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Vote for republicans => get red state policies. Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state. Red states have had the w

Vote for republicans => get red state policies. Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state. Red states have had the worst outcomes for generations but they keep going back to republicans. The reasons escape me. The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing. Maybe China will motivate them to get their act together.

tzs 1y ago
> Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state. He won with a plurality. A majority did not want him.
- the_other 1y ago
  > He won with a plurality. A majority did not want him. Tomato tomato.
- LadyCailin 1y ago
  No, a majority either wanted him, or didn’t care. Only a minority didn’t want him. In the US, you don’t vote FOR a candidate. You only vote against a candidate. If you cast your vote for the Republican, or don’t cast a vote (or cast your vote for a third party), and live in a red state, then you voted against the Democrat. And vice versa. So the only people that you can fairly say didn’t want him were the democratic voters. It’s not a good system, it’s utter garbage, but it’s the current reality in the US, and the longer people fail to acknowledge this, the longer it will remain like this.
  - tzs 1y ago
    1. Many voters do not know about strategic voting. They vote for the candidate they think is best for the job. 2. A voter who knows their vote won't make a difference in the outcome due to the electoral college might vote third party to increase the chances of there being viable third parties in later elections.
    - LadyCailin 1y ago
      I’m happy to excuse third party voters if, after the fact, it’s clear they didn’t spoil anything. In no case will I excuse the non-voters.
levzettelin 1y ago
[flagged]
roenxi 1y ago
> The reasons escape me. It could be the quality of the opposition. The frame of "trying to be a red state" seems a bit unfair, the message seemed to be more that voters were really, really disappointed with the Biden's performance as opposed to any specific draw the Republicans had. Kamala making it a close race was miraculous given where the election looked to be going in early June 2024 up to the infamous debate.
- Herring 1y ago
  It’s not a black or white thing. You can be disappointed with Biden, but by itself that’s not a reason to just switch parties ignoring the Republican performance, especially after Jan6. At the end of the day, Trump’s “burn everything down” racist position was not a dealbreaker to the majority of voters, and that’s on them. It’s much easier to complain and destroy than to create. It takes 30 seconds to cut down a tree, but years, decades or sometimes centuries to grow a big one.
- eesmith 1y ago
  It seems very fair given how the Democrats follow Clinton's triangulation strategy to try to appeal to Republican voters through "red state"-lite legislation, on the assumption that Democrats would hold their nose and vote Democrat no matter how disappointed they are.
- twothreeone 1y ago
  That line of reasoning is actually a classic right-wing gaslighting strategy: "the radical left forced us to act this way, we had no choice". No, voters made an explicit and clear vote of conscience. The democratic campaign may have been a strategic disaster, but the difference in proposed policies - for which the candidate was completely irrelevant - couldn't have been any more stark. The people have spoken. Everybody knew what they were voting for. Pretending they didn't is to disrespect the voice of the people. The majority voted for lower taxes and severely cutting government spending at the cost of higher import expenses, the majority voted for increased US manufacturing at the cost of high-tech jobs and immigration, for more presidential authority and less accountability, for more magical thinking and less science and research. Own your choices.
- 1y ago
aucisson_masque 1y ago
> The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing. I thought that was all northern propaganda. The real reason being that the south refused to be in a confederation where there was more and more power given to the presidency and the senate while the states had fewer. The north of course couldn't say they fought to force these states to remain in the confederation, negating their right to self determination, and instead pushed the slave narrative which was really secondary.
- defrost 1y ago
  Sounds like you have a wikipedia article to heavily edit to bring into line with your thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_... For the several decades I've been alive and reading multiple takes on history slavery has always featured as one of the major three causes of the US Civil War for the majority of historians of note.
- sky2224 1y ago
  The Civil War was 100% about the Confederacy's desire to preserve slavery. The "State's Rights" argument is revisionist to downplay things, especially given the fact that southern states would be hypocritical and demand that the northern states enforce laws like the Fugitive Slave act, which directly went against the rights of the states that had declared themselves as free states.
  - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
