2024 ELECTION THREAD

I really can't think of a better encapsulation of what is meant by Blue MAGA than Democrats snap declaring that unions are evil and racist upon reading that they don't support Dems due to differences on trade.

d2 3 out of the last 4 of our presidents have been of below average intelligence

only in a system that continually spits out terrible candidates is that possible

kamala is not exactly smart herself

despite having massive help in attending one of the elite schools her parents were employed by through there networks where they could have arranged for good letters of reccomendation (that's basically what those are for, they are vibe checks to see if the applicant knows people the school knows/cares about - a letter from a well respected academic lauding kamala's merits would be massively favorable to her getting accepted into a good school) she never went to one

it took her 5 years to graduate college - largely in part because she had to go to vanier college for a year first, which offers the canadian version of a 2 year associates degree or a 3 year vocational degree before transferring to howard and they either wouldn't accept any vanier credits or she failed some classes because she still spent 4 years at howard

there are plausible cultural reasons for the college path she took - perhaps she wanted to spend a year in montreal first and she felt attending a hbcu was important to her - sure all that can be explained away as intentional choices

but then she goes to a very bad law school, currently ranked 88th in the country

for the nation - hastings graduates both fail the bar and do not ever work as lawyers at a higher rate than the national average - and that national average is dragged down considerable by all the degree mill law schools which aren't even ranked

so nothing about her really screams genius

educated yes
smart... meh

i also think you'd be lying if you said after hearing her talk about anything that you were impressed with her and thought she was smart

i think it's criminal that in a country of 350 million people we can't even bring up candidates of at least above above average intelligence to lead the country

yes it's partially the electorate who show that dummies can regularly beat smart people in elections - but it's mostly because of the duopoly where vast majority of the electorate is simply voting by party so there's only miniscule ev to be gained trying to put forward the best possible candidate so why not instead elevate "your guy" through the party mechanism instead?

JFC dude. That whole essay is completely irrelevant to my point.

One of the candidates is Donald Trump. The other candidate is not Donald Trump. One of the candidates is "getting shot in the dick". The other candidate is "something other than getting shot in the dick". Do you need me to draw you a ****ing picture?

Unfortunately we're adults and responsible for our own behavior. Only the both sides bad bros float through life and apparently aren't even responsible for who they vote for.

good post but if you only mention one thing and only one thing that is indeed saying that's the only reason for that thing, it's just indirect

i agree, i never in a million years could vote for trump, and i'll gladly take that unenthusiastic handjob instead of getting shot in the dick - but i'm still going to complain about the unenthusiastic handjob and talk about how how much better it would have been to have instead invited jill steins sister over where we then watch "wet anal" on her laptop and go to town on her while she pisses on me - that sounds way more fun and something i think all americans can agree is the best of the 3 options

Yes. There's a difference between saying we must vote for the lesser evil... sensible, and saying that the lesser evil is actually good.

The latter requires you to contort your mind into positions like, wanting to have a home on a single income is racist.

And that sweet prosperous post-war economy, when most developed nations were rebuilding and many modern-day competitor like China and India were still economic footnotes.

There was definitely another mindset with that generation too, from what I remember of them. It may be just have been the culture in my family and neighborhood but I remember they never wasted anything ever, tended to save for things they wanted, and fixed everything themselves.

I'm sure they spent some on the bullshit of the day but I can't think of any great examples offhand, except cigarettes but they were way cheaper. I get the nostalgia factor since I'm being nostalgic right now, but my sense is that most people romanticizing those days would not have done well in them given modern habits/lifestyles.

I'm not saying I would either. I have fairly good habits in some ways, but I still buy senseless bullshit like most folks do and pay other people to cut my lawn. And they're white guys around here unlike back home.

The hell are you talking about? You have clearly never read any of my posts whatsoever. I have criticized Kamala plenty of times on plenty of issues.

Either that or you’re a dishonest centrist hack that always seems to fall on the side of criticizing dems as dishonest centrist hacks are wont to do.

That's pretty funny because nobody said anything close to that and it's the exact kind of dishonesty you'd pretend to be offended by if done by a poster supporting democrat. It's always just basic diagonlization with ya'll. The same arguments you use to try to show both sides bad just ends up with all three sides bad including you.

it's heavily implied, at worst he took a rhetorical liberty, you're just arguing semantics

Yeah, it seemed the claim was something like unions are racist and the lifestyle enjoyed then was due to racism.

Maybe a bit of a reach, I guess.

There are many other examples. The case for Iraq was patently fraudulent. But Hillary, Biden etc are not monsters for supporting it, nor hopelessly negligent and incompetent.

We are facing an existential environmental threat, but you can't expect anyone to do much about it.

