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Voters don’t care about identity – politicalbetting.com
Voters don’t care about identity – politicalbetting.com
Another election, another failure for the Democratic party. Donald Trump is president elect and the whole world is crossing its fingers that we’re not heading for four years of turmoil and upheaval in the international order, particularly Ukraine. However, this is not the time to write about that, we don’t know enough yet about what Trump will do this time around to make an informed judgment, we can only hope that some of the rhetoric during and before the campaign was made for effect and to grab headlines.
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Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.
Inflation (resulting in people feeling poorer) is why every Western Leader who was in power between 2020-23 has lost or is likely to lose power*
* Ireland may be an exception here but the Irish Government won the lottery when the EU ruled on a number of corporate tax cases so has a lot of money at the moment to pay voters off with.
ydoethur said:
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“Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”
Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.
Nor London, for the matter of that.
Edit - Manchester Cathedral is also quite an impressive building, as an ex-collegiate church, and is bang in the centre.
Currently watching the latest Good Times Bad Times video on YouTube. Not every incumbent lost an election this year. Maduro famously 'won' his.
* I've randomly wandered in every so often (may be 11am, may be 5pm) when visiting to see the same group of ladies cleaning* / chatting to anyone passing..
Actually, you're probably right.
The Dems needed another 1.5% swing, they overperformed against other incumbants up for election elsewhere this year, and for all his sins, Trump has a connection with large swathes of America that the next Republican leader won't have.
I would agree they should tone down the identity stuff, but even if they don't they are still going to be competitive, assuming we have future fair elections of course.
We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.
I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).
Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
The Church of England didn't want the argument as to which of Ripon / Bradford or Wakefield lost their cathedral and given the size of the diocese and the fact it was created recently (2013) it made sense to keep things where they were.
And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
Edit - Coventry is a city of 400,000 people - barely smaller than Bristol. If you're calling that a small city you're really restricting what counts as a 'major' city.
People have identities and they feel them and don’t appreciate them being attacked but also don’t “other” others for being something else.
I liked this article in the Guardian yesterday:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/young-men-donald-trump-kamala-harris
It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.
It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
It’s a decent argument from Max (and his prescription for future campaigns is sensible), but I think it’s overdetermined as an explanation for the loss.
On that score, this Guardian article is (surprisingly) good.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/us-voters-kamala-harris-donald-trump-republican
I commented earlier in the week that for 2028 they need a candidate more like Biden - someone to appeal to blue collar workers. As Max says, focus on bread and butter issues that impact folk on a daily basis, with policies to make their lives better.
That's what people think Trump is offering. When it all goes pear shaped, the Dems need to be able to step up with real solutions.
Edit - although perhaps the obvious one, even though it's not that large, would be Cambridge.
The stuff with Trump reading out the prices of staple food goods was straight out of 19th cent. campaigning….
I keep on being astonished that Harris didn’t make more of the protectionist industrial policy that Biden had poured billions into. Where were the adverts about how chip were invented in the US, and are now coming home?
Unless she was/is a Global Free Trader - but that is unlikely, given her background. And comments about price controls.
I think it probably came from the wet market too, because probably either an infected animal from the lab ended up there, or there was an early super-spreader event there. But I'm pretty convinced it was "made" in that lab and then leaked by some means or other.
The advice in the header seems, to me, to not abandon economic arguments in your campaign.
Harris didn't campaign on the economy and chose the campaign on her identity while Trump campaigned on the economy. He won. In 2020 the roles were reversed and Biden won.
I don't believe that for a minute!
Good header though and I do agree with its central point (what people want isn't driven by ethnicity or gender) if we take out the anti-Dem slant. The way American elections are so intensely analysed via demographics strikes me as artificial and counterproductive.
Whoever won, 50% of the population were going to be very unhappy with the result. The LibTards hate Trump and his crowd, and they hate the Libtards as much. That isn't going to change whoever is in the White House.
