4824

The DNC continues to have its finger on the pulse of American Democrats.

4825

Fuckers. They still don’t get it.

4826

Thanks, but it feels like I’m just pissing into the wind and decided against posting it. (I’m trying to wean myself off political discussions, it just leaves me frustrated and angry. Obviously still a work in progress as I keep failing.)

I’ll post these two links though as counter data to the “ignoring rural voters” shtick that seems so prevalent.

Wisconsin’s turnout was about 66 percent of all eligible voters, reported the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the state’s lowest since 1996.

The county-by-county voting results for Wisconsin in the 2016 election offer insight into Trump’s victory in the state. So, too, does a look at the vote numbers in the victory by President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012. Overall, Trump received just about the same number of votes as Romney, but Clinton received nearly 240,000 fewer votes than Obama.

(Edit: It should be noted in 2018 Walker only lost by 23,000 votes. WI is getting increasingly red, following OH and IA. Currently, a generic Democrat is statistically tied with trump there.)

Here’s an academic paper on the 2016 election (one of many that has analysed the election and whose conclusions are largely ignored by media in favor of their favorite “white working class/economic anxiety” drivel they love to peddle.)

Conclusion quoted at length:

The results of our analyses demonstrated that it is too easy to consider Trump to be anti-establishment candidate, at least with regard to the voting motives of his supporters. Although we operationalized political trust and political support in two different ways, in not a single model was this a significant voting motive. Although the rhetoric about “draining the swamp” (of bureaucracy in Washington, DC) received ample media attention, our analysis suggests that it was not a major voting motive for Trump voters.

Theoretically, this is important because the literature on protest voting (and populism) states that a hostile attitude toward the political elite functions as a major voting motive for populist parties (Moffit 2016; Rooduijn 2014). Trump voters did not follow this pattern; therefore, it would be incorrect to state that the Trump election fits this general pattern of protest voting.

Furthermore, our analyses show evidence of the enduring strength of partisanship in US politics. Despite the fact that Donald Trump could be considered an ideologically extreme candidate—with personal positions that often were at odds with the official position of the Republican Party—considerations of partisanship continued to play an important role as a voting motive. Even in these conditions, most partisans followed the lead of their party. However, even among Democratic supporters, we observed a significant effect of racist resentment and antiimmigrant sentiments.

The most important finding of the analysis, however, is that racism—regardless of how it was measured—appears to have been an important motive in voting for Trump. As such, this is not a new finding because we know that, indeed, in 2008 Barack Obama suffered from a lack of support among racist voters (LewisBeck, Tien, and Nadeau 2010). The 2016 campaign, however, demonstrated that the effect of racism is not only present when voters have a choice among candidates with different ethnic backgrounds. The ideological positions and the rhetoric of the candidate clearly matter as well. In this specific election, negative attitudes toward ethnic minorities and immigrants swayed independents and some Democrats to opt for candidate Trump,thereby considerably strengthening his electoral-support base.

4827

Thank you for articulating that so clearly and forcibly.

4828

It’s not exactly a winning argument, even now. Also, how interesting would debate on it be? “Oh, we all agree that climate change is real and we should do something about? Great, now let’s talk about the billions of dollars that we’ll need to spend to fix it, while there are still people that worry student debt, paying rent, getting a decent job, racism, sexism or putting food on the table. Oh, this is an important issue to the White Progressive men of the Democratic party that is going to vote for us anyway, but not the black community that is right now behind Bidden, the one guy that is beating all of us, and probably not going to do much about climate change?”

There is a reason why the green new deal was so strongly linked to social justice and income, and that is because, for a lot of people, it’s not the biggest issue, even in the Democratic Party.

4829
4830

In the early primary states, climate change now ranks second behind health care on issues. It’s a complex problem requiring complex solutions that cannot be adequately articulated in 30 second sound bites. Until Inslee made it the center piece of his (failed) campaign, even Democrats gave it so much lip service (“we will rejoin the Paris accords” isn’t exactly an aggressive stance on the issue.)

The point is to illustrate the effort and leadership it will take to guide people through what is without question the defining issue of our time. But as Sanders demonstrated with his recently released plan, there is danger in trying to paint the solutions as painless. “We’re going to create 20 million new jobs and it will pay for itself” is at best disengenous and can easily be used as a cudgel against Democrats as seen by a recent Hugh Hewitt op-ed who now hopes Sanders is the nominee.

More broadly, leadership doesn’t mean following the polls and deciding what to do in reaction to them - often it means galvanizing people and, well, leading them where they might not want to go.

4831

Ah, so you want Biden to be the next Nominee. Because that’s how you are going to get him as the nominee.

Climate change is an important issue, but it’s a hot potato, and I don’t see why the Democratic party needs to be playing with it before the election, when the only hands that can be burned are their own.

