POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[a completely inoffensive name]

1. He would govern to the left in some ways, e.g. anti-corporate. (The 2016 electorate perceived Trump as more moderate than Clinton!!!)
2. He would not support the GOP infrastructure and judicial project.

No one had any idea how he would govern besides trying to kick out the Mexicans. With that being the baseline for people, if BUILD THE WALL didn't get the xenophobes all enthusiastic for him early on why the sudden popularity shift. So not only are Republicans really racist, but they are also that lazy about their racism? "I really hate this ethnicity and I love the guy who promises to remove them, but he doesn't look like he will win, so I guess I won't bother trying."

Also, did anyone really think McConnell was not going to drive his judicial project?!?! That Trump wasn't going to just rubber stamp Mitch's picks?

Obama had not yet been thoroughly vilified in RWNJ media, and Fox News wasn't quite so brute-force about its agenda.

Bro, come on... in 2012???

Not at all. The electoral infrastructure and culture of the country cannot support such a third party. The conservative Dems and never-Trump Republicans will do what they have always done, which is try to influence the party from within. They've tended to have great success with this approach.

Well given the recent electoral success of the Lib Dems, it doesn't really seem like the UK can support a third party as well, but so it goes.
Whether or not the progressives are ready or able to split, a Dem majority leader that isn't as shrewd as Pelosi at bringing everyone together is at risk of having them split off. Again, they are just vulnerable to the same delusions as the Trump guys (BLOCKING THE FUCKING ROAD FOR THE THIRD STRAIGHT WEEK WITH THEIR TRUCKS IN MY CITY) who think for whatever reason that the momentum is on their side and will carry them forward. I'm not saying conserv. Dems would switch to a third party btw since that seems to be what you are replying to...

The GOP cannot collapse into a regional party because there are tens of millions of people responsive to their brand of plutocratic fascism, for one reason or another, spread rather evenly throughout the country. And most of them are very deep in the cult, whether that means QAnon or one of a million other delusions.

Bet you $100 a proper UBI that dramatically decreases inequality will make all these fascists suddenly a lot more friendly to their neighbors.

[Hooahguy]

Bet you $100 a proper UBI that dramatically decreases inequality will make all these fascists suddenly a lot more friendly to their neighbors.

Yeah sorry I just don't believe this at all. Racists and fascists aren't confined to any one particular socioeconomic group and waving a bunch of money in their faces won't make them go away, they will just take the money and try to get others booted off it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yeah sorry I just don't believe this at all. Racists and fascists aren't confined to any one particular socioeconomic group and waving a bunch of money in their faces won't make them go away, they will just take the money and try to get others booted off it.

I just don't believe the idea that 40% of the country are inherently racist. People think they are getting screwed over and its an easy narrative to say "those people are screwing you over" than trying to explain how globalized markets work.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I just don't believe the idea that 40% of the country are inherently racist. People think they are getting screwed over and its an easy narrative to say "those people are screwing you over" than trying to explain how globalized markets work.

This is, ultimately, the factor that most empowers institutional racism. Few of those whose actions empower the system that is are racist in inclination or thought. They support the police and the concept of law and order (while often blind to the cultural mores of those police and the economic holdovers of overt racism that place so many of our 'minority' persons in positions where police confrontation is more frequent), they want their kids to go to good schools (while not really thinking about the fact that they have grouped themselves into enclaves of people who look and sound the same because of the psychological comfort thereof), etc.

The Aryan Nation types are very few and have publicly labeled themselves -- thanks for that as it makes them easier to keep track of -- and the vast bulk of those who support institutional racism (which includes, by the way, any number of those persons who are targeted by this implicit system of restraints and control) are not at all racist themselves. They are simply content with the system as it is and do not question that the system itself has enacted itself in a manner that is functionally racist.

We can spot the "Bull" Connors types readily enough, it is the vast mass of kindly people hidden by 'Foucault's mirror' who do not accurately see their own reflections in the images before their eyes.

[a completely inoffensive name]

This is, ultimately, the factor that most empowers institutional racism. Few of those whose actions empower the system that is are racist in inclination or thought. They support the police and the concept of law and order (while often blind to the cultural mores of those police and the economic holdovers of overt racism that place so many of our 'minority' persons in positions where police confrontation is more frequent), they want their kids to go to good schools (while not really thinking about the fact that they have grouped themselves into enclaves of people who look and sound the same because of the psychological comfort thereof), etc.