    The States Rights argument also falls apart the moment you dig 1 level deeper. Which Right were these states worried about when Lincoln was elected? It was the right to keep Slaves. So to the extent it was about “states rights” it was about the “states rights to keep slaves” ie about slavery.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      But then they removed a lot of states rights in general afterwards, not just the right to keep slaves. And today we have the result of that, and it isn't pretty, wouldn't you be happier if states had more rights today?
chrisco255 1y ago
With respect to red states, they're the only ones that still grow: https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-state-and-personal-income-state-4th-quarter-2024-and-preliminary https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-state-a...
- Herring 1y ago
  I think you’ll need a better analysis (longer timescale, more fine-grained, more explanations - education, age, productivity, investment, r&d, immigration etc) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies.... (2019)
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  > Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia > Personal income, in current dollars, increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2024 These are from your link. Where did you get the idea that red states are the only ones that grow? GDP growth is higher in red states in that link, but red states also received something like 80–90% of the funding from the trillion dollars or so passed by the Democratic Congress and President. Also to see how this actually plays out, compare CA to TX. gdp Growth in TX is much higher. But personal income growth in CA is much higher than in TX.
  - chrisco255 1y ago
    Yeah ~1% growth is anemic while states like Arkansas are growing at more than 5%. California is losing population at all income levels. Texas is growing. Meanwhile the personal income growth is about the same between the two.
- nebula8804 1y ago
  Its all a giant scam: Red states block anything and everything that could help anyone but themselves. To "compromise" Dems put investments into bills that help Red states in the hopes that something will get passed(Sometimes it still fails). Examples include all these battery factories being located in purple states so that those senators will be forced to vote for the package. Dems help out the red states just to try and move the needle forward. Red politicians then get elected and further cut things that help Blue states. See all the medicaid cuts, soon social security, last trump admin cut the homeowner tax exemptions that mainly helped blue states, cutting tax benefits that encouraged companies to hire software engineers and timing it so that it takes place after trump left office. Red states typically get more out then they put in in terms of taxes: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-most-and-least-to-federal-revenue/ https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-mo... The blue states are held hostage by the Red states because of the structure of the system(a mess left over from the post Civil War). You can argue that Blue states drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the future: Ex: The California CARB mandates setting emission standards forcing manufacturers to adopt their standard for emissions, The East and West coast define culture in the arts that the rest of the world see and knows as American, top universities are where the future ways of thinking are challenged and explored. Every time the Red side gets into power they try to claw back even this stuff so that the Blue states are essentially nothing more than vassals contributing more but getting little back in return. Blue states need a Democratic party that will play extremely dirty just like the Republicans.
chneu 1y ago
Conservatives and a lot of moderates are single issue voters. As long as trump protects babies or props up the right religious ideology, they're fine with everything else. I recently read "Strangers in their own Land". The author interviewed hundreds of conservatives in the south. The jist was that as Christians they should protect the environment, but the oil refinery will bring jobs. The jobs are more important. So they'll vote for the jobs. It's really that simple. Republicans have mastered single issue stances. They don't need to be honest or trustworthy.
- Herring 1y ago
  https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies.... (2019) Going by that analysis (specifically differences in age, education, immigration) it looks kinda like massive brain drain from red into blue areas. Single issue voting is a low-nuance likely low-iq thing. Also keep in mind 54% of Americans read at or below a 6th grade level, so I’d guess brain drain can be devastating.
  - chneu 1y ago
    This is exactly what conservatives say. That colleges are cesspools of woke liberal ideology. What that really means is colleges give people experiences that aren't possible in conservative areas. Then those people don't return because living in conservative areas sucks.
- seec 1y ago
  Maybe you lack perspective because you have been confortable your whole life? What use does "the environment" have if you cannot afford to live? The jobs necessarily come before the environment because they are the requirement for survival that makes any of it matter. Only rich self-righteous people can afford to care about the environment and the irony is that those people are rich and can do a lot of posturing around these issues, precisely because those poor people exist to take those jobs.
  - Herring 1y ago

tzs 1y ago

> Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state. He won with a plurality. A majority did not want him.