And honestly, are we so different? Are our politics much healthier?
https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3lacced6sw522
Being right wing hasn't saved incumbent governments.
Also- there is a tricky dilemma for democracy here. Inflation spikes are electorally toxic- they annoy everyone enough to make them reconsider their vote. Shrewd electoral engineers are probably better advised to let recession take more of the strain- horrible for the ten percent who lose their jobs, but much less painful for the other ninety percent.
Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).
Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
The problem is that a Bernie Sanders smash the system may have actually tried reforms to improve those outcomes. Will a Trump smash the system improve them, or make them worse?
Some voters do care about identity politics. Otherwise, it wouldn`t have arisen in the first place.
In my view, the Dems lost because of pretty obvious reasons-
Inflation
High illegal immigration for 3 years
Poor candidate who was not able to articulate why things were not as bad as the opponent was making out or that they would get better
Charismatic opponent.
The Republicans will gain four, just possibly five, in the Senate. But, they'll only gain one in the House, and only a relative handful of seats in State legislatures.
I think the Democrat problem is even worse than you say, @MaxPB - because so many of them refuse and will refuse to admit there is a problem
Eg they didn’t see there was a problem with that insane patronising quasi racist Kamala tweet promising to legalise weed and make it easier for black men to sell it “because that’s what they do”
You can walk for hours and there is nowhere to get a FUCKING GIN AND TONIC
I know it’s annoying that I invented it, nonetheless that is the word
I find it so strange because in 2008, 2012 and 2020 they ran brilliant policy based campaigns and won at a canter all three times. Hilary and Kamala both spoke too much about breaking the glass ceiling and not enough about making ends meet.
I and others have made the point that slowing inflation still means that the pound (or dollar) in your pocket doesn't go as fas as it did a relatively few years ago. If eggs (where did I get the idea for that as an example!) were £1 (or whatever) three or four years ago and are now £2, the fact that they 'only' went up to £2 from £1.95 over the last three months doesn't mean much when in reasonably recent memory .... say two years ago ..... they were £1.50 and not long before that, the voter remembers, they were £1.
It takes a while for the 'new normal' be become so.
And for wages to catch up.
For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”
America has a lot of "two nations"ness about it. Electronic media allow that to operate on a fractal scale.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/bland-soggy-slop-or-scratch-cooked-chilli-and-pancakes-the-best-and-worst-hospital-food-around-the-world-in-pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/why-cant-british-hospitals-serve-better-food
After all, the major Christian festivals 'coincide' with previous pre-Christian ones; Christmas/Yule/Hogmanay for example.
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold.
And it is still there by London Bridge, as in T S Eliot's day. I dropped by earlier this year, open, welcoming and free. Worth 10 St Paulses. You could not believe it until you see it. Noom. Or of course numinosity.
The DMZ is amazing but emotionally gruelling
Example: . I was feeling uncomfortable about the inappropriate existence of a funfair - proper funfair - near the barbed wire and the sad graves and the battlefields and the eerie tunnels, then the guide said “the funfair is to keep kids happy and distracted while the old people are crying”
Sometimes, gerrymandering is targeted at the other party. More often, it’s more bi-partisan, as both parties seek to maximise the number of safe seats.
US elections are personality rather than policy driven and Democrats generally win when they run charismatic and inspirational vacuous bullshitters who raise hopes for radical change and then disappoint them by governing as centrists once reality bites - see Obama, Clinton, Kennedy (like Tony Blair here).
Of course they can win with mediocrities, like Carter (after Watergate) or Biden (during the pandemic and after four years of Trump) but it much more to run in their favour. And Harris was the latter type, not the former. So they lost by a couple of points. But had Trump been running against Clinton or Obama in their primes I imagine the result would have been very different.
https://x.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1854340417761775741
In essence, the left argument is that people are better collectively if they act (and vote) collectively. Womens' right are human rights. Minority rights are human rights. Everybody is better off with these things.
So how do the right persuade people to vote against their own interests?
By claiming that their problems are caused by other people.