The Aryan Nation types are very few and have publicly labeled themselves -- thanks for that as it makes them easier to keep track of -- and the vast bulk of those who support institutional racism (which includes, by the way, any number of those persons who are targeted by this implicit system of restraints and control) are not at all racist themselves. They are simply content with the system as it is and do not question that the system itself has enacted itself in a manner that is functionally racist.

We can spot the "Bull" Connors types readily enough, it is the vast mass of kindly people hidden by 'Foucault's mirror' who do not accurately see their own reflections in the images before their eyes.

I think we are in agreement. It is in a sense that notion from Socrates that people do not willingly go to the bad, but it is our ignorance that leads our decisions to the bad and it is ignorance that leads people to defend such bad actions.
It is telling that Q anon has sucked so many in under the guise of saving children, that to follow Trump is to save America, that to own the libs is to save their livelihood. They genuinely believe they are on the right side of history.

[Montmorency]

No one had any idea how he would govern besides trying to kick out the Mexicans. With that being the baseline for people, if BUILD THE WALL didn't get the xenophobes all enthusiastic for him early on why the sudden popularity shift. So not only are Republicans really racist, but they are also that lazy about their racism? "I really hate this ethnicity and I love the guy who promises to remove them, but he doesn't look like he will win, so I guess I won't bother trying."

Yes, no one knew. I'm talking about common narratives that many Republicans in the base and in elected office held.

Moreover, it's easy to believe that the Republicans for whom racism, sexism ,and grievance were more salient - compared to plutocratic economics or abortion etc. - were the early adopters.

Indeed, Trump increased his support with economically-conservative people in 2016 who otherwise disliked the Republican Party for being anti-abortion and hyper-religious (they perceived Trump as the opposite). In that case it should be easy to see how parts of the Evangelical Christian base would have been hesitant about this Trump character at first.

You should try to account for the fact that Trump massively increased his popularity with Republicans after he won, and conclusively after his first year (that he spent shaking a stick on the world stage and going after Muslims and the ACA, while approving of a highly regressive tax reform).

Also, did anyone really think McConnell was not going to drive his judicial project?!?! That Trump wasn't going to just rubber stamp Mitch's picks?

Yes. This was much discussed among Republicans at the time. People thought of Trump as a libertine Democrat infiltrator!

Bro, come on... in 2012???

If you have had any familiarity with Fox News in 2012, in 2016, and since, or with its viewers across those times, then you will know what I'm talking about. They've gone from mere propaganda mill for Republicans to Radio Rwanda.

Well given the recent electoral success of the Lib Dems, it doesn't really seem like the UK can support a third party as well, but so it goes.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

Bet you $100 a proper UBI that dramatically decreases inequality will make all these fascists suddenly a lot more friendly to their neighbors.

I'm going to take what you're saying and take it in another direction. I could be convinced that, if the Democrats were to break Congressional deadlock in 2021 and start aggressively passing a whole raft of reforms without giving a , and could keep winning elections and maintain or accelerate the pace of reform for a couple cycles, then the more apathetic elements of the Right would get with the program. They would see Dems as more proactive and "winners," so even if they find it difficult to stomach the social consensus among the Dem base they would drift away from the gravity of the far-right wingnut camp. Maybe they would become swing voters, in large enough numbers as to permanently damage the national prospects of the GOP and leave it as an increasingly-violent and unhinged fringe party (like it has become on the West Coast). But that's a different argument than saying that economic inequality reduction would somehow pacify the modal right-winger.

I just don't believe the idea that 40% of the country are inherently racist. People think they are getting screwed over and its an easy narrative to say "those people are screwing you over" than trying to explain how globalized markets work.

There is more evidence for one proposition than for the other.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I don't understand what you're saying here.

The Lib Dems haven't been doing well since that coalition with the Cons. I think they only have like a dozen seats in the commons (when I first started watching UK politics they had like 60 something with Clegg) and for the most part are not trusted anymore by their base. Yet, they are still around. Well, I guess they were the only party that came out and said they would reverse Brexit, so maybe there is a role for them?

You should try to account for the fact that Trump massively increased his popularity with Republicans after he won, and conclusively after his first year (that he spent shaking a stick on the world stage and going after Muslims and the ACA, while approving of a highly regressive tax reform).

