Oh no…the Leopards ate my face thread

lol
Sounders said it better than I could have.

 

Covid

 

His opponent was a White male

 

And unlike Trump, Buchanan has been consistently (and I almost hate to admit it) admirably anti-war for over half a century.

 

Because he was such a garbage President along with him messing up Covid it's not even funny. If there is anything that sums up his Presidency for me, it's watching him argue with a journalist in that nasally whine he does. I was at work and my colleague and I are looking at each other with exp

I don't think a lot of people, whether it's the average journalist, most political pundits, and us remember that Trump's been part of the US culture for nearly 40 years, starting with that book.

 

The US had a legal apartheid until the 1960s and a defacto one probably until well into the 1980s. Yeah, racism is not exclusive to the US among rich countries, but I don't think it was implemented in such a formal way in Europe or Canada, until so recently. Also, being such a big country, where the states hold so much power, helps to dilute the power and reach of progressive forces, and tend to lower the legal/social standards, to match those of the most regressive states.

And as have been pointed ad nauseum, it became more difficult to spread when we no longer have a monolitic media apparatus.

And since the 1970s or maybe earlier they were able to create their own media environment where the message is repeated until it becomes a tautology; even worse, they capitalized on social media and used their messaging strength to make millions of people virtually unreachable to alternate ideas.

It is very difficult to highlight that Medicare is now negotiating drug prices, or that the investment on infrastructure is creating more well paid jobs. It is not only that Dems are not good at bumper sticker messaging, it is that the press sucks at delivering, and the public would have read until the sixth word in this paragraph. Dems could try to be more unified in their messaging, build a better outreach campaign, yet still fail to reach the electorate that doesn't understand how the legislative process works.

 

Actually, @Sounders78 that was @Kazuma who replied to BG. I kept looking for your post and didn't see it.

 

They won thoroughly enough this time that it “validates” whatever BS they throw at the wall to contest whatever election they might lose in the future.. any close election and they will suppress votes and win. This result in itself has bolstered the false narrative that something was amiss in 2020.. again, provided we are even living in a country that has elections at all

 

I wasn't sure what I had said either, but hey, I'll take positive vibes whenever I can!

 

As I said before, it was death by a thousand cuts. His appeal to those who miss the old white patriarchal order it was a big part of the equation, his opponent’s weaknesses helped a lot too. Of the top of my mind, the structural advantage that the electoral college gives to the GQP, a dispersed media that caters to the establishment, a difficult international environment, an economy that doesn’t work for the majority…. I could keep going… but I’m just getting over my November depression, so I’m not in the mood to scrutinize that much.

 

Every left wing movement since Occupy Wall Street then. And every left wing movement since time immemorial, or well the New Left anyway.

I'll never forget activists being angry with Obama because he told them that change is hard and slow when they met. They didn't like hearing that and he had to tell them they were meeting with the President at the moment.

 

To be slightly fair to them, the context would be those college students had gone through two recessions, two wars churning through their generation, wealth disparity increasing at a tremendous pace, QoL going down, wages stagnant, housing impossible to find, oh and the climate is falling apart around their ears. To hear "it takes time" wasn't the best way to put it. And how Obama handled the Recession was gasoline on the fire.

They certainly could have been more calm and polite, sure, but they had every reason to be upset. Even moreso now.

 

I used to have this on a coffee cup:

 

My own personal beef: he didn’t restructure Wall Street and financial institutions when they had ruined the world economy. The public bore the cost, and they kept right on rat********ing.

 

OK, on that note I'll post what I was intending to post
somewhere, here as it seems relevant

I did think about starting a new thread because, while we've discussed various reasons for Trumps victory in the different threads, there wasn't a single place to discuss them, (as in, one on it's own).

So...

I watched a youtube with Ezra Klein interviewing a woman who it turns out is his wife, Amy Lowrey...



It's quite long, (well, I'm posting it so, y'know!), and it covers some of the economic reasons as to why not everyone would have felt things were improving.

Although many of the headline figures indicate that the US has low inflation and low unemployment, (or, at least, lower than many of the US' major competitors), is that the case for people at the bottom?

What that seems to suggest is that people in the bottom quintile and certainly the bottom decile, HAVE suffered reductions in their living standards or, at least, haven't seen any much of an increase.

So I've been doing some research into one of the things they mention and that's food inflation and how it impacts people in those categories...

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/food-inflation-in-the-united-states/




and...

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/food-inflation



If we consider that data with this from regarding the proportion of household budgets spent on food...

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-produ...ir incomes rise, U.S.,pixels by 1780, 144 dpi)



That's for food pricing and it's impact on poverty but the other areas they mention are housing, healthcare, etc. I'm gonna try and look at them next.

For me, (as I think I've made clear), the issue is NOT that the poor voted for Trump... it's that they didn't turn out for the democrats.

If these figures are accurate, (and the general thrust of that youtube seems to suggest her analysis is similar), then maybe it's not a mystery as to why the poor can't get off their arse and vote democrat. From a certain perspective it makes sense, particularly if they're constantly ridiculed and, if they don't vote for them, it's coz they're fascists, racists, and/or too fecking dumb to understand the latest gdp figures or realise that the dow is up 'X' squillion percent this year.

As an aside I also think having a load of millionaire pop, sports and movie stars telling them they were gonna vote democrat, again, might have sent the wrong message? If the intention was to highlight the massive and rising levels of inequality, the dems couldn't have done a better job.

Of course, what's also interesting is that, in the UK, the right-wing was thrown out because, again, THEY were the ones in charge. For me, that indicates that it isn't simply a matter of being left or right-wing... it's more a matter of being perceived as part of the establishment in what is seen as a failing system for people at the bottom. More so if you then want them to come out and vote for you.

Some of this is in line with the recent discussion between Mehdi Hassan and Owen Jones.

Anyway, interested in others thoughts, as always

 

I guess he meant from an accountability standpoint. Yes, from a financial standpoint, it will well managed but I can understand it was infuriating to see no one (besides Madoff) was herd accountable for this massive financial cluster********.