So, I really didn't want to dedicate another post to this topic, but Vaush just went and made a whole 1 hour 20 minute video called "Just Vote for Joe Biden You Moron", and I obviously have a few things to say about this.
First of all nice, pitch, btw, that'll sure win people over. People are already sick and tired of being yelled at and condescended to by vote blue no matter whoers, that after all that, yep, this one is TOTALLY going to be the one to set those voters over the edge and see the light. Not.
Really, Vaush's take on politics is literally backwards. I could go on all day about stuff I already covered, so I'll just summarize those. Yes, he still goes on about how principled voters are idiots and pragmatism is the way to go, yes, he still goes on about how we are in an eternal struggle against fascists and you must vote blue no matter who even if you're in a safe state, he literally wants dems to win by margins of like 99-1, because that's the only way fascism will ever be defeated and blah blah blah. And he shames people even in safe states for voting third party because if you vote third party in a safe state you're shifting the demographics in such a way where its harder for the democrats to win.
He uses florida as an example here. How they used to be a super swing state, and how now they are pretty much safe red, and how because of that now dems never try to win over florida and basically see it as a lost cause. And how the republicans always try and always vote red no matter what, and try to win in areas where they can't lose. And how fascists always vote within the republican party and blah blah blah.
And uh....Vaush...really doesnt understand republican voters. I USED to be a republican, and the reason I think the way I do is in part because of that. I never had loyalty to the republican party. There isnt much of a culture of "party loyalty" over there. heck that sounds very 1984ish and would turn off most republican voters. No. What most republicans had been doing for most of my life is sniffing ronald reagan's farts, and more recently donald trump's. They go on NON STOP about their values and policy. They LITERALLY DONT SHUT UP ABOUT THEM. They purity test people to insane degrees where they are about as bad as leftists. If there's a moderate republican who tries the crap the dems try with their voters, the voter base will just NOT turn out and let them lose. Heck, Thomas Frank discussed this in "what's the matter with kansas". The republicans are a bunch of radical ideologues who believe in what they believe in, and they vote republican, BECAUSE THE REPUBLICANS DELIVER THEM MATERIAL GAINS. They deliver tax cuts, SCOTUS judges, crazy laws. They actually DELIVER, and people vote for them because they LIKE them. Heck, if you try to force a moderate on them, they LOSE. When John McCain and Mitt Romney ran, the base wasnt passionate about either of them, and they LOST. Because the voters didnt turn out. Vaush has this idea that fascists are smart (although he also calls them dumb a lot) and how they play the long game, when no, the right just knows how to appeal to its voters. And the reason why trump is so scary to me is in part because while it looked like through the 2010s the republican party's coalition was finally dying off and that the dems were the future, no, suddenly donald trump awoke a mindset in conservative america that republican voters LIKE. And they are PASSIONATE about the guy. They built up a cult of personality around him the likes we havent seen since Reagan. Donald Trump might LITERALLY be this generation's Ronald Reagan figure to republicans. And that's a huge reason I am taking him more seriously as an existential threat than I used to, to the point I can almost kinda sorta get behind pragmatic voting this election cycle. Yes, I agree, Donald Trump's coalition must be repudiated, but unless we can actually repudiate it in the long term, we're just going to be stuck in a cycle of just holding our nose to vote for democrats we hate instead, because the standards for democratic voters are so low there's literally a culture of just voting for the party, no matter how crappy the candidates are. And that's no way to run a party.
Again, the long term success of political parties, in my view, comes down to their coalitions. The reason the republicans have been in such a strong position since 1968 is because the new deal coalition imploded, and all the racist types joined the republican coalition, which led to reagan's successes onward. Then the democrats just cobbled together a coalition based on social progressivism, but economic centrism, being a party of contradictions where it still has to maintain some semblance of its new deal politics, while also appealing to stuffy suburbanites who would otherwise vote for republicans and tax cuts but the dems move to the center enough to appease them where cultural issues matter more to them. And that's where the dems have been since 1992. And that coalition is aging as well.
