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Questions from listeners, though I’m not sure if there is new material here…
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I only posted the article(s) as perhaps offering views worth thinking about. I think Bernie Sanders’ interview several posts upthread was clear on ‘as opposed to, whom’ - he was talking about the working class not seeing from Dems the things they needed to see. (I paraphrase badly, no doubt.)
I don’t think the point being made in those pieces was ‘disagreeing means telling others what to think etc’ it was more this (but it is difficult to find a short pithy extract from the Harris article to show this):
Around the world, in fact, the left looks to many voters like a coherent bloc that goes from people who lie in the road and shut down universities to would-be presidents and prime ministers – the only difference between them, as some see it, is that radical activists are honest about their ideas, whereas the people who stand for office try to cover them up.
What the US election result shows is that, when told to make a choice, millions of people will draw on those ideas, and ally themselves with the other political side. Many of them, of course, have arrived at that conclusion thanks to outright bigotry. But given the remarkable spread of votes for Trump – into Latino and black parts of the electorate, and states considered loyal Democratic heartlands, from California to New Jersey – that hardly explains the entirety of his win. What it highlights is something that many American, British and European people have known for the past 15 years, at least: that the left is now alienating huge chunks of its old base of support.**
My emphasis in the last sentence there. And whether we agree with why others are alienated by large parts of ‘the left’ or not, it remains the case that many people (e.g. those working class voters who appear to vote against their best interests) are turned off by it. Should they be pandered to? I do not think so. But it does seem to be a significant part of the problem that needs solving somehow.
(Maybe my permanent footer needs to be: Education, education, education.)
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This is where I call bullshit. People have forgotten how lukewarm support for Biden was. He overperformed expectations as president. Meanwhile, since the 2020 election, T**** led a failed insurrection against the US government and was convicted of 34 counts of felony fraud. He was going to get support from the MAGA crowd but he lost a lot of traditional Republicans on those two points. That’s not hypothetical; it’s fact.
There was a lot more enthusiasm for Harris than there was for Biden in 2020. These numbers don’t match empirical reality.
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Been saying this for a while now. We need non-authoritarian / anti-MAGA news sources / information channels. If we cannot offer people a reliable alternative (in multiple languages), they will continue tuning in to the manipulative sources that tell them exactly what they want to hear. The question is, which outlets haven’t been compromised and are willing to rise to the challenge of serving as the places to go for factual reporting?
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Okay, if there was shenanigans, then there will be evidence of said shenanigans… It could be true. But we also live in a racist, misogynistic country. That’s just the truth of it. We never did the work to end the cultural roots of racism and misogyny in this country, and Trump benefited from that.
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Here’s an interesting take on how he appeals to listeners who respond to his promises:
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There will be evidence. But are the right people looking for it right now? Because it does no good for it to come to light even 45 days from now. That’s too late. Given the speed that authorities went after T**** last time, it might already be too late.
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Respectfully, I haven’t seen the Trumpists demonstrate the kind of competence that would be required to pull off a multi-state election conspiracy affecting millions of votes.
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I don’t know… I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand, but as I’ve said before, actual conspiracies are often impossible to hide from the public, even if the conspiracists get into power. Even in places like Nazi Germany or the GDR, shit got out at the time…
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Two words: Peter Thiel.
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Regardless of Thiel’s personal competence he would still need many, many co-conspirators to pull off a multi-state election conspiracy. The more people involved in a conspiracy, the less likely it is to stay secret. Even for the short-term.
For the most part the billionaires aren’t bothering to keep their interference secret because they don’t NEED to.
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But most people use paper ballots… I’m not sure how Thiel can change votes that are already on paper…
and yeah, it’s STILL possible… and if there are issues, it’s less via that and more via the stuff with uncured ballots (which @chgoliz has mentioned with regards to her daughter’s vote). In many places, too, the count is still happening too (especially in CA). We won’t know the full vote count until that’s done, and that includes uncured ballots…
So… I don’t want to dismiss a conspiracy out of hand, but we need some evidence of such a thing.
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This feels a bit like saying that billionaires can’t pull off price fixing.
They have tons of money, ratfuckers & intelligence agencies types on tap.
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I agree with that… But I’m not willing to say that’s what happened here just yet…
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Price fixing is comparatively easy when a handful of self-interested parties are the ones setting the prices. And they STILL get caught doing that shit.
Changing millions of votes would involve a lot of people and could be exposed any number of ways. Not outside the realm of possibility, but as @mindysan33 not yet in evidence.
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And I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand, but I also want to understand what actually happened, and I’m not willing to say it must have been rigged, because… well, I know this country and I know that misogyny and racism can drive voters to vote against their own interests.
I don’t know…
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Also - if the Democrats were to throw trans folks under the bus, the bigots would immediately turn on the cis queer people. It’s been shown, time and time and time again, that this kind of appeasement will never work in the long term.
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