Outlaw83
1mo ago
There were plenty of days in court - there was just zero actual evidence to get past the first hoop despite being in front of in many cases, Republican or Trump-appointed judges.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
I think it's also determined by what you base your votes on.
My fellow lefties sometimes still think if they just got the right candidate in the rural parts of the country and really sell the non-college educated populace there on Medicare for all or whatever, they'd look past said candidate being pro-abortion and pro-LGBT or whatever, when that's just not happening, because those rural non-college educated folks legitimately care more about abortion, LGBT rights, immigration, et al than progressive economic policy, even if they'd say they're for union rights or single-payer health care in poll. Those people are conservatives, even if they have some left-leaning views, they just don't vote on those views.
By the same token, if you're a former Democrat PMC and all you deeply care about is transgenderism in schools, COVID rules, and various other Internet culture war issues on the conservative side, and you base you votes on that, and may be pro-choice or pro-union, but don't vote on that, you're just a conservative now. Or at the least, a partisan Republican.
I'm not saying that as an attack or a dunk, but rather I'm treating the college-educated anti-woke centrist with the same respect as a religious pro-life activist when it comes to their political views.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
I actually think Melosi is quite far-right on immigration, she just can't do much due to European laws, and after Brexit, even far-right political parties no longer talk about their countries leaving the EU.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
If dozens of Trump-appointed judges finding no fraud, why would some commission appointed by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer convince anybody?
The reason why more than half of Trump voters believe there was fraud is because Trump to this very day continues to say so.
Note than in the 2022 midterms, many candidates in a lot of different races all claimed there might be fraud in the lead-up, but all of them, including very MAGA types like Mastriano in Pennsylvania all conceded and gave very typical except Kari Lake in Arizona, who is now losing a Senate race by 5 to 10 points.
There were no big changes in the laws in most of these states between 2020 & 2022, but nowhere the same amount of people think that for example, there was fraud in Catherine Cortez Mastro's 0.8% win in Nevada, despite at the time, Nevada being a completely Democratic-controlled state.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Huge Dem's aren't Vivek fanboys. He's only a 'huge Dem' by the standards that anybody who isn't 100% for Trump a 'huge Dem.' He's like many, many people, a weirdo with ping-pong political opinions and obvious mental issues.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I know this is a typical argument from dissident righties that world is a failing state and everything is collapsing, but conservatively, the world is a better place for approximately 70% of the world's population. Even using a purely American perspective, the median American city is still wealthier and for instance, has less crime than broad swathes of the 70's and 80's. Yes, if you truly think the fact there are more non-white people and that non-straight people of all sorts are open about it is truly a disastrous thing, OK, but this happened to Gerald Ford in '76.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
The problem for Trump is neither of these been have been obvious Democrat's. From what I can tell, Ford didn't get any huge approval bump from his two attempts from weirdos like Squeaky Fromme and even for Hinckley, the reason Reagan got sympathy is he dealt with it with good humor and sympathy for people like Brady who got killed.
From what's been revealed, this guy is a weirdo swing voter who voted for Trump in 2016, went to Bernie & Tulsi in 2020, is pro-Ukraine, but anti-vax, and is was trying for a Haley/Vivek ticket. That's not a political ideology you can stick on Democrat's.
Plus, there is the small matter that the moment voters outside of the 40-45% Republican hard limit listen to Trump, they like him less.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Freedom from consequences is axiomatically harmful to human actualization and that's half our politics.
Again, people say this, but all of society is basically to find "freedom from consequences" whether it's penicillin, germ theory, or better ways to keep a building warm or cold. You just don't like this way of a avoiding a consequence. You take antibiotics? Why are you trying to avoid the consequence of dying of a minor cold like millions, if not billions of people had to do for the entire history of the world until incredibly recently?
