Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning. She’s been holding rallies nonstop with Tim Walz & not making her talking points about her race or gender like Hillary. She’s offering expanded healthcare, reinvestments back into public housing, wants to take on corporate greed, protect reproductive rights and chose a pro labor, pro education running mate.
Yet, she’s either barely leading or ties in most polls with a guy that:
Is a convicted felon.
Liable Sexual Predator.
Gets sentenced in November.
Has several more pending cases.
Increased Drone Strikes by 300%. (Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore).
Illegally killed an Iranian General unprovoked with a missle strike.
Increased tensions in Israel/Palestine with the Abraham Accords.
Wants war with Mexico (his words).
Tried to coup Venezuela.
Will bend the knee for Netanyahu’s potential war with Iran.
Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).
Obvious tax cuts for the rich.
Told people to drink bleach during the pandemic.
Is the main driving force for America’s current division.
Constantly attacks marginalized groups.
Tried to steal the 2020 election (Find Me 11,000 votes in GA).
Did Fake Elector Slates to pressure Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election.
Caused a riot on the capitol that lead to his OWN supporters dying.
Just got washed by Harris in the last debate, was completely unprepared on anything but immigration (“I have concepts of a plan”).
And so much more. So seriously what is it? Is it just the attraction to bigotry/racism? Is it to end “wokeness”. Is it because Kamala is a woman of color? You can’t use the both sides argument like Hilary or Biden, Kamala is the obvious better choice. Could you imagine if Kamala had as much baggage as Trump? The media would lose their minds.
Seriously, how the f*** is this guy still in the race?
Nothing I’ve read has ever explained Trump’s appeal like this article.
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
Nothing in there makes a cute soundbite. “They’re racist!”, is far easier than having to digest what the author lays down.
Seriously, read it. It’s important.
It’s a good article. It explains rural America. It doesn’t explain the well off assholes living in Huntington Beach CA. It doesn’t explain the well off assholes living in suburban Inland SoCal. It doesn’t explain rich privileged shitheads like Musk and Thiel.
Those guys just don’t want to see the US go the way of Europe where scorched-earth capitalism has been tamed and extreme wealth is taxed extremely. They are wealthy beyond avarice and STILL don’t feel they are free because they come up against regulations and institutions.
They capitalize on the rural Trumpism because it is the path most likely to lead to unchecked capitalism. Remember, the US isn’t like Europe - yet. And It will take a lot of work to get it there. All those rich guys need is a government that will do nothing. So not only is tax-cut Trump their friend objectively, he creates chaos. And chaos prevents action. Rancorous divisiveness means a logjammed national agenda. Which is all they want: no action. Look the other way while they rape the world.
People like Musk are cynical, attention-seeking manipulators and narcissists. They aren’t afraid that their way of life is being threatened, they’re using the fears of others to further their own ends, and consider themselves above it all.
That article was the most cogent take I have seen on this subject. I have a similar cultural background (rednecks and urban, religious Polish-Americans), but see myself as a science-literate atheist. I have seen this first-hand, but wasn’t able to articulate it as well.
That was from before we knew better. We’ve seen since then that it is indeed racism and hatred that powers the Republican base. That’s why the GOP doesn’t need to have any real policy laid out anymore. They just have to promise to hurt the “right” people this time around. Any sane Republicans that existed then are voting Democrat now.
The problem with that argument is that 80% of people live in cities. There are not enough rural people for them to be a majority of the Republican party.
In america, land votes more than people. We have the electoral college, the senate, and gerrymandering. Rural areas by design have wildly outsized power. This was done intentionally to preserve slavery
That was an amazing read.
I’ve read this article when it was posted before and my impression is it does EXACTLY the thing to non-rural voters as it warns the reader about doing to rural voters. I can quote the bits if you are going to force me to read it again, but I don’t see how anyone can fail to see that.
It also doesn’t change the fact that the party who might actually make their lives better is NOT the one they are voting for.
Jason Pargin is a goddamn hero.
Fun piece. I don’t know about best explanation ever.
It starts out talking about how movies idealize simple honest people from the heartlands (Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Braveheart) but then says:
the whole goddamn world revolves around them. Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes
So which is it? Does pop culture feed rural America’s sense that it is “Real America” or does it make them hillbillies?
As if explaining politics through TV and movies isn’t reductive enough, it can’t seem to keep its own story straight for ten paragraphs in row.
Good read thanks
Good read. Thanks!
I feel like this is just gift wrapping being a dumb racist hick in prettier paper. They are scared of cities because their full of black people, gays, and Mexicans. They like assholes who show the same level of hate as they do - who will keep the black people, gays, and Mexicans away. And they like someone who justifies hiding behind religion so they can tell themselves that God made them this dumb and rascist. So they can delude themselves into thinking they are really the good guy.
This explains a demographic analysis without explaining anything meaningful or unique. The article could be about any post-Regan Republican campaign (such demographic analysis is used by all modern campaigns, on bith sides), so it wasn’t a satisfying article. Combined with all the pop culture references, it comes off as quite immature and an unextraordinary explanation. Mediocre.
Great read. There’s 70+ million people out there choosing to vote for Trump, why? Even if the answer is complicated you can’t dismiss them all outright.
I see a decent amount of comments painting all republics with one brush. I think it’s low effort and unproductive.
Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).
Obvious tax cuts for the rich.
That’s all his financiers hear.
Constantly attacks marginalized groups.
That’s all his voters hear.