You can want 10-20k people to die for lack of HC and also be a good person and good, left/liberal leader. Etc.

If you want to say Trump or the far right are so dangerous we should accept the lesser evil, OK. Then you don't have to hold these types of beliefs.

You probably do have to deal with the fact that Dems have spent 10s of millions supporting the far right.

the democratic party purely supports far right candidates simply to create a "lesser of two evils" voting system

it's disgusting - they don't care about the good of the country, they care about staying in power

it's a classic

scenario

In your case, you're basically saying "I could never vote for stubbing my toe, especially since this whole thing is all a big set up by the united toe stubbers of America, so instead, I will vote for world peace and pet unicorns for everyone, and let the majority decide whether I get my toe stubbed or get shot in the dick".

More than a reach, it seems like a wilful misreading as the original claim was unions (in the 50s and 60s!!!!!) were incredibly racist. You can replace unions with almost anything Harvard, the American Medical Association, NASA and the claim would still be true. No surprise unions were racist then, everybody else was as well. The broader point is the union single income lifestyle you're imagining was probably only common with whites. Black women and especially married black women were already working in the 50s and 60s because their husbands were not eligible for the kind of union jobs you're nostalgizing.

i was pretty explicit that it was wet anal with Beth Schiff (i looked her up but sadly found no pics)

unlike world peace, i think that goal is attainable

So in light of unions leaving dems, the observation was merely that people were generally more racist in the past?

Ok, if, if that's so, I really misunderstood and withdraw my comment.

I re emphasize the stuff about Iraq, Dems promoting the far right, etc.

Wait, how is it heavily implied? The implication actually is that you can’t have single family incomes for (most of) the working class (lower middle to middle) without incredible exclusionary pressures by unions. That’s why for them to be even remotely functional they have to control the boss’s ability to even hire workers while they’re on strike. If it wasn’t for their ability to collude to prevent firing with government or by force, they would be completely useless.

And it’s very easy to see why that would also be the case back then and the exclusion would also apply to black labor and female labor in particular. Why is that such a crazy theory, even if you prove it false which you never attempted to?

the claim was this

you're doing a lot of heavy lifting here

the original claim was not an innocuous and "oh by the way there was more racism back then if you didn't know that already"

it's directly implying that northern trade unions in detroit only thrived because they were excluding blacks which, to use your example is like saying harvard was only a good school in the 1950s because they excluded blacks

whites were also the majority of the population then and now

the income gap between blacks and whites exists both then and now

you're playing racial hostage games where anything and everything stated can be responded with "but it was worse for black people"

yes, we know, everyone knows

when you do that you're not adding to the discussion, it's not some new information

and bringing it up deeply implies that's the only reason

so to further combine the two statements, are you now arguing that the AMA and NASA also only thrived in the 50s due to racism?

you beginning to see the point of why going down that path is stupid? why it's not constructive, it's just cultish virtue signaling with deeply false conclusions and implications that everything that has been nice in this country happened directly due to the suffering of minorities

you're like uncle junior at the dinner table

you act like the unions only did well by exlcuding blacks, yet black kept showing up to work in the auto industry (and shudder to think even joined the unions) to the point where detroit went from barely any blacks to majority black in just 2-3 decades

it's just lazy to say that union workers did well then due to racism

and yes, this is exactly how i understood you comment as well

that's insane and wholly unfounded - you're just guessing because it fits your narrative that all wealth of the past was due to the suffering of black people - this is exactly why so many people hate crt because it frames people to perceive things this way which is not tied to reality nor allows for forward progress because you need a foundation based on the real world in order to progress

I think there are 2 different things. I think we agree 50s nostalgia basically ignores non white people.

For unions leaving Dems, I think you're making a common mistake when it comes to demo mashing election data. My understanding of your claim is something like unions are voting less Dem now than in the past because of perception about their policies on trade and support for labor etc. I think that's wrong because you're not normalizing to overall population. Like say teamsters voted +10% Dem in 96 but only +5% in 2016. It looks like Dems are losing teamster support, but they actually probably gained. That's because there has been a massive shift to the republican party among non college educated men which make up a huge % of teamsters. So in 96 if non college men were voting Dem -2 % and in 2016 Dem -25% Dems are actually doing much better with teamsters in 2016.

Also, there are a ton oof countries where there has been prosperity that was shared with the bottom 50-70% without a large racial under class.

I'm pretty left on a lot of issues, but the idea that prosperity is finite and can only be acquired by taking it from others is one of the more sophomore ideas on the left imo.

Maybe that isn't what is being suggested but it sounds like it. It's strange to see that argument used in favor of neo liberal politicians.

it is exactly what has been suggested