Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 380: Manchin Ease Theater

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean if Joe Biden is going to lose elections for not letting people die, then I dunno what the alternative is supposed to be.

I mean I know what it is.

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masterplum posted...

A moderate Republican

lol

masterplum posted...

I just don't think this race is close enough to 2022 for it to be especially relevant. Afghanistan and Covid are crushing Biden right now. All it takes is the supreme court reversing Roe or something like that and suddenly we are in a completely different climate

A moderate Republican winning Virginia is just completely whatever in terms of national politics

Its definitely not great for Dems, but yeah the VA Gov race has gone to the opposite party of the president 11 of the past 12 times (every time except 2012). The thing Im most worried about is the extent to which it increases the odds that Trump will run again in 2024 and/or Rs will continue to embrace Trumpism (since thats probably more determined by the narrative than whatever the true causes of the shift were). If 2022 goes differently though no one will be thinking about 2021 races in 2024.

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masterplum posted...

All it takes is the supreme court reversing Roe or something like that and suddenly we are in a completely different climate

ok, what if the Court just waits until after the primary because there are always abortion cases pending and the Dems continue to do nothing and worse than nothing

We're talking about what Democrats are (not) doing to improve their chances, "but hypothetically, Republicans might screw up in a year" is barely relevant to Dem political strategy. If your point was that Democrats might save bigger stuff for closer to the election then maybe, but nothing we can see now inspires any confidence in that.

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ElizeLutus posted...

He's not a moderate, though. He's far right. It's just that the rest of the party is a bit more far right than he is. But not by much.

I'm looking at his core positions on ballotpedia and I'm not seeing most of the more insane stuff.

https://ballotpedia.org/Glenn_Youngkin

Cutting costs and loosening regulations could have been the stump speech of a Republican in 1992

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masterplum posted...

It also tells me that vaccine mandates are probably not the way to go if you want to win elections.

Not sure I agree with this. I wouldnt be surprised if Rs gained from people consciously switching their vote due to vaccine mandates, but if those mandates end the pandemic more quickly I think that would overwhelm any other shifts.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

ok, what if the Court just waits until after the primary because there are always abortion cases pending

Neither Roberts nor Kavanaugh have ever indicated they would be the type to do this.

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masterplum posted...

Neither Roberts nor Kavanaugh have ever indicated they would be the type to do this.

The supreme court has been doing a ton of completely unindicated weird shit this year

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Um guys the lead is down to 4% and we're still only at 88% reporting. How sure are we in a Youngkin win?

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HeroicCrono posted...

Um guys the lead is down to 4% and we're still only at 88% reporting. How sure are we in a Youngkin win?

Enough where I stopped paying attention to it?

Whether Youngkin wins or youngkin loses by a hair, that doesn't change anything about the political climate.

Democrats need a big change to not get hammered in 2022

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I'm going to save you all some grief and say that 2024 was fucked the moment we learned that Manchin and Sinema were essentially Republicans

People were always going to blame Biden for the pandemic not immediately disappearing and the necessity of continued restrictions. Things were supposed to get done in office to offset that. Things will not get done. RIP. There, you can stop handwringing for the next three years.

Paratroopa1 posted...

How they vote is a symptom of the type of people they are - it would be impossible for me to ever really be friends with someone whose personality has them voting for republicans in this climate

While this is true, I think the point he was getting at is that those kinds of people used to be able to hide their hate with a smile, or at least act civil and 'upstanding'. That doesn't really happen as much anymore. People are very masks-off and unhinged these days.

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KamikazePotato posted...

People were always going to blame Biden for the pandemic not immediately disappearing and the necessity of continued restrictions. Things were supposed to get done in office to offset that. Things will not get done

Things getting done isn't going to make people vote democrat. The Affordable care act had huge blowback. Sweeping progressive changes would probably be similar.

That's why Democrats needed DC statehood. It was dumb they dumped it. I would have run campaign ads nationwide to try to get national support for it to get it at any cost

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DC Statehood was one of the things they should've gotten done!

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KamikazePotato posted...

DC Statehood was one of the things they should've gotten done!

Seriously, the concessions for it should be nearly endless!

I would have given West Virginia Double Federal Grants for 20 years for it!

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masterplum posted...

