2024 Election POST MORTEM

Politics & News
2193

Average voter: I can’t afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.

Response: Actually, here is the correct definition of “inflation.” As you can see from the correct definition, inflation rates are now good! Hopefully this helps you understand why things will never get better.

What the average voter hears: I can’t afford groceries. Your solution to this problem is to reframe the current situation as “good.” I still can’t afford groceries.

It doesn’t really matter to the lowest quintile that wages rose faster than the top quintile when they were already drowning and are still drowning. The fact that people somehow still miss this is perplexing. It isn’t good at the bottom, and nothing is noticeably better for many people at the bottom. Pointing to these quintiles is irrelevant statistical chicanery.

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2194

If you mean I’m not living in reality I totally disagree. On one hand they have told us for 9 years that we are facing an existential democratic crisis. On the other hand they did literally nothing to stop it when they had the chance. Do you think people are too dumb to see this?

The Obama example is another obvious one. He wasted his entire political capital and a supermajority on Romney’s health care plan. That is at best extreme political incompetence. Again do you think anyone is buying that electing Democrats will acommplish things like codify Roe, solve the Supreme Court, improve the ACA, or any of the other things they run on? You would have to be a moron of the highest order.

Either the Dems are liars or incompetent(probably both) but either way it’s obvious there aren’t enough voters still falling for it anymore im 2024.

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2195

Also, a clip got posted recently of some college girl saying she’s voting Trump because he said “I won’t sign a national abortion ban”. I guarantee she’s not the only one stupid enough to think that statement means “I am the candidate that’s in favor of abortion rights”. (also, Narrator: He gleefully signed the national abortion/IVF/contraception ban the millisecond it crossed his desk.)

2196

Newsflash: Trump is lightyears better at politics than the Dems. That verbage is almost certainly purposeful to trick people.

2197

Ezra Klein’s post portem.

I still think Ezra Klein is probably the best interviewer or political podcaster. You can tell has taken a minute to think things through.

Cliffs: The Obama era of politics are over. It’s now the Trump era of politics. What he means by that is the transformation that Trump did to the Republican Party is going to have to be reacted to by Democrats, instead of Republicans reacting to Obama.

He felt there wasn’t enough time, even if it were possible, to create a political persona for Harris that wasn’t attached to Biden.

He also mentions alienating groups, like Rogan. Dems should have politicians going on Rogan, insert Bro podcast, Fox News, etc regularly to pitch their mainly economic ideas. His example was Bernie going on the Rogan podcast and then getting castigated for being sexist and racist for going on it. That tells Rogan he’s not welcome in the party, even though he said he likely to vote Bernie, implying he was at least gettable. His idea is that it allows large swaths of people to at least hear and see a Democrat in a relatable setting at least keep them curious.

He also mentions that a lot of core contingencies that Democrats thought were rock solid all shifted to the right, major metropolitan areas, black men, latinos, etc. means that something’s gone wrong with the core governance paradigm that Democrats have been doing, and then need to do a deep dive on how the run the governments where they have control to gain those contingencies back.

He does point out that while Democrats thought that Trump was an aberration last time, this time the shifts were so pronounced they can’t treat it as a one off, but also Trump’s win was relatively small. It wasn’t a Reagan blow out, it wasn’t a Bush '04 blow out, it’s probably going to be less of a win than Biden got in 2020. So there’s room to work with, Democrats just have to do it.

Anyways, I’d suggest listening to his show about it.

back.

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2198

ThEsE pOkEr gUyS aRe So SmArT!

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2199

Why do you think that Obama was elevated and elected primarily for his healthcare plan rather than I dunno, being the most charismatic person to say that the Iraq War was going to be a disaster from day 1 and then pounding that message relentlessly when the American people finally came around to violently agreeing with him on that point?

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2200

It’s this. Well not just this, but it’s definitely this.

Here were the simple messages from this election.

Trump: Mass deportation
Kamala: Abortion rights

Economy > women. I was hoping it would be the other way, but it’s clearly not.

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2201

I feel like I am repeating myself, but the upshot of my point isn’t that Biden wasn’t “left enough” or whatever from a policy perspective, it’s that voters need easy to understand, tangible benefits right in their hands that obvoiusly came from the Dems. Good policy isn’t tangible enough. Union endorsements aren’t tangible enough. Social security checks are tangible enough. Heatlh care coverage that you actually have is tangible enough.

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2202

I would adjust this to say that of course realy wage growth “matters” from a policy perspective, but what matters from an electoral perspective is narrative.

Effective narrative: Me no have health care, am dying. Me vote Obamaman. Obamaman make Obamacare. My now have health care. Me vote more Obamaman.

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2203

He was elected for his charisma. His politics are dogshit and his performance in office was very poor. That’s my entire point.

If you don’t have an Obama level politician(who isn’t coming around every cycle) to sell the lie that you are for a left leaning platform people won’t buy it and these people can’t win. Also the more times we go through the cycle of MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER VOTE DEM TO SAVE: (Insert whatever the party landed on that cycle Abortion, Democracy, Health Care, etc) and then we elect them and they don’t enact or in most cases even attempt to enact what they run on the less the electorate believes them.

It’s the political version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

2204

What should he have spent his political capital on instead? Serious question, he wasn’t going to get M4A passed or abortion rights enshrined. Also, the Dems ran on stopping an Obamacare and were successful for a decade.

2205

Trump is a cancer to democracy and will be a fascist dictator if elected again.

But thank god he survived the assassination attempt.

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2206

In fairness to the woman in that clip, I don’t think she interpreted that way, because she continued by saying something to the effect of “and he’s keeping it with the states”. So I think she understood how he has portrayed his position on it, but obviously LOL to anybody taking Trump saying “I won’t do x” at face value.

And perhaps another SSC moment from me, but I kinda believe he’s not going to sign a blanket “no abortions in the USA” law. We all say how good he is at branding and politics. He’s knows that doing that would be terrible politics. Maybe he doesn’t care anymore if he’s not running again. If anything, it’ll be something awful like no abortions beyond 12 weeks unless a GOP government doctor reviews your case and determines it’s medically necessary. Which I guess we could call a national abortion ban, but he’ll brand it well enough that the media will say “well it’s technically not an abortion ban…”

2207

He could have still passed M4A. You are falling for the lie that the Dems have used to explain why they didn’t do it. Nuke the fillibuster for gods sakes. You were elected by a huge mandate to do M4A and a host of other things and they let one old white guy passing away end any hope of doing that because of norms.

Obama spent his whole two terms pandering to the right. Let’s not pretend he was stymied by bad luck or insurmountable procedural issues or whatever else.

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2208

Thanks for clarifying, I agree with that

2209

First off this party platform is ridiculously large. But here is the 2008 platform. Stuff like meaningfully increasing the minimum wage is in there. Did they do that when they had the chance? Of course not.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-democratic-party-platform

2210

Yeah, we can skewer Dems for a lot of things, but this was a straightforward message that they hammered. Should have been a clear winner and it didn’t work.

2211

One lesson I learned, inflation is a more important economic force because everyone experiences it. Unemployment only impacts 3-10% of people at any time and most folks vote like only other people could become unemployed, not themselves.

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2212

Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, by January 2010 Massachusetts had already replaced a Kennedy with a R promising to vigorously oppose Obama and Obamacare with the end result being the public option, etc removed from Obamacare.

So either 1) Massachusetts voters are world class technocrats who parsed through the Obamacare text and then (stupidly) decided to try to tank it because they thought it wasn’t good enough or 2) your theory of the case is completely wrong.