it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
Yeah? What percentage of the population?
Again, this incessent need for partisan moralizing. There was no way to prove to the American people that he was going to give government positions to the people behind it. I don’t like Trump, I didn’t vote for him, you can stop constantly trying to convince me he’s a Bad Man.
What we’re talking about is not morality, it’s the factual question of why Trump won. For that purpose, his character is only relevant insofar as it affects public opinion of him.
Which parts? I need specifics since you just tried to claim that January 6th was an issue that had a direct, material impact on the average American (lmao!) so I don’t trust you to make that evaluation.
How is that relevant? How many lives need to be destroyed and how much does your democracy need to be damaged to bullshit and lies alone for it to be an issue?
I’ve only used his character and actions to highlight how manipulated and misinformed people have to be to still vote for him. That should be clear.
Go watch the interviews/campaign speeches and almost every article regarding the project before the election. There was no lack of warning about what was to come, anyone who was unaware either didn’t care or was just another one of the misguided sheep. If you don’t already think the damage done to American democracy on Jan 6th doesn’t, by definition, have an impact on the average American then you have some other grave issue in your “philosophy”. If you just don’t care about democracy because you’re some kind of brainlet tankie then RIP, waste of time.
Because you’re trying to argue that it’s something that has a direct material impact on the average person. Again, as always, you’re getting distracted by moralizing, “This should be an issue” but that’s not what we’re discussing. The fact is, regardless of what people should or shouldn’t care about, regardless of how bad a given event is or isn’t, the fact is that people care the most about things that materially impact them or people they know personally. Inflation, therefore, is more important to the average person than January 6th, and if you go on and on about Jan 6 while failing to address their economic concerns, you will lose. Again, like what happened.
Again, it’s not about what is important or what I think is important, you’re getting distracted by moralizing. It’s about understanding reality as it is. And reality as it is is that people care about things that affect them in direct, material ways more than things that don’t, and January 6th had no direct, material impact on the vast majority of people.
You can whine all you want about how people “should” be more concerned about it, but all you’re doing is railing against the realities of human psychology. It is what it is, not everyone cares about the stuff you care about, even if the stuff you care about really is genuinely important. You might as well complain about the laws of physics, maybe the universe would be better if the second law of thermodynamics didn’t exist, but that doesn’t really matter, because you can’t change it, and, similarly, you can’t wave a wand and get people to stop prioritizing their direct, material interests.
Understanding and adapting to what voters actually care about is what allows you to win elections which is what allows you to take power and address the concerns you have and keep the other side out of power. It doesn’t matter what you think is important if you can’t win.
You keep repeating this meaningless slogan as if we live in a world where morality doesn’t exist or matter.
Agreed, not full picture though. Let me know in what way did Trump do a better job of addressing economic concerns given his already shit economic policies during his first term and his inability to communicate any meaningful plans.
But they don’t genuinely care, because if they did they’d try to be minimally informed. It’s all just based on emoting and slogans, It’s all morons falling for braindead propaganda by bad actors.
Sure, but I’m not talking about anything related to morality. I’m talking about the way the world is and does work, not how the world ought to work. I’d be happy to discuss morality some other time, but when we’re trying to understand physical reality, we need to be able to set it aside. But you refuse to do that. You aren’t capable of looking at things objectively because you’re always immediately trying to inject you opinions about how it ought to be.
He didn’t do much, beyond positioning himself as an “outsider” as he does. Mainly, it was less than Trump did it right and more that Kamala did it horribly wrong. Inflation had had a direct, negative material impact on everyone in the country, and Kamala failed to distance herself from the Biden administration, which people assumed was responsible because that’s when it happened.
And this is where you inject, “But Biden wasn’t responsible,” even though that’s already been established and it doesn’t really matter. People still made the connection and prioritized the issue, in both cases, because of how brains work.
Ok then, great, should be easy then. Just be a bad actor and get the morons to fall for your propaganda instead of theirs. Then you can get elected and address whatever concerns you like.
You can complain that voters don’t care or aren’t informed enough, but unless you have an actual plan to change psychology on a mass scale, you’re just whining that the laws of physics don’t work the way you want them to.
No, you’re just trying to cleanly separate morality from real events as if this is a fucking video game. The moral fiber of politicians for example, is and should be a concern because it does have an impact in pHysiCaL rEaLiTy.