If the democrats suffer major defeats in a ton of states, it's largely because they've failed to cobble together a coalition in order to project their power. The democrats are stuck in a pattern of defeatism, because the generation of democrats alive has never known success. The baby boomers like the clintons were in college when the new deal coalition was imploding. All of those ancient gen x, boomer, and silent generation democratic politicians like joe biden, and the clintons, and chuck schumer, and nancy pelosi, and dianne feinstein, who is basically a vegetable at this point, I mean, they're all of this generation of loser, defeatist dems. And they completely botched the chance that we had to actually turn things around. They failed to understand that the younger generations like a bernie, that the left too wants to project power and not just be the lesser evil consolation prize. And we're coming to a point in american politics where there's gonna be a reckoning for the dems. And the dems and their more loyal older voters are eventually gonna die out and be replaced with millennials, and zoomers, and the generations after.
And things are going to change. You see, the right is on borrowed time, potentially. It's mostly older generations who support them, and right now we're approaching a point where the last gasp of the republican party is a shift to authoritarianism to stop the natural progression of politics, and the realignment that was going to happen naturally, from happening. Seriously. If we went by demographics alone, it seems obvious to me that the GOP likely had no future, and the democrats were going to inherit a massive majority of voters.
BUT.....there's a problem. THe older generation seems intent on keeping things the same and shaping the next generation in their image. SO the GOP is going full authoritarian, and the dems are kind of suppressing their more left wing voters and beating them down and telling them they have to jsut accept things as they are or we lose to the fascists. And so far, they're basically just hanging on.
And you know what? Maybe these forces are derailing the inevitable left wing "coalition of the ascendant" that was gonna happen in the 2010s. Maybe the dems didnt have an interest in a leftward turn because it upset their donors, and the GOP were scared because it threatened their values, so the GOP is going authoritarian, and the dems are playing chicken with their voters in order to bully them in order to accepting less.
This isn't healthy, and something has to give here. But I will say this. If voters wise up and refuse to vote for democrats, whose fault is that? For vaush, it's the voters' fault. He's one of those blue no matter who voter shaming morons who thinks that the proper way to talk to people is to tell them the beatings will continue until morale improves. That rather than appealing to voters through their values and material policy, he tries to whip them up into a frenzy against fascism and bully them into voting for democrats.
But if the democrats can't maintain their coalitions, that's their fault. If the dems lose florida, and ohio, and michigan, and wisconsin, and pennsylvania, and iowa, that is, in part, THEIR FAULT. The other part of the blame lies with the GOP, but from their perspective that was a success. That they managed to take this region out from under the dems' noses through smart politiking.
By the way, for as much as vaush tries to act like dems dont try in red areas, they do when it suits them and their ideology. They're trying to bolster their centrist ideology by explicitly targetting red states that are moderating due to a large socially liberal and racially diverse suburban population. They're making gains in Arizona, and Georgia. They're trying similar tactics in North Carolina, and Texas, to much less success, but they're losing the rust belt in the process. And you know what? They dont care. Because a rust belt strategy would undermine the older generation's centrist ideology. They are interested in maintaining their coalition, and more importantly, the ideology behind it. Because that's how they look at the world. So, oh, we need to be progressive to win over rust belt voters and offer good solutions? That's too hard, let's just run to the center and to identity politics virtue signalling and win the south instead. Even though they can't do that either. But you know what? They'll try their darndest to make gains in georgia and arizona, and dont care what happens to iowa, or ohio, or florida, or even michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania. Seriously, the thing that's pissing me off is the dems are just leaving these areas to the republicans. Why? Because they're white, they're working class, and they dont care. In a party obsessed with postmodernism and economic centrism, the kind of strategy they have to pursue to win those areas is not in their interests, so they dont pursue it, but then they, and idiots like vaush, blame the voters for not voting blue harder.