Everything else goes in one ear and out the other, muddied up with enough “whataboutism” and “both sides” rhetoric from the financiers to keep the voters form actually considering alternative options.
If the race were between The Literal Devil ® and Jesus Christ (D), the vote total would be 45%-55% just based on the letter they choose to run after their name.
Policy doesn’t matter when people base their entire personality on their political party identification.
Jesus was a socialist Jew. We had one of those run for President, too, but couldn’t make it past the Democratic primary.
But see how evil he looks…
/s
He got my first D primary vote… but NOT MY LAST.
Amen, preach it!
needs more puppies and rainbows
If you completely forget everything about Bernie; who he is, what he’s done, how he speaks, everything; he does look like a CEO who would lay off half his staff for a discount on a sandwich. But thats more because he’s an old white guy in a suit and they all look like that
He has joyful eyes
Jesus is a Mexican name. Check mate.
Closer to 50/50 with the electoral college.
And it pisses me off that people will vote for the dipshit because he’s an R, but i would vote for a half-dead horny toad on the other side.
Republicans have been taught to ignore reality and give in to their hatred.
Despair is also a key party platform. The more hopeless someone is, the more likely they are to invite catastrophic change like Trump promises.
I would say that all Americans were. Republicans/conservatives overachieved however.
I think you’re correct. We were taught about manifest destiny but not the genocide of Native Americans, and that’s just one instance of the institutionalized racism we were taught was good. SO MANY PEOPLE never grew out of that or tried to be better.
Well we were taught about the trail of tears as a thing that happened a long time ago. But it’s all good now. But my family having strong tribal connections. Tribal leader on my father’s side a couple of generations back. We’re all on the official tribal rolls. And I was old enough to have gotten the reparations doled out in the 1980s for what happened to my great great great ancestors. A whole $10,000. Which is better than a kick in the teeth. But definitely not any sort of compensation for what was stolen.
So I knew about the Indian schools and some of the other heinous shit that Canada and the United States had pulled unlike so many others. But even I was surprised to learn that they were still current and operating well within my lifetime. People treated as if it’s a long ago solved problem. There are people still alive and well today that have families destroyed or lost family because of it. And there’s plenty of other shenanigans. Probably the most depressing part is that United States and Canada weren’t all that alone. Heck China is more or less doing it today. To cultural groups whose identity differs from the Vanguard parties chosen monoculture.
It’s as if this nation has deep internal divisions following a badly wrapped up civil war that have metastasized into irreconcilable worldviews.
So this is a community for venting and asking rhetorical questions now?
how else could the Democrats win?
every election they pander more to the right and if someone does not run that is worse what would they have to campaign on?
progressive politics?
Many Conservatives have been conditioned to stop looking for facts and believe what the TV tells them. Trump admitted as much during the debate. When challenged on the cat thing, he dismissed the reporter’s research and said that he believes it because he saw it on TV. His voters will, too.
Roger Ailes was Nixon’s media consultant during Watergate, and the lesson he learned was that if the media was on Nixon’s side, he could have gotten away with it. Ailes went on to run Fox News. That is no accident.
It’s honestly madness.
The former President, running a multi-million dollar campaign, with access to the best information in the world, has nothing to say but rambling “but the TV said, but the TV said!”
Just an absolute fool.
But he’s always been like this. He had the world’s largest intelligence apparatus at its service, but didn’t believe what they said when it contradicted what his buddies Vlad and MBS told him.
Oh I agree, you just want to believe that even the world’s stupidest person could eventually learn something. It’s not like this is a case of him being deliberately obtuse, which we often see, he truly believes his own nonsense.
Conservatives who are capable of good quality research, and honest self-reflection barely exist because those two qualities often destroy their affiliations to modern conservativism as it stands today.
So some become neocon-neoliberal hybrids, others become economic Libertarians or Fascists in sheeps clothing, but most, are just as they seem - people who feel betrayed and shut out by the prevailing liberalisms of the day (often personified in the form of an ex-wife, ex-boss, or minority on the street), and it’s something they don’t want to investigate or research honestly.
In fact, most conservatives of this “follower” ilk, are deeply and psychologically invested in their sickness, in maintaining their “honest dogma” as it explains past traumas and the state of their lives in easy and convenient ways.
Get them together in groups and it becomes a self-reenforcing system. Self-propagating. It’s a self-sustaining set of problems and problem mindsets.
Some for conspiracy theorists, gets to be a real problem when they get a platform too.
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It’s his next chance of avoiding prison. Also pride.
Brainwashing most simply.
This video explains it all in 19 words. Democracy relies on intelligent, informed choice. Republican voters typically lack one or both.
ignorance-based fear.
lot of that in a geographically isolated country with poor education.
Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning.
There’s a few major flaws:
Trying to out-flank republicans on the right with immigration and crime; instead of counter-messaging that republican claims of migrant crime are false and migrants commit less crime than average, and crime as a whole is declining, her campaign promotes how tough she is on crime. This is essentially campaigning for the republicans. The people who are terrified of immigrants and criminals are voting republican.
Trying to out-flank republicans on the right in foreign policy. Harris can promise rivers of Muslim, North Korean, and Russian blood, and the people who want that will still vote republican. Talking about how lethal the US military will be and how hostile the US will be to other countries decreases turnout. War is not popular. Trump’s campaign is already hitting Harris on supporting the genocide in Palestine.
Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore
Money and bigotry
