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How is that relevant? How many lives need to be destroyed and how much does your democracy need to be damaged to bullshit and lies alone for it to be an issue?
I've only used his character and actions to highlight how manipulated and misinformed people have to be to still vote for him. That should be clear.
Go watch the interviews/campaign speeches and almost every article regarding the project before the election. There was no lack of warning about what was to come, anyone who was unaware either didn't care or was just another one of the misguided sheep. If you don't already think the damage done to American democracy on Jan 6th doesn't, by definition, have an impact on the average American then you have some other grave issue in your "philosophy". If you just don't care about democracy because you're some kind of brainlet tankie then RIP, waste of time.
Because you're trying to argue that it's something that has a direct material impact on the average person. Again, as always, you're getting distracted by moralizing, "This should be an issue" but that's not what we're discussing. The fact is, regardless of what people should or shouldn't care about, regardless of how bad a given event is or isn't, the fact is that people care the most about things that materially impact them or people they know personally. Inflation, therefore, is more important to the average person than January 6th, and if you go on and on about Jan 6 while failing to address their economic concerns, you will lose. Again, like what happened.
Again, it's not about what is important or what I think is important, you're getting distracted by moralizing. It's about understanding reality as it is. And reality as it is is that people care about things that affect them in direct, material ways more than things that don't, and January 6th had no direct, material impact on the vast majority of people.
You can whine all you want about how people "should" be more concerned about it, but all you're doing is railing against the realities of human psychology. It is what it is, not everyone cares about the stuff you care about, even if the stuff you care about really is genuinely important. You might as well complain about the laws of physics, maybe the universe would be better if the second law of thermodynamics didn't exist, but that doesn't really matter, because you can't change it, and, similarly, you can't wave a wand and get people to stop prioritizing their direct, material interests.
Understanding and adapting to what voters actually care about is what allows you to win elections which is what allows you to take power and address the concerns you have and keep the other side out of power. It doesn't matter what you think is important if you can't win.
You keep repeating this meaningless slogan as if we live in a world where morality doesn't exist or matter.
Agreed, not full picture though. Let me know in what way did Trump do a better job of addressing economic concerns given his already shit economic policies during his first term and his inability to communicate any meaningful plans.
But they don't genuinely care, because if they did they'd try to be minimally informed. It's all just based on emoting and slogans, It's all morons falling for braindead propaganda by bad actors.
Sure, but I'm not talking about anything related to morality. I'm talking about the way the world is and does work, not how the world ought to work. I'd be happy to discuss morality some other time, but when we're trying to understand physical reality, we need to be able to set it aside. But you refuse to do that. You aren't capable of looking at things objectively because you're always immediately trying to inject you opinions about how it ought to be.
He didn't do much, beyond positioning himself as an "outsider" as he does. Mainly, it was less than Trump did it right and more that Kamala did it horribly wrong. Inflation had had a direct, negative material impact on everyone in the country, and Kamala failed to distance herself from the Biden administration, which people assumed was responsible because that's when it happened.
And this is where you inject, "But Biden wasn't responsible," even though that's already been established and it doesn't really matter. People still made the connection and prioritized the issue, in both cases, because of how brains work.
Ok then, great, should be easy then. Just be a bad actor and get the morons to fall for your propaganda instead of theirs. Then you can get elected and address whatever concerns you like.
You can complain that voters don't care or aren't informed enough, but unless you have an actual plan to change psychology on a mass scale, you're just whining that the laws of physics don't work the way you want them to.
No, you're just trying to cleanly separate morality from real events as if this is a fucking video game. The moral fiber of politicians for example, is and should be a concern because it does have an impact in pHysiCaL rEaLiTy.
Oh really? was it Kamala that ranted about Haitians eating pets? danced for 40 min onstage to ave maria and ymca like a senile kook? She shouldn't have to distance herself from the Biden administration because the administration objectively did a good job. It's really hard for you to admit that people are just uninformed or misinformed by propaganda.
