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Instead of getting tangled up in social issues, liberal politicians should be prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's e

Instead of getting tangled up in social issues, liberal politicians should be prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations, would create a huge and lasting political win across a broad section of the electorate.

ModernMech 2y ago
It always comes back to social issues because some people have a problem with policies that support all kinds of economic activities.
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  Part of the courage needed is not pandering to the left.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    If only that was happening as much as the American right thinks it is.
    - hkt 2y ago
      One might think that Trump had just beaten Lenin rather than Biden, judging by the rhetoric
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      Seriously, where's all the pandering? We should be swimming in awesome shit, if that were true.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - rpastuszak 2y ago
    In what sense?
    - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
      In the sense that the center is where the action is, and votes are, and the left and right fringes attract too much attention and influence.
      - watwut 2y ago
        No, far right is where the action is. Then there is the center that eternally and constantly focuses on faults of left or of democrats and constantly excuses far right. You have far right and then many far right enablers who will always blame the democrats and left for what conservatives do. Then you have comparatively less few pro-democracy moderate and small far left.
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        This is why Trump has done so well by running toward the center. Oh. Wait.
  - janniekiller 2y ago
    [dead]
- senderista 2y ago
  This is the GOP "wedge strategy" that squashes potentially-popular economic policies that the oligarchy opposes by distracting the electorate with culture-war issues.
  - senderista 2y ago
    I see I’ve triggered the local wannabe broligarchs.
Avicebron 2y ago
I'm pretty sure the political group that can guarantee a quality National Health Service in the US will win
- MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
  When the Democrats had a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate when Obama was elected, they couldn't even get a public option included in the Affordable Care Act, and the right so successfully demagogued "Obamacare" (their name for it) that the Democrats lost an incredible number of seats in the 2010 midterms. Bernie Sanders campaigned on Medicare for All (essentially what you're suggesting) in 2016 and 2020, and he didn't even win the Democratic primary. Despite how big a problem healthcare is in the US, most voters fear any change that may put their current health coverage at risk. Most people under 65 have (or feel like they have) decent-to-good health insurance through an employer-sponsored plan and don't necessarily see a big benefit to throwing that away. People over 65 are fiercely protective of their Medicare benefits and tend to worry that Medicare for All is going to make their healthcare worse. (Judging by the amount of "shocked Pikachu face" we see lately from Trump voters who expected him to fix the economy, there's a critical group of swing voters who seem unwilling or unable to accurately judge candidates based on their policies vs. their vibes.) I don't agree with those people. I'd love to see our healthcare system dramatically overhauled. But between the polarization and risk aversion of American voters, "a quality National Health Service" has not proven to be a winning platform so far and is unlikely to be in the future.
  - aSanchezStern 2y ago
    "Didn't even win the democratic primary" might be a bit of a misnomer if it's implying that winning the democratic primary should be much easier than winning the general. Bernie has positions that are popular outside of democrats, many people think that if he had won the primary, he would have had a much better chance of winning than Hilary or Biden, since he had less baggage and his policies were broadly popular.
    - MattGaiser 2y ago
PartiallyTyped 2y ago
See, people, NIMBIES in particular, take issue with housing and infrastructure, people with stock in pharma and insurance corps take issue with government supporting others. In this very forum, some asinine person supported Trump administration axing the free tax submission programme of the IRS on the basis of them owning shares in the tax software companies.
wwweston 2y ago
That's pretty much where liberal politicians end up targeting most of their policymaking and even a sizable portion of their campaign platform (as demonstrated in the Harris platform). Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why?
- soco 2y ago
  Because anything related to "delivering better lives" gets labeled as "tangled up social issues" and discarded in favor of "increasing profits". Maybe the majority only understands life through money? Like, a better life means more money, period - and has no concept that a better life could mean road safety, reliable healthcare, serious schooling, quiet retirement, and such.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Republicans are trusted more on schools post-COVID and evidence is blue states lost more schooling progress than red state even if blue states were mostly ahead pre-COVID. (if you argue that we are not post-COVID, people are not going to trust you on schools even if the virus still lingers. As callous as it sounds, everybody dies, but not everybody gets a complete education and if you think the way the education-industrial complex thinks, students don’t get back social and educational progess they lost)