Seriously, the concessions for it should be nearly endless!

I would have given West Virginia Double Federal Grants for 20 years for it!

that's not even a concession dems want to invest in the state

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https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1455722698689196033

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Ah, it's the Karen's fault.

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The American Political Pendulum still remains the dumbest part of our country.

"Things aren't immediately better? Vote out the incumbent party no matter what!"

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The issue of DC statehood is the all-capped, bolded, underlined, highlighted proof that most Congressional Dems don't want any meaningful economic progressive change and are quite content with the way things currently are.

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masterplum posted...

I'm looking at his core positions on ballotpedia and I'm not seeing most of the more insane stuff.

https://ballotpedia.org/Glenn_Youngkin

Cutting costs and loosening regulations could have been the stump speech of a Republican in 1992

His main bits were CRT and Transphobia. His positions were typical Republican positions. I.E. Things with absolutely no substance, and empty promises.

TheRock1525 posted...

The American Political Pendulum still remains the dumbest part of our country.

No, I'd say it's the 'both sides' nonsense people say, acting as if both sides are equally responsible for the problems. Yes, Democrats are part of the problem. But they're the missing doorknobs to the Republicans sinkhole swallowing the entire house.

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Dancedreamer posted...

No, I'd say it's the 'both sides' nonsense people say, acting as if both sides are equally responsible for the problems. Yes, Democrats are part of the problem. But they're the missing doorknobs to the Republicans sinkhole swallowing the entire house.

I mean, at the end of the day it's not policy as much as people want to believe that passing your proposed policies = winning elections.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-like-a-political-party-until-it-passes-laws/

It's all identity politics, then, now, forever. Poor black urban voters and poor white rural voters have the exact same needs, tend to lean religious, and yet vote radically different ways, even when one side promises to cut their welfare benefits time and time again. They literally interviewed VA voters who said CRT was their biggest reason for voting, and when asked what CRT, did not know what it was.

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red sox 777 posted...

The Democrats don't understand how to promise to give people things without talking about how you are going to pay for them.

trump didn't do this either, though (i.e. "we're going to make mexico pay for the wall!").

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

trump didn't do this either, though (i.e. "we're going to make mexico pay for the wall!").

That's not a serious strategy because it's hard to imagine why would Mexico agree to that. It is however a signal that he's not going to tax Americans for it, which is what people care about.

The Dems should stick to vague and unrealistic stuff, like Reagan's idea that tax cuts actually pay for themselves. Then use the real method every administration has used for decades - borrow/print money.

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Again, we're still only like T-plus-12-hours from all this but I think the emerging picture is less "oh my god CRT nonsense is working" and more "Voters feel like the economy is bad (see: supply chain issues completely out of our hands)" given even more momentum by the pendulum effect of US politics.

Cohn has been saying the VA results indicate a general shift towards Republicans rather than any particular demographic breaking hard for Youngkin. You have New Jersey not fucking called on election night. And perhaps more crucially, CRT fearmongers/anti-mandate people on some of the higher profile school board elections across the country have been losing.

Taken together I'd say this is more in the lane of "it's the economy, stupid" than anything else and the effects of the pandemic and supply chain issues, etc. have people feeling the economy is bad (even though "WOW the DOW closing at RECORD HIGHS in what some say is the GREATEST ECONOMY EVER! THANK YOU PRESIDENT BIDEN!" /s)

I mean good news/bad news is that I think that's a more easily "fixable" issue than "oh my fucking god, voters bought into crt and transphobia fuck everything." Bad news is I don't think it gets fixed in time, because again, a lot of the factors are just beyond the US and so 2022 could be a bloodbath and the eternal cycle of "Republicans tank the economy, voters run to the Dems to fix it. Dems start guiding it back on track but this shit takes time and so at the enxt election voters go "omg why isn't it fixed yet?" and vote Republicans back in who get into office just as the Dem efforts to economic recovery bear fruit so voters think the Republican solved it and they claim it's their doing right before they fucking tank it again in handouts to the rich."

I mean, it may have a bigger play in VA specifically because that whole "parents shouldn't have a say" soundbite was downright lethal to McAullife in a normal environment, let alone one with the headwinds against him and it being supremely easy to roll into the CRT nonsense. But overall nationwide I don't think that's the conclusion that should be drawn... as of right now. Again, we're still counting votes and picking up the pieces here.

