bluewater
bluewater's JournalThe ACTUAL reason Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia...
It's the Tale of the Tape
First and foremost, in a male dominance hierarchy height is the most prominent marker:
Terry McAuliffe --- 6' 0"
There you have it.
I'll wait here for the big money Cable TV Political Pundit offers to start rolling in.
Compare my post from 2 days ago to comments being made today
bluewater (4,930 posts) Thu Nov 4, 2021, 12:33 PM
I'm staying positive and will support President Biden's agenda & how he must implement it.
President Biden has consistently tried to get Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema on board and has made compromises to appease their concerns.
If the President Biden says we should pass the infrastructure bill today, I would say "sure thing" and urge my fellow Progressives to do the same.
If President Biden says a 1.75 Build Back Better Bill is the best we can get right now, I will say "fine" again and urge everyone to pass that within weeks at the latest.
As a progressive, I feel it is vital that we continue to support the President and whatever he decides his current agenda has to be in the face of current opposition in Congress.
Let me climb up on a soap box here and use my prophet-in-the-wilderness voice:
Fellow Progressives, don't be left holding the bag as Manchin and Sinema continue to obstruct the President's Build Back Better framework. Don't get blamed for ANY bill not passing. Continue to support the President and his efforts to get both bills passed as soon as possible.
And I'll risk saying this.... you know how the blame game works.
If a progressive Democrat loses an election, we are told it's because they were too progressive.
If a moderate Democrat loses a race, we are told it's because some Democrat, not even a person in a leadership role or holding office or even running for office, said something too progressive.
So, let's not get blamed for not supporting the President's stated objectives, even if he has to modify those due to the political balance in Congress.
/Preacher Mode OFF
Ok, why did I re-post this besides the obvious need to be self-congratulatory and pat myself on the ass?
Because I knew that unwarranted and broad brush criticism would be directed at Progressives here on DU in general.
And sure enough I was correct.
Today, threads have started up complaining, yes, complaining that "some" unspecified "folks" here on DU are not happy enough that the infrastructure bill passed and are concerned that the Build Back Better bill might not make it thru the Senate.
Sarcastic comments like this were made:
[they] didn't get the ponies we thought we were promised.
Not soon enough, anyhow. I think they're still in a shipping container somewhere.
Ok, are these really the type of comments anyone should be making TODAY when we should be celebrating the BIF bill passing and be coming together, united as Democrats preparing for the 2022 midterms?
I think not.
I'm staying positive and will support President Biden's agenda & how he must implement it.
President Biden has consistently tried to get Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema on board and has made compromises to appease their concerns.
If the President Biden says we should pass the infrastructure bill today, I would say "sure thing" and urge my fellow Progressives to do the same.
If President Biden says a 1.75 Build Back Better Bill is the best we can get right now, I will say "fine" again and urge everyone to pass that within weeks at the latest.
As a progressive, I feel it is vital that we continue to support the President and whatever he decides his current agenda has to be in the face of current opposition in Congress.
Let me climb up on a soap box here and use my prophet-in-the-wilderness voice:
Fellow Progressives, don't be left holding the bag as Manchin and Sinema continue to obstruct the President's Build Back Better framework. Don't get blamed for ANY bill not passing. Continue to support the President and his efforts to get both bills passed as soon as possible.
And I'll risk saying this.... you know how the blame game works.
If a progressive Democrat loses an election, we are told it's because they were too progressive.
If a moderate Democrat loses a race, we are told it's because some Democrat, not even a person in a leadership role or holding office or even running for office, said something too progressive.
So, let's not get blamed for not supporting the President's stated objectives, even if he has to modify those due to the political balance in Congress.
/Preacher Mode OFF
Framing a policy as rectifying racial injustice decreases public support according to Yale study
Sadly, our country is just that sub-consciously racist.
