POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Montmorency]

@rory_20_uk
I've talked some about this referendum that passed in Alaska, but I'm not sure if I mentioned it on the Org. It's a fantastic electoral reform and one you might like. Hopefully the Republicans can't get it ruled unconstitutional (we could take the hit on severing and eliminating the campaign finance disclosure rule if need be).

A "yes" vote supported making changes to Alaska's election policies, including:

* requiring persons and entities that contribute more than $2,000 that were themselves derived from donations, contributions, dues, or gifts to disclose the true sources (as defined in law) of the political contributions;

* replacing partisan primaries with open top-four primaries for state executive, state legislative, and congressional offices; and

* establishing ranked-choice voting for general elections, including the presidential election, in which voters would rank the candidates.

The majority of House Republicans have filed an amicus in support of the suit to overturn the election. Hell of a kayfabe.

At this point there's more of a fig leaf to being an open supporter of Alternativ fuer Deutschland than of the Republican party.

106 House Republicans are spending critical time when people are starving and small businesses are shuttering trying to overturn the results of our election, but please tell us more about how “both sides are just as bad”

As this op-ed by esteemed professor Brian Klaas ruminates, we have the problem of millions of voters who are committed to authoritarian psychology and politics.

As we move into the next phase of repair and rebuilding, though, there’s an uncomfortable truth all Americans must now face. The problem wasn’t just President Trump. The problem was also us.

Every so often, history produces dangerous demagogues. When that happens, citizens are tested: Do you unite to reject a politics of fear, division and authoritarianism? Or does the country splinter, with half fighting back and the other half cheerleading as a would-be despot seeks to undermine democracy to consolidate power?

Now we know the answer: America splintered. When presented with a man who saw democracy as a pesky inconvenience, a huge chunk of the American electorate didn’t just accept him. They cheered, applauded and sported his memorabilia. They embraced him not in spite of his authoritarian impulses, but because of them.

To understand why this happened, we have to acknowledge a depressing reality: A substantial proportion of Americans are “authoritarian voters.” In other words, they crave the leadership of a strongman without significant checks. Moreover, their political preferences are only about outcomes, not process. If they want to ban Muslims from entering the country or to stop abortions, authoritarian voters aren’t particularly bothered if the norms of democracy are shredded, so long as they get their way.

A Vox-Morning Consult survey found that just under half of White American respondents scored high on measures of authoritarian personality, a proxy for authoritarian voting. Nearly 1 in 5 scored very high. Of these authoritarians lurking among us, nearly 7 in 10 were self-identified Republican voters. And for them, Trump was a godsend.

These are not just common clay of the new West, they are Good Americans, many bound to become the Very Best.

Republicans had positioned themselves as the defenders of cultural order and traditional values, which had the unanticipated consequence of attracting a lot of authoritarian voters to their ranks.

One cannot understand contemporary American history without realizing that this was in no way unanticipated.

In that way, when it comes to our diseased democracy, Trump is both symptom and cause. He activated latent authoritarians who would have voted for a Trumpian figure if one had been on the ballot. But he also made the language, behavior and policy of despotism mainstream. In short, he activated authoritarian voters that already existed, but also spent the past four years transforming plenty of constitutional conservatives into cheerleaders for American autocracy.

But this is also true. After Trump there is no going back for many people. As bad as Republican voters were, they are now - collectively and individually - much worse. They have changed to become more hateful, more fearful, and more dangerous. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities, after all, and the Republican noosphere is fully insane at this point.

It’s clear that elected Republicans — who largely refuse to answer basic factual questions about the winner of the presidential election — know that their voters are authoritarians. And they are catering to them.

Well, duh. One piece of common wisdom that has long been overripe to discard is the idea that Republican politicians are categorically "savvier" about what is real than the Republican base are. But they both consume all the same media and share many of the same psychological tendencies and grievances; Republican politicians one and all are drawn from the pool of Republican voters. The cultural distinction has vanished. As the oldest generations in office pass out of power, so further will whatever rarefied institutional memory there was.

I sure hope the Old Guard Democrats go first.

Unfortunately, it’s not only these authoritarian voters whom we have to worry about. There is also evidence that Americans’ ideological commitment to democracy could be waning with each passing generation. A 2017 article in the Journal of Democracy found that around 3 in 4 Americans who were born in the 1930s said that it was “essential” to live in a democracy. That figure falls with each successive decade of birth, to around 3 in 10 Americans born in the 1980s. (Similar dynamics are showing up across other Western democracies, raising the possibility that generations that didn’t live through fascism or the Cold War have a less rigid personal commitment to democratic values.)

Democracy is not self-repairing. Over time, without citizens who are committed to protecting it, it will eventually die, smashed under the iron fist of a would-be strongman who attracted a big enough chunk of the electorate to go along with him. Trump failed, but it was close.

Hmm, I've seen this sort of finding around political classifications or nationalities, but not around the variable of age cohort.

Hard to overstate the importance of achieving the ability to start getting stuff done.

The other half is much harder, because it’s not about one individual. Instead, it’s about the tens of millions of Americans who, long after Trump is gone, will welcome another aspiring despot with open arms. And that, unfortunately, is the next front in the battle to protect American democracy.

Well, duh.

The Simpsons, Season 23, Episode 496 "Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson"

Homer: Yeah, maybe I'll vote Democrat. The great thing is, when they get in, they act like Republicans.

Besides taking him out of context as Samurai touches on, Homer Simpson isn't the role model you want to emulate.

That's actually a pretty old one. Link

Appeals to logic and reasoning are harder to make and harder to get folks to listen but have the better long term impact.

Appeals to affect work quickly, don't require any linear support, etc. but are subject to being more transient and replaced by the next "moving" message.

Its one of the reasons Trump (and other demagogues) have to keep things stirred up and keep the rallies going -- if the emotions cool and thinking begins, then some of the audience is lost.

That's a good primer, but I was thinking more specifically of the communication of affective states themselves, and their reciprocal conditioning of behavior.