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Also, Trump was possibly the most socialist president we've ever had. We directly distributed money to individuals and corporations at a scale never seen before in world history (measured by dollar amounts). As a result, American workers are now financially secure enough to demand higher wages and quit if they don't get them.

Republicans will support any socialist policy as long as you don't call it that and never try to pay for it with income or property taxes.

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xp1337 posted...

Again, we're still only like T-plus-12-hours from all this but I think the emerging picture is less "oh my god CRT nonsense is working" and more "Voters feel like the economy is bad (see: supply chain issues completely out of our hands)" given even more momentum by the pendulum effect of US politics.

Cohn has been saying the VA results indicate a general shift towards Republicans rather than any particular demographic breaking hard for Youngkin. You have New Jersey not fucking called on election night. And perhaps more crucially, CRT fearmongers/anti-mandate people on some of the higher profile school board elections across the country have been losing.

Taken together I'd say this is more in the lane of "it's the economy, stupid" than anything else and the effects of the pandemic and supply chain issues, etc. have people feeling the economy is bad (even though "WOW the DOW closing at RECORD HIGHS in what some say is the GREATEST ECONOMY EVER! THANK YOU PRESIDENT BIDEN!" /s)

I mean good news/bad news is that I think that's a more easily "fixable" issue than "oh my fucking god, voters bought into crt and transphobia fuck everything." Bad news is I don't think it gets fixed in time, because again, a lot of the factors are just beyond the US and so 2022 could be a bloodbath and the eternal cycle of "Republicans tank the economy, voters run to the Dems to fix it. Dems start guiding it back on track but this shit takes time and so at the enxt election voters go "omg why isn't it fixed yet?" and vote Republicans back in who get into office just as the Dem efforts to economic recovery bear fruit so voters think the Republican solved it and they claim it's their doing right before they fucking tank it again in handouts to the rich."

I mean, it may have a bigger play in VA specifically because that whole "parents shouldn't have a say" soundbite was downright lethal to McAullife in a normal environment, let alone one with the headwinds against him and it being supremely easy to roll into the CRT nonsense. But overall nationwide I don't think that's the conclusion that should be drawn... as of right now. Again, we're still counting votes and picking up the pieces here.

I think its just a standard case of Republicans campaigning for something and Democrats campaigning as Not Republicans

Not Republicans is a horrendous message when the country isnt in great shape. You cant campaign on laurels when you have no laurels

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masterplum posted...

I think its just a standard case of Republicans campaigning for something and Democrats campaigning as Not Republicans

Not Republicans is a horrendous message when the country isnt in great shape. You cant campaign on laurels when you have no laurels

Related:

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1455716232007757825?s=21


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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Related:

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1455716232007757825?s=21

Thats amazing.

Someone needs to send this to every single Democrat strategist. The good news is this flamed out hard a year before it mattered.

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While McAullife did spend a great amount of effort trying to tie Youngkin to Trump, the takes that that's all he did and there were no issues being run on is just false.

You had tape of Youngkin being asked about abortion saying he couldn't answer that publicly because it would scare off independents but if elected he was all for restricting it.

people just didn't gaf

again likely because of the economy

McAullife ran a bad campaign, no doubt, but let's not distort it to oversell one message/reason instead of the others.

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Virginia democrats also did a bunch of stuff over the past two years. This is equal parts "democrats are incompetent" and "people are bad and don't care" imo.

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A little surprised Kaine told both progressives and moderates to go fuck themselves about the Virginia election.

I mean I will take that over what I expected.

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masterplum posted...

Someone needs to send this to every single Democrat strategist.

At this point I think it's just that every Democrat strategist should be fired

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Actually lots of good news from last night if you pay attention.

Also first time NJ democrat won re-election in like 50 years, didn't know that and makes me appreciate that win more.


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At least the WH seems to, initially at least, taking the right tack?

https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/1455901750578323466

Also apparently reporting is out saying House Dems just went "fuck it" and put paid family and medical leave in their reconciliation bill so I guess the clash with Manchin and Sinema is on.