Here's the Yale study describing this:
Racial Equality Frames and Public Policy Support
How do racial attitudes shape policy preferences in the era of Black Lives Matter and increasingly liberal views on racial issues? A large body of research finds that highlighting the benefits of progressive policies for racial minorities undermines support for those policies. However, Democratic elites have started centering race in their messaging on progressive public policies. To explore this puzzle, in this paper we offer an empirical test that examines the effect of describing an ostensibly race-neutral progressive policy with racial framing, as used by Democratic elites, on support for that policy. To benchmark these effects, we compare a race policy frame with class, class plus race, and neutral policy frames. We demonstrate that despite leftward shifts in public attitudes towards issues of racial equality, racial framing decreases support for race-neutral progressive policies. Generally, the class frame most successfully increases support for progressive policies across racial and political subgroups
In American politics, the question is not whether racial attitudes matter, but rather how and why racial attitudes matter. Despite progress, racial prejudice continues to play a central role in American society, with devastating impacts for both racial minorities and white Americans. What is the role of racial attitudes in shaping policy preferences?
Although most white Americans agree with the general principles of racial equality, a large literature finds that white Americans remain reluctant to endorse policies that are designed to actually achieve racial equality. For example, racial priming tends to activate racial attitudes and decrease support for social welfare policies and policies perceived to aid Black Americans (for review, see Valenzuela and Reny 2020). While “old-fashioned racism” may have declined, “the turbulence of the late 1960s gave rise to a ‘new racism’ wherein opposition to policies designed to assist blacks was born out of a blend of traditional American moral values and anti-black affect” (Hutchings and Valentino 2004, p. 390). A large body of research thus finds that in some form, racism remains a pernicious force in white Americans’ policy preferences.
Yet, in recent years, Democratic elites have started centering race in their messaging, even on topics not explicitly about race. Prominent Democratic pollsters and strategists argue that this is a way to both motivate the Democratic base and persuade voters. Recent research also suggests that white racial attitudes are shifting in a way that may have meaningful political ramifications, suggesting that explicit discussions of race could potentially be beneficial to racial equity causes(e.g., Sawyer and Gampa 2018; Jardina, Kalmoe and Gross 2020). This is surprising given how Republicans have historically used racialized language to decrease support for progressive policies(e.g., Hacker and Pierson 2020).
Are Democratic elites wise to explicitly use racial justice framing in promoting their ostensibly “race-neutral” progressive policies? Decades of political science research would suggest linking progressive policies with race would decrease support for those policies, particularly among white Americans. Yet, increasingly, Democratic elites are talking explicitly about race. Might Democratic elites’ messaging strategies, particularly in light of the heightened salience of racial inequities in American society and growing antiracist social movements, reflect a meaningful shift in public opinion that has not yet been incorporated in political scientists’ theorizing on the role of race in policy preferences?
https://osf.io/tdkf3/
This explains why the simple phrase "Black Lives Matter" receives so much push back from white voters that insist THAT is racist and "All Lives Matter".
The study went on to say that Black voters equally support a policy if it is framed on a racial basis or a class/economic basis, so politically with all voters it would be more effective to frame issues in class/economic terms.
This is something to keep in mind when it comes to messaging our Democratic positions on a host of issues like Pre-natal Care, Housing, and Voter Suppression Laws.
Has calling out a politician for catering to lobbyists ever worked? Yes, I think it has.
Failure to point out that a politician is in the pocket of big money lobbyist just allows those politicians to continue enriching themselves at the expensive of the public's well being.
Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant, transparency is our only defense.
We should all keep speaking truth to power.
4 things we learned from the Virginia election that we already knew
1. Racism is a thing
It’s a depressing reality and certainly one I would have hoped were no longer true. But political strategies that rely on a wide range of racial animosities and fears are hardly new. Linking racial backlash to anxieties about education and school children is a very old tactic. (Here's some reading to get started) One lesson of the 1960s and 1970s is that racially progressive attitudes often fade when faced with issues that come close to home. These kinds of political attacks are also often mixed with gender-related and sexual fears, and the politics of the 21st century offer no shortage of opportunities to deploy the politics of fear in this area.
I genuinely don’t know what to do about this. It’s a very ugly reality. But commentators and analysts could devote more time thinking about solutions if we stopped acting so surprised that it still happens.
2. Republicans are still competitive post-Trump
Of all the things we knew, we perhaps knew this one most of all. Trump performed quite well in the 2020 election for a president serving during a disastrous economy and pandemic. Republicans picked up seats in the House and kept Senate seats they might have lost. Even in the 2018 elections, widely considered a blue wave, Republicans picked up Senate seats (in expected places) - North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri.