This is also another opportunity for you to realise that morality actually exists and is something to account for.
Even that statement is missing the point. "Is and should be a concern." You can be concerned about it all you want, but we're talking about how voters will and have behaved, and their behavior has clearly demonstrated that an insufficient number of people care about such things for it to be decisive. Should they care? I don't care whether they should care.
To clarify, sure, Trump's character has an impact on material reality once elected, but we're discussing voter behavior, which doesn't necessarily see that connection or care as much as they perhaps should. But how much they "should" care is an altogether different question from how much they do care.
Did those things have a direct, material impact on broad segments of the population? Maybe some Hatians faced more discrimination and were alienated, but that's a hell of a lot fewer people than were affected by inflation, so the impact it had on the outcome of the election was probably negligible.
And there you go again. Whether she should or shouldn't have to is irrelevant, you're drifting off into "ought's" again. Regardless of whether she should have had to, she did have to.
I already said that they were ages ago. In fact, I was the one who first pointed out that "a wave of global inflation caused incumbent parties in many countries to lose elections." You only assume I can't "admit" it, despite me explicitly telling you it, because you can't wrap your head around the fact that *even though they were uninformed, Kamala still failed to make the case to them." Again, unless you can wave a magic wand and cause uninformed voters to become informed, you're just complaining about how reality works.
I never said it didn't. What I said is that we have to be able to look at reality rationally and objectively without our preconceptions of what "should" be true getting in the way of things.
Also, I'm very confused about what you even mean by this or how it's in any way a response to what I said.
Yes, because they're heavily brainwashed by foreign and right-wing propaganda. Just waiting for you to finally concede this basic fact.
The fact that the candidate outed himself as a senile retard should have the material impact of shifting votes to the opposition.
And how exactly should Kamala distance herself realistically from the administration she herself was in? Do you think you can come up with some gem of an insight that all the top advisers failed to see? Cool
YES I AM. I'm not sure why you insist on pretending the current state of US politics is a normal reality that people are meant to just conform to, where you can still calculate what the right move is or isn't according to any kind of rules that make sense. It's completely fucked. Good faith politicians can't function normally in this dogshit environment where people think that random social media posts are a genuine substitute for real news, or spend their days listening to pundits who are literally paid by Russia.
THE WHOLE POINT IS HOW DISINFORMATION IS KILLING DEMOCRACY YES.
Sure, some people are, but the broader trend is people following their perceived material interests.
😑
I don't know why I'm bothering. It's always this "should" nonsense. It's completely irrelevant to understanding voter behavior.
It did not have the impact you want it to have because people vote according to their material interests, and Trump's various antics did not make them change their minds about which candidate was in line with their material interests. Because they were directly, materially affected by inflation, and not by "Trump dancing."
Of course I do. Those "top advisors" are the same incompetent morons that bungled the Clinton campaign.
You have to provide an alternative explanation to the right's narrative. When things are bad, people look for who to blame, the right tells them to blame immigrants, while liberals tell them not to blame anyone because things are fine, actually. It's no wonder people go with the narrative that actually tracks with their lives experience of material conditions. The solution, the way to answer the right's narrative, is to blame the rich, the billionaires who are hoarding wealth and price gouging and who were (in part) actually responsible for inflation. The democrats don't want to do that though because they would risk alienating their rich donors.
Even if they weren't willing to do that, Kamala was directly asked what she would do differently than Biden on the economy and had *absolutely no answer," which was an extreme political fumble. Saying virtually anything would be better than that. She is a terrible politician with poor political instincts, which is why she bombed out of the 2020 primaries despite being the frontrunner.
What I'm saying is that reality and the current state of US politics should be recognized for what it is. And it's impossible to do that if you keep injecting your ideas about what should be into analysis of what is.
Because you can. You just have to view things through a materialist lens rather than an idealist one.