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This concept that "moderates r bad" in the online SJW hivemind is probably the thing that will result in a Trump 2024 win more than anything.

The "progressive" movement is so full of half baked and sometimes just straight up unrealistic ideas that giving any credence to their whims will destroy the fabric of society. Reddit users and our resident Board 8 tankies don't realize that people vastly prefer the status quo with incremental improvements over what the regressive left and the insane right are proposing.

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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

This concept that "moderates r bad" in the online SJW hivemind is probably the thing that will result in a Trump 2024 win more than anything.

The "progressive" movement is so full of half baked and sometimes just straight up unrealistic ideas that giving any credence to their whims will destroy the fabric of society. Reddit users and our resident Board 8 tankies don't realize that people vastly prefer the status quo with incremental improvements over what the regressive left and the insane right are proposing.

And you are, after all, the expert in half-baked and unrealistic thoughts

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I did see an interesting post on another message board about how people are missing the point somewhat in regards to the criticisms of CRT in schools. When people complain about CRT, they're not being literal; they're using CRT as a catch-all for all kinds of social/cultural movements that they're opposed to that come out of certain sectors of the contemporary intelligentsia. Cancel culture, wokism, anti-racism, etc... Whether or not their criticisms are valid is certainly something that can be disputed, but to focus on the logistics of whether or not CRT is being taught in public schools is missing the forest for the trees.


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Yesmar_ posted...

I did see an interesting post on another message board about how people are missing the point somewhat in regards to the criticisms of CRT in schools. When people complain about CRT, they're not being literal; they're using CRT as a catch-all for all kinds of social/cultural movements that they're opposed to that come out of certain sectors of the contemporary intelligentsia. Cancel culture, wokism, anti-racism, etc... Whether or not their criticisms are valid is certainly something that can be disputed, but to focus on the logistics of whether or not CRT is being taught in public schools is missing the forest for the trees.

https://twitter.com/hasanthehun/status/1455635227351552000?s=21

When they say CRT what they really mean is any history that I might be embarrassed/ashamed about.

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They literally have no idea what CRT is.

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"we'll have to fact check the christopher columbus thing"

yeah ok

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A batch of Vote By Mail ballots just came in for Mercer County in NJ, and brought up Murphy's numbers in the county to only 4% less than 2017. If that holds for the rest of the state, he could end up winning by 8-9% in the end, lol.

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I've seen some articles arguing that the CRT controversy has only really caught on because parents are dissatisfied with schools in general right now (largely due to the impact of COVID). Parents can tell something is going on to make education worse recently, the Democrats say everything's fine, and the GOP says the problem is "critical race theory" (whatever that is). Since the Democrats are obviously wrong, people assume that the GOP might have a point with this CRT thing.
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The Mana Sword posted...

"we'll have to fact check the christopher columbus thing"

yeah ok

obligatory

https://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/2011/10/10/happy-columbus-day/

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wrt CRT, I don't think anyone but the most hardcore stupid racists are opposed to teaching the history of racism. Things like civil rights movement, the civil war, slavery, are all important topics that kids need to understand. Where the whole argument falls apart is where it talks about "white privilege" as being a concept in 2021, which is seen and perceived as a direct attack on white people that are not successful. Even if there is a statistical truth there, statistics apply to the wide ranging population (i.e. arrest rates, sentencing lengths, etc), while the lived in experience of a lot of traditional GOP/Trump supporters is that they have not at all benefitted from being white.

This is further exacerbated when valid criticisms of CRT are met with derision and accusations of "racism", rather than a constructive conversation. We have a similar situation in Canada right now where the "woke" crowd are trying to present anyone with a European/Asian background as "evil colonizers" because we are "living on land traditionally controlled by First Nations". When you tell someone who's ancestors were poor farmers in Italy/Ireland that moved to Canada in the 1950s for a better life are "responsible" for all of the historical issues around first nations, there is a very strong pushback to that, as it makes literally zero sense.

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I mean this is the stated goal of one of the first strategists behind making CRT a thing. They straight up stated that the intention was to brand as "CRT" a whole host of things to make it completely toxic and an easy way to consolidate a bunch of social/cultural issues under one buzzword.

So GOP strategists and a handful of politicians know that the furor they've kicked up about CRT has absolutely nothing to do with what critical race theory actually is.