Youngkin provides useful clues about what a post-Trump GOP might look like, at least in purple areas, clinging to some Trump talking points and ideas (see item 1) while distancing himself from some of the former president’s norm-breaking rhetoric and political antics.
For Democratic strategists, this may prove to be useful information. But it’s not especially new information. Trump himself won in 2016 with this combination of racially conservative appeals and ambiguity on other questions, and promises to improve the economy. His lack of, shall we say, political discipline has always been an advantage with some voters and a liability with others, but his basic formula was a combination of novelty and promises, traditional Republican fare, and Trumpist nationalism, with enough blurriness that people could see what they wanted to see.
3. Democrats have a complicated identity and coalition
Maintaining a multi-racial coalition in a racially divided country is hard. Maintaining a coalition across class lines, in which some voters want to see structural change and others crave “normalcy” is also hard. The Democrats have had particularly vocal fights over long-standing party leaders like McAuliffe (and Biden) and a wide range of perspectives auditioning to be the future of the party, with different visions of policy, ideology, and demographic representation. One implication is that nationalized contests are probably trickier for Democrats than for Republicans. There are no easy answers or winning formulas that work everywhere.
4. Thermostatic politics
This is probably the biggest one - the party that holds the White House (and in this case both chambers in Congress as well) is vulnerable and likely to lose seats.
Given this regular occurrence, why the focus on finding lessons and explanations? In some sense, it seems like commentators are eager for any sign that politics is about to change, that this election will shake up the dimensions of American politics that are at once dull and erratic, fractious and predictable. This one will be the realignment, the 1860, the 1932, the earthquake, the big shift, the contest that ends the stalemate and reflects the depths of the real crisis we’re in.
This sort of goes back to the thermostatic voting idea, which is an important concept but perhaps one we’re not curious enough about. Political observers have accepted this as a regular feature of political behavior in our context, even as that context has dramatically changed. One reason, perhaps, that this has persisted through a period of dramatic polarization is that while the party in power changes, very little else does. Policies are passed, or not, and the basic problems of healthcare and economic inequality and the environment remain. Thermostatic politics is the most recent expression of how unresponsive American politics can be.
Maybe these assessments are right, and maybe they’re not. But if we have to over-analyze a single state’s outcome for lessons, we should look for reasons and not narratives. It’s true that Biden is unpopular right now, and that has electoral implications. He’s unpopular because - in spite or because of administration efforts - everything sucks for a lot of people. Electing a Republican governor in Virginia is unlikely to fix the problem, obviously. Instead of trying to relearn what we already know, maybe it’s time to start thinking about why we’re stuck in these patterns, and what could create real change.
https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/4-things-we-learned-from-the-virginia-election-that-we-already-knew
Good points worth remembering.
It was NON-COLLEGE educated white women in Virginia that switched
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1455722698689196033McAuliffe actually did better with college educated white women than Biden did.
Stunning results.
Leave Joe Manchin ALONE!
This is the thread to voice how unfairly harsh people have been on Senator Joe Manchin.
Feel free to show your support for Senator Manchin.
I'll start.
Senator Manchin has a 100% record on supporting President Biden's agenda in Congress, to date.
And this past month he has saved the country by stopping the passage of expanded social safety net programs that are just too expensive.
Manchin calls Biden's $1.75 trillion spending proposal a "shell game"
Last week before leaving for Europe, President Biden announced a $1.75 trillion social-spending framework, trimmed down from the original $3.5 trillion. But Manchin made it clear Monday he still isn't comfortable with the framework in its current state, and the Senate can't pass the legislation without him. Democrats had hoped to possibly vote on both the infrastructure and the reconciliation bill this week, but Manchin's comments indicated that might not be possible.
"As more of the real details outlined in the basic framework are released, what I see are shell games, budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion bill estimated to be almost twice that amount, if the full time is run out, if you extended it permanently," Manchin told reporters Monday afternoon. "And that we haven't even spoken about. This is a recipe for economic crisis."
Manchin, who has all along expressed concerns over spending, increasing the debt, and inflation, reiterated those concerns Monday. He took no questions.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/manchin-calls-bidens-24175-trillion-spending-proposal-a-shell-game/ar-AAQccd2?ocid=uxbndlbing
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