States that aren't winnable for your electoral college needs can at least help you with padding the popular vote totals. You also help all the down ballot races that could swing blue if you have a good top ticket that inspires enthusiasm and stimulates new voters to get off the sidelines.
I’ve long thought that politician pay increases should be linked to the same COLA that Social Security recipients receive. It should not be static, but it also should not be subject to sudden 50% jumps.
Do Hennepin County Commissioners need a 49% raise?
Pay hikes also coming for the sheriff and county attorney. Final vote planned for Aug. 6.www.startribune.com
People have hated Cruz for years and yet the Canadian cockroach still survives. People hate him but still pull the lever. If Kamala can add more voters and they go for Allred then maybe it's enough. I'll believe it when I see it. We appear to be getting the worst people moving from blue states. I've heard for multiple cycles that Texas is turning purple. I've yet to ever see it at the state level. DFW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and parts of South Texas go blue. The rest is solidly red.
I mean the metro areas all voted pretty highly for Biden in 2020. Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio all have Democratic representatives. There aren't enough Democrats overall in the state to overcome the redness of the rest of the state. It gets very tiring that people only seem to care about national races when everything local affects them in a much greater way than the people at the national level. Your city council, mayor, and state representatives matter a lot more to your day to day than who is president. If you can't be bothered to vote locally regardless of if your vote makes a difference nationally then I don't really know what's going to reach you. If Kamala coming to Texas multiple times helps get people off the sidelines then let's do it. If she's also hitting up donors, I really don't give a shit. We need to beat Trump and that takes money.
The vast majority of people who identify as moderate in America in 2024 are just right wing with extra steps.
and, especially in the online arena, when people self-describe as moderate they're just cloaking their leanings with a common-sense attitude. For a while Musk was using the "moderate" identity to frame his descent into the right (or his mask-off revelation of right-wing leanings which were always there)
There was a piece on NPR about this. Same with people who identify as "not poltical." I hate politics, quit making my video games/movies/shows political (portraying women and minorities).
Yup, their moderate positions usually include a lot of right wing dog whistle and parroting a bunch of Fox News talking points.
I'd love to read that piece. A few months back I saw a tweet where someone pointed out that if you have a problem with media injecting diversity and colorblind casting into the production process, perhaps you're just offended by the aesthetics of diversity. A couple years back my BIL was texting me about Rings of Power and circling this rhetoric that he isn't bothered by Black elves, what matters is whether the show is good or not. He then introduced me to the Critical Drinker, where he picked up these opinions, and I haven't had a good opportunity since to circle back with my BIL on this but...well, it's all this same strain of framing reactionary opinions as a common-sense perspective.
But I voted for Lieberman once!
Found it. More specifically it was about the "zynternet" a recent internet adage that is basically bro-y bullshit that identifies as apolitcal, but is actually conservative.
I agree that people probably do use your last point to obfuscate the truth of their position, but a realistic perspective on the world today is going to necessarily sound more pessimistic than optimistic. Few things have had such a harmful effect on addressing serious global problems than the insane American optimism and toxic positivity. McDonald's sold the idea in the 80s that not only do you work a shit job that pays nothing but you have to do so with a smile. And that BS caught on like wildfire. Customers started to demand it. And it infiltrated the entire political and economic sphere. But things like climate change, a realistic view of it, is incredibly dark. Failing to face up to that by thinking we'll just solve it like we do everything is the opposite of realism.
You're absolutely right, and I think I clouded my point by hitching the reactionary/moderate dichotomy to a pessimist/realist dichotomy; I meant more the logical leap seems similar in both cases, assuming one's perspective is the fixed point at the center of the spectrum.
Absolutely. That's definitely going into a value judgement which is deviating pretty far from "realism." But I agree that I've met plenty who've voiced those kinds of beliefs and don't realize that it's not the kind of value-free realism they think it is. It sees things in a binary framework ignoring that we live in contradiction. Things are rarely ever either/or, they're usually both/and. Some people suck and deserve it, some people are babies and have done nothing to deserve any of this.
Not to get hung up on minutia but I would disagree with including Iowa. The state is very Midwestern, similar to Central Illinois and most of the other states that grow endless fields of corn and soybeans. They are traditionally Protestant/Catholic. Church is still a big part of community probably only second to local bars and taverns. I have never spent much time in the other states listed but I can certainly attest than none of my friends or family in Iowa would consider themselves to have a “Wild West” core value. They are much more Fargo than No Country For Old Men.