the_other 1y ago
> He won with a plurality. A majority did not want him. Tomato tomato.
LadyCailin 1y ago
No, a majority either wanted him, or didn’t care. Only a minority didn’t want him. In the US, you don’t vote FOR a candidate. You only vote against a candidate. If you cast your vote for the Republican, or don’t cast a vote (or cast your vote for a third party), and live in a red state, then you voted against the Democrat. And vice versa. So the only people that you can fairly say didn’t want him were the democratic voters. It’s not a good system, it’s utter garbage, but it’s the current reality in the US, and the longer people fail to acknowledge this, the longer it will remain like this.
- tzs 1y ago
  1. Many voters do not know about strategic voting. They vote for the candidate they think is best for the job. 2. A voter who knows their vote won't make a difference in the outcome due to the electoral college might vote third party to increase the chances of there being viable third parties in later elections.
  - LadyCailin 1y ago
    I’m happy to excuse third party voters if, after the fact, it’s clear they didn’t spoil anything. In no case will I excuse the non-voters.

levzettelin 1y ago

[flagged]

roenxi 1y ago

> The reasons escape me. It could be the quality of the opposition. The frame of "trying to be a red state" seems a bit unfair, the message seemed to be more that voters were really, really disappointed with the Biden's performance as opposed to any specific draw the Republicans had. Kamala making it a close race was miraculous given where the election looked to be going in early June 2024 up to the infamous debate.

Herring 1y ago
It’s not a black or white thing. You can be disappointed with Biden, but by itself that’s not a reason to just switch parties ignoring the Republican performance, especially after Jan6. At the end of the day, Trump’s “burn everything down” racist position was not a dealbreaker to the majority of voters, and that’s on them. It’s much easier to complain and destroy than to create. It takes 30 seconds to cut down a tree, but years, decades or sometimes centuries to grow a big one.
eesmith 1y ago
It seems very fair given how the Democrats follow Clinton's triangulation strategy to try to appeal to Republican voters through "red state"-lite legislation, on the assumption that Democrats would hold their nose and vote Democrat no matter how disappointed they are.
twothreeone 1y ago
That line of reasoning is actually a classic right-wing gaslighting strategy: "the radical left forced us to act this way, we had no choice". No, voters made an explicit and clear vote of conscience. The democratic campaign may have been a strategic disaster, but the difference in proposed policies - for which the candidate was completely irrelevant - couldn't have been any more stark. The people have spoken. Everybody knew what they were voting for. Pretending they didn't is to disrespect the voice of the people. The majority voted for lower taxes and severely cutting government spending at the cost of higher import expenses, the majority voted for increased US manufacturing at the cost of high-tech jobs and immigration, for more presidential authority and less accountability, for more magical thinking and less science and research. Own your choices.
1y ago

aucisson_masque 1y ago

> The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing. I thought that was all northern propaganda. The real reason being that the south refused to be in a confederation where there was more and more power given to the presidency and the senate while the states had fewer. The north of course couldn't say they fought to force these states to remain in the confederation, negating their right to self determination, and instead pushed the slave narrative which was really secondary.

defrost 1y ago
Sounds like you have a wikipedia article to heavily edit to bring into line with your thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_... For the several decades I've been alive and reading multiple takes on history slavery has always featured as one of the major three causes of the US Civil War for the majority of historians of note.
sky2224 1y ago
The Civil War was 100% about the Confederacy's desire to preserve slavery. The "State's Rights" argument is revisionist to downplay things, especially given the fact that southern states would be hypocritical and demand that the northern states enforce laws like the Fugitive Slave act, which directly went against the rights of the states that had declared themselves as free states.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  The States Rights argument also falls apart the moment you dig 1 level deeper. Which Right were these states worried about when Lincoln was elected? It was the right to keep Slaves. So to the extent it was about “states rights” it was about the “states rights to keep slaves” ie about slavery.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    But then they removed a lot of states rights in general afterwards, not just the right to keep slaves. And today we have the result of that, and it isn't pretty, wouldn't you be happier if states had more rights today?

