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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Why has the white working class been voting GOP for many decades despite essentially voting against their economic interests

Why have the democrats failed to provide any possible case for getting them to switch?

What is actually appealing about the Democrat's vision for the future in terms of how it has actually manifested?

If it were a matter of GOP voters being utterly stupid you might think it would be easy for dems to figure out how to push their buttons or provides something they want.

I don’t think there’s anything necessarily appealing for poor whites about the ‘Democrats’ vision’ but it seems straightforwardly likely that a Democratic supermajority and subsequent huge expansion of the federal government’s welfare programs, tax credits, housing support, childcare and so on would probably benefit those below the net-contributor threshold.

subsequent huge expansion of the federal government’s welfare programs, tax credits, housing support, childcare and so on would probably benefit those below the net-contributor threshold

People who are already eligible for such programmes can apply. I don't know where you're getting the idea that the Democrats would suddenly splurge on public spending to include people who are "below the net-contributor threshold" but not getting or applying for support right now.

To be cynical, if there is such expansion of services, poor whites are going to be last on the list to get any of that and they know it.

In the face of zero opposition, I imagine many of those goals would be supplanted enough by efforts to uplift specific demographics that it wouldn't make a tangible difference to a poor white person anyway.

The only rational conclusion one can draw is that as stupid as the working class may be, the sort of person who votes democrat is even more so ;-)

  • -10

You've managed to draw seven reports on this comment (boo-outgroup - 3, antagonistic - 3, low-effort - 1) which is far from a record but it's still pretty impressive.

You've also managed to get meta-moderated at "Not-Bad" (lowish confidence) so I'm pinging @ZorbaTHut as this is the first significant meta-moderation outlier I've seen during the testing phase.

Anyway, more partisanship = more effort, please.

I was being tongue in cheek hence the smiley, but at the same time in every jest...

This is literally the old "what's the matter with Kansas" cliche'. IE look at these inbred hillbillys caring about low-status shit like their jobs and their families and their stupid backwoods trailerparks instead of important high-status things like climate change and lgbtq+ rights. Deplorable. But here's the thing, if intelligence is about processing new information and building accurate models, the "experts" haven't exactly been covering themselves in glory over the last 30 years or so, and the ones who have (IE guys like Bezos and Musk) are visibly treated with scorn, so maybe caring more about your job and your hometown even if they are low-status is a much more reliable proxy for intelligence than being regarded as an "expert".