It's the fucking Brexit campaign all over again.
You can quibble about the details, but you can't argue with the results.
"I am voting for this guy because he hates all the same people I do, and he told me THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS"
It's bullshit, but it works.
Biden did lots to revive manufacturing in the US. Harris didn’t campaign on what had *already been done*.
Is it possible that she and her advisors found economic protectionism in global trade an embarrassment? That they thought Biden was an old fool, going back to the 1950s?
No wonder they don’t have babies
http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/12/concerning-yule.html
As for your other point, yes, many cathedrals and churches would have been built on sites of pagan temples. Because that is where the building materials and cleared sites would have been. It also helpfully made a statement that paganism had been stamped out. But others were built on the site of major government buildings. York springs to mind.
Just as, today, a new office block might be built on the site of an old office block.
If it was all about food prices then why did the Dems do better in the 2022 midterm elections when price rises were most visible ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwrr58801yo
Word of the day: "graveyarding"
Harris 2024 = 226 EVs
But there was a national swing, against which the Dems outperformed in the contested states. That suggests a big picture driver was a factor and that has to be economy/cost of living.
And probably the lag behind Biden’s investment agenda was too great.
And when in York recall there was a Bishop of York three centuries before there was an Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dems also appear to have a remarkable blindness that not everyone is of the identity that they're favouring. If you're making the argument that 'we will do x, y and z for black men' then white people tend to think 'well what about us?' If you're saying 'vote for us because our candidate is a woman' then a lot of men will be somewhat discouraged.
And meanwhile it's not terribly successful because outside of some niche circles the identity group that you're patronising feels patronised.
https://www.noom.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noom
But then on the other hand, Kamala lost on policy. People do care about policy. She didn't have enough policy. And it wasn't different enough from
Biden.
On the other other hand (hello Zaphod) Kamala lost because a smaller percentage of middle aged white men in a few states voted for her than for Biden.
Seriously. I missed it. In my defence I have been *quite busy* travelling
Perhaps a lot of people have quite rationally concluded that the Left is not on their side, and pursues policies that are contrary to their interests.
The people gaining from the new factories would be predominantly white men in flyover states.
Biden might have an interest in and empathy towards them.
Whereas Harris is a coastal liberal.
Presumably the main hall of the HQ was adopted as the cathedral church for some time - hence the continuity of the kind you rightly describe at Chichester.
There's also a church in a Cotswold dell which is built atop a Roman villa with bits of mosaic visible in the church floor - but I cannot remember where it is except that it's northwest of Oxford.
The Department of Justice on Friday unsealed an indictment against Farhad Shakeri, 51, alleging he was tasked with “providing a plan” to kill Trump.
The US government said Mr Shakeri has not been arrested and is believed to be in Iran - which described the claims as "completely baseless".
In a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan court, prosecutors allege that an official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard directed Mr Shakeri in September to devise a plan to surveil and kill Trump.
“The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The justice department also charged two others allegedly recruited to kill an American journalist who was an outspoken critic of Iran.
The other individuals were identified by the justice department as Carlisle Rivera, also known as "Pop", 49, from Brooklyn, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, from Staten Island.
The two appeared in court in the Southern District of New York on Thursday and are being detained pending a trial.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx28x187rmko
"How could an entire left-liberal worldview be more comprehensibly dismantled by reality? And yet, the primary response among my own liberal friends was rage at the electorate."
"one of Trump’s most effective ads — “it shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor,” according to the NYT — was on Harris’ support for public funding for sex reassignments for illegal aliens and prison inmates. It packed a real punch among black and Latino men and suburban women."
"The Democrats’ insistence that women have penises and men give birth is perhaps the most insane position any major political party has ever taken in US history."
He very much doubts the Dems can dig themselves out of this post-modern hole.
If only Dems would listen.
Some - like Mark Lilla - have been warning for years they were headed to disaster by ignoring the working class who want pocketbook stuff solved not theories of social construction.