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> Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why? It’s not a “misconception.” Democrats choose to spend their political capital changin

> Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why? It’s not a “misconception.” Democrats choose to spend their political capital changing the status quo on social issues. For example, Americans overwhelmingly oppose affirmative action: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans-and-affirmative-action-how-the-public-sees-the-consideration-of-race-in-college-admissions-hiring/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans... Affirmative action was banned in California in 1996. Which party tried to repeal the ban in 2020? Republicans didn’t pass a law to ban affirmative action even more!

jakelazaroff 2y ago
Did you read your own link? It says that affirmative action enjoys at least plurality if not majority support: > Americans who had heard the phrase affirmative action in the Center’s December survey were asked whether they saw it as a good or a bad thing. Among those who had ever heard the term, 36% said affirmative action is a good thing, 29% said it is a bad thing and a third weren’t sure. > By comparison, Gallup has asked U.S. adults whether they “generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for racial minorities.” In 2021, the last time Gallup asked this question, a 62% majority of Americans favored such programs.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Keep reading! > Public attitudes about affirmative action can also vary depending on the specific context in which it is being discussed, such as in higher education or the workplace. > A larger share of Americans disapprove than approve of higher education institutions taking race and ethnicity into account when admitting students, according to several recent Center surveys. > In that survey, 74% of U.S. adults said that, when making decisions about hiring and promotions, companies and organizations should take only a person’s qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity. Around a quarter (24%) said companies and organizations should take a person’s race and ethnicity into account – in addition to qualifications – to increase diversity. The unpopular approach of considering race is what Democrats have pushed recently. E.g. Prop 16: > A "yes" vote supported this constitutional amendment to repeal Proposition 209 (1996), which stated that the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting.
  - jakelazaroff 2y ago
    Yes, if you cherry pick data you get different results. Prop 16 was rejected by around 57% of the voters — hardly overwhelming, but there’s a reason that you’re citing a 74% figure when it supports your argument, vaguely gesturing at an election result when it’s more even and outright ignoring the poll where a majority of people explicitly say they support affirmative action for racial minorities.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 2y ago
      People support the nice sounding abstract phrase until you tell them specifically what you mean by it. And I didn’t cherry pick anything. I quoted the portions of the article that said support depends on context, and then the paragraph discussing the college context and the employment context. The article itself happens to specify a percentage in text for one but not the other. Then I mentioned Prop 16 as a concrete example of a Democrat-supported policy. But you can’t compare that number to the 74% because Prop 16 was a vote by a very liberal state, while the Pew poll is nationwide.
      - jakelazaroff 2y ago
        Further down in the article, it also cites a poll in which over 60% of people say racial and ethnic diversity is either extremely or somewhat important. People have a lot of conflicting opinions! The idea that the data here supports any sort of “overwhelming” consensus is just straight up not true.
        rayiner 2y ago
        That’s not a conflicting opinion. People support diversity, but oppose the principal approach to achieving diversity. Note that the questions for both admissions and employment specify diversity as the goal. For example, the options for the employment question are: > Only take a person's qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity > Take a person's race and ethnicity into account, in addition to qualifications, in order to increase diversity People support the end of increased diversity, but oppose race conscious admissions and hiring as a means to that end. That’s entirely consistent.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Affirmative action is reparations by another name. It's like saying I should pay for my ancestors crimes. I am a pretty liberal person, but watching a white male candidate pass the interview but not get a job explicitly because he was a white male (because the only slots left were for "diverse" candidates) even makes me uncomfortable. That's a lived experience. I watched it in real life. Jon Stewart has had two guests that he pushed back on that were both right while Stewart was wrong. The first guest was on his Apple TV show, and he said something to the effect of "there's more of us [who disagree with reparations]," and Jon Stewart spoke over him and generally denied his opinions as rational. Current events show that that wasn't something to ignore. The second was a guest talking about how these "social issues" are bad democratic strategy. Social programs are popular when they help the disadvantaged, but not popular when they help a particular group (which I think is in some way related to "intersectionality"?). Jon Stewart became emotional focusing on the injustice rather than pragmatically solving the problem.
  - ben7799 2y ago
    It's easy for Jon Stewart to feel that way cause it can't hurt him. There is no minority Jon Stewart to take his job, and he already has so much money he will be wealthy the rest of his life even if he loses his job today and never works again. I think that is where democrats often run foul of average voters.. they see very wealthy democrats pushing something. It won't hurt the wealthy democrats, but it could hurt them. Average non-wealthy people don't want to be punished for the sins of past wealthy people who happened to have the same skin color as them.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - hayst4ck 2y ago