But this is something they did knowingly and absolutely the base believes that "CRT" is taught in schools. They just have no idea that what CRT actually is is basically a graduate school legal circles theory on why inequality persisted even after the passage of civil rights, etc. But the base has been maliciously and intentionally led to believe CRT is something else entirely full of vague concepts like "teaching that all white people are racist" and because they're so insulated in a right wing media bubble and feedback loop any attempts to try and explain what it actually is will be ignored and accused of being fake news.

I don't think this was your intention but it came off to me as a repackaging of "They take him seriously, not literally" which was some of the highest weapons grade bullshit spewed in 2016. At every single turn, up to and including a literal insurrection on the Capitol, the GOP base has shown they very much take things seriously and literally.

So yeah, maybe people in the base don't mean actual, factual critical race theory when they mention CRT but that's kind of beside the point. The whole, "But CRT isn't taught to kids, oh my god!" is the natural, exasperated reaction to it and I agree it isn't effective because there's just no reaching most of these kind of people any more but I don't begrudge it too much because like, I understand it being the natural reaction and it really should be stated once or twice for the record for the sake of the truth if nothing else.

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My understanding of critical race theory is that it says America has a system of white supremacy and white privilege, that this is the main reason for continued unequal racial outcomes, that just changing to colorblind laws and policies has not been and is not enough to remedy this, and critical race theory examines how this all plays out.

Basically no schools are actually teaching Critical Race Theory but there are indeed "all kinds of social/cultural movements that they're opposed to that come out of certain sectors of the contemporary intelligentsia. Cancel culture, wokism, anti-racism, etc" that seem to share Critical Race Theory's basic worldview that many find objectionable and some of these are indeed starting to spread into schools here and there?

So regardless of Republican cleverness or perfidy in branding stuff as "Critical Race Theory", all the objections about "CRT isn't actually being taught" seem...rather hollow? "Critical race theory isn't being taught anywhere, you shouldn't worry about it, it's just stuff by a bunch of fellow travellers that basically share the same worldview." Oh.

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AxemRedRanger posted...

My understanding of critical race theory is that it says America has a system of white supremacy and white privilege, that this is the main reason for continued unequal racial outcomes, that just changing to colorblind laws and policies has not been and is not enough to remedy this, and critical race theory examines how this all plays out.

Basically no schools are actually teaching Critical Race Theory but there are indeed "all kinds of social/cultural movements that they're opposed to that come out of certain sectors of the contemporary intelligentsia. Cancel culture, wokism, anti-racism, etc" that seem to share Critical Race Theory's basic worldview that many find objectionable and some of these are indeed starting to spread into schools here and there?

So regardless of Republican cleverness or perfidy in branding stuff as "Critical Race Theory", all the objections about "CRT isn't actually being taught" seem...rather hollow? "Critical race theory isn't being taught anywhere, you shouldn't worry about it, it's just stuff by a bunch of fellow travellers that basically share the same worldview." Oh.

I think CRT in an academic sense is more nuanced than that and may not necessarily have a conclusion. Certainly not a political conclusion or a policy prescription. I saw the term in school, 8+ years ago. But I doubt anything being titled as CRT is being taught below college level.

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AxemRedRanger posted...

Basically no schools are actually teaching Critical Race Theory but there are indeed "all kinds of social/cultural movements that they're opposed to that come out of certain sectors of the contemporary intelligentsia. Cancel culture, wokism, anti-racism, etc" that seem to share Critical Race Theory's basic worldview that many find objectionable and some of these are indeed starting to spread into schools here and there?

Isn't the basic worldview that those things all boil down to: "be kind to people, especially if they have it harder than you"? Like you could debate specific points about each of those things listed (does cancel culture go too far? is anti-racism needed? what does "wokeism" even mean?), but if you want to lump them into one unified group and complain about the whole thing "being taught in schools," I think the common thread you'd be objecting to is "don't be a jerk."

I feel like there's this whole trend of oversimplifying a bunch of related things into one blanket term that doesn't actually fit everything you want it to fit, and it makes it real hard to have a discussion about anything. The right has had a long series of buzzwords to do that with (communism, socialism, political correctness) and the left just seems to be hung up on "fascism" and a certain German movement.

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