At what point, if ever, will Americans’ dissatisfaction with the Biden administration translate into voting behavior?
Polls certainly reflect that dissatisfaction – if you believe the polls. And there also are the “eff-Biden” chants at football games, although we don’t know what percentage of people share the intensity of that particular sentiment. But Biden has come close to running this country into the ground in short order, and people are noticing.
I haven’t yet had any in-depth talks with any of my Democrat-voting friends about all of this, but the superficial and brief chats I’ve had with some of them indicate unease and dissatisfaction on their parts. For example, they uniformly don’t like what happened in Afghanistan.
And yet I have no sense that any of them would even consider voting for a Republican. Let me emphasize that I don’t know, because – as I said – I haven’t yet had lengthy talks with them. But that is what my gut tells me, for two reasons. The first reason is that I well know how difficult it is for a lifelong Democrat to vote for a Republican. And it’s only gotten more difficult in the last two decades or so, as Republicans have become more and more demonized by the Democratic establishment and by the media as well as social media. Voting for a Republican is, in many people’s minds, sympathy for the devil.
The second reason is Donald Trump. For example, one friend I spoke to expressed a great deal of upset at the way Biden handled Afghanistan, and then said to me, “But hadn’t Trump agreed to do the same thing?” In other words, she had read in the news that Biden was just following Trump’s plan, and she had no source of competing information – except me, and I proceeded to explain the differences between Trump’s plan and Biden’s “plan.” The point is, though, that Trump has been so thoroughly demonized for so long – and so many of the people receiving that information don’t seriously doubt their sources – that any criticism of Biden can be countered with a “but Trump was the same or probably worse” rejoinder.
Each such discussion feels a bit Sisyphean, rolling that ball uphill again.
Voting? You mean fair voting or the dishonest voting that was conducted in 2020?
The Dems have figured out how to steal an election. Mail-in ballots were just part of it. We don’t know the full depth of the Dems’ theft efforts but the AZ audit gave us a notion of how it was done.
As Bob Woodward noted, Biden only won because of 38k votes in 3 states.
Fixing voting should be the number one thing for the GOP and I see zero evidence this is happening.
The Dems have mastered cheating and the GOP can’t even admit that it is a problem. We’re F’d.
I suspect that liberal democrat’s response in 2024 will depend on the candidates. I suspect a lot would vote for Harris, if Trump’s the nominee. Perhaps a bit less of a visceral reaction if Gov. DeSantis is the nominee. If another Bush or Romney, I suspect a larger proportion of liberal democrats will simply stay home rather than vote for a Republican. That would be a ‘safe’ form of protest against the excesses of the democrat party.
However, as Cornhead implied, “at this point, what does it matter?”
Gotta hand it to the left; they’ve done an outstanding job at making Republicans just too nasty in the minds of many. I saw this the first time McAuliffe won. Many who should have been conservative Republicans (from what they said on other matters) simply couldn’t see voting for them. Even though they knew he was a crook, and would say so. “He’s totally corrupt, but what else can I do?” I heard that a lot.
So I left Virginia.
If we discount cheating as the reason Trump lost, then we know that more than half of American voters are morons. From a social point of view, the more cheating, the better, because fewer morons.
I asked, some time back, if people of sufficient cognitive ability to get through the day have a moral obligation to use their rational processes in matters of public policy. IOW, forswear a concern about “mean tweets” making you feel bad. Neo’s tentative judgment of her friends leads me to believe that they won’t. And possibly feel very good about themselves who didn’t get confused by facts and stuff.
Cornhead. Our pal, I am Sparticus, pointed out that a lot of effort went into driving up Biden’s vote totals everywhere, win or lose, so that he would win both the popular and electoral votes. They didn’t want Trump to be able use the popular vote to beat the Dems over the head.
We cannot vote our way out of this mess.
Period.
My grandmother (RIP) voted solid democrat until she cast her vote for Ronald Reagan. He had met him in Richmond, VA and he won her over.
Marisa aside, I have a one word reply to the question of complaints getting widespread without pragmatic voter consequences: “And yet I have no sense that any of them would even consider voting for a Republican.”
Stagflation. Look for next year for this to manifest.
Obviously, the precedent is 1980.
Stanford University macroeconomist John Cochran says watch inflationary expectations.
This has only recently grown and cemented itself in the data.
When inflation bites and growth cuts into
pocketbook issues, then self-interest will reassert dominance.
Even overwhelming the tools of the propaganda machines.
Ergo? 2016 may well be repeated. Otherwise, as Marisa asserts, we are lost.
For about 95%(maybe higher) of committed Democrats the answer is never.
The point is, though, that Trump has been so thoroughly demonized for so long – and so many of the people receiving that information don’t seriously doubt their sources – that any criticism of Biden can be countered with a “but Trump was the same or probably worse” rejoinder.