    - watwut 2y ago
      Republicans are not trusted more on schools. You may trust them more after covid, but overall the claim does not seem to be valid. Also, republican plan is to dismantle public schooling and conservative plan is to move as much as possible toward homeschooling. Which has double advantage of keeping women at home.
- Gothmog69 2y ago
  [flagged]
- jf22 2y ago
  I think it's simply that being mad about social issues gets more interactions on social media.
knowknow 2y ago
It’s amazing that this gets upvoted while it is completely uninformed about what liberal politicians actually run on. This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. People love getting tangled on social issues as it’s the most provocative. This conception that most people actually care about rational policies is false and has been false for at least the past decade.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  Where exactly did you get the idea that Kamala was running on this? Where was she advocating for, say, Medicare for all? Or fighting vested interests by running on campaign finance reform, to get money out of politics? She was running on an abstract, classical centrist non-program of "we've done great under Biden and we're going to keep doing the same". That is the exact opposite of what GP was suggesting.
  - knowknow 2y ago
    The comment is saying that liberal politicians should be >prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Nothing about what you mentioned at all. Nor did I ever claim Kamala ran on what you said. The fact that you and the commenter have different ideas of what rational policies are and assume politicians should be running on that platform is part of the bias. You assume that most people want the same thing as you but most people don’t. The majority actually enjoy social issues.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      They were was also saying: > Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations So I interpreted the first part in a more revolutionary direction, though you may be right that they were thinking a different direction than I was.
  - anon7000 2y ago
    She wasn’t running on an abstract program, people just weren’t paying fucking attention. For just one example: https://www.kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Policy_Book_Economic-Opportunity.pdf https://www.kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Poli...
cortesoft 2y ago
“Delivering better lives for people” is already an inherently social issue, though. There are many people who don’t WANT to improve certain people’s lives, and if your proposed policies help them, they will be against it even if it makes everyone’s life better; they are willing to forgo improving their own life to make sure the people they hate won’t see any improvement. Unless your policies go out of their way to exclude the groups they hate, you aren’t going to get their support.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  See, for an example, that "he's not hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting" quote that made the rounds from an unhappy 2019 Trump voter.
  - noisy_boy 2y ago
    That voter much be very happy now because he is hurting plenty of people aplenty.
mullingitover 2y ago
> Instead of getting tangled up in social issues It's not that they're getting 'tangled up', it's that reactionary activists (whose ultimate goal is repealing the Civil Rights Act entirely) use strawman social issues as a wedge and the press is led around by the nose parroting these controversies that are brazenly ginned up. Liberal politicians don't really have a great strategy for this because the majority of media (and I'm talking about the real media: influencers with more following than all legacy media combined) is right-wing these days. Progressives end up barely treading water while reactionaries run circles around them, and then are blamed when reactionaries make everything worse.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  There is a fringe wing of the democrat party that loves social issues and is an outsized fraction of the "community organizing" base they use to do things like canvassing and other forms of volunteering. These people need politicians to at least prove their "purity" on social issues, even on issues that are very unpopular. This is analogous to the hyper-religious wing of the republican party. They also like to get involved and volunteer, but they demand a certain stance on social issues, too.
  - mullingitover 2y ago
    There's a lot of effort to conflate basic civil liberties with fringe social issues, tie them together, and burn down the civil liberties because they're just 'fringe social issues.' There are some fringe issues supported by some democrats, but the real base of the party is black voters and their civil rights are the real target. Conservatives still haven't forgotten about being forced to end segregation in schools, nor have they giving up on trying to re-segregate.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      I honestly think this take on conservatives is pretty unhinged. It's completely baseless, too. Why not talk about one of the civil rights that they openly oppose? The number one civil right that American conservatives are after is your reproductive freedom. Number two is your right to access [medicine/drugs/foods] you choose.