      Yes. Jon Stewart has said multiple times something like "it's just resource guarding," which is easy to say from a position of abundance. He is the populist voice of the educated left and I find lots of echo's in my own social circles/education. Stewart is coming around and waking up to the idea that "woke" policies were rejected, and the democrats need re-framing/a reckoning. IMHO, he is largely the voice of democratic reckoning. Biden wasn't kicked out until Stewart's public evisceration and declaration that the emperor, in fact, has no clothes. He at least adapts with increasing information.
consteval 2y ago
I hardly think most (any?) democrats or their constituents are talking about affirmative action in this day and age. It’s pretty shocking that this extremely fringe issue is the only thing you can find to support the narrative that dems are “spearheading” radical social change. Whats actually happening is that conservative fear monger about random various minority groups, as they have for all of time, and then enact policies intended to harm them. The dems have no choice but to respond. You would think that conservatives continuing this playbook for, well, ever, would cause people to stop and say “wait… are the conservatives really the ones stirring up the culture war?” But no, somehow it hasn’t. Somehow, we’re all still living under the delusion that conservatives just maintain the status quo and oppose radical change, and not that they’re the ones creating the need for opposing action.
- rayiner 2y ago
  > I hardly think most (any?) democrats or their constituents are talking about affirmative action in this day and age Kamala Harris: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/14/harris-forgivable-loans-legal-marijuana-trump-black-voters.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/14/harris-forgivable-loans-lega... Biden’s SBA: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-discriminate-racesmall-business-loans-stake-heart-dei https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-di... Biden’s USDA: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/white-farmers-challenge-biden-usdas-racial-equity-relief-rules https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/white-farmers-chall... Obama’s FAA: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/30/faa-diversity-hiring-practices-scrutiny-long-air-d/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/30/faa-diversi... Also, politicians are on the hook for their reaction to what the private sector is doing. The cached blurb for Google’s equal opportunity web page still says this: “Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.” Google got rid of the “affirmative action” part recently. Democrat politicians supported these programs. Republicans promised to end them.
- int_19h 2y ago
  > I hardly think most (any?) democrats or their constituents are talking about affirmative action in this day and age. In my state - WA - there's a prohibition on affirmative action written into the constitution (originally passed in a referendum in the 90s). Democrats have been talking of repealing or otherwise constraining it for ages, and in 2019, it culminated in another referendum: https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmative_Action_and_Diversity_Commission_Measure_(2019) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmat... You can see who supported it in the linked article. It was an indirect initiative so it went to the legislature first, which voted it in as law along party lines. A veto referendum was then held, in which it was repealed: https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Referendum_88,_Vote_on_I-1000_Affirmative_Action_Measure_(2019) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Referendum_88,_Vote_on_I-... Again, you can look at the article for details on who supported and opposed it. I can assure you that many people do remember this whole brouhaha and the names associated with it, at least the most prominent ones (like the Dem governor).
wwweston 2y ago
Composition fallacy much? I was a CA voter in 2020. The focus I saw from candidates and citizens alike were things like democracy, rule of law, housing costs/policy, and police reform. Prop 16 was a footnote, not a focus, which is probably one of the reasons it lost (alongside the fact that its language made it difficult to tell if it was allowing for civil protections or tearing them down). And democratic domestic policy focus since has been pretty clear: economic stimulus, infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and various kinds of working class relief. Pretty standard "promote the general welfare" stuff, sometimes joined with efforts to protect "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (even for people who look or love differently). That's what you'd expect from classic liberals who still believe in enlightenment values and ideals. Or even just anyone who wants those things for themselves and realizes that to guarantee it to anyone, you have to support it for everyone. This was definitely all over the 2024 democratic platform. The problem isn't that people don't like the policy and values they'd get from the Democratic Party and its candidates. It's that they're increasingly mislead about what the difference is. As evidenced by the polling on relative policy popularity last fall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/22/trump-harris-agenda-comparison-poll-venezuelan-gangs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/22/trump-har... https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/trump-harris-policy-quiz/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/tru... https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50802-harris-vs-trump-on-the-issues-whose-policies-do-voters-prefer https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50802-harris-vs-t...
- rayiner 2y ago
  Voters don’t take campaign platforms at face value, they view them through their experience. People in California aren’t experiencing Democrats actually fixing housing. But they are seeing large employers like Google post stuff like: “Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.” (Google deleted that language from its website recently enough that it still shows up in the Google search results blurb.) And Democrat politicians are supportive of such efforts. At the end of the day, the Biden administration built way more DEI departments than EV chargers. And Democrats own that.
  - 2y ago