When it comes to Trump, yeah, I think it’s safe to say that part of the reason he’s so hated and feared by regular Democrat voters is the media demonization factor.
But I also think beyond that, many people just have a very strong, visceral reaction to him on a purely emotional level. This reaction goes far beyond politics. They find everything about Trump distasteful, borish, ugly, and offensive. His appearence, the way he wears his cloths, the spray tan, his demeanor, they way he speaks, the complete package engenders revulsion in them.
And because of all that, many of them will never be able to supress these strong feelings long enough for any sort of rational thinking when it comes to thinking about the guy, what he’s done, and what’s been done to him. At this point I doubt that there’s anything that could get them to actually vote for Trump over some other person, unless the alternative was just so abomidable that it was just asburd, in which case they’d be far more likley to just not vote at all.
The GOP has an excellent group of relatively young people who can win the White House in 2024.
DeSantis, Haley, and Noem all qualify for a place on the ticket. All three have been effective Governors. DeSantis and Noem have experience as Congressional representatives as well. Haley was an outstanding UN Ambassador.
There are also Senators like Cruz, Cotton, and Hawley – not likely Presidential candidates – but strong possibilities for positions like AG and SecDef.
Compare the above vs folk such as Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Harris and Warren.
Biden ? He should be running to an upscale nursing home.
Noem is done.
Right now, DeSantis is the future of the right. Lots of the good traits of Trump without so many of the bad traits. And he is young. I am tired of elderly leaders. Pelosi sounds worse than Biden at this point.
Biden voters will never vote for any republican.
Voters who cast a vote for a candidate with a proven 45 year record in politics of having achieved nothing at all, are beyond lost or beyond hope.
They are governed by whatever the media says. They are immune to facts.
As for DeSantis, a recent house guest of mine – a Bidet voter – told me that DeSantis is an extremist.
How was this opinion formed?
By watching the mainstream media, ex-Fox.
This person is is typical of Bidet voters; they are ignorant of all the issues, refuse to consider the issuers, are driven by emotion and if they “like” (e.g., is he/she a nice person? have a presidential demeanor, etc) the candidate.
Imagine if a candidate named Stalin or Hitler was running for president here in the USA and he had a perfect presidential demeanor and personality; just a really nice guy.
Half the voters in the USA would vote for that guy.
Let me guess, most folks here in the USA have zero idea who Stalin was.
And these folks vote.
Every single Republican is demonized, until they retire from politics, or become a useful Rino like Romney and McCain. After retirement they become a respected elder statesman.
The difference with Trump vs the usual gop is he hits back.
The usual gop seems to be into failure theater, and part of the uniparty.
The media is losing more credibility, my guess is this helps Trump a lot.
Haley is a RINO, she’s repeatedly demonstrated that.
If it come to pass, charisma and likeability are certain to be strong characteristics of the Anti-Christ. The way to identify the true nature of any candidate is to look at the predictable results and consequences of what they propose and how they handle objections. Do they clearly, rationally and forthrightly address objections or do they appeal to emotions in a dismissive manner?
In other words, “by their ‘fruits’, shall ye know them”.
“And yet I have no sense that any of them would even consider voting for a Republican.”
I’m in that camp, myself. The Repubs have no urgency. Either there is no serious problem or they are defective. To me, it looks like our country has a serious problem.
Just one example:
I was listening to a podcast on governmental agencies. The panel mentions in passing that a Trump nominee was not confirmed for 2 years.
Did Congressional Repubs fight back? No, they did not. They did, however, rig things so that (officially) they did not go out of session, therefore Trump could not make “recess appointments.
When Biden* was elected, did they give those MoFo’s a little of their own medicine back? No, they did not. They confirmed a set of scummy incompetents with barely a whisper of discontent.
Some say that Trump should not run in 2024 because his rudeness would only energize the Democrat turnout because they hate him so much. My counter to them is that Trump didn’t lose in 2020 because of Democrat turnout — he was beaten because the election was rigged.
People who are not strongly aligned will abandon the Democratic Party for the most part. Some committed Democrats will be demoralized and stay home.
1. Between 1988 or thereabouts and 2004 or thereabouts, the population of swing voters imploded. About 25% of the electorate changed their mind during the course of the 1988 campaign. In 2004, Karl Rove was operating under the supposition that only about 7% of the electorate could be called thoroughly non-aligned.
2. The nexus of vectors which influence political alignment have changed. There is much more intense inter-group aggression than there was 30-odd years ago. It is difficult to understand why this should be so, but it is so without a doubt. Partisan Democrats tend to be people with quite poor self-understanding.
3. Ballot security is severely compromised. They will steal every vote they can.
4. Note that older cohorts within the Democratic Party offer no critiques of the party’s intramural culture. Elder statesmen ain’t worth sh!t, Alan Dershowitz excepted. (Yes, today is Jimmy Carter’s 97th birthday. He has been addressed as ‘Mr. President’ for 44 years and change. Forty-four years and change prior to that, the country was near its Depression-era nadir and the young Mr. Carter had just learned to read and perhaps take on some farm chores).