MattGaiser 2y ago
Home owners are by far the majority, so battling home owners is an easy ticket to defeat.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Home owners are the minority in San Francisco, so why in your opinion are prices so high there?
  - MattGaiser 2y ago
    What does the voting population look like? Where I am in Canada, we typically do not prioritize canvassing neighbourhoods with more renters as they usually don’t vote. I imagine that tenant rights and rent control transform many renters into essentially homeowners for purposes beyond the asset itself. They also aren’t impacted by prices.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      I was told by a lawyer who does eviction cases that most jury members in SF are renters. My guess is that most who show up for jury duty also vote. There are consequences in theory for shirking jury duty, but my experience (from the early 1990s) was that the risk of actually incurring any consequences is very low.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  Yeah, I was about to write the same thing. I’ve been a lifelong renter, but have friends who converted from renting to owning (in Canada). Once you pay $1M+ for your place, you won’t vote for anyone who says they will lower your home prices. And since they’re the majority in every state, it just doesn’t work. Unless you have some sort of government that plans for “long term”, good luck. On the bright side, decreasing birth rates around the world will solve this problem by itself, if people can wait long enough. It’s the same in Japan. Tokyo house prices are going YoY because of foreign investments and growing population, but all other prefectures not so much (excluding special zones where they are building big semiconductor factories).
singpolyma3 2y ago
How are housing and government services not social issues?
tdb7893 2y ago
Only one presidential candidate had "DEI" and trans people as a major part of their campaign (and now have made those things a major part of the first two months of their presidency) and it wasn't the Democrats. It's kinda shocking to me that people think the Democrats have been running on social issues while Republicans haven't. I'm curious the sorta of media people watch that make them believe this.
- tombert 2y ago
  I always thought it was weird how they call left-leaning people "snowflakes", as if lefties are super easily offended. Some are, but I don't even think it's the majority. But you know who is easily offended? The people who pretend to be offended by the term "happy holidays" every year. The people who pretend that a child seeing a gay person is somehow going to groom them. The people who pretend that seeing a black person in a starring movie role is really upsetting them. The people who pretend that mentioning that trans people exist is causing some sort of societal collapse. And I am saying "pretend" very deliberately, because I genuinely do not think that anyone is actually offended by the term "happy holidays". I think that literally every single person who says they are is actively lying. It's utterly ridiculous. I am pretty left learning, at least by American standard, and I am generally speaking pretty hard to actually "offend". I will generally discuss basically any topic no matter how taboo, I make jokes that most people would consider offensive, I say curse words, and I don't pretend to get offended when a conservative says something really dumb.
hayst4ck 2y ago
Democrats are largely controlled opposition. If you ask where democratic power comes from, it comes from campaign donations by America's richest and most powerful people. Bloomberg ran for president under their banner, think about that. At minimum it communicates that the democratic platform is compatible with oligarchs. How are they supposed to wrangle corporate power, when that is exactly where their power comes from? "Social issues" are a godsend for oligarchs because they allow for effort to be spent on issues that don't challenge corporate power. They provide a sink for democratic efforts that ultimately don't move the needle for most of their voters. It gives a pathway for "positive" change that doesn't threaten corporate power. It insidiously disempowers the people who would be most likely to wrestle with corporate power. Most of all it provides the illusion of opposition and therefore the illusion that I have representation because I have someone who has the appearance of representing my values (like empathy), but none of the substance of it. Democrats have a choice. (1) don't threaten corporate power and focus on ultimately pro-corporate social issues that are ultimately dis-empowering (2) threaten corporate power/land owner power/Israel power and immediately have their campaign financing removed and their challengers funded. Even if you believe that democrats are focusing on issues that meaningfully change people's lives, like build back better or CHIPS, they are doing it without challenging corporate power. Which is why no matter which regime is in power, it feels like democracy is in decline. Then you get sad, because you realize there is no way to get actual representation for the issues you care about other than to run yourself, but if you ran explicitly to challenge those in power, those in power would fund your opposition. So then you realize that it's hard to get into power without expressing loyalty to those who grant power, and then you have a cogent explanation for why things are the way they are.