jakelazaroff 2y ago

Did you read your own link? It says that affirmative action enjoys at least plurality if not majority support: > Americans who had heard the phrase affirmative action in the Center’s December survey were asked whether they saw it as a good or a bad thing. Among those who had ever heard the term, 36% said affirmative action is a good thing, 29% said it is a bad thing and a third weren’t sure. > By comparison, Gallup has asked U.S. adults whether they “generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for racial minorities.” In 2021, the last time Gallup asked this question, a 62% majority of Americans favored such programs.

rayiner 2y ago
Keep reading! > Public attitudes about affirmative action can also vary depending on the specific context in which it is being discussed, such as in higher education or the workplace. > A larger share of Americans disapprove than approve of higher education institutions taking race and ethnicity into account when admitting students, according to several recent Center surveys. > In that survey, 74% of U.S. adults said that, when making decisions about hiring and promotions, companies and organizations should take only a person’s qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity. Around a quarter (24%) said companies and organizations should take a person’s race and ethnicity into account – in addition to qualifications – to increase diversity. The unpopular approach of considering race is what Democrats have pushed recently. E.g. Prop 16: > A "yes" vote supported this constitutional amendment to repeal Proposition 209 (1996), which stated that the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting.
- jakelazaroff 2y ago
  Yes, if you cherry pick data you get different results. Prop 16 was rejected by around 57% of the voters — hardly overwhelming, but there’s a reason that you’re citing a 74% figure when it supports your argument, vaguely gesturing at an election result when it’s more even and outright ignoring the poll where a majority of people explicitly say they support affirmative action for racial minorities.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 2y ago
    People support the nice sounding abstract phrase until you tell them specifically what you mean by it. And I didn’t cherry pick anything. I quoted the portions of the article that said support depends on context, and then the paragraph discussing the college context and the employment context. The article itself happens to specify a percentage in text for one but not the other. Then I mentioned Prop 16 as a concrete example of a Democrat-supported policy. But you can’t compare that number to the 74% because Prop 16 was a vote by a very liberal state, while the Pew poll is nationwide.
    - jakelazaroff 2y ago
      Further down in the article, it also cites a poll in which over 60% of people say racial and ethnic diversity is either extremely or somewhat important. People have a lot of conflicting opinions! The idea that the data here supports any sort of “overwhelming” consensus is just straight up not true.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        That’s not a conflicting opinion. People support diversity, but oppose the principal approach to achieving diversity. Note that the questions for both admissions and employment specify diversity as the goal. For example, the options for the employment question are: > Only take a person's qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity > Take a person's race and ethnicity into account, in addition to qualifications, in order to increase diversity People support the end of increased diversity, but oppose race conscious admissions and hiring as a means to that end. That’s entirely consistent.
hayst4ck 2y ago
Affirmative action is reparations by another name. It's like saying I should pay for my ancestors crimes. I am a pretty liberal person, but watching a white male candidate pass the interview but not get a job explicitly because he was a white male (because the only slots left were for "diverse" candidates) even makes me uncomfortable. That's a lived experience. I watched it in real life. Jon Stewart has had two guests that he pushed back on that were both right while Stewart was wrong. The first guest was on his Apple TV show, and he said something to the effect of "there's more of us [who disagree with reparations]," and Jon Stewart spoke over him and generally denied his opinions as rational. Current events show that that wasn't something to ignore. The second was a guest talking about how these "social issues" are bad democratic strategy. Social programs are popular when they help the disadvantaged, but not popular when they help a particular group (which I think is in some way related to "intersectionality"?). Jon Stewart became emotional focusing on the injustice rather than pragmatically solving the problem.
- ben7799 2y ago
  It's easy for Jon Stewart to feel that way cause it can't hurt him. There is no minority Jon Stewart to take his job, and he already has so much money he will be wealthy the rest of his life even if he loses his job today and never works again. I think that is where democrats often run foul of average voters.. they see very wealthy democrats pushing something. It won't hurt the wealthy democrats, but it could hurt them. Average non-wealthy people don't want to be punished for the sins of past wealthy people who happened to have the same skin color as them.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - hayst4ck 2y ago
    Yes. Jon Stewart has said multiple times something like "it's just resource guarding," which is easy to say from a position of abundance. He is the populist voice of the educated left and I find lots of echo's in my own social circles/education. Stewart is coming around and waking up to the idea that "woke" policies were rejected, and the democrats need re-framing/a reckoning. IMHO, he is largely the voice of democratic reckoning. Biden wasn't kicked out until Stewart's public evisceration and declaration that the emperor, in fact, has no clothes. He at least adapts with increasing information.