I think that the Left’s long, slow takeover of most of the country’s institutions has created a voting bloc that’s almost impervious to facts. For this bloc, voting Democratic is a cultural phenomenon approaching religious practice. Sadly, Trump’s personality reinforced this behavior. To these core Democrats, Republicans are repulsive beasts. Even being near these unmasked animals causes feelings of contamination. When the various types of voter fraud are added into the equation, this Democratic voting bloc is hard to beat.
I think that serious change to our current political landscape will only come with wrenching change from outside of it. That change could come from an economic collapse driven by drastic debt restructuring; or it could arise from more serious conflict with China; or it could come from something I can’t even imagine, like a truly serious pandemic. Unfortunately, new political landscapes, created by catastrophe, are unlikely to appeal very much to me. No matter what happens, I don’t see a central government reduced in size and scope. I don’t see more individual freedom on the horizon. Instead, our most likely prospect is a software-assisted Leftist authoritarianism. Our daily lives will be thoroughly monitored and controlled. Those who disobey will lose the right to work, to make financial transactions, to buy a house, to travel, etc. I’d expect a vast system of various forms of house arrest. Voting will be a comical artifact of a bygone era — the least of our worries.
College-educated professionals will probably be the last ones to abandon the sinking U.S.S. Biden. Too much of their self-image as good and, especially, smart people is invested. But when they do…hoo boy! I would not want to be a minority member of the managerial class when that happens.
Mike
When Biden* was elected, did they give those MoFo’s a little of their own medicine back? No, they did not. They confirmed a set of scummy incompetents with barely a whisper of discontent.
Recall that when put to a confidential ballot, retaining Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican caucus won 70% of the votes. Recall also that Bitc* McConnell’s wife bailed from the cabinet and Bitc* McConnell denounced Trump. Recall also that the number of Congressional Republicans who have any interest in the welfare of the 6 January political prisoners is close to nil. Those trash care about their donors, not their voters.
“The second reason is Donald Trump.” Say no more.
The Democrats ran for decades, successfully for the greater part, against Herbert Hoover. Now, in the 21st century, whomever the Republicans put up in 2024, be it DeSantis, Cruz, Noem, Rubio, whomever — just fill in the [blank]:
[blank] is Donald Trump, Donald Trump is Adolph Hitler. A vote for [blank] is a vote for Adolph Hitler*. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum, uh-huh. Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the bray-ayn. La-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-da.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfbmjUQOFxs
* mathematics’ transitive law in action, folks!
The demonization of anyone who might take power away from the Democrats and the Left has been ongoing since way before I was born. TV and video just made it easier than text, drawings, and voice did to do. Here’s links, 2 parts, to something I saw in my mid 30s right after the 1980 election. Anyone not down with the Left will be demonized, the ones we need fight anyways.
https://youtu.be/Rb-uw_uTdUI
https://youtu.be/hupJFbKIIpc
As per Cornflour and the Left’s digital tyranny comes this story (via Instapundit): Document Leaks Show How Amazon’s Astro Robot Tracks Everything You Do online.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ypp8/leaked-documents-amazon-astro-surveillance-robot-tracking
This morning, via Zerohedge, came another interview with legendary contrarian investor Doug Casey.
He’s a man of a certain age. But he also presciently mentions how he uses a landline and only has a cell phone when he travels to conferences.
He adds the case for multiple and separate cell phones to compartmentalize your privacy from tracking.
I haven’t thought about this problem in a year or two.
But reading this (above) and Casey’s interview….if you want any real privacy, this is clearly the direction to go.
Edward Snowden was right. If we want privacy and our rights, then we all must take serious steps to assert and defend them from tech tyranny.
An example just from a few hours ago from a D voting FB friend: He complained about not passing the 3.5T monstrosity and interestingly blamed it on the radical left. Then went on, in the typical naieve way, about why can’t the Ds and GOP just get together and compromise? Still hates Trump, and would never vote GOP.
“Even being near these unmasked animals causes feelings of contamination”
We can replace unmasked with unvaccinated, no??
Cornflour:
WaPo is running a story that White House aides are exploring whether Biden can continue making payments even after the nation breaches the debt ceiling. The other option being considered is minting a one trillion dollar coin. (What the hell, mint 30 of ’em.) Par for the course for an Administration that says borrowing $3 trillion won’t increase the debt because we’ll just raise taxes.
Look! Out there on the horizon! Is that a rude beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born?
It may not matter. The dissatisfaction would likely lead to an “enthusiasm gap” that would be just as impactful to results by seeing many traditionally Democrat voters sitting on their couch on election day. Additionally, let’s not forge the never Trump Republicans that threw a vote to Biden. It is unlikely (based on my limited conversation with relatives that fall into this category) that policy should definitely take a back set to mean tweets as an election issue.
