Protests, dual power, and even electoralism.
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80% of politics is just vibes and most people would be exposed to nothing more than the occasional headline.
It’s why kissing babies or successfully eating a hotdog without being weird (which a remarkable number of politicians fail at) is so important.
Like, people don’t read books but they see the bookshelves with your memoirs on then and they notice your choice of typography and that’s how elections are decided.
Representative democracy is a fraud.
This is also why it's funny people think that the Gaza genocide will be some kind of millstone around Biden or Harris's campaign. The American electorate has only the loosest understanding of what domestic politics are and literally doesn't give the slightest shit about foreign policy or people in other countries. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that foreign policy has absolutely zero impact on how Americans vote.
foreign policy has absolutely zero impact on how Americans vote
I'd say it's more:
A big chunk of voters do care -- look at all the protests against Israel, look at all the anti-war sentiment against Iraq and Vietnam -- there are just huge factors steamrolling those opinions before they can be a deciding factor.
the democrats win when the 'normal' ill-informed yankees turn out to vote, by being marginally less putrescent. the issue for Biden/Harris is not the feelings of those people who on average probably don't care, it's the organizations that can increase their turnout but will withhold their organizing efforts. those assholes that knock on doors & bus folks to the polls are ideological and informed, that's what the democrats are going to capitulate
Or perhaps a better way to put it is that foreign policy has absolutely zero impact on how Americans vote.
this is also true for the """good""" things that the US achieves like getting countries into NATO, which is why Biden's statement before he dropped out where he was like "I got Finland and Sweden into NATO! I got AUKUS done!" was so funny. Literally nobody cares. Most people are judging Biden and Trump based on the most incoherent criteria in human history, because none of it really matters, because both parties are promising that the treats will keep coming in. Hillary Clinton is a war criminal who brought slavery to Libya, leading to the mass impoverishment of millions of people - and I know with absolute certainty that that fact did not lose her any more than a thousand votes across the whole country of hundreds of millions, and only Libyan migrants would have given a shit. It was her hairstyle, or demeanor, or talking style, or maybe some vague exhaustion with Obama and "well, it's only fair if the Republicans get a term after the Dems got two! :)"
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this... how do people just live in ignorance?
My brain has a million thoughts running through it and these people's brains are 🕸🕸🕸
Leaded gasoline was only fully banned in cars in the mid 1990’s. It’s still in propeller plane AvGas.
I'll never not be surprised by both the pure idiocy of certain members of the American electorate and the ability of professional journalists to locate these specimens.
the ability of professional journalists to locate these specimens.
Heave half a brick out of window and you'll hit one.
Americans don't believe in anything
my mum is sort of this way - she's Singaporean and has been very Conservative Catholic my entire life, but I remember she pulled me aside a few years ago talking about how Australia needed to be like China because 'under their Authoritarian regime, things actually get done and they can plan for the future properly'
Yeah my mom undulates between hating the CCP and lamenting how shitty the US is about maternity leave and guns
It's not that 'voters' are incoherent, even though many are, it's that swing voters between the Democrats and the Republicans are completely incoherent because there is nothing objectively different between the parties aside from some levels of bureaucratic government shenanigans that barely affects us because both sides are bad at doing effective bureaucracy (which doesn't actually need to be 'efficient', it just needs to actually accomplish that which it sets out to do, which is the most important government skill), and vibes based on social justice or whatever is brewing in the culture war that only like 25% of any of the party actually gives a shit about at any time.
And it is these swing voters that people in the party chase, most of whom in my experience are basically just 'Chyna bad' voters and whomever publicly whips the whipping boy the most gets their vote.
there is nothing objectively different between the parties
While both are anti labor or pro Oligarchy parties, one is definitely a lot worse than the other. One party aims to uphold the status quo while the other works to establish a reactionary theocracy.
This is incorrect. The Democrats do not work to 'uphold the status quo'. They actively and purposefully undermine the efforts of progressives who are seeking to work against those attempting to entrench local reactionary theocratic tendencies. It's acceleration by another name. And this is because you don't understand the Republican project.
Calling what the Republicans are seeking a 'theocracy' is hyperbolic and misunderstands the distinct petite bourgeoisie nature of American Protestant faith. They are not seeking a Mormon style control of the country, they are seeking the opposite, they wish to dissolve the country into theocratic fiefdoms based on the particular religious inclinations of the petite bourgeoisie. That doesn't mean they don't wish for Christian dominion over the world, but that is just cope for the fact that they are stuck in the financialized neo-liberal hegemony like everyone else. This suits the Democrats just fine because they will also get their little quasi-religious fiefdoms on the coasts, where the real economic power is anyways.
And all this really is doing is creating legislation to legally justify already existing practices in these areas. The 'theocracy' is here, we just stick too much to the edges of society to interact with it.
Edit: Sorry for being rude, it's just that I genuinely fight with these supposedly different 'democrats' on a regular basis, and they are basically as fucked in the head as your average Republican, there is very little distinction outside of the fact that they don't want to see the misery, but if it happens just out of earshot, then it doesn't exist.