PEOPLE DONT VOTE BLUE BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS DONT MAKE A CONVINCING CASE FOR PEOPLE! GOSH! Really, vaush, the blue no matter whoers, they're dense. And then they turn around and tell us to run people in the primaries. WE DO THAT, THEY RIG THE PRIMARIES. Seriously, no one who votes third party does it as a third option, they do it because they recognize the democrats are completely hostile to their interests and ideology, and that they cant win inside the party, so they vote outside of it. Seriously, I voted green in 2016 and 2020, particularly BECAUSE the dems kept screwing over, ignoring, and alienating, the bernie coalition. They'd rather lose to trump, than appease the left any more than they have to.
This is mostly the democrats' fault, in my opinion. The reason the party realignment and coalitional restructuing has been happening the way it was is because the dems are EXPLICITLY DRIVING SOME VOTERS AWAY FROM THEM, in order to gain other voters who fit the brand that they're trying to portray. Meanwhile the GOP is radicalizing into fascism, because you got the old coalition aging and losing power, but them getting a bunch of pissed off economically disadvantaged white working class voters, who end up being more angry about wokeism and immigration, than about labor rights, and policies that would materially help our lives.
Politics is a massive mess of theater in which the powerful are controlling the parties and the directions that the voters flow, while a lot of pissed off and disaffected voters are screaming into the void over a system that doesnt help them at all, and their energy is being channeled into white hot rage on the republican side, which is why fascism is becoming a thing on the republican side, and the democrats are just trying to force their centrist crap on the next generation, and it's working. So lefties, who could have breathed new life into the democratic party, become a minority of a party and stuck between either voting for the dems, and enabling a party hostile to their interests, or voting third party, and risking the GOP becoming even stronger. It's a really crap situation to be in, and it feels awfully manufactured to me, but that's where we are.
It's a shame really. If you asked me in 2014 how I would expect the next realignment to go, I would talk about americans gaining consciousness to how much the GOP has been screwing them since reagan, waking up, and voting for dems in overwhelming numbers, causing the GOP's reagan coalition to crumble the way the new deal coalition did before it. I considered those white working class voters who inevitably got sucked into trumpism potential voters. ANd a lot of them liked bernie in 2016. And I think some of them would've voted for yang too. But they just werent going to vote for hillary, the uber feminist SJW who basically told us we cant have universal healthcare. And Biden, while he won primarily to get trump out and repudiate trumpism, he's not really popular. Why? BECAUSE THIS ISN'T WHAT VOTERS ACTUALLY WANT. Seriously, the two parties are forcing us to choose between two crap options, and people are choosing between two crap options. If better candidates were available, people would vote for them, but they dont because 1) the dems sabotage them, and 2), they think voting third party is a waste of time, specificially because of BS people like vaush peddle.
If we had a large number of voters voting for the green party, or for the forward party, that would signal to the parties that gee, maybe they need to do more than bullying and voter shaming to win people over. Maybe they actually need to offer material gains that people want.
IN my mind, both the GOP and the democrats deserve repudiation. Both parties need to shape up. Initially, I wanted to see the dems win in overwhelming numbers to watch the GOP's coalition implode, but given the dems are literally so bad at their job, and the GOP somehow managed to breathe new life into their party, they just ended up finding success by going more extreme and fascist. THeir voters are pressuring them into it and if GOP primary numbers tell me anything, it's that that's what the voters on the republican side WANT. it's trump's party now, and they're probably gonna circlejerk about the guy all the way until 2050 or so like they did with reagan. Yes, we need to snuff out that emerging coalition in its crib. But in doing so, we're enabling the democrats to just ignore and take advantages of us, and bully us, and show them that they dont have to work to earn our votes. And that's why in 2016 and 2020, I voted green, because that just goes against my own values in a major way.
In 2024, I really dont know what I will do. It seems clear, based on my rating exercise, that candidates like west and williamson, while not perfect, ARE a huge deal better than biden on my all important economic priorities. It's not a straight win though, with leftists being deficient on foreign policy, and often weaker on more pragmatic metrics, so I still might go biden. Maybe I do decide that biden has done enough and repudiating trumpism is more important this election cycle.
But be warned. Long term, if we want things to improve, the left is eventually going to have to get down and dirty with the democrats in order to force them to embrace more progressive policy. it takes immense political pressure to force the dems to do anything, and the left needs to keep the pressure on if we hope to achieve material gains. And part of this pressure is the threat to NOT vote for dems.