My accounting is that his actions were normalized and his rhetoric was adopted by mainstream conservative media. Republicans more or less were brainwashed, just like they were brainwashed about Obama. It happened after the election because as you say, many within the party distrusted him and were denouncing him all the way to election day. Once he won, then his voice became the voice inside GOP voters head.

If I recall correctly, on election day Trump's performance on total voter counts relative to Romney wasn't even that good. It seems to me that most Republicans simply did not care for him but once he won and became the leader, the propaganda machine became pro-trump and quickly turned them. I mean, we have talked about the data that shows GOP voters literally 180 flipping on many policies once Trump came into office, from bombing syria to the state of the economy. Average voters are not concerned with the judges, they (except for the single issue voters by definition) not concerned with policies. They operate on feelings, even the economy is just a feeling. No one ever actually checks the 401k and sees the facts that stocks are not doing better under Trump than with Obama: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019...ent/index.html

I'm going to take what you're saying and take it in another direction. I could be convinced that, if the Democrats were to break Congressional deadlock in 2021 and start aggressively passing a whole raft of reforms without giving a , and could keep winning elections and maintain or accelerate the pace of reform for a couple cycles, then the more apathetic elements of the Right would get with the program. They would see Dems as more proactive and "winners," so even if they find it difficult to stomach the social consensus among the Dem base they would drift away from the gravity of the far-right wingnut camp. Maybe they would become swing voters, in large enough numbers as to permanently damage the national prospects of the GOP and leave it as an increasingly-violent and unhinged fringe party (like it has become on the West Coast). But that's a different argument than saying that economic inequality reduction would somehow pacify the modal right-winger.

What I would try to convince you is that unbroken cycles of Democratic rule would produce policies of wealth transfer from the top to the bottom and the middle. Without the typical Republican sabotage of everything good that government does, such benefits would cool off many right wingers who live and breath Q-anon crap cause they are mad about their lives.

[Montmorency]

I don't understand what you're saying here.

The Lib Dems haven't been doing well since that coalition with the Cons. I think they only have like a dozen seats in the commons (when I first started watching UK politics they had like 60 something with Clegg) and for the most part are not trusted anymore by their base. Yet, they are still around. Well, I guess they were the only party that came out and said they would reverse Brexit, so maybe there is a role for them?

I mean, what are you suggesting about third parties in America with reference to LibDems?

My accounting is that his actions were normalized and his rhetoric was adopted by mainstream conservative media. Republicans more or less were brainwashed, just like they were brainwashed about Obama. It happened after the election because as you say, many within the party distrusted him and were denouncing him all the way to election day. Once he won, then his voice became the voice inside GOP voters head.

But this is a pretty notable development. Why did this happen?

If I recall correctly, on election day Trump's performance on total voter counts relative to Romney wasn't even that good. It seems to me that most Republicans simply did not care for him but once he won and became the leader, the propaganda machine became pro-trump and quickly turned them. I mean, we have talked about the data that shows GOP voters literally 180 flipping on many policies once Trump came into office, from bombing syria to the state of the economy. Average voters are not concerned with the judges, they (except for the single issue voters by definition) not concerned with policies.

Republican elites have been concerned with judges for 60 years, and it's trickled down to voters as polling shows. Republican voters very commonly cite "judges" as one of those single issues. This is changing under Trump in that Dems have come to see the courts as more salient than before.

But look at the three reservations I listed above. That the Republican base abandoned those reservations is not a function of propaganda per se, it's something objectively the case! Trump did win, he did govern as an orthodox Republican, with the exception that he was even more racist and sexist and lawless. The clear explanation is that the base loved the novel features, which were not the propaganda (though the propaganda did grow more intense and dangerous as I say) but the relative oversupply of bad behavior.

In other words, Republicans came to worship Trump because he reflected their truest long-standing values (of which there is plenty of independent corroboration over the years).

Why is Trump durably more popular with the Republican base than most other Republican politicians or the generic Republican? Because he's an open white male supremacist who triggers the libs. That's what it comes down to.

Thus the one factor I did fail to mention is that the confluence of all the above - grievance, cruelty, racism, sexism - is the thrill and desire to see the hated liberals and subgroups humiliated and punished. That's what they love Trump as man and president for, perhaps above all.