Outlaw83
2mo ago
The thing is, and I say this as a dirty open borders social democrat, there are plenty of actual bad cases, as you'd expect in a nation of 350 million people to use for examples, and even with families who will support you using their case, as opposed to the poor kid in Springfield, Ohio, whose family is against Trump or anti-immigration folks using their child as a bludgeon against immigration.
So why make up stuff?
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Yes, it's almost like we're legitimate when we talk about choice and freedom when it comes to health care choices that doesn't effect other people - want a baby, great we think the state should support you heavily. Don't want it, great, here's state funding for abortion. Want to rage against the dying of the light? Let's use public health to do so? Don't want to be a burden, that's cool too.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
All Western European abortion laws have late-term exceptions you can drive a truck through, and also, abortion is far more easily available in the first two trimesters.
For all the talk of European laws and how moderate they are, any Democrat in a red state who proposed them as a compromise would be called a baby killing radical all the same.
Atlantic article on it - (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/roe-overturned-europe-abortion-laws/670539/) - Use archive.is or whatever.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, even if you assume perfect usage of contraception, a 1-5% failure rate over tens of millions of people over lots of sex will lead to some legitimately accidental pregnancies.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
There's all sorts of "natural" consequences we've gotten rid of thanks to technology and science. Why is pregnancy different?
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Is there that sort of person really, though?
Or, maybe to put it more accurately, is there anybody who can appease this website, the Daily Wire/Federalist/etc. types, and also not cause non-colleged educate pro-choice women in Wisconsin to get, 'ewww.' Like, it may be true there's not a majority of liberal wokeism, but there's even less of a majority of conservative populism. Especially among people under 50.
I know there's this view it's all about optics and charisma, but if you throw 1997 George Clooney up there and start talking about it's OK if states are banning abortions, you're going to have issues. Like, Obama rolled a natural 20 on charisma, but even he had issues in 2012 because things weren't great and the ACA wasn't popular yet. Hell, Reagan had a massive mid-term loss in 1982, and then had another in 1986 due to unpopularity.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, seemed to work out for Irish, Italians, Jews, and all the other formerly high-crime low-wage ethnic groups. Even among Hispanics, there's a rising tide of 3rd & 4th generation who are now very successful and just like the white ethnics are starting to vote on cultural grievance and status protection, just like Archie Bunker and such started to do so.
Outside of that, there's no evidence that sort of issues, say, Europe is having with it's immigrant population is happening in the US at any large scale in the long run. Sixth and seventh generation Algerians and Turk's aren't considered fully French or German, and this just isn't an issue in America, outside of a rump 30% of which there has always been a population that's been upset since we started letting those swarthy Swedes in.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
It's the same thing when you look at stuff like suicide rates among the youths - if it's all Instagram and phones, then it's not showing up in various countries in Europe. There's something more, but the real reason isn't probably something as easy as "capitalism sucks" or "feminist and immigrations sucks."
Outlaw83
2mo ago
The problem is threefold -
1.) Money hits a saturation point - ask any resident of Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc.
2.) ActBlue does a better fundraising job at times for Democrat's and is a better gauge on enthusiasm than 14 rich people.
3.) Those rich right-wing donors get Republicans to support unpopular things like continue tax cuts, abortion bans, or allow unpopular candidates to win primaries because they manage to find a political sugar daddy.
Ironically, the GOP would be better off under European-style campaigning, assuming no other changes, where there are no primaries, campaigns are limited, and actually financially restrained.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, you still have freedom of association in your personal life - some people in fact, call that 'cancel culture' when some people don't want to associate with other people due to their personal views, but yes, if you want the privileges and success that can come with being a business owner in America and all the advantages that has thanks to centuries of work by men and women of all colors and creeds, you don't get to make that business a private club for your own kind.
Or to quote a current Presidential candidate, you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
There is no such thing as assimilation resistance at least the way it actually matters in society, as opposed to being upset there's more aspects of cultural group x in American life. There's no evidence of the usual pattern changing - first gen speaking mother tongue, second gen speaking mixture, third gen speaking English and a little bit of the mother tongue, fourth gen not knowing the mother tongue. OK, the last part is a joke.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
The problem with this line of argument is that if you directly, anonymously ask normal people about their preferences, many of the answers are so far right that they couldn't be stated in polite society. Especially on the topic of enforcing borders or trans ideology.