This difference is more apparent at state and local levels, too. There are tons of strong criticisms of Democrats; the argument of "no they're literally the same" isn't necessary and doesn't work particularly well.
I'm pretty sure the media is just making shit up and it's mostly donors that think like this.
I think journalists are just good at finding crackpots that make for good OpEd anecdotes. I'm not denying that Yanks are by are large extremely stupid, but as much as we gone on about people having incoherent politics, it's been my experience that most people do have a somewhat consistent worldview informing their political decisions, they just either have weird values, horrid analysis, or both.
Like surveying the people I work with, who are on a spectrum of MAGA Chud to Bernie Bro, most can articulate some vague set of values that are mostly consistent, but they suck at actually assessing anything materially and just assume things are happening either randomly or because of malicious actors in high place. I don't wear my politics on my sleeve at work, but what's weird is when I actually offer them some kind of economic or geopolitical analysis on why something is happening, they all seem to think I'm the smarter boy on planet earth cuz they "didn't think that may". But if I ever said "Marx" much less "Lenin" they'd tar and feather me so I guess occasionally dumbfounding them is the best I got 
I think journalists are just good at finding crackpots that make for good OpEd anecdotes.
People put more thought into picking a character in a fighting game
i mean, a fighting game character actually responds to your inputs. right now we're playing government on a wifi connection.
right now we're playing government on a wifi connection.
More like playing it on attract mode
Much like electoralism, I still haven't gotten into Guilty Gear because none of the characters appeal enough to pick a main from and I'd still much rather be playing BlazBlue
Rubemaxxing
These people like to cosplay as swing voters.
Real swing voters might have voted Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
But anyone who voted for Trump twice and is seriously entertaining a third vote for Trump after Jan. 6, Dobbs and his felonies is not a swing voter.
Swing voters will sway democratic this election.
The real question is simply how hard each base turns up.
Nobody cares about his felonies.
I don't get this site, why does everyone with Lemmy in their username have weird BlueMAGA takes?
Not sure if you're doing a bit, but they're users from other Lemmy instances outside of Hexbear, and they usually have lib-ass takes.
I am not doing a bit, it just has been baffling scrolling Hexbear then suddenly seeing a comment about the marketplace of ideas sorting everything out or whatever, and it's always from someone with Lemmy in their name. They all seem like the Carl Diggler character Felix Biederman used to do, but more on-the-nose.
Because on their home instance, that's the normal perspective. They wander in here, like a lost dog, thinking it's their backyard, and start barking, expecting to get a chorus of howls in response but instead get told to shut up.
They're not from here, their instance is full of other libs, and lib communities. They're probably browsing their instance's "All" feed and see these posts because someone from their instance has subscribed to [email protected]. They have "lemmy" in their username because many of these instances have it in their domain name. lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.dbzer0.com, lemmy.ee, etc. When our comments show up in their instance, the names have @hexbear.net on the end [email protected] . Lemmy is a federated system, that means these sites are all interconnected, but otherwise their own self-contained ecosystem.
Seriously, half the reason a lot of people like Trump is he's a wacky, edgy, "outsider" who doesn't give a fuck about decorum. Only nerd ass West Wing fans care that he's a felon, for everyone else it just adds to his bad boy mystique.
Everyone also knows he's done much worse things that he'll never get punished for in any way. I don't understand why Trump getting a slap on the wrist over some financial regulations is supposed to be some huge win.
Liberals:
Be directly responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people, mostly women and children: I SLEEP
Commit a felony by not filling out the proper paperwork for usage of campaign funds: REAL SHIT
Swing voters will sway democratic this election.
i dont think you should treat this statement as 100% true, from what i have learn swing voters are centrists who while they like to act that they care about policy and stuff they only really care about which candidate looks the strongest/coolest, its good biden dropped because he looks frail and with dementia, but the dems will still have to get someone that at least can clap back at trump or look ok or his strategy of "unifying" the country by getting a Never trump republican as VP with give him the small lead he needs to win.
i dont think either base will decide the election
Swing voters... want to gamble that they are voting for the "winning" candidate and get more satisfaction from this than from any potential policies the winning administration might implement.
Swing voters will sway democratic this election.
and if you keep repeating this mantra to yourself maybe it will become true
There is one odd vibe shift I am noticing, which is people who say the r-slur and use "gay" in a derogatory manner backing Dems this cycle
the dem base is shedding all of the progressive posturing they've been doing for the past decade just like they tossed "me too" aside once there was a credible accusation against biden
soon the differences between the parties won't even be aesthetic beyond the color palette of the ties and banners
Nobody cares about jan 6 or some weird accounting crimes. You'd have to be extremely unhinged to be concerned at paperwork being filed slightly wrong. And Jan 6 is a joke.
the word you're looking for is stupid.
If you were in charge of major party, why would you ever try to cater to these people? They definitionally do not have coherent, stable political opinions, and there aren't that many of them anyway.