Current Affairs The 2020 United States Presidential Election

[Pittsburgh Footy]

And, not for nothing, but like @Pittsburgh Footy kind of intimated, I'll give a rundown of how politics used to be vs now:

Dems: we want a tax relief bill for the middle class because trickle down economics isn't helping anyone

Republicans: but we'll have a big shortage in our taxes, how will we pay for it?


vs now

Dems: we want Medicare for all because health insurance is absolutely killing our entire country

Reps: KRAKEN, ELECTION STOLEN, BENGHAZI



There have been 400 pieces of legislation passed by the House that have simply been ignored by Mitch McConnell. These people have no interest in actually helping anyone. Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill then, when he overrode Obama's veto of it, said "Obama didn't explain the ramifications of this" when it literally opened the US to lawsuits for attacks on foreign soil.

There is a massive and fundamental disconnect between reality and whatever world a lot of people on the right live in.

This

 

[coollino]

Those people believe what they're told. They're easily led. They're given a scapegoat for anything wrong in their lives and told the other side will make their lives worse by 'leaders' who are power hungry or grifting for money.

In short, Trumps' base are largely uneducated.

America Is Divided by Education

The gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.

www.theatlantic.com

If you just dismiss these people as idiots, they'll continue to be idiots and the problem never goes away, and they'll continue to find figureheads to reach out to for a voice. To use your "flat earther" analogy, what good has yelling at them that they're stupid ever done except increase their numbers? Or anti-vaxxers - actually dangerous - the more you dismiss them instead of reasoning with them, the more their numbers grow.

You fix that by giving wannabe dictators like Trump no ammo to fire. You improve their lives, reach out, reconcile.

Your ire shouldn't be directed at the everyday Republican voter - it should be at the people who exploit them. There's a huge difference between those two things. The vast majority of an electorate aren't the ones invading the Capitol; they're moderate who lean one way or another based on their personal circumstances.

It's not about being "gentle"; it's about being smart.

You could argue that Hilary Clinton calling Republicans/Trump supporters 'deplorable' lost her the election.

It was an unbelievably stupid thing to do.

 

[Tubey]

You could argue that Hilary Clinton calling Republicans/Trump supporters 'deplorable' lost her the election.

It was an unbelievably stupid thing to do.

Spot on. And to a lesser extent, Gordon Brown and 'Bigotgate'.

You don't have to agree with people to listen to them. You can disagree and reason back.

Compromise basically. It's an increasingly lost art, despite being by far and away the most effective way of winning and getting things done politically.

 

[Blues Harp]

Spot on. And to a lesser extent, Gordon Brown and 'Bigotgate'.

You don't have to agree with people to listen to them. You can disagree and reason back.

Compromise basically. It's an increasingly lost art, despite being by far and away the most effective way of winning and getting things done politically.

Try and reason back with scummy tories mate
go on to the Leave UK website and open your eyes..

 

[riddick]

I just saw this on reddit and it nails it:

Fox News pushed Obama birtherism and tolerated the claims that he was a secret Muslim. They told their viewers he was a far-left, anti-white radical with tyrannical aspirations. They depicted him simultaneously as a weak, effete, international laughingstock. They denounced his every word and action as that of an arrogant, out-of-touch “elitist.” They entertained every anti-Obama and anti-Clinton conspiracy theory without question.

They cheered every act of GOP obstructionism, hypocrisy, and corruption. They accused every Democrat of literally hating and wanting to destroy America. They told viewers that conservatives like them were being persecuted and silenced. They stoked fear of Muslims and immigrants. They claimed that all of the media was biased and false except for them. They warned that SJWs were threatening free speech. They denounced education and science as brainwashing.

They ran with every lie that came from the Trump White House. They assured their viewers that anything negative about him was fabricated. They attributed his every undeniable screw-up to the sinister “Deep State.” They played up the threat of Antifa and BLM. They played down the threat of COVID. They depicted cities as Mad Max hellscapes of violence and depravity. They screamed for months about voter fraud and “stolen election.”

They have spent two [Poor language removed] decades building their audience into a perpetually enraged, fearful, paranoid, hate-filled, anti-intellectual, reality-bending monster to attack on behalf of American right-wing.

And now they’re all shockedpikachu.jpg that their monster has turned on them, lumping them in with all the rest of the "fake news" media for being insufficiently devoted to their idiot god-king after the election, leading to plummeting ratings across almost all time-slots. I'd take some schadenfreude in the whole situation, if the whole thing weren't so terrifying at this point.

