laws

-social security

-Medicare 

-public school

moving on from what we already have, here’s pretty mainstream democratic policy goals-

—nationalized healthcare/Medicare for all/public option

- student loan forgiveness

-free college tuition

 

Its laughable that these ideas ARE revolutionary in this country because they are supported by the right wing parties pretty much everywhere else. It’s not authoritarian and your claim that it is just exemplifies the ridiculous fear monger if about socialism- which is a very successful campaign bankrolled by HMOs and drug manufacturers to keep us paying the highest healthcare costs in the world.

I admit that but it's on the bossy, authoritarian side rather than the policy side. When any self-proclaimed socialist is squishy on Cuba and Venezuela in any way, it triggers me. And they are squishy on it when to me they ought to be more furious about it than anyone else for the damage it does to their positions.

It's not just the healthcare industry.

 

[Mindwalker]

7 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Okay, just to be clear. Is this a US thing or common internationally, at this juncture. My understanding is that more rural areas tend to vote for Putin. And then, I'm under the impression East Germany tends to vote for more nationalist right parties. And then, there is the whole Brexit thing.

It does. Not that the East is all rural, btw. Plus you have that whole "former communist part that feels a bit srewed over by how the reunification went" factor.

[Fury Resurrected]

Just now, Lollygag said:

I admit that but it's on the bossy, authoritarian side rather than the policy side. When any self-proclaimed socialist is squishy on Cuba and Venezuela in any way, it triggers me. And they are squishy on it when to me they ought to be more furious about it than anyone else for the damage it does to their positions.

It's not just the healthcare industry.

 

You’re not being very clear using words like “squishy”  It seems like you are expecting a burden of expertise about other countries for people whose ideas you don’t like that you aren’t expecting for anyone else. All of your posts about this subject are pretty vague and emotionally knee-jerky and contain no actual evidence of anything. It’s hard to tell what you are referring to, citing some examples would help. Socialism isn’t scary. There are plenty of enormously popular socialist policies in the United States that have existed for generations. 
 

Lastly- of course it’s about policy. It should be about policy. None of your criticisms have had any policy and have just repeated right wing fear mongering nonsense. The policy is the only way to dispel that, and it’s not very compelling to counter actual policies with criticisms like “squishy” and “bossy”

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

 

Lastly- of course it’s about policy. It should be about policy. None of your criticisms have had any policy and have just repeated right wing fear mongering nonsense. The policy is the only way to dispel that, and it’s not very compelling to counter actual policies with criticisms like “squishy” and “bossy”

If the last 4 years should have dispelled more than anything it is that it is emphatically not about policy. It is about emotion, feeling and rationalization and a whole lot of other psychological and sociological factors, but it is not about policy. Hell, one could argue that the biggest factor in both Trump and bidens wins was really stupid: name recognition. 

[teej6]

Both the Trump and Biden campaigns were wooing the catholic vote. Based on an exit poll survey, the catholic vote moved Biden’s way compared to 2016. It was split evenly between Trump and Biden this time. The Catholic vote was ~22% of the electorate this year and although they do not vote as a monolith, they are especially important for democrats to maintain the Rust Belt states. America magazine (a jesuit and liberal catholic magazine) published exit polls based on a survey, AP VoteCast. https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/11/06/catholic-vote-donald-trump-joe-biden-election-split

[teej6]

4 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

If the last 4 years should have dispelled more than anything it is that it is emphatically not about policy. It is about emotion, feeling and rationalization and a whole lot of other psychological and sociological factors, but it is not about policy. Hell, one could argue that the biggest factor in both Trump and bidens wins was really stupid: name recognition. 

Yeah it boggles the mind when people who are depended on ACA vote for the man who is trying to dismantle it. 

[ThinkerX]

50 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

This part I'm extremely interested in, as I'm wondering about this international trend. I have several questions:

1. Was Trump's election part of an international trend, or was it solely an American thing?

2. If an international trend, do you see it abating?

3. Is there generally a growing divide between the "places that don't matter"(ie rural and post-industrial regions) and more successful urban areas?

My take, for what little it be worth:

1) Part of an international trend.  Witness what happened in Turkey and Russia, among other places.  Ultimately, the 'right/left' thing will matter less than the corporations behind the thrones.

2) Nope.  Not really acknowledged at this point is that civilization is at a crisis point, those being climate change, energy, and water.  Ugly times in the not so distant future.  Consolidation of power ('I got mine - screw everybody else') as a solution.  Prediction: a decade or three from now, Trump's 'Wall' is going to seem like a visionary idea to keep 'climate refugees' out.

3) The divide exists, but might reverse to an extent.  Reason: Coronavirus.  Working from home is now a thing.  Given good internet connections, where that home is in relation to the office doesn't matter.  Hence, why blow a million bucks for a mega mansion two hours from the office when you can buy a decent house for one tenth that in a small town?  Likewise, certain types of alternative energies are best suited for rural, rather than urban areas.  A...strange...transformation is underway.