Again, it doesn't really matter if you like them or think they're mature in their attitudes and approach, they've now proven that you can't win elections without them. Figure out how to appeal to them or watch us descend into decades of Trumpism.
... but appealing to them would mean descending into decades of Trumpism, because that's what they want.
They don't want to be appealed to, nor do they intend to compromise. They want to tear down everything I value, burn it to the ground, piss on the ashes and put me up against the wall. I know this because they've told me precisely that, and have been telling me that for nearly a decade. They've been very vocal and clear about what they want, and it isn't to be understood, or to meet anyone halfway.
I'm tired of being told that I need to capitulate and surrender and understand why I deserve the bullet. Fuck that, and fuck them.
See, this is exactly why I felt the need to speak up. Trumpism isn't what they want, it's just the closest thing to what they want that's been offered. And if you let Trump be the only person who speaks to them for the next 10 years, you might actually find they they begin to believe that it is in fact the real thing.
The economic woes come first, and it's still not too late for a left-leaning populist to take charge of the Democrats and give the people what they need while protecting minorities and LGBT folks. The only way we get to the social justice disaster that people are predicting is if we all collectively throw up our hands and write off 50% of the voters as a lost cause.
The trouble with this argument is that if what they want is to keep the coal mines running, no one can give them that. If it’s a disqualifying event to tell them that fact and offer to help, then it seems like we’re on a dead-end road. The election goes to the people who lie about it to gain power and still do nothing about it, or make it worse.
E.g., the party who actually succeeded in doing something about health insurance just lost to the party who did everything in their power to stop it, and who immediately decided to decimate Medicaid when they took over. So you can give the people what they need and still get punished for it.
We've been hearing what they are asking for and what they are saying. The push back that Romney and McCain got from their own voters because they wouldn't attack Obama as a foreign Muslim. What will it take for people to believe that people who state "He's not hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting" actually want to hurt people. We don't want the same things with different paths to get there. We have fundamentally different values.
I like how Trump is not what they want only when there is a need to deflect the blame. But when someone needs to deflect blame from Trump, then he is doing exactly what his voters want.
And somehow, when left and democrats are doing something bad, left and democrats are to be blamed. And when conservatives or right do something bad ... left and democrats are to be blamed.
> The economic woes come first
No they do not. Trump does not make economy better, you know it, they know it, I know it. It is not about removing fraud or corruption, Trump is fraudster and they know it, you know it and Trump himself knows it.
It was a stream of lies and hate that won and people voted for. It has nothing to do with economic policies that could help these people or not. Pretending to yourself that some rational policy can counteract it is how you loose.
Trumpism is what they wanted. It's what they voted for. They made it their identity, religion and basis for their worldview.
Not one of them could name a single policy position Kamala Harris or Joe Biden had. Part of the reason for that is the dismal and pathetic ability of the Democrats to actually sell themselves, because they assumed just not being Trump would be enough. It should have been, but it wasn't, because Americans are the worst. But the other part is that Trumpists wouldn't have listened, nor would they have cared, regardless of what was offered. They were never going to listen to a "left-leaning populist." These people thought Hillary Clinton was a baby-eating Marxist. They set up a gallows on the Capitol. They saw the price of eggs was too high and the videogames were too woke and decided they wanted to watch the world burn. That's it.
I want social justice. I want UBI. I want socialized healthcare and education. I want a liberal, secular, social democratic society with robust labor laws, a boring and stable government, and a strong social safety net. I want to spend more of my tax dollars on infrastructure and fewer on murdering brown people for God and the almighty petrodollar. I want feminism and black liberation and gay and trans rights. I want land back. I want fully automated luxury space communism. I want science and scholarship. And a lot more Americans align with my views than the popular narrative would have you believe. We even won the popular vote in 2016, not that it matters. All of these things would help Trumpists more than Trump's own policies. Not that it matters. Hillary Clinton said a mean thing about them one time and the screaming in their head has never stopped. She was absolutely correct, though, and the right could have taken the chance to clean their own house instead of trauma-bonding with the worst elements in their ranks. Not that it matters.
But I can't have that. Obviously not from the Republicans, but neither from the Democrats. I can have whatever Snow Crash Handmaid's Tale cyberpunk dystopian nightmare the orange gibbon and his ketamine-tweaking puppetmaster cook up, and 20 years from now I guess can just die in a ditch of hunger and dysentery because JimmyDingleberry or whomever in Musk's cult of groyper fuckbois deleted Social Security and because vaccines were declared fake and gay in the Soyjak purge of 2030.
These are not rational people, and this is not a rational government. I'm not going to give them the dignity of pretending otherwise.