All this year contend many want this, anarchists the mayhem, deep state the run of the country without real supervision, the ruling elite making money with no end.
Inflation can be blamed on the Big Corporations–which pay no taxes–and the sheep will eat it up.
We need the distaste for Biden to expand to the rest of his party. The leadership and the core of the DNC are the actual people in charge, the ones that are the problem and they are using old slow Joe to hide behind.
When the time comes they will destroy Joe and try to tie all of the anger to him. It may work.
@Cap’n Rusty:WaPo is running a story that White House aides are exploring whether Biden can continue making payments even after the nation breaches the debt ceiling.
There will be be no problem with that any more than there was all the other times the government was “shut down”, the most recently being 2018, and there were no trillion dollar coins minted and no one had to explore whether Trump could still make payments.
The only thing that happens is that the government has to prioritize what it pays for. Some stuff gets put off until the debt ceiling is raised again. But every day the government takes in billions of dollars.
It’s not so bad that it’s fake news, it’s that it’s the SAME fake news over and over. The government was shut down twice under Trump and once under Obama. How do we forget this and fall for the lie one more time when we’ve all experience it being disproved?
One can wonder how much vaccine mandates effects some middle of the road types. And now Newsome is going full mandate on childhood mandates.
Even if Covid is about to slow down to a low simmer, without mandates, the average Democrat will probably believe mandates did it.
“just as impactful to results by seeing many traditionally Democrat voters sitting on their couch on election day.”
Of course they may sit on a couch … and not mark a ballot. They still might “vote”, though, in the sense that their ballot might get harvested.
And now Newsome is going full mandate on childhood mandates.
Hoping for thousands of lawsuits. The California political class is plain evil.
Art,
Noticed in the comment section on a Fox News article , people were saying that was the final straw, they were leaving California.
What does that translate to in real numbers, I do not know.
Does the Spanish language “ community” even know or care about these issues?
“I think that serious change to our current political landscape will only come with wrenching change from outside of it.”
Likely.
Invasion of Taiwan?
North Korea missle launch?
Empty shelves, high prices in grocery stores?
Richard Aubrey on October 1, 2021 at 3:13 pm said:
Yes, you did. https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/09/04/a-post-9-11-political-changer-tells-her-story/#comment-2575117
That was a comment in this posting … https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/09/04/a-post-9-11-political-changer-tells-her-story/ …
… wherein and when I unsettled our host almost as much as I did with some more recent remarks; which led to, and were eventually amplified in …
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/09/28/human-nature-liberty-and-who-deserves-what/ …
You had apparently mooted the matter even prior to that; as I too had, with regard to that formerly recognized expectation that citizens of this republic would manifest and exercise the virtues and embrace the responsibilities demanded of free men and women in a constitutional republic.
You know, living up to their responsibilities – should they have the franchise – as political peers and jurors and all that other unreasonable to expect, much less demand, stuff
It only matters if the mail in voting is stopped. I see no reason to believe this will happen. Come around next August, the federal courts will start ordering the same voting methods of 2020 be employed everywhere, and I predict the SCOTUS will sit on their hands.
The resistance to even listening to a different point of view is mind boggling. The people in my neighborhood, with whom I am very friendly, know I am a Republican, that I supported Trump and that I generally support conservative political and economic policies and we get along just fine – AS LONG AS WE DON’T TALK ABOUT ANY OF THAT. I was chatting with my next door neighbor who commented that she wanted to vote Republican but that she WOULD NOT if DeSantis was the nominee. She then materially misquoted something he had said about masking school children. I had previously learned to just back away, very, very slowly …
Orange Man Bad, Orange Man Bad, Orange Man Bad!
But, of course, it isn’t just Orange Man. He aggravates and inflames the rage of liberals more than any public figure in modern times. But any Republican, even someone as squishy as Jeb Bush, will still be framed as evil incarnate if they access (or come close to accessing) serious power. The main difference with Trump is, he punches back…hard. That infuriates them all the more.
Ultimately, our liberal/progressive Democrat-inclined friends hold a Manichean worldview. They are in the right side of history, those who disagree are on the wrong side. There will be many mistakes and errors along the way…but…their intentions are pure, noble and based in SCIENCE!(tm).
They will take us to hell and back on their good intentions before they ever admit maybe, just maybe, they’re wrong.
DNW:
Do you not recognize the tyrant in yourself? Or do you just not care because you think your judgment is so good that it is you who deserves to be the judge of whether people have deserved rights, and that the criteria you would like to implement is whether they care enough about liberty to defend it to your satisfaction?
Martin:
Yes, it has occurred to me that at some point the Democrats may throw Biden under the bus and blame everything on him, and that it might work to cause the electorate to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Then again, Kamala Harris is not liked and she is equally incompetent, so I’m not at all sure it would work.