That said, for me, the lesson of 2016 isn't, as vaush said, that voters have to learn to vote blue no matter who, no, the lesson is that dems need to keep left wing voters happy enough to remain in their coalition. And left wing voters need to send the right signals and reward candidates when they actually deliver on some policy goals, which is another reason im leaning toward potentially voting biden in the general.
Keep in mind, I dont hate biden that much. I think it's weak, I dont think he's gone far enough on my priorities, but darn it, he did try on some of them, and part of me wants to reward him for that. Still, West and Williamson are measurably better. But whether it's worth a protest vote to signal that "do better" is another debate for another day.
Quite frankly, I dont want to commit to voting for any one candidate now. I lean williamson in the primary, sure, that's a no brainer. Williamson is the best candidate in the race in general this time around. But Biden vs West? You could argue convincingly either way given my current values and the current predicament. I'll make that judgment some time in 2024.
But yeah. That's the thing. Even now, even though I kind of agree this might be a "pragmatic voting" year, I cant stand vaush. Yeah, dude? If you ever read this, know you're not doing jack crap to advance your cause. If anything, you're hurting it. Because your entire strategy comes down to bullying lefties WHO DONT LIKE DEMOCRATS into supporting democrats. And that's just not a stable long term coalition to have. Regardless of my own values on the matter, I feel like vaush (and blue no matter who dems) need to come to terms with the fact that a political coalition full of unhappy people you literally have to bully to come out and vote for you every 2-4 years is NOT going to be stable, and it's NOT going to learn to long term electoral gains. We will continually remain one election away from fascism, as long as the democrats dont improve. Because the long term solution to defeating fascism is building a coalition full of people who dont WANT to vote for fascists. Who WANT an alternative. Who are ENTHUSIASTIC about who they vote for. You shouldnt have to keep poking and prodding and bullying people into voting for democrats. They should want to do it naturally. Being constantly on defense like this is just a sign that your coalition is weak and losing. And it needs to shape up.
There's a theory in american politics that's considered a competitor to party realignment theory, but in a way...not. It's the idea of a sun and moon party. Basically one party is the sun, it's the dominant power, it sets the overton window, it sets the tone, and the other party is the moon and struggles to remain relevant and merely serves as an opposition party within the sun party's overton window. I think there is value behind that and it works perfectly with realignment theory.
Second realignment, Jacksonian dems were the sun party, whigs were the moon. Third, lincoln republicans were sun, southern democrats moon, 4th party didnt seem to have a clear cut sun and moon, although I'd be inclined to say republicans sun, democrats moon based on the successes of people like Theodore Roosevelt. Fifth alignment, FDR dems were the sun, republicans were the moon. Sixth alignment, Reagan republicans were sun, clinton dems were the moon.
And now we're in a messy transition to the 7th alignment. Ideally, the solution would be progressive dems sun and moderate republicans moon, but the dems seem hell bent on remaining the moon party due to their sheer incompetence, while the republicans are seizing the opportunity to remain the sun party again through trumpism. And that's NOT a good place to be. Our country might literally fall to fascism if that becomes the case. Honestly, if dems want to avoid that fate, they need to shape up and become the sun party, and IMO that means moving left on economics, but center on cultural issues. Drop the wokeness crap, and appear to working class voters through economic ideas that improve their lives. If they can't do that, we might see America become a fascist country in our life time. Do or die, people.
All I know is vaush isnt helping the situation, because all he does is scream at people who dont like the dems to vote blue. He literally doesnt understand that he's contributing to the problem that way, not the solution. A party full of people who hate their party, its politicians, and its platforms will never be able to maintain power. Because elections are won in waves, and those waves are based on voter enthusiasm. If you want to truly defeat fascism, you need to develop an alternative people are enthusiastic about to counter it. You know, like FDR did in the 1930s. He saw that america was at risk to fall to fascism or communism so acted to preserve capitalism and liberal democracy. We need another FDR like figure with another FDR like new deal, if we want to do that again. Period. End of story.
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