This just isn't true, at least in the United States. Even in polling that shows support for harsh measures, there's also still strong support for amnesty for a number of current undocumented and stuff like the DREAM Act. On the transgender issue, the vast majority of people don't care, think it's at best an issue for their school boards or local government to deal with when it comes to kids, but there's the general American-speciifc libertarian view on it when it comes to adults.
If that was the message from the GOP, they could win on this, and indeed they did when that was the message combined with general worry over school closings. But, as we're seeing, even in places like Florida, the Mom's for Liberty types go off the rails and then lose elections, and when the GOP tries to run ads in abortion referendums about how this actually means something something transgenders will take your kids, they lose on that too.
Yes, the median American is to the right of the median Democrat politician on immigration and transgenderism. In both cases, they're to the left of the median Republican politician and they don't really care about the latter, so they find it, "weird", when GOP politicians and media obsess over it.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
1.) If you would've told a British person they were basically the same as a Serb or Bulgarian in I don't know, 1851, they likely would've punched you and called you some weird slur nobody knows anymore. But, also, the whole "these ethnic groups are all similar too each other so that immigration was OK, it's just these people won't be able to do it," is literally the same argument made against Italians, Jews, Slavs, and hell, the Swedes at one time. This weird 'we're all white and should have solidarity' is a thing that never existed. As I've might've said before, as the descendent of Pole's, it's actually far more likely some ancestor of current non-college educated half-German guy in rural Ohio did a bit of light war crimes of ancestors of mine, as far as nothing bad has been done to my ancestors by non-European immigrants, so why should I, as argued below, have solidarity with them on racial lines?
2.) I'm quite sure the ole' American assimilation process (which continues largely the same way it always has despite protests to the contrary) will do it's work on Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and whomever else is the scary migrant group of the week. Yes, yes, the culture will change around that - welcome to being in the position of Bill the Butcher in 1863 upset the Irish were changing things or whatever. We're not some European country where people stay on the same patch of land for 9,000 generations. Things shift and change, and whatever you think was the perfect time that we globalists ruined was a time of ruin and destruction for some a generation or two older than you.
As far as imparting cultural sentiments, I don't know, Trump seems to be winning over Hispanic's fine. A little economic success leading to ladder pulling does not know color. It's an American tradition.
3.) Which is probably my inherent bedrock disagreement on where we don't agree - America's not getting worse to me. There are issues, as always, but in the long run, even with Trump, things continue to progress bit by bit.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, I guarantee there were parts of the country that accelerated a similar rate, when you account for a much bigger immigration wave nationally.
But putting that aside, once you're in the United States, you're allowed to live where you can get housing. That's it. The community doesn't get a veto.
I mean, except overwhelmingly in blue states, they have expanded access to health care in the ways they can. Every single 'blue state' immediately accepted the Medicaid expansion that was passed and in those states, there are far less hoops to jump through. Again, for unions, all of the states where it's easiest to form a union are in blue states - the more obvious example of this is where in Michigan, the Republican's passed right-to-work in 2010 and a the first Democratic trifecta since then reversed it.
I'd also point out that all the non-college educated non-woke blue collar workers could organize themselves under their own unions if they wanted too. There's no law against creating your own union, but to steal a phrase, there seems to be not enough Elite Human Capital to pull that off.
Also, all of the highest states in the country for teacher pay are blue states and the lowest are all red states.
Like, you can disagree with the extras, whether it's types of policy in schools or covering health care procedures you don't like, and that's a valid reason, but there on the basic issues, the Democrat's are better on these specific issues and again, if you care more about books you don't like being available to students or limiting abortion, that's all well and good, but then, you're a conservative.
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