@Neo:
For what reason did you delete my comment pointing out that voting Republican is equivalent to Losing Caste as far as most members of the Professional Managerial Class is concerned?
It’s blindingly obvious that the Managerialist Bugpeople have awakened into a state of Class Awareness and Separateness in the past several decades. Needless to say, they are convinced of their own moral superiority and they increasingly despise the Deplorables (all the more so because Deplorables look uncannily like they do –> and we know all about Small Differences.. or we should.) To pretend that this does not matter is, well, Wishful Thinking.
I am curious.
T-Rex. Been there. Explain the reality, anger results, or a kind of mixed confusion and apprehension, as if actual facts are unfamiliar as a concept.
It’s not awakening, it’s enculturation which has been accomplished through the media and in the school systems especially colleges where the environment can be more completely controlled 24/7 over the course of years.
You become what you do to fit in with others around you over time. The Left has used this natural process to remake people into the kind that will accept the world the Left envisions. They will resist seeing any other way of the world.
What a pair: the Hong Kong sage (loosing caste as applicable to the US) and the man born to the saddle who slums as a philosopher.
neo on October 1, 2021 at 10:33 pm said:
Hi Neo.
I’m sorry you seem so annoyed. What I have to say will, I am certain, be very reassuring.
First of all, I think that you must mean something other than “tyrant”.
Because I have absolutely no interest in doing anything with regard to anyone, other than generally ensuring that the predicate of our federal association remains as it was meant to be:
1. explicit
2, political
3, and intellectually coherent; insofar as those enjoying the privilege of a full franchise which entails a civic and even juridical responsibility which accompanies their imputed status as political peers (there is that term again), do live up to their very minimal moral responsibilities. That is a principle which was at the founding of the polity, and for some time after, completely uncontroversial.
Of course since the founding, the franchise has been expanded to include classes of people who were at one time judged to be incompetent to participate in making decisions which would place liens upon the lives and the fortunes of others.
Some of those people were vagabonds, the feeble minded, savages, those in bondage, and persons who were dependent upon others for their lives.
As time went on, the argument was made that some classes of persons theretofore believed by experience and or prejudice to be either incompetent or of such limited physical, mental, moral, or life competence that they were not fit to have a say in the political lives of others, (i.e., granted recognition as a political equal deserving of having a say in your life and the governance of a regime of liberty) were formally reclassified as deserving to have such a say.
Competence and thus worthiness to have a say in the political life of the republic was imputed to them based on certain arguments.
I assume that even now, most of us would draw certain limits to participation in the process, even if we had been successful – as we apparently have not been – in keeping the government of this federal republic one of strictly defined, and limited powers and reach.
Not that you would ever be likely to be in a situation where five retards, six schizophrenics, and four rapists would be in a position to decide the fate of you and nine others, but you can get the general idea. For example, even now letting children vote in a “pure democracy” (and a pure democracy, or a pretend one is where we seem to be headed) would be thought by most people to have some obviously dangerous consequences.
I am not asking, much less demanding, that your grandmotherly liberal friends take up arms training, read through the entire “Debates on The Constitution” regularly, and start lifting weights. But I think that the foundational duties envisioned for a deserved franchise – in this case a matter of political rather than obvious natural right – should continue to be respected, if we are to assume that the persons themselves deserve to be respected in their political office of enfranchised citizen.
You will note here that I have avoided any substantive reference to natural rights, as it is obvious that there is no point in discussing their defense in a context which cannot be or has not been precisely defined and grounded to this point at least. And most progressives don’t recognize them anyway.
And as far as their liberties in a system of distributive reciprocity (as opposed to natural law) go, I made no remarks about restricting them. My point is that they may not deserve the sacrificial defense of these same liberties by others, if they shirk their duty to be informed.
Of course it may be possible that like Marxists, some of them are informed. In which case they would not be shirkers but moral aliens and enemies.
I assure you I am no tyrant. I don’t care enough about these people or what they do with their personal lives to be a tyrant. I just don’t consider them – as, and insofar as we have discussed them – as living up to their political duties in a system which now can in truth only be factually based on a theory distributive reciprocity.
And we are not a family after all. We Americans are not friends. We don’t have the same vital interests across the board, and our values are not only not congruent, but in large measure are antithetical. There is no principle of complementarity at work here, or theoretically possible in this present system as it really is. Nor should there be. Complementarity is for families, for men and women, for those who have bonds of natural affection. That is not the case here. Everyone has to be able to do the “fireman’s carry”, or else; and fortunately the “carry” in this case in extremely minimal: to thoroughly know our system of government, to understand and embrace the principles of constitutionalism, the rule of law, and individual liberty; and, to exercise critical and informed judgement when voting on those who will be handed the levers of power.
All that is required is of our “fellow” citizens ( and many are not fellows in any social or moral sense of the word) is that they live up to their most basic political responsibilities as putative political equals. To make the imputed, actual.
