4 ms·

I think the idea that the "sides" are roughly equally balanced is a false narrative pushed by the smaller side. Obviously "hang Mike Pence" isn't an appealing i

by geofft 6y ago

I think the idea that the "sides" are roughly equally balanced is a false narrative pushed by the smaller side. Obviously "hang Mike Pence" isn't an appealing idea to anywhere near 100% of Republican voters, and I would wager it's appealing to just about 0% of non-Republican voters. What you're seeing is that the amount of yelling is roughly equally balanced, but you can't extrapolate from that to what all people actually believe. Obviously you won't find common ground for every single person, but there is common ground for 80-90% of them. A few more bits of information: - There's Mike Pence himself, the actual vice president of the United States, and his unwillingness to go along with the worldviews of those who have by now concluded he needs to be hanged. - Mitt Romney, the actual Republican presidential candidate in 2012 (who won 47% of the popular vote), has been pretty strongly opposed to the idea that Trump secretly won / would have won, to the coup, etc. Previously he marched in Black Lives Matter protests and voted to convict the President in the impeachment trial last year. (Romney also created Romneycare, the model for Obamacare, even though if you listen to how loudly people yell, it seems like half the country opposes it.) - Georgia elected two Democratic Senators. More generally, the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013 and several states are actively engaged in gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. The fact that you see Republicans roughly tied with Democrats doesn't indicate that Republican policies are equally popular. And, again, the "side" that advocates for "hang Mike Pence" is hardly the totality of the Republican Party. So what can be done? I think the highest-impact thing is to help out efforts to re-enfranchise Americans and end gerrymandering. The work coordinated by Stacey Abrams in Georgia is a good place to start, for instance. Regardless of what party or policies you support, if you believe in democracy, getting elections to be more representative can only be a good thing. And in particular, if you're right-leaning but worry that the Republican Party is going too far, making it so that the party has to compete by convincing centrists instead of being able to rely on extremists will be good for the party.

1MachineElf 6y ago
It's odd to me how someone could think that there is more hatred for Mike Pence coming from within his own party vs. outside of it. I don't know what social media circles you've participated in for the past 5 years, but it seems clearly the opposite case to me. There is an overwhelmingly large group of people online who equivocate Mike Pence with Nazism, and they regularly call for punching and killing of anyone who has that label. Last August, a Trump supporter was killed at a Portland BLM protest, where afterwards into the microphone the organizer yelled "I am not sad that a f*cking fascist died tonight. He was a f*cking Nazi. Our community held its own and took out the trash." Many young people praised this. I do not believe the remarks would have been different if it were Pence in the same situation.
- geofft 6y ago
  I'm not arguing that there is more "hatred" for Pence coming from within his party than outside it, in a general sense. I'm arguing specifically that "hang Mike Pence" is coming from the far right, and only from the far part of the far right. If you find this odd, you should read some far-right forums. I read these social media circles (as well as far-left ones of various sorts), not because I agree with them, but because I think it's useful to understand what the "other side" thinks. The one I was reading today had multiple memes of him as a traitor - one had him photoshopped as Brutus assassinating Trump-as-Caesar surrounded by Romney and others, one had him next to Benedict Arnold, etc. Meanwhile, at some point in the NYC Women's March four years ago, when folks were chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go," I tried to lead a "Michael Pence has got to go." Nobody really joined in. And in any case, my original point is that there is a large number of folks, Democrat and Republican and everything in between, who do not agree with "hang Mike Pence," and it is on those people's beliefs that we can build common ground. I don't deny that there are protestors with megaphones who shout extreme positions, but my exact point was that you should not extrapolate based on who shouts the loudest.
vladTheInhaler 6y ago
I agree with your overall point that we need to revitalize our voting system. The Center for Election Science has made a convincing argument for approval voting as a method to de-polarize elections [1]. [1] https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effec...
- geofft 6y ago
  Yup. Another thing about our current system that I only realized after talking with folks who do politics for a living about what they do: the fact that elections are close to 50/50 isn't a sign of a deep and fundamental divide in our country, it's that it's financially not worth getting much past 50/50. If you are currently at 48%, it's worth changing your platform a bit to get 51% of the population; if you're at 51%, it's not worth changing your platform to get 55%. More directly, if you're polling well in 40% of districts, poorly in 40% of districts, and competitively in the rest, it's worth focusing your attention only on the competitive districts, until you get to 50%. It's not worth paying any attention to the ones you're not competitive in. Other voting methods (approval or ranked-choice) will reduce this effect and make political parties more representative of what people actually believe, instead of designing the system such that we have two parties that do the worst possible job of each representing 50% of the people.

by geofft 6y ago

1MachineElf 6y ago

It's odd to me how someone could think that there is more hatred for Mike Pence coming from within his own party vs. outside of it. I don't know what social media circles you've participated in for the past 5 years, but it seems clearly the opposite case to me. There is an overwhelmingly large group of people online who equivocate Mike Pence with Nazism, and they regularly call for punching and killing of anyone who has that label. Last August, a Trump supporter was killed at a Portland BLM protest, where afterwards into the microphone the organizer yelled "I am not sad that a f*cking fascist died tonight. He was a f*cking Nazi. Our community held its own and took out the trash." Many young people praised this. I do not believe the remarks would have been different if it were Pence in the same situation.

geofft 6y ago
I'm not arguing that there is more "hatred" for Pence coming from within his party than outside it, in a general sense. I'm arguing specifically that "hang Mike Pence" is coming from the far right, and only from the far part of the far right. If you find this odd, you should read some far-right forums. I read these social media circles (as well as far-left ones of various sorts), not because I agree with them, but because I think it's useful to understand what the "other side" thinks. The one I was reading today had multiple memes of him as a traitor - one had him photoshopped as Brutus assassinating Trump-as-Caesar surrounded by Romney and others, one had him next to Benedict Arnold, etc. Meanwhile, at some point in the NYC Women's March four years ago, when folks were chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go," I tried to lead a "Michael Pence has got to go." Nobody really joined in. And in any case, my original point is that there is a large number of folks, Democrat and Republican and everything in between, who do not agree with "hang Mike Pence," and it is on those people's beliefs that we can build common ground. I don't deny that there are protestors with megaphones who shout extreme positions, but my exact point was that you should not extrapolate based on who shouts the loudest.

vladTheInhaler 6y ago

I agree with your overall point that we need to revitalize our voting system. The Center for Election Science has made a convincing argument for approval voting as a method to de-polarize elections [1]. [1] https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effec...

geofft 6y ago
Yup. Another thing about our current system that I only realized after talking with folks who do politics for a living about what they do: the fact that elections are close to 50/50 isn't a sign of a deep and fundamental divide in our country, it's that it's financially not worth getting much past 50/50. If you are currently at 48%, it's worth changing your platform a bit to get 51% of the population; if you're at 51%, it's not worth changing your platform to get 55%. More directly, if you're polling well in 40% of districts, poorly in 40% of districts, and competitively in the rest, it's worth focusing your attention only on the competitive districts, until you get to 50%. It's not worth paying any attention to the ones you're not competitive in. Other voting methods (approval or ranked-choice) will reduce this effect and make political parties more representative of what people actually believe, instead of designing the system such that we have two parties that do the worst possible job of each representing 50% of the people.