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  The sadder is part is that that reality is a ticking time bomb. It will work until people are so pissed off that the pitchforks come out.
  - hayst4ck 2y ago
    Just like when the pitchforks came out in Nazi Germany in order to overthrow the Nazi regime... /s Pitchforks don't work without a supporting institution, and the Intelligence state, corporate and governmental, is very very capable of preventing free association by people who might wish to supplant an illegitimate government with a new one. No it will work until the economy is properly destructed and we are defeated when our war machine is incapable of production, we become incapable of importing necessary goods, or the nuclear taboo is broken causing entire industries to disappear in the a flash. If we are lucky some brave military officers will uphold their oath to the constitution before it's too late, but that seems unlikely. Pitchforks were for the last 5 months. Historically speaking if there aren't pitchforks in the next month it's over and we are on the fascism train until catastrophe.
armchairhacker 2y ago
I agree. But as other commenters are pointing out, many liberals are already trying this, but conservatives misrepresent them as being focused on social issues (and misrepresent their opinions on such issues) anyways. IMO, here are the problems liberals face and solutions to regain popularity: - Liberal politicians may say the correct things, but what matters is what they do, and specifically how it's perceived. As vice-president, Harris did practically nothing, and the overall perception of the economy under Biden is negative. Meanwhile, Trump is doing almost exactly what he said, even small things like pardoning Ross Ulbricht. Fortunately, you don't need to be the party in power, or even elected, to have well-perceived actions; I believe community-building is the best and easiest way for liberals to regain appeal. - Liberal politicians may say the correct things, but they don't open themselves up to criticism enough. Liberals (and conservatives, and corporations) have learned to say almost nothing for fear of misspeaking, but this is backfiring; they get attacked for policies they don't state because they don't explicitly denounce those policies, and the policies they do state get misrepresented because they don't clarify or broadcast the clarifications enough. Harris should've went on Joe Rogan's podcast and should've agreed to a debate in Fox News; she would've been judged for her responses, but by not going, she was judged for imagined responses*. Meanwhile, Trump agreed to the debates on CNN and ABC, and he posts and speaks much more often and unscripted (so it's him posting and speaking). - Wrt. social issues (trans, woke. etc.): "live and let live", and ask for clarification, particularly examples. This area is where people imagine and misrepresent others' opinions the most; so when a liberal politician is asked their opinion on XYZ, they should answer unambiguously, even if it makes them look bad, then debate and clarify. I really think the overarching policy should be "live and let live", and finding ways to accomplish that with minimal federal intervention; because I believe (and hope) it's something most people would agree on**, and because "getting X done" is strictly easier than "getting Y to do X". One thing that must be said, because the above problems and solutions have been discussed before, but this has been discussed less: these also apply to "the far left", perhaps the same or more than they apply to conservatives. Many people get attacked by the far left who are completely on their side (recent example: ProtonVPN); many others get attacked who I believe are on their side, but must clarify their policies. In summary: people choose the worst interpretations of their political opponents' speech; if they oppose you, they'll choose the worst interpretation of your speech. However, if you don't speak, your opposers will choose an even worse interpretation of your silence. The ways to remove bad interpretations are: clarify, and far more significantly, act in a way that disproves them. Also, if your general actions benefit people, they'll gradually stop opposing you, so they'll start choosing better interpretations; the same speech is more or less controversial when it's spoken from different people, * If someone asks you a question and you don't respond, they're not going to forget the whole scenario, they're going to imagine your response based on their existing perception of you. Even if truthfully answering the question lowers their perception of you, if lying or not answering lowers it more, it's the correct choice. ** At minimum, I believe most people would allow any group happiness, if it didn't affect them, said group wasn't hurting another group, and doing so meant they themselves were better off. If most people believe liberal politicians will help their quality-of-life more than conservatives, I don't think they care about social issues; but vice versa is also true, most people won't protect victim's rights if they believe they must non-negligibly sacrifice QOL to do so.