After all, that, is the only connection we have: formal participation as citizens, maintaining, in-common, a regime of republican liberty. Other than that, we are actual – “existential” one might say, as so many progressives do – enemies in many cases.
But they, these imputed peers we are discussing, have not in fact done their most basic homework. They have in fact failed the test of political peerhood. Chucking their grandkidlings under the chin, playing the piano, and donating to the dog pound, just don’t count.
But being an amiable man of goodwill as I am, it is my hope that they begin to rouse themeselves from being either complacently asleep, or hyper-woke.
As I said before: It would be one hell of a sorrowful thing for this polity to collapse into homicidal civil anarchy and dissolution, without people ever waking enough to realize what is happening.
I’m pretty sure most of you have seen this ad, but it’s germane to the topic.
Obviously, the producers are playing to exactly the Democrats that Neo and others describe, who would not vote for any Republican because they actually believe what DeSantis has done to rescue Florida from Covid-paranoia is Evil.
Equally obviously, all the conservative commenters are going: “if it’s not a parody (it isn’t), then it should become a model for an ad of his own.”
The question is: will Independents viewing it (at least those who aren’t predisposed to see all Republicans as Evil and any GOP candidate as an avatar for Trump as Satan Incarnate), jump to the Left, or to the Right?
https://www.publishedreporter.com/2021/10/01/left-wing-pac-attempt-to-criticize-desantis-policies-makes-him-look-good-social-media-declare-it-campaign-contribution/
I chose this out of the many posts because it explains the movie reference “Florever Purge” that totally went past me until I looked it up on Wikipedia.
I’m sure they think it is very clever, and in some ways it is. The Left has been much better at harnessing contemporary culture to their bandwagon than the Right has been, historically anyway. However, this particular phrase is clunky rather than compelling.
One of the things that impressed me most about Trump’s operation was its improvement in ads, campaign tropes, and memes, over the usual GOP fare.
DeSantis is really pushing the envelope on a lot of issues.
But will he win over some Democrats & Independents who finally open their eyes to reality, or cause them to double-down on demonizing him?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/florida-sues-biden-administration-over-immigration-policy/ar-AAOVpqP?ocid=msedgntp
Even if the Democrats in general won’t vote for Republicans, maybe some more incidents like this will persuade them to at least vote for a better quality of Democrat.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/10/leftist-fairfax-prosecutor-to-courthouse-security-do-you-know-who-i-am.php
But it would be even better if they would vote for a genuine conservative or sixty.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1443919610831642670.html
RTWT for a goodly rant.
One of the best posts on the legal situation that applies to the immigration policy (or not-policy) of the Democrats.
https://www.bookwormroom.com/2021/10/02/a-lesson-from-1689-a-d-for-joe-biden-and-the-soros-prosecutors/
Posted on October 2, 2021 by Wolf Howling
Quotes Chapter and Verse, and gives a sobering historical parallel, which is depressing mostly for the length of time it took the English to subdue their wayward monarchs, and that still didn’t last permanently until much, much later.
A more humorous beat-down of Biden & Co., but still somewhat depressing, because the things that are being mocked are applauded by the Democrats of our day.
https://www.bookwormroom.com/2021/10/01/bookworm-beat-10-01-21-the-i-cant-keep-up-with-the-crazy-illusrated-edition/
“(By the way, do you remember back in March 2020, when COVID cartoons were cute things about hanging out in pajamas, being with the kids, and applauding healthcare workers?)”
Then again, Kamala Harris is not liked and she is equally incompetent,
She’s lucid, she passed the bar exam.
Art Deco – Not on the first try. 🙂
“she had no source of competing information”
Years ago, a wise executive gave me some advice:
“Always remember, when you are running an organization of any significant size, that you are not seeing reality. It’s like you are watching a movie where you get to see maybe one out of a thousand frames and you have to piece together what’s going on from that.”
The same applies to a voter’s view of political issues, with a much smaller sampling % of the frames…and the people who choose those samples exercise enormous power. It is only in recent years that we have begun to comprehend just how overwhelming that power is.
For a while, it looked like the Internet might effectively dilute the power of the traditional gatekeepers, but the rise of social media has undercut that hopeful trend.
David Foster – That’s a good, succinct history of the Internet:
For a while it looked like the Internet would do (insert solution here), but it it actually made the problem much worse.
David foster.
Fox news is easily available. People choose not to look at that frame. And they claim information they don’t find useful must have come from FNC, likely as a way of pre-discrediting it. Not like it or Instapndit or Newsmax or other sources are not available.
I recall a Nice Church Lady saying with smug satisfaction, Fox News is not shown in this house.
New York Post is on line.
Liberals choose to avoid the obvious, which is obvious. The big tech outfits merely provide a vehicle to concentrate the approach/avoid process.
“We’re the guys with the guns”
General Mark Milley
Amazing change is right around the corner.