I don't know why I bother. They didn't vote according to the REALITY of their material interests you dumbass, they voted according to their MISINFORMED INTERPRETATION of their material interests. WHY YOU ASK? Because the administration did objectively well MATERIALLY and NOBODY CARED. Trump is also OBJECTIVELY BAD for their MATERIAL INTERESTS, this is proven by both the FACTS of his first term and the DOGSHIT or NON-EXISTENT PLANS for his second term.
This is just a dogshit tankie take. Trump filled his cabinet with billionaires and was supported by the richest man on earth. Nobody cares about this "blame the rich" nonsense, evidently. It's clear that you just see everything through this trash tankie lens which is why it feels like I'm talking to a schizo. Hilarious that you genuinely think that you would've been better at coming up with a successful strategy for Kamala than people who do that shit for a living.
Ah yes, I know that in your world of non-existent morality this would've had an easy counter. But shitting on your current boss by making up nonsense about how he actually did things poorly (when he didn't) doesn't come easily for people who are more genuine/honest than you. Also, isn't the obvious answer to anything Kamala could say "why didn't you do/push for that policy as the vice president?"
I do recognize it as the piece of shit it currently is yes.
Engaging in and furthering the decay just to win isn't the way to go. Clear out the trash so that democracy can actually function. Ridding ourselves of this dogshit disinformation environment and returning to normal politics isn't "idealist", we've been there not too long ago.
I guess Bernie Sanders is a tankie now 🤣
I already explained this. When the options are, "You are struggling, and the reason you're struggling is minorities" vs "You're not struggling, it's all in your head, the economy's doing fine actually," people are inclined to listen to the narrative that tracks with their lived experience. If you want to actually compete with that narrative, you need another explanation of why people are struggling, ideally a simple one, and that's where a leftist narrative is necessary.
The idea of Kamala Harris being more genuine/honest than me is too absurd to even take offense at, it's just hilarious.
I guess you got what you wanted then. Kamala chose to fall on her sword and "do the right thing" and now you can pat yourself on the back for being on the side of the good guys while the right takes power and fucks up all the stuff you claim to care about. If we keep getting such "noble" people, then the right's dominance is assured for the foreseeable future. How important is stuff like Ukraine to you, really, if you're fine with that result? Seems to me you're fine with them being sacrificed as long as your side keeps it's hands clean.
Not that it would even "dirty her hands" to simply offer some kind of policy. The Biden/Harris administration was constrained by a divided government, she could've said they wanted to go further with stuff but were held back. Is that not the truth?
Also, for the record, my position is not that morality doesn't exist, just that you have to set it aside when assessing the world as it actually is.
Because the vice president doesn't have much power? Obviously.
Yes, we were there not long ago. And then we proceeded from that state into this one. Even if we could somehow return to that state, the root causes that pushed us into this one would still remain.
But you don't seem to have any actual plans for achieving the change you want in the first place. You just seem to want politicians to fall on their swords for no reason so they can be heroic martyrs and you can revel in your "correctness" about things. I guess I owe you an apology, when I tried to explain to you what could've been done differently in order to win, it was under the assumption that you actually wanted to. If you just want to whine about things not being the way you want them to, idk what to tell you, you do you ig.
If you're suggesting that she should've thrown Biden under the bus in her response, then it's not absurd at all.
Ah yes, all of a sudden voters are aware of the facts "oBviOusLy" lmao. Let's just pretend that whatever real or imagined failures of the Biden admin weren't successfully thrown onto her during the campaign. zzzzzzzzzz
It's more like “You are struggling, and the reason you’re struggling is minorities” vs the basic facts of how the country is actually performing and what actually caused inflation all over the world. Too many Americans are just too dumb and misinformed, that much is clear.
As I explained, she wouldn't have had to throw Biden under the bus, unless you consider "distinguishing herself from him in literally any way" to be "throwing him under the bus."
It was very easy to associate her with the real or imagined failures of the Biden campaign because she did nothing at all to distinguish herself from them.