But again, the racism and sexism and cruelty and grievance are essential to that. The loyalty can't arise without those underlying factors. Republicans and their media were loyal to Bush the so-called "compassionate conservative," but not like this. It's not simply the case that Republicans have no underlying values or beliefs while being very easily tribally-manipulated. It's more the exact reverse in fact, that because they have these attributes and values they are more prone to embracing authoritarianism and especially to authoritarianism in the Trumpist cast.

The "economic anxiety" argument is simply discredited in this day and age.

What I would try to convince you is that unbroken cycles of Democratic rule would produce policies of wealth transfer from the top to the bottom and the middle. Without the typical Republican sabotage of everything good that government does, such benefits would cool off many right wingers who live and breath Q-anon crap cause they are mad about their lives.

Listen, naturally we have a shared goal in reducing inequality and we want to pursue it regardless for many reasons. If we become a premier social democracy, well-governed and respected, and that happens to convince the third+ of Republicans who have economically-interventionist beliefs to not be fascists, fantastic! Their deactivation would help create a virtuous cycle of permanent Left majorities, if only by blocking support from the GOP and any insurrectionist tendencies it may adopt, as opposed to directly persuading converts to vote for leftists. But there's little basis to predicate inequality reduction as a means to influencing Republicans, and even less of one to imagine that trying one more time to make an affirmative policy case to them before the act will acutely change their behavior or mindset.

Republicans are not economically anxious, as surveys repeatedly find, they are culturally anxious. Republicans are not mad about their lives, they're mad about other people's lives. That's who you have to be to be a Republican.*

*Besides pure upward redistribution

[a completely inoffensive name]

I mean, what are you suggesting about third parties in America with reference to LibDems?

So my understanding is that Lib Dem party take positions that make otherwise Labour voters vote for them, this causes Labour to lose more seats and doesn't really gain anything for the Lib Dems, as I said they have few seats but last election had 11.5% of total votes. This helped the Cons get more seats than they deserved per the popular vote.

My analogy is that if the Democratic Progressive faction believes that the Democratic Party is not giving them the policies they want, cause centrism or cause the conservative Dems/Lincoln Republicans are influencing the party, there is a significant chance they would splinter off as a third party depending on how good the majority leader is at doing their job. My original point is that we should be worried about who will follow Pelosi as majority leader, cause such mismanagement would give the GOP an opening to win where they shouldn't if Progressives go rogue. Do you believe the narrative that Bernie Bros potentially cost Hillary the election given how 80,000 people across three states made the difference? If yes, then can you see my point? If not, then disregard.


But this is a pretty notable development. Why did this happen?

I can believe your earlier points to the extent that the party apparatus including Fox and the other propaganda arms did not work explicitly for Trump because they were skeptical of how he would rule. I don't believe that logic comes into play for average GOP voters, to clarify. Once he got in and they saw how well he would advance the agenda, they started working to get the base to rally around him. They don't seem to have a hard time convincing GOP voters of falsehoods, I mean they convinced that poor old woman that Obama was a Muslim before he was even elected and she was so confused in the video when McCain said "No ma'm he's not."


Republican elites have been concerned with judges for 60 years, and it's trickled down to voters as polling shows. Republican voters very commonly cite "judges" as one of those single issues. This is changing under Trump in that Dems have come to see the courts as more salient than before.
As a methodological nit pick, when these surveys go out asking what your priorities are, are they are blank lines to fill in or are they giving voters a pre-determined list of choices and they are checking off judges? GOP propaganda has been bringing up 'activist' judges for decades now, so it is a common talking point. Let me flip it on you, if GOP voters responded to judges strongly wouldn't the better play for the election be to withhold the Barret nomination until after the election?


In other words, Republicans came to worship Trump because he reflected their truest long-standing values (of which there is plenty of independent corroboration over the years).
Why is Trump durably more popular with the Republican base than most other Republican politicians or the generic Republican? Because he's an open white male supremacist who triggers the libs. That's what it comes down to.

Because conservative media radicalized their base into white male supremacists. My notion is that propaganda is actually really, really successful. Especially when you have convinced people that every other news source is propaganda.

“I regret in a way voting for Trump. I really do.” She is still fuming about his do-not-sell-your home remarks in Youngstown. “He promised that nobody was going to have to sell their homes. He said they [GM] were going to stay. That’s why I can’t vote for him this year.”