Andrew Yang’s Forward Party isolates Boomer Democrats, splitting the Democrat vote and ending the reign of the worst batch of clueless self-serving elites in US History.
Trump/DeSantis win in a landslide with long coattails. The Swamp is truly attacked and change actually happens.
Biden is successfully prosecuted for real crimes of corruption, not the criminalization of policy differences, and becomes the first President to spend the remainder of his life in prison. Other Boomer Democrats are swept up in the orgy of prosecution for corruption, driven by Yangian Forwardians who see them blocking true reform. Cancelled Pelosi and Hillary are probably sentenced to prison. Swampians flee DC to try to protect their ill gotten gains by becoming invisible.
China abandons Communism as the oligarchs take over and institute a Chinese version of Russian post-communist government.
The Golden Age described by Dilbert creator Scott Adams manifests.
Richard Aubrey…”Fox news is easily available. People choose not to look at that frame. And they claim information they don’t find useful must have come from FNC, likely as a way of pre-discrediting it. Not like it or Instapndit or Newsmax or other sources are not available.”
Quite true. Other sources *are* available, but they do not represent part of the ‘information’ intake of people who are not intellectually curious and open-minded enough to go seek them out. And the overwhelming preference of ‘progressive’ (ie, neo-fascist) views in media works in conjunction with confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Many people don’t like changing their opinions, and many people don’t want to lose jobs, business opportunities, and friendships by holding & expressing unapproved opinions. Such behavior becomes much easier to self-justify when the vast majority of ‘information’ flowing across one’s view supports the safe opinions.
David. All true, but the point is the choice is personal. FNC is big in everybody’s mind about such issues. It’s a remote push away. Some don’t bother and some get the vapors at the name.
As you know, Florida is doing better than maybe forty states in C19 figures. I mentioned that to a mush head acquaintance who said it was impossible because deSantis wasn’t following the science. You could shove this clown’s face into a very large flat screen with FNC on it for a month at a time and…nothing would change.
Art Deco:
Your “she’s lucid” response is irrelevant to what I wrote. I never said she was as cognitively challenged as Biden, I said she was not liked and that she’s as incompetent.
DNW:
I’m pleased to hear that, but it puzzles me as to what you are really trying to get at in the practical sense, if anything.
Of course I wish they’d all listen to me, I wish they cared more about liberty, I wish they’d be more responsible (by my definition). But if we’re just saying abstractly whether they “deserve” this or that, it’s meaningless to me because if you’re not going to do anything about it I just don’t see the point of the discussion except as an intellectual exercise (not that I’m against intellectual exercises, but I was assuming you had more in mind).
And yes, of course, most people say that felons shouldn’t be allowed to vote, for example, But that’s about it nowadays for limitations on voting (which used to exclude, for example, those without property, women, and slaves) – that and age, and even the latter trend is to allow younger and young people to vote.
Zaphod:
I deleted two comments of yours, both extremely short and snarky, posted a couple of minutes apart on different threads (although I saw them more or less simultaneously). The one I saw first (although it actually was posted a few minutes after the other) was basically just saying “I could make a great point refuting what you say but I just can’t be bothered.” That was pure snark with no content at all. A few seconds later I saw the other comment, the one you are asking about. That one merely declared something to be the case without a single argument other than because you say so. The part I’m talking about was this: “The mistake is to think that Politics is still Politics. It ain’t. Kali Yuga, Baby!”
No one here thinks “politics is still politics” – at least not in the sense I think you are meaning it. Since you don’t explain what you mean it’s hard to tell what you mean. But it’s the old attitude in which you seem to be assuming that people here naively and ignorantly think something – “politics is still politics” – and are unaware of The Truth, about which you will enlighten them: “It ain’t.”
It’s not that I always delete comments like that. Most of the time I let them go, but you seem to specialize in them and paired with that other comment the condescension was dripping, with hardly any content at all except the idea that voting GOP is some sort of caste betrayal. By the way, you wrote in your question here (at 10:53 last night), that the deleted post of yours asserted that “voting Republican is equivalent to Losing Caste as far as most members of the Professional Managerial Class is concerned.” That’s not what you wrote. You wrote:
At no point did you make it clear that you were talking about “members of the Professional Managerial Class.” The subject of the post was not the “Professional Managerial Class.” It was Democrat voters, period.
I said she was not liked and that she’s as incompetent.
She’s not as incompetent because she is not demented.
Art Deco:
First of all, Biden is not totally “demented.” He has some degree of dementia, but I see plenty of evidence that he is far from totally gone. What I see is a person with some degree of dementia who also has been a lifelong liar with extremely poor judgment and a strange personality. It’s a bad combination, and it reads as “incompetence” although I’m not sure that’s responsible for a lot of his decisions, although it’s responsible for some (and particularly the poor presentation of them). I think if you consider that he (and of course his aides, who do control some of this) is following a leftist agenda, and perhaps even bent on the destruction of this country as we know it, he’s not so incompetent at all.