Almost as if complex economic explanations either go over people's heads, don't reach them, or they don't believe them. I wonder if there's some kind of simpler, but also true narrative that would acknowledge people's struggles while blaming them on people much more responsible for the situation than random minorities. Something like, blaming the rich. But no, can't do that, because Bernie Sanders is too tankie for you.
Again, what is your actual strategy for addressing the problem of uninformed voters? I just gave you mine, yours seems to be "lose, but it's ok so long as you were right."
should be easy for you to give an actual example then.
No, it was easy because people are dumbasses and don't know basic facts like "the VP doesn't have much power". Again, she can't real distinguish herself much from her own administration if troglodytes aren't even aware of what a VP can or can't do. Trump literally just copy/pasted his critiques of Biden onto her and people ate that shit up lmao.
basic facts like how the economy is performing and covid caused global inflation is "complex economic explanations" now?
An example of her... not doing that? I already did, when she was asked in an interview what she would do differently.
Again, what's you're plan to account for people being dumbasses? If people are dumbasses, and you want politicians to keep running campaigns as if they weren't, then the inevitable result of what you want is that you lose.
Yes. How "the economy" is performing doesn't necessarily reflect on the average person's lived experiences as they watch prices go up and don't own enough stocks to really benefit from that. I don't recall Kamala ever actually bringing up covid as the reason for global inflation, which was probably smart doing so probably would've just increased covid skepticism, it would've played right into their hands. It's no surprise that the right was able to cut through that rhetoric by talking about the price of eggs and such.
I really feel like you're underestimating the challenge of communicating ideas to a broad population. Any message you want to communicate, you should imagine someone acting in complete bad faith trying to present you in the worst possible light and shouting over everything you say, because that's what cable news is, and it's also what political content on platforms like Twitch and YouTube are like, except then they don't even have to bring you on at all, they can go through clips and shit cherry-picking and taking things out of context. I can shout "YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY BECAUSE THE BILLIONAIRES TOOK IT" and that's a lot more likely to get through than like, "You don't have any money, but you could have even less money, and actually if you compare our inflation levels to the global median you'll see that it was actually unavoidable," which can easily be distorted and shouted down.
An example of how she could've distinguished herself successfully...
I'm not trying to present a plan. I'm trying to explain the sources of disinformation and how people were manipulated by them. The media environment needs to be fixed, but people have already been successfully manipulated into distrusting traditional media and trusting Russian bot farm accounts on Twitter instead. How to fix this environment now? God knows
I feel like I'm highlighting that, if anything.
I already did. She could've said that the administration wanted to do more about inflation but was held back by Republicans in Congress. She could've also pointed a finger at the rich and say that she would do more to confront them and stop price gouging.
Ok, well some of us actually do have ideas on how to win and haven't resigned ourselves to this defeatist martyrdom nonsense. So, like, maybe we should toss out your ideas at least for a while and give mine a try, since they involve a practical, coherent strategy adapted to the present situation which you have no answer for.
Like why on earth would I ever come around to your position if you can't even come up with a theoretical solution to the most important political questions of our time? If even you see your political project as a sinking ship, I'm sure as hell not coming aboard.
Ah yes, because voters clearly cared when it was pointed out that republicans blocked the border bill just to avoid giving Biden that win, on the orders of Trump.
Yes, voters were also clearly concerned about "eating the rich" when they voted for billionaires who are backed by the richest man on earth. Truly a guaranteed winning strategy. Genius, that's really a grounded take from someone who actually see's how "things actually are" rather than "ought to be".
Your "ideas" are shit, nobody cares. You're clearly incapable of identifying what's wrong in the first place so what chance do you have of coming up with any workable solutions that aren't just schizo tankie delusions lmao.
Who's "we"? Quit larping like a schizo, you're not the opposition rebellion leader lmao. Nobody's implemeting any of your tankie dogshit.