Oh really? was it Kamala that ranted about Haitians eating pets? danced for 40 min onstage to ave maria and ymca like a senile kook? She shouldn’t have to distance herself from the Biden administration because the administration objectively did a good job. It’s really hard for you to admit that people are just uninformed or misinformed by propaganda.
This is also another opportunity for you to realise that morality actually exists and is something to account for.
Even that statement is missing the point. “Is and should be a concern.” You can be concerned about it all you want, but we’re talking about how voters will and have behaved, and their behavior has clearly demonstrated that an insufficient number of people care about such things for it to be decisive. Should they care? I don’t care whether they should care.
To clarify, sure, Trump’s character has an impact on material reality once elected, but we’re discussing voter behavior, which doesn’t necessarily see that connection or care as much as they perhaps should. But how much they “should” care is an altogether different question from how much they do care.
Did those things have a direct, material impact on broad segments of the population? Maybe some Hatians faced more discrimination and were alienated, but that’s a hell of a lot fewer people than were affected by inflation, so the impact it had on the outcome of the election was probably negligible.
And there you go again. Whether she should or shouldn’t have to is irrelevant, you’re drifting off into “ought’s” again. Regardless of whether she should have had to, she did have to.
I already said that they were ages ago. In fact, I was the one who first pointed out that “a wave of global inflation caused incumbent parties in many countries to lose elections.” You only assume I can’t “admit” it, despite me explicitly telling you it, because you can’t wrap your head around the fact that *even though they were uninformed, Kamala still failed to make the case to them." Again, unless you can wave a magic wand and cause uninformed voters to become informed, you’re just complaining about how reality works.
I never said it didn’t. What I said is that we have to be able to look at reality rationally and objectively without our preconceptions of what “should” be true getting in the way of things.
Also, I’m very confused about what you even mean by this or how it’s in any way a response to what I said.
Yes, because they’re heavily brainwashed by foreign and right-wing propaganda. Just waiting for you to finally concede this basic fact.
The fact that the candidate outed himself as a senile retard should have the material impact of shifting votes to the opposition.
And how exactly should Kamala distance herself realistically from the administration she herself was in? Do you think you can come up with some gem of an insight that all the top advisers failed to see? Cool
YES I AM. I’m not sure why you insist on pretending the current state of US politics is a normal reality that people are meant to just conform to, where you can still calculate what the right move is or isn’t according to any kind of rules that make sense. It’s completely fucked. Good faith politicians can’t function normally in this dogshit environment where people think that random social media posts are a genuine substitute for real news, or spend their days listening to pundits who are literally paid by Russia.
THE WHOLE POINT IS HOW DISINFORMATION IS KILLING DEMOCRACY YES.
Sure, some people are, but the broader trend is people following their perceived material interests.
😑
I don’t know why I’m bothering. It’s always this “should” nonsense. It’s completely irrelevant to understanding voter behavior.
It did not have the impact you want it to have because people vote according to their material interests, and Trump’s various antics did not make them change their minds about which candidate was in line with their material interests. Because they were directly, materially affected by inflation, and not by “Trump dancing.”
Of course I do. Those “top advisors” are the same incompetent morons that bungled the Clinton campaign.
You have to provide an alternative explanation to the right’s narrative. When things are bad, people look for who to blame, the right tells them to blame immigrants, while liberals tell them not to blame anyone because things are fine, actually. It’s no wonder people go with the narrative that actually tracks with their lives experience of material conditions. The solution, the way to answer the right’s narrative, is to blame the rich, the billionaires who are hoarding wealth and price gouging and who were (in part) actually responsible for inflation. The democrats don’t want to do that though because they would risk alienating their rich donors.
Even if they weren’t willing to do that, Kamala was directly asked what she would do differently than Biden on the economy and had *absolutely no answer," which was an extreme political fumble. Saying virtually anything would be better than that. She is a terrible politician with poor political instincts, which is why she bombed out of the 2020 primaries despite being the frontrunner.
What I’m saying is that reality and the current state of US politics should be recognized for what it is. And it’s impossible to do that if you keep injecting your ideas about what should be into analysis of what is.
Because you can. You just have to view things through a materialist lens rather than an idealist one.