ModernMech 2y ago

It always comes back to social issues because some people have a problem with policies that support all kinds of economic activities.

dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
Part of the courage needed is not pandering to the left.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  If only that was happening as much as the American right thinks it is.
  - hkt 2y ago
    One might think that Trump had just beaten Lenin rather than Biden, judging by the rhetoric
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    Seriously, where's all the pandering? We should be swimming in awesome shit, if that were true.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- rpastuszak 2y ago
  In what sense?
  - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
    In the sense that the center is where the action is, and votes are, and the left and right fringes attract too much attention and influence.
    - watwut 2y ago
      No, far right is where the action is. Then there is the center that eternally and constantly focuses on faults of left or of democrats and constantly excuses far right. You have far right and then many far right enablers who will always blame the democrats and left for what conservatives do. Then you have comparatively less few pro-democracy moderate and small far left.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      This is why Trump has done so well by running toward the center. Oh. Wait.
- janniekiller 2y ago
  [dead]
senderista 2y ago
This is the GOP "wedge strategy" that squashes potentially-popular economic policies that the oligarchy opposes by distracting the electorate with culture-war issues.
- senderista 2y ago
  I see I’ve triggered the local wannabe broligarchs.

Avicebron 2y ago

I'm pretty sure the political group that can guarantee a quality National Health Service in the US will win

MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
When the Democrats had a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate when Obama was elected, they couldn't even get a public option included in the Affordable Care Act, and the right so successfully demagogued "Obamacare" (their name for it) that the Democrats lost an incredible number of seats in the 2010 midterms. Bernie Sanders campaigned on Medicare for All (essentially what you're suggesting) in 2016 and 2020, and he didn't even win the Democratic primary. Despite how big a problem healthcare is in the US, most voters fear any change that may put their current health coverage at risk. Most people under 65 have (or feel like they have) decent-to-good health insurance through an employer-sponsored plan and don't necessarily see a big benefit to throwing that away. People over 65 are fiercely protective of their Medicare benefits and tend to worry that Medicare for All is going to make their healthcare worse. (Judging by the amount of "shocked Pikachu face" we see lately from Trump voters who expected him to fix the economy, there's a critical group of swing voters who seem unwilling or unable to accurately judge candidates based on their policies vs. their vibes.) I don't agree with those people. I'd love to see our healthcare system dramatically overhauled. But between the polarization and risk aversion of American voters, "a quality National Health Service" has not proven to be a winning platform so far and is unlikely to be in the future.
- aSanchezStern 2y ago
  "Didn't even win the democratic primary" might be a bit of a misnomer if it's implying that winning the democratic primary should be much easier than winning the general. Bernie has positions that are popular outside of democrats, many people think that if he had won the primary, he would have had a much better chance of winning than Hilary or Biden, since he had less baggage and his policies were broadly popular.
  - MattGaiser 2y ago

PartiallyTyped 2y ago

See, people, NIMBIES in particular, take issue with housing and infrastructure, people with stock in pharma and insurance corps take issue with government supporting others. In this very forum, some asinine person supported Trump administration axing the free tax submission programme of the IRS on the basis of them owning shares in the tax software companies.

wwweston 2y ago

That's pretty much where liberal politicians end up targeting most of their policymaking and even a sizable portion of their campaign platform (as demonstrated in the Harris platform). Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why?

