American democracy health thread

One ethnography I read as a grad student in the early 90s focusing on Bolivia was We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines. Don't remember much about it, however.

 

That is a simple fact indeed. One can argue that the rich oligarchs, wall street high rollers etc may be "smart" to support the GOP, since there can get massive tax breaks and other measures to help them grow their assets. However, that is hardly the case for the "masses", blue collar workers etc who will be at the short end of this incoming authoritarian regimen actions and decisions.

 

The mines are the birthplace of the current Bolivian syndicalism. We probably have the strongest syndicalist tradition in the world. The next chapter after the mines was "relocalization" where the miners moved to more tropical climes and many eventually became coca farmers. Evo Morales himself is part of this.

 

Yeah but people can't name 3 branches of government? If the pres and vp die in a plane crash who becomes president? How does a law become a law? The guy that doesn't understand Inflation or tariffs, vote counts just as much as mine but that doesn't make him educated. You want to call it elitist when it is asking people to understand civics and how the country works? You get the vibes economy and all this nonsense. I didn't realize asking for decisions to be based on facts and data and not feelings based on what they heard on am radio or a podcast, is elitist.

 

Power talks and the vote is power. Regardless of what the actual planks of the platform uneducated voters are very smart at detecting undercurrents or, as you call it, vibes. Candidates can put out the smartest sounding plan in the world and many voters won't be able to understand it but they sure can figure out who the candidate spends time with. The Democratic party has absolutely taken the blue-collar vote for granted and cozied up to rich donors and voters picked up on that. A lot of those voters had split tickets so all is not lost for Democrats. Complaining continuously about their education level is a great way to permanently lose those votes.

 

Trump, JD Vance, Musk, Peter Thiel ...

"Cozy up to rich donors" vs put actual billionaires and venture capitalists on the ticket supported by other billionaires.

 

Man, that's a great piece of fan fic. I'm not sure if he rips off Hunger Games or Elyseum. Any way, if the GQP voters believe that, it will be virtually impossible to make them vote for the other party, unless we somehow convince them that Republicans are reptilian overlords.

 

On numerous occasions I have suggested people read "This Present Darkness" by Frank Peretti if you want to understand the present mindset in how the right views the left. It was published in 1986 and was on the Christian best-seller list for 150 consecutive weeks. This means many GOP leaders who were in their teens or 20s in the late 80s probably read it. You can see it plainly in the language many of them use when talking about Democrats.

 

Care to explain how the video relates to my comment? I'm not going to spend 13 minutes watching a video trying to figure out what point you are making, when you seem to have the ability to say what point you are wanting to make yourself. So please, in the spirit of discussion, start explaining what in the video is relevant to the conversation.

 

Per AOC. The voters in question have too much work to do. They don't have time to dig in and understand the issues and they are getting information directly from the candidates. The democrats neglected to connect to the target audience or as AOC says "we didn't talk in the second person while Trump consistently messaged 'Trump is for you'". The same with Trump's acceptance speech. He led with legal pathways to citizenship and then followed with deportation talk.

This supports my take that Democrats never had a message for the common person. To the common person, if their is no message then they don't care. This is doubly so if you are the incumbent party.

 

Those are also reasons often quoted by folks justifying denying voting rights to blacks and women in America.

 

If it’s physically painful for you to read an opinion that is different from yours, then you need to toughen up.

 

These are takeaways from AOC asking voters who voted for both Trump and her.

1. Universal frustration that is raging at a political establishment that centers corporate interests, billionaires, and puts their needs ahead of the needs of working Americans.

2. People are responding well to Trump saying that he is fighting for them.

3. People don't really believe Trump will really do all the crazy stuff he says he is going to do. They don't believe they are the "criminals" that Trump wants to deport.

4. People are too busy and overwhelmed with info to know where to turn for reliable info.

Fine with reading differing opinions. Hard to read something so wrong and stupid.

 

Thanks for explaining as that gives me something to work with, especially since what I was responding to was your comment that "The Democratic party has absolutely taken the blue-collar vote for granted and cozied up to rich donors and voters picked up on that."

When I think back on what Kamala was saying, compared to Trump, it doesn't seem consistent with what you just wrote.

1. She promised a middle-class tax cut that would benefit 100 million Americans, including the restoration of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, and not to raise taxes on people making less than $400k. Whereas Trump promised to end inflation (newsflash - high inflation already ended and it has been in the target zone for a little while now), maintain the tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and reduce the corporate tax by another 1% and place tariffs on imported goods that would cost the working class much more to buy things.

2. Cap insulin prices to $35 for everyone (if I remember correctly), whereas Trump has been known for trying to kill Obamacare, which would hurt working class families.

3. Housing credit for new buyers. Trump said he would get lower housing prices by going after illegal immigrants.


In other words, it's not about the actual policies they were promoting or Democrats "taking the blue-collar vote for granted and cozy up to rich donors", but instead it is all about who is using the megaphone to be heard.

 

I am starting to question your educational level because you seem to fail to understand you don't need a PhD to understand civics. My Dad had a the equivalent of a HS education from Ghana and my mom 8th grade. But after surviving coups in Ghana, they are very aware of policy and take in a ton of news and educational programming on US policy. To understand how things work. I have already stated that dems have to accept that voters are dumb and have to be plain spoken. Use more simple metaphor and let complex terms. That doesn't deny that the voting public is dumb when it comes to civics, you just have to change you messaging to their stupidity. Do you grasp that point?

 

Yeah, I will take that under advisement.

 

Well, yes, but the problem is you can have policies but if your communication does not talk the way a constituency needs to hear it then you have taken that constituency for granted. Harris had a huge edge in campaign funds so this played badly. If you can't be bothered or forget to communicate then you are done for. People absolutely picked up on this.

 

Glad you said it and not me. I couldn't find a way to put it.

 

Are you talking about Fox News, Sinclair or Twitier or Rogan and other Bro channels? Not to mention AM radio. So what megaphone does she have? As you can see with some posters, there is a whole conservative sphere that a person can be in and never here anything. That's how you get anti vaxxers and stop the steal. I mean CNN is now run by Rupert disciple.

Why do you think she did shows like call her daddy. She tried to do Rogan from the road but he said you have to come to Austin and be in my studio, which was his way of making it impossible for her.

 

What the democrats took for granted was the idea that voters would be repelled and disgusted by the never ending stream of racism, bigotry and ignorance pouring out of the Trump campaign.

Turns out there is a significant chunk of US voters that are attracted to (or at the very least do not mind) such message.

 

Here’s another tip: mean, condescending sarcasm is not a sign of intelligence. You aren’t going to convince anyone of anything with that.

It will finally click for you when you understand that dems aren’t speaking over voters’ heads…they’re speaking to themselves.

Right wing people in America have spent over half a century being forced to listen to, and process, and gain a functional grasp of leftist advocacy across media and every other institution. They are well-versed in all of the leftist nonsense that you think is intelligent. Meanwhile, leftist politicians refuse to go on freakin’ Joe Rogan (another former democrat) because they can’t control the discussion.

You all are under a spell. But thankfully for the rest of us, we are moving on without you.

 

Question away my educational level if you want but I have receipts. My family is different than yours and still lives in Bolivia with PhDs and Masters from the US and Japan all of them through full scholarships like Fulbright. I have a Masters myself. I can post my diploma if you need proof.

I understand your point about civics completely but we don't have data on civics knowledge and actual voters. The guys who don't know civics are likely non-voters in my opinion. I believe about 36% didn't vote and that is a low rate of absenteeism. Typically it is 40%+. So I question when you call voters dumb. Frankly, there a lot of attacks on people in your posts including myself.