Harris has the same leftist agenda, and she has her own aides. She has, however, done nothing right since she’s been in office – even bungling her own message in many ways and annoying the left that she serves. She is in my opinion at least as incompetent as Biden and perhaps more, and she certainly has an odd and even more off-putting personality than he. She is far less experienced in politics and I believe it shows.
As I said, equally incompetent although Biden is somewhat more demented.
“… But if we’re just saying abstractly whether they “deserve” this or that, it’s meaningless to me because if you’re not going to do anything about it I just don’t see the point of the discussion except as an intellectual exercise (not that I’m against intellectual exercises, but I was assuming you had more in mind)….”
Hi Neo.
Yes I certainly do have more in mind. I want to point out to conservatives that it is not only alright, but justified by the very values which progressives and most liberals either stridently or tacily embrace to let them burn in the conflagration they have ignited; if and when it spreads to their own neighborhoods.
I mean for real. Not for rhetoric’s sake.
I want to point out that as these people should be left to die in the beds which they have made if it ever comes to that, it is only justice.
I also want conservatives to stop being cucks in their personal lives. And I want too , by pointing out the illogic of being a sap and sacrificing or expressing solidarity on any level with liberals in trouble, to reinforce the idea of how utterly stupid it is. Because if you save them, they will just return to doing what it is that subversive human vipers always do … no matter how superficially mild mannered they are.
So when I say that they are not deserving I mean that not only are they not deserving, according to the Rule of Redounding Standards, of the liberties and security which they themselves enjoy – but also that they are not deserving of rescue or refuge or protection from any of the bounce-back effects of their undermining and subversive sociopolitical programs.
I would however never perdonally deprive them of their liberties, whether or not they deserve them; even if I had the power to do so.
What I would do is commit to gazing on with my best imitation of studied indifference as they are dragged through the streets and set on fire.
After all, our relations are purely political; and the political is now reduced to a context of either reciprocality or coercion, as natural rights and law and obligations don’t apply any longer.
Furthermore, we have no human connection via shared supernatural commitments either … to these progressives … soulless entities that they are anyway. Not that being labeled soulless should disturb any progressive in the least.
The fact is, that we just occupy the same landmass; which then serves as the field for a slow motion war of incompatible and antithetical cultures and life-ways.
But no, I would never, NEVER, lift a hand to harm them.
Hope that is clear.
I am not only out of the city today, but way out of the city. Unless I travel to a town tomorrow I am likely to be unable to offer any further clarifications or nuances with regard to my position.
@DNW:
“What I would do is commit to gazing on with my best imitation of studied indifference as they are dragged through the streets and set on fire.
After all, our relations are purely political; and the political is now reduced to a context of either reciprocality or coercion, as natural rights and law and obligations don’t apply any longer.
Furthermore, we have no human connection via shared supernatural commitments either … to these progressives … soulless entities that they are anyway. Not that being labeled soulless should disturb any progressive in the least.
The fact is, that we just occupy the same landmass; which then serves as the field for a slow motion war of incompatible and antithetical cultures and life-ways.”
Well-formulated. I particularly like this bit: “my best imitation of studied indifference”. The correct forms must be observed!
DNW. May we be excused if, instead of studied indifference, we laugh scornfully and loudly and crack a bottle of mid-level port when the town bike path comes for THEIR back yard?
Good question if voters will vote Gop.
I hope so, especially with the pushback on the Covid over reach. Huge opportunity, which the Gop is ignoring as usual.
A better question is will the gop run candidates voters like, instead of good members of the uniparty and chamber of commerce endorsed that are horrible, milquetoast, insipid, vapid, boring candidates (Ga Senate Candidates were prime examples of this. Be great if the eGOP put as much effort into winning elections, as they do in making sure the wrong type candidates lose their primaries).
And what of Trump?
As well as what will be the impact of electoral fraud.
And the filtering / censorship by the Internet giants.
The F*ck Joe Biden Chants are a huge cultural marker.
Another Cultural Marker is this Daily News Article Title:
SNL goes easy on Joe (again): Biden’s Afghan debacle and budget dumpster fire are mocked as Kyrsten Sinema, AOC, Joe Manchin and Gov. Cuomo all offer conflicting advice to the embattled president
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10053721/SNL-FINALLY-goes-Joe.html
Dick Illyes —
You forgot “and then Amazon delivers a pony to my front door!”
🙂
I think great change is coming, but whether that change will be worse or better keeps me up at night. I think the Boomers will find themselves out of power and sidelined, but whether GenX steps up or whether Millennials take over will make a lot of difference to whether we have relative cultural peace or a Cultural Revolution.
Had dinner with some friends. The wife said she voted for Biden because she couldn’t stand Trump; never wanted to hear his voice. Nothing about policy. So, I suspect, things can never get so bad on the reality side as to affect her vote or her thinking about her vote.
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