And this is how you elect Trump (or Trump Jr) in 2024.
It will take a while to break down 2020 but “defund the police” probably hurt the democratic vote and might have cost them the senate. Biden seems to have outperformed the party because he campaigned as a moderate.
The Republicans went with an extremist in Trump and have gotten trounced in the popular vote in every election since. They won in 2016 (and almost in 2020) because they have an huge advantage in the Electoral College. Democrats don’t have that advantage unless they flip back the rust belt. Instead, they have to win the popular vote and win it solidly.
Filling yourself with righteous anger and acting on that anger is just going to hand power back to the very people you seem to hate.
That is a pretty big maybe at this point. Defund the police means many things to many people. However, white suburbs, who presumably would feel most vulnerable about defund police messaging went back to Biden.
ETA: People also shouldn’t stay quiet or self-censor when their lives are being put at risk, election or no. If the idea isn’t brought up, the discussion won’t happen. Nobody could look at George Floyd and say let’s wait till after the election to get angry and push for change. Biden didn’t push defund the police, though Republicans may have had some success making it stick to him. But it is not official Democratic Party policy.
Indeed. De-humanizing the losing side will only deepen the culture war that fascists so desperately want. Personally I hold on to hope that some Republicans can be led back from the brink.
Or could be Biden not supporting that position (and other progressive policies) hurt the vote. Seems more likely to me.
Yet they are losing.
They did.
Sure. It’s far better to accept second class citizenship with grace, right? I mean, it’s not YOUR rights, so why should you give a shit or be angry about losing those rights? /s
This. Making them pariahs will only feed their conspiracy/persecution mindset. Eliminating Trumpism is going to be de-programming the world’s largest cult.
Look, there is going to be some cathartic release, and people need to understand that is about Trump and not about them personally. The world has seen a lot of deplorable behaviour on that side, and calling it deplorable is important. I’m not suggesting that any of it can be condoned or ignored. But being vengeful or spiteful isn’t likely to improve the situation.
There have always been a lot of socially conservative Americans out there, and a lot of Republicans. Changing minds will never be easy, and some may say it’s impossible but what is the alternative? The only hope is to keep working on putting progressive ideas out there, showing that they can work and moving the Overton window toward the left. People forget that a lot of Bernie Sanders’ ideas have polled well among Trump supporters. Consigning them all to the dustbin is consigning the country to a civil war.
if that budged the electorate by more than 0.1% i will absolutely amazed. in texas republicans spent two weeks using the phrase “defund the police” to attack democratic candidates in wall-to-wall ads, the result: republicans came out of the woodwork to endorse democratic candidates and call the republicans lying sacks of shit (well, the tv friendly version of that) in every single race i had the misfortune of being inundated with and the result? on state and national level every incumbent democrat in those races won re-election and 1 democrat won a race where there was no incumbent. incumbency beat out over other factors.
is “defund the police” the best way of expressing the concept-- no. are there better ways of describing the necessary changes in allocating resources and the application of violent means of control over communities-- yes. that’s the messaging that needs to happen but taken raw, “defund the police” and related epithetical treatments of “extremism” or “socialism” are a blind alley designed to make us chase our tails and eliminate some of the greatest hopes for the future. i’ve been a county and state level participant in the democratic party since 1984 and i’m already educating my fellow rural texas democrats. i’m not wringing my hands over worries that we’ll be too mean to the trumpists.
or consistently get out there and outvote them. i have first cousins who love trump and there is no convincing them of anything except that more people who think like i do need to die. i’ve spent much of the last 12 years trying to move the needle with them, invoking reason, rational self-interest, and the new testemant and they’ve moved from “show me the birth certificate” to “fuck your feelings.”
Why not both? She’s right to be angry, AND to hold people accountable to ensure she has the rights she was promised. Those things are not mutually exclusive, nor should we be telling others how THEY should feel, how THEY should react. It’s a very tone deaf comment and it smacks hard up against very sexist attitudes about women who dare to show their feelings.
I think we shouldn’t go out of our way to alienate trumpers and covidiots because I want them to sink back into complacency and laziness. They are not where we, democrats and progressives, are going to find the votes needed to move our country left and away from fascism. Those votes, the ones we need, are going to come from inspiring the people who haven’t voted because of hopelessness, kids aging into voting, every new citizen, and those who have had their right to vote taken from them.
I think Georgia is a great example of what can be done if people believe their vote matters and will make a difference in our country.
Gender never crossed my mind (I honestly try to avoid assuming a gender in online forums). And my objective wasn’t to tell anyone how they should feel. But rather argue that anger is best used to motivate actions, but not decide them.
The Civil Rights Movement was referenced, that was fuelled by anger over outrageous racism. There was a lot of violence but for the level of injustice and anger that was present it was also extraordinarily peaceful.
The BLM protests during the summer were extremely popular, they even caused the NFL to flip its stance. It’s only when “defund the police” started taking over the narrative and Trump was able to trigger some riots that their popularity started to diminish.
It’s great to use anger as a motivator, but using it as an excuse for extreme policies or even violence is the point when it becomes self-defeating.
Addressed by someone else. It was anything but extraordinarily peaceful, that’s the white washed version Americans are fed so they can avoid feeling bad about it since most of the violence was terrorizing black people and a responding with police brutality.
And it was FULL of anger, righteous, pure, anger. From that anger sprang a movement, a cause, and eventually a change. Without that anger… you don’t get much movement. The BLM protests this past spring and summer were angry protests. And much like the Civil Rights movement, they were violent because the response to righteous, justified anger, even when peacefully expressed, is ALWAYS violence.
There has never been a movement not fueled by the anger of the oppressed. There has never been a movement bringing real change that does not, at some point, suffer violence. Sweat and blood are always called for in order for there to be change.
EDIT: And I will note that yes, that sucks. We should be able to move the needle by protesting alone, not suffering endless depredations from the powers that be when we agitate for our rights. But that has never been the way of the world. The powers that be want their power and do not suffer sharing it lightly.