Her sister still strongly supports Trump. “She says she’s going to put a Trump sign in my yard, and I told her, no she’s not.

“My sister says, ‘You should be watching Fox News. You need to be watching Fox News.’ I really don’t have time. If I’m not at the doctor’s, I’m watching my grandkid.”

Same situation, but one is still a true believer and the other has regrets. The only difference? Fox news.



But again, the racism and sexism and cruelty and grievance are essential to that. The loyalty can't arise without those underlying factors. Republicans and their media were loyal to Bush the so-called "compassionate conservative," but not like this. It's not simply the case that Republicans have no underlying values or beliefs while being very easily tribally-manipulated. It's more the exact reverse in fact, that because they have these attributes and values they are more prone to embracing authoritarianism and especially to authoritarianism in the Trumpist cast.
The anger is needed to turn out the base and the angrier you can make them the better come election time. They have no attributes except what the tv tells them, and the tv has been making them angry for a long time.
Monty, you probably know people who are still Mets fans. Tribal-identity is a very strong thing.


But there's little basis to predicate inequality reduction as a means to influencing Republicans, and even less of one to imagine that trying one more time to make an affirmative policy case to them before the act will acutely change their behavior or mindset.
I disagree, I think the current iteration of the Republican party that started with Reagan came in off of stagflation, when the economy boomed under Clinton we had Bush tout 'compassionate' conservatism like you said, when 07 happened we started to see the conservative culture get crazy and now with Corona we are seeing absolutely degenerate behavior. I think there is a link.


Republicans are not economically anxious, as surveys repeatedly find, they are culturally anxious. Republicans are not mad about their lives, they're mad about other people's lives.
Because culturally we dignify people based on their labor and their wealth. You cannot separate the two so cleanly.

[Hooahguy]

We should pray that Florida goes to Biden quickly because Trump is planning on declaring victory if it looks like he is ahead on election night and then try to get the courts to stop the counting.

However, we should all take a deep breath and try not to panic:

Trump’s blatant telegraphing of this strategy through leaks to Axios is a blessing in disguise. The public is now going to be hearing from the media about Trump’s plans over the next few days and learn more about why election night vote totals are not likely to reflect the final results if the election is close.

The strategy is not going to work. The networks and news organizations are prepared for this and Americans have learned to discount anything the president says. Most are inoculated from his lies about voting. And assuming there are no major foul-ups in how the rest of election day voting goes, it is hard to imagine any legal strategy that will lead courts to order a halt to the counting of ballots that have arrived before election day (even if there could still be litigation over late arriving ballots). So far, all of the Trump and Republican suits aimed at stopping the easing of voting rules during the pandemic on grounds of a risk of fraud have failed miserably, and any post-election attempt on these grounds should fail too.

The mantra for the next few days is: Count all the ballots arriving legally under state law. Ignore premature victory statements. Take a deep breath.

Due to all this fuckery, I am far more bearish than most others when it comes to the election. Right now I think its a tossup whether or not Trump loses. As I said earlier, I think it was incredibly dumb for the Biden campaign to push mail-in voting when they knew this summer that the postal service was being messed with. Not to mention, the propensity for mail-in ballots to be messed up skyrockets due to dumb mistakes like forgetting to sign the envelope and Americans are morons.

[Montmorency]

So my understanding is that Lib Dem party take positions that make otherwise Labour voters vote for them, this causes Labour to lose more seats and doesn't really gain anything for the Lib Dems, as I said they have few seats but last election had 11.5% of total votes. This helped the Cons get more seats than they deserved per the popular vote.

In principle yes, though IIRC from my rough postmortem of the 2019 UK election the LibDems only 'took' a handful of seats from Labour, and in a couple constituencies you could make the reverse argument (that Labour undermined LibDems).

The LibDems have generally not been a major party for a century.

My analogy is that if the Democratic Progressive faction believes that the Democratic Party is not giving them the policies they want, cause centrism or cause the conservative Dems/Lincoln Republicans are influencing the party, there is a significant chance they would splinter off as a third party depending on how good the majority leader is at doing their job.

This hasn't happened yet, and it can't happen because:
The LibDems exist as a party in the UK, because they have both national and local infrastructure and can get at least some seats up and down the ballot across the country. In parliamentary systems it is typically easy for third parties or even new parties to make some inroads. Third parties in the US essentially have no existence in terms of infrastructure or political representation because the electoral system is inimical to them.