This is an entire network that runs on disinformation and conspiracy theories to undermine faith in the government. How on EARTH do you go against this?

 

[Tubey]

Try and reason back with scummy tories mate
go on to the Leave UK website and open your eyes..

You know, the only time a Labour leader attempted to appeal to centre-right Tory voters in the last... ohhhh... 40+ years... well, that resulted in the only Labour government we've had in all that time.

Every time they didn't, they lost.

So I don't think it's a bad idea to open up ideologically if you want to get into power and actually enact change.

Whereas not doing so just results in Tory rule and all their ideological excesses.

 

[LinekersLegs]

No, he should pick and choose his battles.

Obamacare is the perfect example of what I mean.

When introduced, it wasn't full on NHS, because that would have been intolerable at the time. But it was enough to cause, er... a bit of rage to say the least. Obama sunk quite a lot of political capital into it.

Over time, repeals failed, by the time Trump got in office Obamacare was ingrained enough to be indispensible. The roots had taken hold.

Now, in 2021, people have used it, saw the benefits, and it's not even an electoral issue. It's actually increasingly popular. Biden can now expand on it.

Poll: Obamacare More Popular Than Ever

The Affordable Care Act wins 55% support among the public - its “highest rating” since becoming law nearly a decade ago, according to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll.

www.forbes.com

It took a decade, but it's lasting, pretty much irreversible positive change. That's what I mean by incremental gains. Obama didn't go for the home run; he stopped at third base and waited for someone else to convert the big score later.

With climate change, it's honestly not the hot button topic you'd think it'd be in terms of controversy. There'd be some backlash sure, but it's an ever decreasing minority who deny it needs addressing and the actual impact of it won't be felt on daily lives in a visceral way. There's so many other issues right now that Biden rejoining the Paris Accords on Day 1 won't result in many eyelids batted IMO, bar from the usual airwaves shock jocks pronouncing American immediate doom etc. but that'd happen if Biden does anything.

I agree he should pick and choose his battles but I think you are barking if you don’t believe climate change isn’t a hot button topic in the US - even fuel economy standards agreed by auto makers are controversia!

And given the outrage that Obamacare caused, a plan that was originally based on the conservative group Heritage’s idea, I’m honestly not sure that a full NHS plan would have caused that much more and would probably have delivered benefits that a Dem politician could have campaigned for election on far quicker so I‘m not overly convinced by your core argument.

I believe that Biden should try to enact the agenda he was voted in on - there will likely have to be some compromise on the way especially given the narrow House and Senate majorities but I believe watering them down even before they get there would be a bad idea not just from a end result but also politically.

 

[Tubey]

This is an entire network that runs on disinformation and conspiracy theories to undermine faith in the government. How on EARTH do you go against this?

All media only exists to sell itself. If there was no appetite for Fox News, they wouldn't be influential.

Hence by what you just quoted, once they started to fail to cater to said appetite...

'...leading to plummeting ratings across almost all time-slots'

You go against it by making Fox News seem irrational to more and more people, by shifting the ideologically needle to the left little by little when you're in power.

It's not easy to do. There's no overnight solution. There's no point screaming in disbelief that people watch it.

 

[riddick]

All media only exists to sell itself. If there was no appetite for Fox News, they wouldn't be influential.

Hence by what you just quoted, once they started to fail to cater to said appetite...

'...leading to plummeting ratings across almost all time-slots'

You go against it by making Fox News seem irrational to more and more people, by shifting the ideologically needle to the left little by little when you're in power.

It's not easy to do. There's no overnight solution. There's no point screaming in disbelief that people watch it.

You know the ratings are plummeting because they are going even more extreme, right?

 

[LostLegend]

Apple Has Threatened To Ban Parler From The App Store

The social networking app favored by conservatives has been given 24 hours to institute a moderation policy.

www.buzzfeednews.com

They're still at it on Parler. Using the platforms 'free speech' to call for a full on armed insurrection on the 19th.

 

[Hickson9]

Trump permanently suspended from Twitter.

 

[Tubey]

You know the ratings are plummeting because they are going even more extreme, right?

Must admit I haven't watched/read much. But from your own quoted text...

... lumping them in with all the rest of the "fake news" media for being insufficiently devoted to their idiot god-king after the election

I thought that was the issue, like how they declared one of the states first for Biden etc.

 

[Tubey]

Trump permanently suspended from Twitter.

WAHEY!!!

 

[ChesterBlue]

These pricks using dementia as a insult Biden are truly disgusting, in my eyes it’s on a level of saying someone has cancer

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

I hope this was on purpose!

Someone's something or other.