Comment by Ancapistani
1 year ago
With absolutely no malice intended: you step back a bit, lick your wounds, and try to figure out why your message and candidate failed - just like the GOP did for the past four years.
Four years feels like a long time when it has just started; it isn’t so long at all in hindsight. Moreover, you have two years before the next opportunity you have to disempower Trump (midterm elections). The campaigns for those start in a year or so, so if you’re going to cripple Trump by taking back Congress now is the time to be introspective.
The electorate is not irreconcilable, but change doesn’t happen when you double down on the same course.
Thank you for a non-malicious response, but (also respectfully) I am not a Democrat, and your response seemed to me more geared toward answering "How can I deal with policy changes that I disagree with?" I am more concerned about the potential for the complete capitulation of American democracy to totalitarianism than any particular platform issues. What's happening right now is only a small part standard disagreements between parties (the GOP banning trans athletes, rebalancing the budget, approaching foreign relations differently) and much more about half the country being entranced by a cult of personality while the leaders in a position to stop a president from becoming a king instead are bowing down to him.
> try to figure out why your message and candidate failed
I don't like Harris' message. I probably disagree with her on a majority of political debate topics. I am a centrist and would agree with her on some things, but I would have considered myself a right leaning centrist more than a left leaning centrist. Her message failed for me too. I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man? And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.
I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.
> I am not a Democrat, and your response seemed to me more geared toward answering "How can I deal with policy changes that I disagree with?"
Yep, 100%. My biases are showing :)
> I am more concerned about the potential for the complete capitulation of American democracy to totalitarianism than any particular platform issues. What's happening right now is only a small part standard disagreements between parties (the GOP banning trans athletes, rebalancing the budget, approaching foreign relations differently) and much more about half the country being entranced by a cult of personality while the leaders in a position to stop a president from becoming a king instead are bowing down to him.
Yes, I’m concerned about the risks I’m seeing too. Where I’m really struggling is in trying to connect that emotion to facts. So far, every headline, article, and statement I’ve seen has turned out to be somewhere between “misleading” and “outright malicious falsehood” upon closer inspection.
Still, I read and give each one a fair chance to change my mind. The accusations being made are so extreme it would be wrong for me not to.
What really concerns me is that this extreme partisan rhetoric would make it much easier for Trump or someone near him to actually take control. When people have seen months and months of these sorts of assertions being made, only to investigate them and discover that isn’t what was happening at all… at some point, people are going to stop listening. That’s when things get really dangerous IMO.
My biggest fear with this administration is that they’ll actually do the things they’re being accused of, I’ll see it for what it is, and I won’t be able to get anyone to listen to me because of “outrage fatigue”.
ETA: a second response is coming for the last section :)
I agree in the principle that extraordinary claims must be backed by fact and evidence.
I disagree that there is an excess of hyperbole going on.
I truly believe that Trump/Musk/Vance and the unitary-executive/techbro-cult, if they are not soon stopped in their tracks, will have subverted American political and economic power for generations.
Europe and Canada and the world can no longer trust the United States as a long-term partner. This isn't about subtle pivots and diplomacy. This is betrayal of values on our closest political, military and economic allies.
He is actively destroying the apolitical civil service and trying to gut the pipeline of young, skilled workers into federal government. The only motive for the actions they are taking are to destroy our government. I would not be shocked to hear reports in the coming months of military officers being asked who they voted for in 2024.
He is claiming (and trying to exert!) levels of executive power that generations of Americans were taught by Nixon were forbidden.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
"If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented and that means we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.”
These quotes should frighten every American.
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I get it. I think your fears are warranted. I appreciate your response.
As someone who currently studies public policy I find the centrist declaration interesting because I used to consider myself a centrist until I started reading more on the actual positions of many politicians.
In my limited view Obama was very centrist, as was Hillary, and with some notable exceptions it looked like Kamala would continue the trend (while expediently skewing left and sometimes even slightly right when necessary).
I think if you were to pie chart policy even into Trumps first term you’d see presidential action being both majority in volume and majority in impact as centrist.
So while I agree that Kamala’s messaging failed to point this out during the election, and DEI rhetoric and action being a notable exception to my argument, Kamala was at the end of the day the centrist candidate IMO and thus the 2.0 correction would be more transparency to that reality.
> I don't like Harris' message. I probably disagree with her on a majority of political debate topics. I am a centrist and would agree with her on some things, but I would have considered myself a right leaning centrist more than a left leaning centrist. Her message failed for me too.
I’m an extremist without question, just not the popular type. Think less “Donald Trump” and more “Ron Paul” :)
> I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man?
The alternative was someone with no obvious positions other than her predecessor’s, who was not elected by her party, and who was honestly just unlikeable as an individual for most people.
Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two: I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone (though I also don’t have sufficient evidence to believe he definitely didn’t), and I don’t think “only self interested” is quite right. I think his motivations are a bit more complex than that, and are more rooted in personal pride and revenge than anything else. I don’t think he intended to win the first time, and I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.
I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.
I don’t believe for a moment that he’s being selfless or altruistic. He’s acting out of self-interest, but not in the way most people would mean that statement.
> And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.
As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.
> I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.
I’d be happy with Obama v. McCain at this point.
Thanks, I am appreciating reading this discussion.
> Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two
So then you agree that he tried to overthrow an election? This is the wild part to me. I don't know whether his actions after losing the 2020 election were technically illegal or not, but in my opinion this was the clearest threat to America's peaceful transition of power I've ever witnessed. I thought "okay, this is at least 50x worse than Watergate, even Trump won't survive this." Then amazingly (to me), he won in 2024. My only hypothesis for how that happened is that 99% of people who voted for him believed his unfounded claims regarding the 2020 election. But you seem to be an interesting counterexample.
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Thank you, for both responses. There are little things we could quibble about further, but it's late, so I'm going to keep it short [edit: I failed] and then go to bed happy that you and I were able to have a discourse that felt respectful, well reasoned, and beneficial - something I've felt so lacking for recently. Despite being able to quibble about details, I understand a lot of what you are saying and agree with many of your points.
> As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.
The one thing I'd like to pick at tonight is this. I don't think many of the people who voted for him would have agreed with all of this a year ago, but they get stuck agreeing with it now out of confirmation bias and because he's on their team, and they want their team to win. It seems more like everything Trump does is approved by the vast majority of his base, no matter what that ends up being.
Before the election I enjoyed the debate between Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris[1]. Shapiro's main point was that though he didn't like a lot of what Trump said, he liked a lot of what Trump did in his first term. Shapiro was of the opinion that Trump wouldn't do all the things he said and that his second term would look a lot like his first.
It is my opinion that, a month into it, Trump's second term now looks nothing like his first, and Trump is making good on all the things he said he would do during his campaign. Everyone isn't Shapiro, but a lot of people listen to him and think like him. Taking Shapiro as an example, I would say he was clearly wrong. But if you watch Shapiro today, he accepts what Trump is doing full stop. He's not out there saying, "I didn't think Trump would actually do all of this." He's acting like this is what he wanted. And, thanks to Shapiro's confirmation bias and a good healthy dose of audience capture, it is what he wanted - at least the part about Trump being right, now that "right" has changed.
Anyway, I typed way longer than I intended to. Thank you for a good civil discussion.
> I’d be happy with Obama v. McCain at this point.
Fully agreed.
Good night.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTnV5RfhIjk&t=3s&pp=ygUWYmVu...
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>The alternative was someone with no obvious positions other than her predecessor’s, who was not elected by her party, and who was honestly just unlikeable as an individual for most people.
We used to live in a democracy, not a dimocracy. There were more options than the 2 major parties. Always have been.
> I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone
Yeah, and his name totally didn't show up in Maxwell's black book, and he totally wasn't a pal of Jeffrey Epstein. /s
You're fucking kidding me.
> I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.
My brother in Christ, financial enrichment has been the only goal of Donald Trump, ever. He ran in 2016 expecting to lose so he could use the base as viewers of the new Fox-alt media platform he was trying to raise money for.
This is a guy whose life mission is to convince everyone else he's a billionaire, while simultaneously threatening to sue anyone who claims he isn't, while also simultaneously avoiding lawsuits that would open his finances up to discovery. He tried to sue his own biographer when said biographer claimed he wasn't a billionaire. Trump dropped the case when it went to discovery.
>I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.
His first run was in 2000. His second run was 2012. Third run got him elected. His fourth run saw him defeated. His fifth run got him re-elected. Get your facts straight.
It’s not a candidate issue, when the media and messaging doesn’t get to the other voters.
If a scientist going up against a fraud, and the fraud wins the debate, then it’s not a debate.
This is what happened back when experts went to Fox and talked about climate change in the 90s.
They were simply obliterated. Even if a point was made, it would be killed and something else floated during the evening shows.
Because it’s not a debate. It’s not about truth, or democracy.
Trump dodged every debate after Harris came on the scene. He was not humiliated for this.
One team wants to win. The other team wants a functioning nation.
The electorate is functionally irreconcilable if the message never gets to them, and their party punishes bipartisan behavior.
And this is not what america was set up to survive. It was assumed that people would reach across the aisle.
Even if you win the next election. The ground work for Trump 3.0 and beyond remains.
People need to look at Fox News, and develop ways to get past their censorship and message curation.