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   simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 01:51:19 JST simsa03
   Saw Biden's speech. A tear in my eye. I will miss this politician, his courage to be decent, his unpretentious work ethics of a politician just trying to deliver. A true public servant, like so many. I will miss him and his like as they are replaced by the awful crowd in red hats, already salivating in their glee to burn all down just for the sake of burning it all down.
   • tinydoctor likes this.
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 10:33:14 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 Many are blaming Biden. Maybe he should have stepped aside to allow for a primary for a successor. But I don't blame him even if it would been better if he had.

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 11:52:07 JST simsa03

     in reply to

     • tinydoctor
     "Shoulda woulda coulda never did nothin’", as a close friend's mother once said.
     
     I don't think that it would have made a difference one way or the other. Dems had to play the cards they held, they decided to play it this way, and whether the other strategy would have achieved a better result is everybody's guess. And irrelvant.
     
     What I don't like, though, is that when the decision was made, that even Nancy Pelosi (whom I admire deeply for all of her political career) first praised Biden for his humility in putting country before ego, and then, when things went south, backstabbed him with ridiculous accusations. That I find indecent. (Apart from the fact that blame games never work and that they never win anything. Things turned out this way, not the other.)
     
     All the blame-games about why Dems lost not only the White House but both Houses of Congress ignore (in my opinion) the impact of one topic that seems to have been decisive in these elections but hasn't yet been spoken about in the post-election discussions. And it has (in my opinion) been so decisive that it would have turned the election to GOP's favour regardless which candidate Dems had finally come up with.
     
     Many talk about the individual person's economic assessment as decisive topic. Others name migration and "the border situation". Fair enough.
     
     But the more driving factor (again: in my opinion) has been abortion. And here Dems were in a bind. They chose abortion to rally a certain segment of the population. And that worked fine in white middle class people with higher education. But at the same time it seems to have alienated another important part of the traditional voting blocs of the Dems, viz. the Latino voters, who are said to be more faith driven and more family value driven.
     
     If you add abortion to migration/border and economic hardship, you get a powerful surge for the T campaign.
     
     1) Many low-income earners and many "minorities" feared that more migrants would take away their jobs and put more strain on already scarce resources of #infrastructure (housing, education, health services). They acted like they didn't want to see "their" "opportunities" they once received now offered to others, a "close the door quickly after me" sentiment. Not directly racist but an example of lateral violence.
     
     2) Advertise abortion and "minorities" and low-income people, most often faith and family value driven, get the feeling of their sense of identity being threatened. And here not T, not tax cuts for the rich, not the rise in consumer good prices due to his planned tarrifs, not Project 2025, not his fascism, not the surveillance capitalists' tech imperialism, or whatever you like to come up with, matters. The only thing that matters is that Dems (and only Dems!) threaten the identity of the vulnerable.
     
     So perhaps Dems could have avoided the outcome of the election if they could have desisted from using abortion as topic at all. It's my impression that they blew it with this topic. And it is my impression that they not really had a choice: They probably couldn't have *not* used this topic as they needed the strong female support.
     
     There was no way around, I guess. Dems were doomed with the abortion topic, one way ot the other. It blew up their Big Tent. Regardless whom they would have finally selected as candidate, by whatever process.
     anderbill likes this.
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 21:19:59 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 I don't think abortion is what killed Harris and the Dems chances. But it's clear I was way up in my silo and accepted some assumptions that are now in retrospect wrong. I did think Harris would win, and even momentum was on her side. Boy, was I wrong. I feel much the same way I did in 1980 when Reagan was elected, except with less testosterone. Back then, I was flabbergasted and enraged that so many people were that stupid.

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 00:59:30 JST simsa03

     in reply to

     • tinydoctor
     I had the same Reagan association.
     
     Still I'd hold up abportion as factor, plus now adding Harris being a woman. That knocked off too many "traditional" voters. Esp. that Harris is an "imperfect" woman, with no own biological child...
     
