So, I was debating the whole Jasmine Crockett vs James Talerico thing with some lib who believes in so called "electability", and I ended up making a comparison to 2016 and how the dems elevated Donald Trump thinking it would make Clinton more electable, and then it backfired massively. What happened? Well, Trump was an interesting candidate that fired up their base, while Clinton demotivated theirs. And I argue I find Talerico demotivating while that sassy attitude Crockett has makes me like her more.
But I digress, I dont think it matters much and despite polling showing texas isn't out of reach, I honestly think it mostly is. It always teases libs by being statistically in range, but then the polls always overestimate the republicans. And the polling aint much different between the two anyway.
But, it got me thinking about 2016 again, and as someone who was pretty much a die hard democrat after 2012, it really makes me beg the question: how DO you mess up so bad that I won't vote for the democrat in 2016? Its like, you REALLY had to work at pissing me off after 2012 to do that.
But...in a nutshell, what really did it for me? Well, basically, you become half republican. You stop fighting for anything different. You run to the center, you compromise our values away, you don't fight for anything, and if anything, you embrace the values of the other side.
I'll tell you why I aint big on James Talerico, because he's boring white Christian boy who basically sounds like a conservative to me. He has the worldview of conservatives. he has the values of conservatives, he just ends up framing liberal ideas from a conservative perspective. But I dont want a conservative perspective, and I don't want conservative values. I want CONTRAST.
This isnt to say that I won't vote for christians mind you, but it does take a hit on the worldview question when it becomes explicit. Even if I can agree with you on actual ideas, we dont support those ideas for similar reasons. We have differing ideologies and value systems. And if it IS too in your face where it's driving your entire value system, it makes me pause on whether you're even a good fit. We already have one side pushing christian nationalism, we don't need another.
When Clinton was speaking out of both sides of her mouth on abortion and gay marriage, even going so far to pick fricking Tim Kaine as a VP, I was turned off. When Kaine was talking about machismo when my own ideology is about engineering society to make the world a better place, I was turned off. When Clinton leaned hard into her protestant work ethic BS, going on about "god given potential", I was turned off. Basically, my entire worldview was secular at the time (and still is politically), and when you start sounding like a christian conservative, you start sounding like the people I left. Clinton offered little positive economic change, she offered almost nothing on the economy, and socially, for all the shaming the blue no matter whoers do, I wasnt even sure she WOULD fight for abortion rights or gay rights. Because that's how bad she was.
So...that's a big part of it. When you stop trying to even contrast yourself from the right, it's like...why bother? And then you get the other half of the equation. She seemed to express open hostility toward me and the things I was for. Her whole strategy was sanders supporters was calling us sexist and racist and privileged, telling us we couldnt have good things, and voter shaming us into voting for her. And that crap doesn't work on me. If anything, it just pissed me off and made me hate her more.
So yeah, between not positively contrasting herself from the conservatives I left, and if anything, trying to emulate them to win over literal mccain and romney voters, and then being openly hostile and dismissive toward me and my faction's concerns, it was like, yeah, F Hillary Clinton.
Really, it baffles me how even a decade later, people don't seem to understand this. Clinton literally offered no positive contrast for progressives vs the republicans. It was just...here's the actual republicans...and here's a republican lite. Like, keep in mind, you guys read some of my 2009 era political essays for college. And I can tell you at the time, I considered myself the kind of "moderate conservative" who would've crossed over for clinton. And I literally LEFT that brand of politics, and became as wildly progressive as I am now. Again, she was literally appealing more to literal mccain and romney voters, than me. And obama showed, we never needed them. So it's like, wtf democrats?
And yeah. We can talk about this all day, but I got things to do, and I just wanted to post that shower thought on the subject. But really, it still baffles me to this day. How do you alienate someone as partisan as I was at the time? Turns out, simply by not being partisan yourself, embracing the ideology of the enemy, and being openly hostile toward your own voters. And that sums it up in a nutshell, doesn't it?