The Democratic party has been around in some form since almost the beginning. The Republicans since the 1850s. The LibDems in the UK are coeval with the Republicans. All spent generations as major parties starting from their inception. The Green and Libertarian parties have never been anything in the United States, unlike elsewhere. Even the Socialists have had a more significant presence in elected office.

In our history there have been Independent movements, but they were almost always centered around a single personality (e.g. Ross Perot, Teddy Roosevelt) or single issue (segregation, Prohibition, farmers' populism).

Aside from the aforementioned considerations, there isn't even a paper constituency for an American third party to coalesce around; most Progressives identify their interests with the Democratic Party, to say nothing of the fact that the party has been moving toward them. There isn't even a premise of the party aggressively opposing their faction, around which to conjecture schismatism. (Very Online personalities who have always hated the Democratic Party don't count as constituents, nor are they demographically-significant.)

The more realistic threat, if the Democrats fail to deliver some goods, is of young people deepening in discouragement and disengagement and failing to 'grow into' higher participation to match the Boomers.

If not, then disregard.

I can believe your earlier points to the extent that the party apparatus including Fox and the other propaganda arms did not work explicitly for Trump because they were skeptical of how he would rule. I don't believe that logic comes into play for average GOP voters, to clarify. Once he got in and they saw how well he would advance the agenda, they started working to get the base to rally around him. They don't seem to have a hard time convincing GOP voters of falsehoods, I mean they convinced that poor old woman that Obama was a Muslim before he was even elected and she was so confused in the video when McCain said "No ma'm he's not."

The postulate of the individual Republican voter's entire ideology falling out of elite Republican signalling remains unsupportable. The segment of the base that was suspicious of Trump in 2016 was always a minority anyway! And many of those defected from the party entirely (i.e. true Never-Trumpers). The elites were concerned about Trump's electability in their residual constraint around notions of public legitimacy and proper behavior. By now they've learned that they can throw all that to the winds and go wild - their ecosystem will reward them and to hell with the mainstream.

That is, something that used to hold Republican politicians back was a belief that they couldn't go too far without losing support from the mainstream media and even their base. They still had minimal buy-in to democratic principles and ideas of restraint and respectability. As soon as they saw they were no such constraints or consequences to their behavior that they went full fascist.

The elites and the base have an epistemic symbiosis, often the base drives the elites, and the elites themselves - the current generation - have been entirely educated within the same ecosystem that you might characterize as being a reserve for the rubes; they share a worldview now more than ever.

As a methodological nit pick, when these surveys go out asking what your priorities are, are they are blank lines to fill in or are they giving voters a pre-determined list of choices and they are checking off judges?

This is a very typical sort of question included in dozens of polls and surveys, almost always in the format of presenting a list of options and asking the respondent to select 1 or more top issues, or to rate/rank each issue by importance. For example:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics...2020-election/

Let me flip it on you, if GOP voters responded to judges strongly wouldn't the better play for the election be to withhold the Barret nomination until after the election?

That's one possible strategic orientation, but it's just as easy to believe that they are impatient to seize the opportunity presented to them.

Part of it depends on what you think the short-term game is for Republicans. If you are Mitch McConnell and believe that Republicans are at serious risk of losing control of the government this year, or that a strong SCOTUS majority could help Republicans retain control, then it could make good, amoral, sense to ram through a justice.

Also, confirming Barrett triggers the libs.

Same situation, but one is still a true believer and the other has regrets. The only difference? Fox news.

Fox News is effective, but it can't work without a base. Fox News did not make the clay; it but molds it.

Fox News in the Age of Trump turns a bigot into a minion. But they had to be a bigot to begin with.

Your account does not accurately capture the history, and it's predictions would always seem to fail if applied retroactively or comparatively.

Tribal-identity is a very strong thing.

Except for the consistent and progressive realignment of voters between the parties over the past 60 years. Tribalism does not explain Republicanism in itself, and it cannot hope to. Look to the content, the value-system.

I disagree, I think the current iteration of the Republican party that started with Reagan came in off of stagflation, when the economy boomed under Clinton we had Bush tout 'compassionate' conservatism like you said, when 07 happened we started to see the conservative culture get crazy and now with Corona we are seeing absolutely degenerate behavior. I think there is a link.