     I guess the U.S. is not ready for a woman in that position, not for a long time.
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 01:35:53 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 Part or most of my enthusiasm for Harris was because she is a woman and a person of color, and presented that as a positive in a powerful and smart way. I knew many voters would vote against her precisely because of that, but a lot of people I thought would feel that enthusiasm did not. Like my elder daughter, who voted for Stein, who saw her as part of the Dem establishment she is so very angry at. Misogyny and racism won, in part because some sat on their hands or voted third party.

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 01:47:00 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 It was a trolley problem election. Now we all get to find out which track the trolley is barreling down and who and who isn't standing on that track. A lot of voters pulled the switch to send it down barreling down on other people, and may be surprised to find themselves run down.

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 02:02:14 JST simsa03

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     • tinydoctor
     What I saw a few days back is that other than in 2026 this time third-party votes diodn't make a difference to the Dem loss. In the Swing States Stein achieved vetween 0.3% to 0.8%, far less than the winning difference of the T campaign against the Harris campaign. So don't blame daughter, at least not this time.
     
     Anyway, although I understand the various sentiments that factored into the voting decisions, what I do not understand is the oblivion of the U.S. voters not to take into consideration the effect of such elections on the foreign policy and the consequences for the world, be it political, financial, economically, environmentally. U.S. citizens have a responsibility, in my opinionk, to think about such consquences as well, and then I find this strange mix of lack of education, self-aggrandizement, and autism in U.S. voters rather appalling.
     
     But be it as it may, T has a mandate now, and that makes me ache in a way I don't feel very often. I guess that must have been the feeling by many when on January 30th, 1933, Hitler became Reich Chancellor.
     
     And there is the tiny possibility that things may even get worse by T holding back, somehow "solving" the wars in the Middle East and in Europe, not pushing world economy to the brink. What if he turns out tame and more or less successful. How will that change people's attitudes toward authoritarian conduct? Yuck!
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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 02:03:34 JST simsa03

     in reply to

     • tinydoctor
     That is a fitting image.
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 02:50:54 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 I don't blame my daughter. At least she voted. Those who did not exercise their right, privilege, and responsibility as citizens to vote anger me more than those who voted, even if they voted for Trump. American voters and nonvoters do not take consideration or responsibility. Yes, appalling, not to say...deplorable?

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 03:46:34 JST simsa03

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     • tinydoctor
     Well, I'm not so sure. Better not vote than vote awful. To me the talk about "exercise their right, privilege, and responsibility as citizens to vote" is a faint echo of the strange sentimental self-image of the U.S. consisting of "shining city on the hill", "beacon", and "last hope for the world". The Myth of Exceptionalism is always at work when the U.S. sees reasons to engage as well as when she sheds responsibility when collateral damages accrue.
     
     I have been a staunch non-voter for the past 40 years, for various reasons. And when pressed with the remark to consider all those people who died for "our privilege to vote" I usually replied that it was democracy that brought Hitler to power not a coup. (In fact it was some kind of coup as the backroom deals between Schleicher, Brüning, Papen, and Hindenburg to make Hitler Reich Chancellor to tame him inside a broad coaltion of conservatives pretty quickly backfied.) I had only one rule: Should voter turnout sink below 51% I'd vote, not for the programs of the parties but to keep the democratic system alive. (I always accepted that I could afford my stance of not-voting only because there was a majority of people actually voting.) Only lately did my assessment change when I began to view democratic systems (!) in terms of political infrastructure. (That is: Liberal democracies as a means to provide enough time for disagreements in opinion to be resolved or decdied without society breaking apart, quite contrary to what quthoritarian structures provide.)
     
     Thus I am less into a "sentimental and moralizing approach" towards democracy but into more mundane aspects of cost-benefit considerations. (I wonder how Thomas Hardy would have seen these two approaches.)
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 23:08:14 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 Well, there's awful and awfuller. A friend who much more radical and down on Democratic Party posted "Ok, I did my duty and voted for the lesser fascist..." My parents thought it was important to vote I reckon I got my citizens vote sentimentality from them. I think one can make an reasonable, ethical decision to exercise the right not to vote, but most of the people who didn't vote in this election were more I can't be bothered, don't want to get my hands dirty by making a choice...

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 11-Nov-2024 23:08:34 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 and so on. Hardy?