soco 2y ago
Because anything related to "delivering better lives" gets labeled as "tangled up social issues" and discarded in favor of "increasing profits". Maybe the majority only understands life through money? Like, a better life means more money, period - and has no concept that a better life could mean road safety, reliable healthcare, serious schooling, quiet retirement, and such.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Republicans are trusted more on schools post-COVID and evidence is blue states lost more schooling progress than red state even if blue states were mostly ahead pre-COVID. (if you argue that we are not post-COVID, people are not going to trust you on schools even if the virus still lingers. As callous as it sounds, everybody dies, but not everybody gets a complete education and if you think the way the education-industrial complex thinks, students don’t get back social and educational progess they lost)
  - watwut 2y ago
    Republicans are not trusted more on schools. You may trust them more after covid, but overall the claim does not seem to be valid. Also, republican plan is to dismantle public schooling and conservative plan is to move as much as possible toward homeschooling. Which has double advantage of keeping women at home.
Gothmog69 2y ago
[flagged]
jf22 2y ago
I think it's simply that being mad about social issues gets more interactions on social media.

knowknow 2y ago

It’s amazing that this gets upvoted while it is completely uninformed about what liberal politicians actually run on. This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. People love getting tangled on social issues as it’s the most provocative. This conception that most people actually care about rational policies is false and has been false for at least the past decade.

tsimionescu 2y ago
Where exactly did you get the idea that Kamala was running on this? Where was she advocating for, say, Medicare for all? Or fighting vested interests by running on campaign finance reform, to get money out of politics? She was running on an abstract, classical centrist non-program of "we've done great under Biden and we're going to keep doing the same". That is the exact opposite of what GP was suggesting.
- knowknow 2y ago
  The comment is saying that liberal politicians should be >prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Nothing about what you mentioned at all. Nor did I ever claim Kamala ran on what you said. The fact that you and the commenter have different ideas of what rational policies are and assume politicians should be running on that platform is part of the bias. You assume that most people want the same thing as you but most people don’t. The majority actually enjoy social issues.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    They were was also saying: > Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations So I interpreted the first part in a more revolutionary direction, though you may be right that they were thinking a different direction than I was.
- anon7000 2y ago
  She wasn’t running on an abstract program, people just weren’t paying fucking attention. For just one example: https://www.kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Policy_Book_Economic-Opportunity.pdf https://www.kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Poli...

cortesoft 2y ago

“Delivering better lives for people” is already an inherently social issue, though. There are many people who don’t WANT to improve certain people’s lives, and if your proposed policies help them, they will be against it even if it makes everyone’s life better; they are willing to forgo improving their own life to make sure the people they hate won’t see any improvement. Unless your policies go out of their way to exclude the groups they hate, you aren’t going to get their support.

crooked-v 2y ago
See, for an example, that "he's not hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting" quote that made the rounds from an unhappy 2019 Trump voter.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  That voter much be very happy now because he is hurting plenty of people aplenty.

mullingitover 2y ago

> Instead of getting tangled up in social issues It's not that they're getting 'tangled up', it's that reactionary activists (whose ultimate goal is repealing the Civil Rights Act entirely) use strawman social issues as a wedge and the press is led around by the nose parroting these controversies that are brazenly ginned up. Liberal politicians don't really have a great strategy for this because the majority of media (and I'm talking about the real media: influencers with more following than all legacy media combined) is right-wing these days. Progressives end up barely treading water while reactionaries run circles around them, and then are blamed when reactionaries make everything worse.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
There is a fringe wing of the democrat party that loves social issues and is an outsized fraction of the "community organizing" base they use to do things like canvassing and other forms of volunteering. These people need politicians to at least prove their "purity" on social issues, even on issues that are very unpopular. This is analogous to the hyper-religious wing of the republican party. They also like to get involved and volunteer, but they demand a certain stance on social issues, too.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  There's a lot of effort to conflate basic civil liberties with fringe social issues, tie them together, and burn down the civil liberties because they're just 'fringe social issues.' There are some fringe issues supported by some democrats, but the real base of the party is black voters and their civil rights are the real target. Conservatives still haven't forgotten about being forced to end segregation in schools, nor have they giving up on trying to re-segregate.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    I honestly think this take on conservatives is pretty unhinged. It's completely baseless, too. Why not talk about one of the civil rights that they openly oppose? The number one civil right that American conservatives are after is your reproductive freedom. Number two is your right to access [medicine/drugs/foods] you choose.

