Comment by ronnier
10 hours ago
I think a large part of why they do this and vote the way they do is because of comments like yours. Hacker news, Reddit, award shows, movies, universities, etc all have a constant drum beat of disdain and hate towards them. I think this motivates them into voting even if the vote is against their own interest.
I think we're beyond the point of "you can't criticize them. That's mean and motivates them." At what point is the line drawn? Should it be in bad taste to criticize Orban supporters because it makes them support him more? What about Erdogan? Putin? Kim Jong Un? And why is it one sided that they can't be criticized, but it's all fair and good for their own leaders to demonize everyone? It's a silly double standard and people see through it now. Concern trolling stopped being effective years ago.
If you want to win elections, yes. You never convince voters by telling them that they are evil people. Its fine to say Trump is evil, its not fine to say Trump voters are evil because those voters will now be much less likely to vote for you. They can't take back their votes, they already voted for Trump before, so they will just not vote for you when you attack them like that.
Republicans have been calling democratic voters baby-killers for the entire time I have been aware of what a republican is. This sort of behavior has only gotten worse over time. They still manage to win elections.
I get that there are real asymmetries here, but I really don't think there are substantial blocs of swing voters who use "who has insulted them less" as a real factor. If that were the case, Trump would not have made the gains he did in 2024.
The important thing is to make people feel welcome in your coalition. It is clearly possible to do that either with or without being nice. It's just a different skillset.
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What you say is insightful and true. The west, America in particular, has a genuine problem today with its politics of polarising people to extremes. It partly has to do with how politics is done online in the internet, through the creation of "echo chambers" where no "dissent" is tolerated.
Dems have tried the strategy of pandering to republicans for decades. That strategy in 2024 backfired and made Dems not care about the election. The whole time republicans ran a campaign saying that blue haired democrats are harming kids and they're burning down cities and someone needs to lock them up all up. Republicans had a great election year.
Again, one sided. People are tired of it. More importantly, people are growing tired of the tolerance for the people who support the current happenings. Look around about what people who stayed out of the 2024 election said and it's that Dems were milquetoast and tried to be friendly and play both sides. Look around and see why republicans were fired up to vote. It's because they loved the demonization of Dems.
The funny thing is you can criticize the supporters. It's no problem. You can criticize Bush voters and everyone will agree with you. Why? Because nobody voted for Bush. Yet he won two elections. Meaning those people regretted their vote and now completely hide that they voted for him. They also retroactively hate the Iraq War, despite supporting it in 2003 and saying anyone who opposes it is unamerican. But those people will now say Dems started the war.
Trying to pull those people over is like trying to wrestle with a greased pig. No kind words will ever be enough to grab them. They're incredibly loyal to their side no matter what, and will deny ever supporting it the moment social pressure builds up too much. But interestingly, they also respect anger and vitriol against those they feel betrayed them. Republicans loved voting for Trump because he said he was against neocons and the Iraq War and all those people who voted for them. If Trump ever falls out of favor, those people who once supported him won't be begging for leniency. They'll put on a new hat and demand revenge against him and his supporters. They don't want a both aisles softy. They'll just pretend they were always against him.
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I'm not about to bite my tongue for this absurd cowardly fallacious reason.
Everything Trump has done since he was re-elected made Democrats hate him more, and more publicly, and you know what, despite that Trump's ratings have steadily fallen.
If your thesis is true, you'd expect Trump's ratings to go up.
As far as I can see, partisan hatred doesn't matter, because pretty much everybody speaking and listening to such rhetorics have already made up their minds. The battle is fought in the middle, and these people don't care about latest Truth Social posts. They care about the price of gas.
Trump fucked with the one thing people will not forget about, because their livelihood depends on it. It's going to be... interesting.
One third of Americans voted Democrat.
One third voted Republican.
One third did not vote.
I hold the last group most responsible.
One group voted for nicely speaking tax free zillionaires. Another one voted for hate speaking zillionaires.
Third one didn't want to vote for zillionaires.
Perhaps next time there'll be someone to vote not representing the zillionaire-class?
It's hard to blame it on people not voting for options that suck and do not represent their political stance.
Everything republican party do and everything republicans vote for ... are fault of the opposition. Always. Republicans are little helpless souls having no choice but cause maxinum harm as long as opposition in any for exists.
Look at what that party collectively stands for now, who they kick out and who they keep. They all stand behind trump.
I learned recently that there's actually a name for this concept. Murc's law states that in American politics, only Democrats are assumed to have agency.
Presumably democratic reforms could help change the dynamic if they changed the incentives. Right now, it's a politically viable strategy to just obstruct the other party when out of power, and politically unviable strategy for Congress to oppose a president from the same party. Both of which lead to a lot of dysfunction.
As an example, if Congress had multimember districts with an appropriate voting system (e.g. ranked choice voting for all members at the same time), then you can effectively nullify the power of gerrymandered voting districts (the current system, where effectively politicians choose voters rather than the other way around). Doing so would elevate the influence of general elections over party primaries. Then representatives would be less afraid of challenges in those primaries, which is currently one of the major disincentives in opposing the president of the same political party (fear of being "primaried").
That is just progressive vs conservative, ie changing things vs conserving things, humans are biased to conserve things unless the set of changes are overwhelmingly better.
So conservatives win when progressives push for too many changes, not changing things is the default. So saying that the democrats lost the election by pushing too fast is not weird, that is just how humans works.
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Unironically yes. I lived in the Seattle area and witnessed firsthand the effects of state/county/city Democrat rule. Gifted programs cancelled, streets full of homeless and drug addicts. Hateful people yelling at and flipping me off as I take my kids to daycare for the heinous crime of driving a Tesla. I’m a well educated highly paid minority, the kind of voter that Democrats take for granted. I voted Republican down the ballot last election.
Are you familiar with the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face”?
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You witnessed the firsthand effects of NIMBY rule, which both parties have in abundance.
Well let me be the first to thank you for the extra dollar a litre on my fuel, the extra hundred or so dollars a month on my mortgage and the impending recession that your choice has imposed upon me here in Australia.
Thanks so much for voting in Trump and his enablers.
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So, you did not voted for centrists and chosen to vote for nazi salute throwing radicals ... because there are non meek leftists groups.
The only way to win against Trump voters like you is to ignore them, because people like you will choose nazi until nazi are the only game in town.
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That's a completely intellectually bankrupt argument that blames good people for the actions of bad people. It doesn't have a shred of fact or logic to support it.
Bless your heart, you're doing the cartoon.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-Y...
Why are all the Democrats Fox News (and the actual President of the United States himself) does a "constant drum beat of disdain and hate towards" not doing the same thing? Why is this only a concern on one side?