4832

Perhaps the best example of the dilemma of climate change that comes to mind is FDR, who no doubt understood in 1940 that, not only was the US likely going to war in Europe, but that it was almost certainly essential that the US go to war in Europe. On the other hand, he also knew that campaigning on the basis of war in Europe would likely mean his defeat, given prevailing attitudes of the voters, so he campaigned instead on a promise of not going to war in Europe.

Real action on climate change is going to be painful. People are going to be hurt by it. Some people will likely be ruined by it, or at least they will believe it will ruin them. That ruin is proximate, right in front of them, while the consequences of climate change are very remote. It may make sense for Dems to avoid a purely internal debate on the most aggressive policy, broadcast to the entire country and animating those fears.

4833

I actually feel that the proper timing for a climate change debate, politically speaking, is during the general election, not the primary, b/c of the GOP pattern of ignoring this issue and pretending like in some fantastical way climate change only affects Dems. By having it as a single-party debate during the primary, we allow the GOP to continue ignoring it and treat a global issue as if it were a “Democrats Only” issue. I do think having some of the general election debates on specific topics, with climate change one of the main topics, is a good idea.

4834

The DNC isn’t ‘leadership.’ In this case, they’re trying to elect a Democratic president. They’ve decided that, from a strategic perspective, they don’t want to elevate Climate Change above the issues voters care more about.

I think they’re right. General election voters – particularly swing voters and those in swing states – probably don’t have Climate Change as a top-3 or even top-5 issue. I understand that the existence of our species should take priority over healthcare, the economy, racial/ economic justice, student debt, police reform, abortion rights, gun control, etc. But it doesn’t.

If you’re going to take one issue and identify it as your party’s highest priority, it needs to be something that will resonate with a broader swathe of voters.

4835

Why is there a proper time for this? IMO the proper time is all the time. There’s no reason we have to limit discussion about climate change to a single debate over the next two years.

4836

Now I know why Thanos thought it a good idea to obliterate half of humanity. :P

Climate change is an important issue with Democrats (google it if you don’t believe me, it’s second behind health care) but that won’t stop the media from (mostly) ignoring it. It certainly is a major issue with millennials as they and certainly their kids (if/when they can afford to have any) are going to be the ones who will have to deal with the shit when it really hits the fan (us old farts will be dead before then.) Millennials now also outnumber boomers as a cohort - yes, I know, they don’t vote but maybe, just maybe Democrats remaining cowardly and feckless will ensure they keep not voting.

And once the general rolls around there won’t be one word about climate. It’s going to end up being all about socialism and open borders - and not because that’s how Republicans spin but rather that’s the how the media will choose to frame it.

4837

Yes, but those people are wrong. It is the biggest issue. The Democratic candidates could lead on this instead of following. Make the people understand the urgency. It’s the fucking planet for chrissakes. This is why unlike a lot of folks I don’t applaud Inslee dropping out. It was nice to have one person on the stage who actually got it, and spoke the truth.

This is at least as big a crisis as World War II and people are still treating it like one item out of a list of ten. It doesn’t feel insane now because the crisis is happening on a timescale and in a manner that makes it difficult for people to grasp. But in retrospect it will be seen as the madness that it is.

4838

It is for you, but not for people saddled with huge college debts, or people in dead end jobs that pay a poverty wage, or people without enough savings to take care of a single big emergency.

The fact is, being able to make climate change your number one concern is a form of privilege that not all of us have, even on this forum.

So, no, I don’t want it debated. I would rather talk about bridging the wealth gap, the influence of money on politics, support for young people and young families. Those are the issues that are number one list, because they impact me and my family here and now. After those are sorted, then I’ll have the breathing room to worry about the climate.

4839

If someone is worried about their healthcare this year, or their staggering student debt-load right now, or their kid being killed by police, it’s a very heavy lift to tell them that their highest priority should be around disasters in the future.

Mostly, you just demonstrate that your priorities are different from theirs. I don’t think you can “leadership” this away. It doesn’t matter that their risk calculus is demonstrably wrong. It just doesn’t.

4840

This is exactly why I offered FDR’s 1940 campaign. Did he do the right thing, on balance? I think probably yes. It’s difficult to assess counterfactuals, but if FDR loses in 1940, it’s easy to imagine a timeline where the US stays out of WW2.

Edit: Indeed, one way to look at it is that aggressive climate change programs as the top priority will probably immiserate people now — or leave them in misery — so that other people are not immiserated later. That’s…hard to sell. It doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but it’s hardly a great campaign slogan.

4841

A worthy epitaph for a species that got close but couldn’t quite get over the hump.

4842

Last I checked, people with college debt still live on Earth.

They still don’t get it, and Dems are not leading. Trump takes “brown people invasion” and makes it the biggest issue of our time, and Dems can’t take the literal burning of the earth and elevate it above stuff like income tax.

Again, in retrospect it will be understood as the madness it is.

4843

Cockroach Herodotus said as much in his chapters on “Humanity Failing the Marshmallow Test”.