Good news, but whoever runs for the Republicans will be a trumpist
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The Far Left, aka The Squad, and their ideology have been getting absolutely hammered.
The Democrats are likely to lose many many seats in November
Unsurprisingly those who claim to love America are those who actually hate it the most.
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How is that the case?
Biden hasn’t implemented their ideas at all. He’s reneged on student debt, healthcare, minimum wage etc.
Tell us one ‘far left’ idea that Biden has pushed through.
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Which is a great representation of US politics and media coverage of it, as the criticisms have almost zero basis in what has actually happened and what people have done.
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Now, how do you see this is going?
The GOP has a several generation history of using suppressing votes as a key tactic in the electoral strategy. They have relatively recently learned there is no penalty from saying the quiet part out aloud and so have started becoming publicly open about it. They are no enacting laws to bolster the strategy. And yet people are like “the party who thinks they cannot win if people vote are enacting laws to prevent people voting, but Nate Cohen and David Brooks say it wont stop people having a vote counted”.
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Since I have lived here in America the Republicans have a lot of form for gerrymandering districts to defeat the black and Hispanic vote, and they also have form for adding requirements for voting that make it unduly difficult to vote, especially in minority neighborhoods. It all serves to suppress the vote, and the rationale given is to weed out corruption in the voting process, which is not a problem.
The Republicans have two options if they want to be in the game moving forward. Broaden your tent, win hearts and minds and win elections.
OR
Generate a culture of fear, along the lines of the country is changing, they are taking it all away from us…. and then gerrymander the crap out of it, and suppress enough voters to try to win elections that way.
Statistically they will become a party of yesterday if they keep on like this. The country is changing, and I think the Republicans have one, maybe two cycles left in the current guise, and if they don’t broaden the appeal they will become irrelevant.
They lost the last Presidential election by 7M votes. You can try to close that gap with all the dirty tricks you like, but ultimately, one or two more cycles maybe, you will fight a losing battle when you don’t have the demographics.
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Great article on why AOC and the Far Left is a disaster for the Democrats
The Liberal Patriot. Just from the name of the website it is obviously not an unbiased source.
Quick look at the front page…
“What Conservatives Get Right About Politics”
“Climate Catastophism is a Loser”
“Think Spacially, Not Racially” (Major yikes by the way…)
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I think it is true that AOC and and the squad turn off a large contingent of the US electorate who might otherwise be inclined to vote for a Democrat. The issue is the stated concerns are based on what they have heard people say about them not what they’ve actually done or said. And I think that pretty much sums up US politics right now.
CRT in schools was a completely fabricated issue based on a lie about what it is and how schools were using it. Yet, the story, or at least the way the story was covered (with legitimacy given to the anti-CRT arguments) generated real feelings of concern in swing voters. Once people care about an issue, even if fake, you cannot sway them by telling them their fears are illegitimate. Yet too many people are content to win the intellectual argument by dunking on the anti-CRT position by saying shit like “CRT isn’t taught in school”. What voters hear then is that their concerns are ignored by the “elite” and causes them to double down.
Politics is not about what is true, it’s about what people feel is true. Democrats are too focused on treating the criticisms of them as based in reality which when they are not means there is no avenue for improving the situation - If AOC talking about the defunding the police is hurting other candidates then asking her to stop will do nothing if she has not in fact advocated for it.
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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on CRT. (Geolock to US)
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While being understandably hesitant to get my confidence up again that he completely obvious self evident illegal thing that happened in fron of our faces will be treated as an actual illegal thing, this seems like big news
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/02/eastman-pence-trump-jan-6/
Interesting that the headline and lede in this piece are not entirely consistent, the former putting distance between the finding and rump himself and the lede explicitly including him.
I dunno, he just seems to get away with anything, no matter how egregious.
I wonder how electable he’ll be now though, with his blatant arse licking of Putin.
If only the Dems could be trusted to put up a credible, electable candidate…
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Do a majority of people in the US specifically care about Putin/Ukraine?
Probably not much, but it’s not a good look to be cosying up with your country’s enemy.
Trump was twice impeached and there’s a long list of other stuff he has done that would have sunk any normal politician. The Jan 6th stuff won’t stick. It should, and I want it to, and I also want his finance crimes to stick too, not to mention the two things he was impeached over.
But normal rules don’t apply to this one, and the country has gone bonkers.
A few weeks ago Pence had the audacity to say Trump was wrong. And Mitch the slug face McConnell stands up to him a tiny bit too. But basically there is an orbit around Trumpy with the unwritten rule that everyone should kiss his papal ring.
He enabled Putin, but clearly Putin has the goods on him, so he will continue in that.
I do believe America cares about Ukraine, and is sending reinforcements, but crucially not to Ukraine but to surrounding NATO countries to help contain it. Sanctions and so on will play out, but I don’t think the sanctions will go as far as they might, as politically Biden needs to watch the economy, especially inflation.
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Everyone I know is very invested in what is happening - but then again I am on an Air Force base so most people are just wondering when/if they’re getting sent over there.
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People are watching/interested. Mostly i think we’re scratching our heads trying to figure out what exactly Putin thinks he’s going to achieve. What’s his end game, and will he manage to draw more countries into war?
We’re all as confused, interested, and upset with what’s going on, with the caveat that it’s more like we’re peaking over the fence into the neighbors yard watching what’s happening instead of watching events in our own backyard. The refugee crisis won’t hit us the same way it will hit Europe, and nobody wants a world War, but we’d all like to take down Putin, so it’s a bit complicated because those thoughts don’t really jive.
Thanks for the reply.
I guess the point I was trying for is the following - which may or may not clear things up…
In Europe it is seen as, “this is a terrible catastrophe” - across the board, people and politicians.
In the US, people will be interested but it is largely a shrug of the shoulder and back to “what are the gas prices!?”, “that Marjorie Taylor Greene…” and so on.
I hope this doesn’t escalate further but it is starting to feel like we (i.e. the rest of Europe), by not doing anything, are becoming an accomplice to this atrocity.