consteval 2y ago

I hardly think most (any?) democrats or their constituents are talking about affirmative action in this day and age. It’s pretty shocking that this extremely fringe issue is the only thing you can find to support the narrative that dems are “spearheading” radical social change. Whats actually happening is that conservative fear monger about random various minority groups, as they have for all of time, and then enact policies intended to harm them. The dems have no choice but to respond. You would think that conservatives continuing this playbook for, well, ever, would cause people to stop and say “wait… are the conservatives really the ones stirring up the culture war?” But no, somehow it hasn’t. Somehow, we’re all still living under the delusion that conservatives just maintain the status quo and oppose radical change, and not that they’re the ones creating the need for opposing action.

rayiner 2y ago
> I hardly think most (any?) democrats or their constituents are talking about affirmative action in this day and age Kamala Harris: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/14/harris-forgivable-loans-legal-marijuana-trump-black-voters.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/14/harris-forgivable-loans-lega... Biden’s SBA: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-discriminate-racesmall-business-loans-stake-heart-dei https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-di... Biden’s USDA: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/white-farmers-challenge-biden-usdas-racial-equity-relief-rules https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/white-farmers-chall... Obama’s FAA: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/30/faa-diversity-hiring-practices-scrutiny-long-air-d/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/30/faa-diversi... Also, politicians are on the hook for their reaction to what the private sector is doing. The cached blurb for Google’s equal opportunity web page still says this: “Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.” Google got rid of the “affirmative action” part recently. Democrat politicians supported these programs. Republicans promised to end them.
int_19h 2y ago
> I hardly think most (any?) democrats or their constituents are talking about affirmative action in this day and age. In my state - WA - there's a prohibition on affirmative action written into the constitution (originally passed in a referendum in the 90s). Democrats have been talking of repealing or otherwise constraining it for ages, and in 2019, it culminated in another referendum: https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmative_Action_and_Diversity_Commission_Measure_(2019) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmat... You can see who supported it in the linked article. It was an indirect initiative so it went to the legislature first, which voted it in as law along party lines. A veto referendum was then held, in which it was repealed: https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Referendum_88,_Vote_on_I-1000_Affirmative_Action_Measure_(2019) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Referendum_88,_Vote_on_I-... Again, you can look at the article for details on who supported and opposed it. I can assure you that many people do remember this whole brouhaha and the names associated with it, at least the most prominent ones (like the Dem governor).

wwweston 2y ago

Composition fallacy much? I was a CA voter in 2020. The focus I saw from candidates and citizens alike were things like democracy, rule of law, housing costs/policy, and police reform. Prop 16 was a footnote, not a focus, which is probably one of the reasons it lost (alongside the fact that its language made it difficult to tell if it was allowing for civil protections or tearing them down). And democratic domestic policy focus since has been pretty clear: economic stimulus, infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and various kinds of working class relief. Pretty standard "promote the general welfare" stuff, sometimes joined with efforts to protect "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (even for people who look or love differently). That's what you'd expect from classic liberals who still believe in enlightenment values and ideals. Or even just anyone who wants those things for themselves and realizes that to guarantee it to anyone, you have to support it for everyone. This was definitely all over the 2024 democratic platform. The problem isn't that people don't like the policy and values they'd get from the Democratic Party and its candidates. It's that they're increasingly mislead about what the difference is. As evidenced by the polling on relative policy popularity last fall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/22/trump-harris-agenda-comparison-poll-venezuelan-gangs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/22/trump-har... https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/trump-harris-policy-quiz/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/tru... https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50802-harris-vs-trump-on-the-issues-whose-policies-do-voters-prefer https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50802-harris-vs-t...

rayiner 2y ago
Voters don’t take campaign platforms at face value, they view them through their experience. People in California aren’t experiencing Democrats actually fixing housing. But they are seeing large employers like Google post stuff like: “Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.” (Google deleted that language from its website recently enough that it still shows up in the Google search results blurb.) And Democrat politicians are supportive of such efforts. At the end of the day, the Biden administration built way more DEI departments than EV chargers. And Democrats own that.
- 2y ago