MattGaiser 2y ago

Home owners are by far the majority, so battling home owners is an easy ticket to defeat.

hollerith 2y ago
Home owners are the minority in San Francisco, so why in your opinion are prices so high there?
- MattGaiser 2y ago
  What does the voting population look like? Where I am in Canada, we typically do not prioritize canvassing neighbourhoods with more renters as they usually don’t vote. I imagine that tenant rights and rent control transform many renters into essentially homeowners for purposes beyond the asset itself. They also aren’t impacted by prices.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    I was told by a lawyer who does eviction cases that most jury members in SF are renters. My guess is that most who show up for jury duty also vote. There are consequences in theory for shirking jury duty, but my experience (from the early 1990s) was that the risk of actually incurring any consequences is very low.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
Yeah, I was about to write the same thing. I’ve been a lifelong renter, but have friends who converted from renting to owning (in Canada). Once you pay $1M+ for your place, you won’t vote for anyone who says they will lower your home prices. And since they’re the majority in every state, it just doesn’t work. Unless you have some sort of government that plans for “long term”, good luck. On the bright side, decreasing birth rates around the world will solve this problem by itself, if people can wait long enough. It’s the same in Japan. Tokyo house prices are going YoY because of foreign investments and growing population, but all other prefectures not so much (excluding special zones where they are building big semiconductor factories).

singpolyma3 2y ago

How are housing and government services not social issues?

tdb7893 2y ago

Only one presidential candidate had "DEI" and trans people as a major part of their campaign (and now have made those things a major part of the first two months of their presidency) and it wasn't the Democrats. It's kinda shocking to me that people think the Democrats have been running on social issues while Republicans haven't. I'm curious the sorta of media people watch that make them believe this.

tombert 2y ago
I always thought it was weird how they call left-leaning people "snowflakes", as if lefties are super easily offended. Some are, but I don't even think it's the majority. But you know who is easily offended? The people who pretend to be offended by the term "happy holidays" every year. The people who pretend that a child seeing a gay person is somehow going to groom them. The people who pretend that seeing a black person in a starring movie role is really upsetting them. The people who pretend that mentioning that trans people exist is causing some sort of societal collapse. And I am saying "pretend" very deliberately, because I genuinely do not think that anyone is actually offended by the term "happy holidays". I think that literally every single person who says they are is actively lying. It's utterly ridiculous. I am pretty left learning, at least by American standard, and I am generally speaking pretty hard to actually "offend". I will generally discuss basically any topic no matter how taboo, I make jokes that most people would consider offensive, I say curse words, and I don't pretend to get offended when a conservative says something really dumb.

hayst4ck 2y ago

Democrats are largely controlled opposition. If you ask where democratic power comes from, it comes from campaign donations by America's richest and most powerful people. Bloomberg ran for president under their banner, think about that. At minimum it communicates that the democratic platform is compatible with oligarchs. How are they supposed to wrangle corporate power, when that is exactly where their power comes from? "Social issues" are a godsend for oligarchs because they allow for effort to be spent on issues that don't challenge corporate power. They provide a sink for democratic efforts that ultimately don't move the needle for most of their voters. It gives a pathway for "positive" change that doesn't threaten corporate power. It insidiously disempowers the people who would be most likely to wrestle with corporate power. Most of all it provides the illusion of opposition and therefore the illusion that I have representation because I have someone who has the appearance of representing my values (like empathy), but none of the substance of it. Democrats have a choice. (1) don't threaten corporate power and focus on ultimately pro-corporate social issues that are ultimately dis-empowering (2) threaten corporate power/land owner power/Israel power and immediately have their campaign financing removed and their challengers funded. Even if you believe that democrats are focusing on issues that meaningfully change people's lives, like build back better or CHIPS, they are doing it without challenging corporate power. Which is why no matter which regime is in power, it feels like democracy is in decline. Then you get sad, because you realize there is no way to get actual representation for the issues you care about other than to run yourself, but if you ran explicitly to challenge those in power, those in power would fund your opposition. So then you realize that it's hard to get into power without expressing loyalty to those who grant power, and then you have a cogent explanation for why things are the way they are.