John Birch Society. Affirmative action. Southern strategy. Political correctness. Forced busing. Pat Buchanan. Illegal immigrants. Welfare queens. Japanese ascendance. Iran-Contra. Contract with America. Watergate and the Chennault Affair. The War on Terror. Don't ignore the very long genealogy. The rot of violent oligarchic lawlessness has festered since before we were born. 2008 didn't start the fire.

The same people that helped cover up Iran-Contra were the ones Daddy Bush pardoned, to later end up in the Trump administration. The same people that helped Son Bush steal the 2000 election ended up in Trump's administration and - most critically - on his Supreme Court. And on that last point I'm referring to Barrett and Kavanaugh. Roberts too of course, but Son Bush rewarded him more promptly.

This is not a coincidence. History did not begin in 2008.

Because culturally we dignify people based on their labor and their wealth. You cannot separate the two so cleanly.

Then why don't other people with this unclassifiable sense of economic anxiety untethered to their real material conditions also respond by voting Republican? Why does Republican vote share among whites increase almost linearly across income quantiles? Why are there actually economically-precarious voters who vote Democratic? 85% or so of the Republican electorate is white. They are disproportionately religious and higher in income. There is something to all that.


One of the oddities of this exchange is, why would it surprise you that half of white people in the country are virulent bigots? The historical mean is much higher! A century ago it was nearly all of them. Elements of the Left have been persistently misled by this wishful thinking that reactionaries are potential socialists waiting in the wings. If true it would make the movement, so the impulse is understandable - but it is not true. There is not evidence for it. There just isn't. When you're putting together this story, you have to face down the concrete manifestation, right? It's not enough to stake a theory from ideology, the performance has to be measured. From a neutral perspective, how would someone generate the theory of economic anxiety, and how would they apply and measure it in our context? Once you try it falls apart. An alien anthropologist would not generate this theory. I haven't seen sound case for the idea that doesn't appeal to its convenience or optimism, and any that attempt to argue from data have been clearly refuted by now.

Like I said, its allure is obvious to me. In 2017-18 I was willing to give it a chance to bear fruit. In the end you have to reckon with all the evidence aligning against it. Best to scrap it along with the 2017 dismissal of calls to impeach Trump, on the grounds that Pence would be a worse or more dangerous president somehow.

The path of the Left cannot run through the Right but through absorbing and suborning the Center. Republicans believe they must retrieve "their" country from us. Your blandishments of social provision mean nothing to them, they can't possibly mean anything. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the worldview and priorities.

When that Lebowski fella talked about the tenets of National Socialism being an ethos, I don't know what he was supposed to be communicating - but it probably wasn't his openness to supporting the National Socialist program.

We should pray that Florida goes to Biden quickly because Trump is planning on declaring victory if it looks like he is ahead on election night and then try to get the courts to stop the counting.

However, we should all take a deep breath and try not to panic:


Due to all this fuckery, I am far more bearish than most others when it comes to the election. Right now I think its a tossup whether or not Trump loses. As I said earlier, I think it was incredibly dumb for the Biden campaign to push mail-in voting when they knew this summer that the postal service was being messed with. Not to mention, the propensity for mail-in ballots to be messed up skyrockets due to dumb mistakes like forgetting to sign the envelope and Americans are morons.

On the other hand, Trump may have played himself by enflaming Democratic turnout, as seen in the hundred million early votes, while hemming the core of his own support in reserve until the last minute. Most absentee ballots have arrived, and the vast majority of outstanding ones are in blue states!

The way to stop a coup is by mass direct action in the event, to raise the political costs to the coupers and to persuade paralyzed or undecided observers that they should not comply with illegitimate authority or directives. Particularly if they occupy a place within the civil or security services.

If the courts tell us to stop counting votes anywhere we have some authority over the canvassing or administration, we should reject the unlawful rulings and dare them to stop us. Sara Nelson and many of the national unions have also been in serious interunion discussions toward organizing a general strike set on the trigger of an attempted coup. I think we are prepared.

At any rate, as my calculations show North Carolina and Florida will very likely be declared for Biden by midnight Nov. 4. If the ratfucking moves forward in Pennsylvania or elsewhere amid that, they're going to fail miserably on all fronts while even Dianne Feinstein is liable to be radicalized. If their Supreme Court participates in any such move, the Roberts 6 are guaranteed to be sitting beside fresh colleagues in a few months' time.

Democrats are in array.