BrenBarn 2y ago
The sadder is part is that that reality is a ticking time bomb. It will work until people are so pissed off that the pitchforks come out.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Just like when the pitchforks came out in Nazi Germany in order to overthrow the Nazi regime... /s Pitchforks don't work without a supporting institution, and the Intelligence state, corporate and governmental, is very very capable of preventing free association by people who might wish to supplant an illegitimate government with a new one. No it will work until the economy is properly destructed and we are defeated when our war machine is incapable of production, we become incapable of importing necessary goods, or the nuclear taboo is broken causing entire industries to disappear in the a flash. If we are lucky some brave military officers will uphold their oath to the constitution before it's too late, but that seems unlikely. Pitchforks were for the last 5 months. Historically speaking if there aren't pitchforks in the next month it's over and we are on the fascism train until catastrophe.

armchairhacker 2y ago

I agree. But as other commenters are pointing out, many liberals are already trying this, but conservatives misrepresent them as being focused on social issues (and misrepresent their opinions on such issues) anyways. IMO, here are the problems liberals face and solutions to regain popularity: - Liberal politicians may say the correct things, but what matters is what they do, and specifically how it's perceived. As vice-president, Harris did practically nothing, and the overall perception of the economy under Biden is negative. Meanwhile, Trump is doing almost exactly what he said, even small things like pardoning Ross Ulbricht. Fortunately, you don't need to be the party in power, or even elected, to have well-perceived actions; I believe community-building is the best and easiest way for liberals to regain appeal. - Liberal politicians may say the correct things, but they don't open themselves up to criticism enough. Liberals (and conservatives, and corporations) have learned to say almost nothing for fear of misspeaking, but this is backfiring; they get attacked for policies they don't state because they don't explicitly denounce those policies, and the policies they do state get misrepresented because they don't clarify or broadcast the clarifications enough. Harris should've went on Joe Rogan's podcast and should've agreed to a debate in Fox News; she would've been judged for her responses, but by not going, she was judged for imagined responses*. Meanwhile, Trump agreed to the debates on CNN and ABC, and he posts and speaks much more often and unscripted (so it's him posting and speaking). - Wrt. social issues (trans, woke. etc.): "live and let live", and ask for clarification, particularly examples. This area is where people imagine and misrepresent others' opinions the most; so when a liberal politician is asked their opinion on XYZ, they should answer unambiguously, even if it makes them look bad, then debate and clarify. I really think the overarching policy should be "live and let live", and finding ways to accomplish that with minimal federal intervention; because I believe (and hope) it's something most people would agree on**, and because "getting X done" is strictly easier than "getting Y to do X". One thing that must be said, because the above problems and solutions have been discussed before, but this has been discussed less: these also apply to "the far left", perhaps the same or more than they apply to conservatives. Many people get attacked by the far left who are completely on their side (recent example: ProtonVPN); many others get attacked who I believe are on their side, but must clarify their policies. In summary: people choose the worst interpretations of their political opponents' speech; if they oppose you, they'll choose the worst interpretation of your speech. However, if you don't speak, your opposers will choose an even worse interpretation of your silence. The ways to remove bad interpretations are: clarify, and far more significantly, act in a way that disproves them. Also, if your general actions benefit people, they'll gradually stop opposing you, so they'll start choosing better interpretations; the same speech is more or less controversial when it's spoken from different people, * If someone asks you a question and you don't respond, they're not going to forget the whole scenario, they're going to imagine your response based on their existing perception of you. Even if truthfully answering the question lowers their perception of you, if lying or not answering lowers it more, it's the correct choice. ** At minimum, I believe most people would allow any group happiness, if it didn't affect them, said group wasn't hurting another group, and doing so meant they themselves were better off. If most people believe liberal politicians will help their quality-of-life more than conservatives, I don't think they care about social issues; but vice versa is also true, most people won't protect victim's rights if they believe they must non-negligibly sacrifice QOL to do so.