chrisco255 1y ago

With respect to red states, they're the only ones that still grow: https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-state-and-personal-income-state-4th-quarter-2024-and-preliminary https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-state-a...

Herring 1y ago
I think you’ll need a better analysis (longer timescale, more fine-grained, more explanations - education, age, productivity, investment, r&d, immigration etc) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies.... (2019)
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
> Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia > Personal income, in current dollars, increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2024 These are from your link. Where did you get the idea that red states are the only ones that grow? GDP growth is higher in red states in that link, but red states also received something like 80–90% of the funding from the trillion dollars or so passed by the Democratic Congress and President. Also to see how this actually plays out, compare CA to TX. gdp Growth in TX is much higher. But personal income growth in CA is much higher than in TX.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  Yeah ~1% growth is anemic while states like Arkansas are growing at more than 5%. California is losing population at all income levels. Texas is growing. Meanwhile the personal income growth is about the same between the two.
nebula8804 1y ago
Its all a giant scam: Red states block anything and everything that could help anyone but themselves. To "compromise" Dems put investments into bills that help Red states in the hopes that something will get passed(Sometimes it still fails). Examples include all these battery factories being located in purple states so that those senators will be forced to vote for the package. Dems help out the red states just to try and move the needle forward. Red politicians then get elected and further cut things that help Blue states. See all the medicaid cuts, soon social security, last trump admin cut the homeowner tax exemptions that mainly helped blue states, cutting tax benefits that encouraged companies to hire software engineers and timing it so that it takes place after trump left office. Red states typically get more out then they put in in terms of taxes: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-most-and-least-to-federal-revenue/ https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-mo... The blue states are held hostage by the Red states because of the structure of the system(a mess left over from the post Civil War). You can argue that Blue states drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the future: Ex: The California CARB mandates setting emission standards forcing manufacturers to adopt their standard for emissions, The East and West coast define culture in the arts that the rest of the world see and knows as American, top universities are where the future ways of thinking are challenged and explored. Every time the Red side gets into power they try to claw back even this stuff so that the Blue states are essentially nothing more than vassals contributing more but getting little back in return. Blue states need a Democratic party that will play extremely dirty just like the Republicans.

chneu 1y ago

Conservatives and a lot of moderates are single issue voters. As long as trump protects babies or props up the right religious ideology, they're fine with everything else. I recently read "Strangers in their own Land". The author interviewed hundreds of conservatives in the south. The jist was that as Christians they should protect the environment, but the oil refinery will bring jobs. The jobs are more important. So they'll vote for the jobs. It's really that simple. Republicans have mastered single issue stances. They don't need to be honest or trustworthy.

Herring 1y ago
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies.... (2019) Going by that analysis (specifically differences in age, education, immigration) it looks kinda like massive brain drain from red into blue areas. Single issue voting is a low-nuance likely low-iq thing. Also keep in mind 54% of Americans read at or below a 6th grade level, so I’d guess brain drain can be devastating.
- chneu 1y ago
  This is exactly what conservatives say. That colleges are cesspools of woke liberal ideology. What that really means is colleges give people experiences that aren't possible in conservative areas. Then those people don't return because living in conservative areas sucks.
seec 1y ago
Maybe you lack perspective because you have been confortable your whole life? What use does "the environment" have if you cannot afford to live? The jobs necessarily come before the environment because they are the requirement for survival that makes any of it matter. Only rich self-righteous people can afford to care about the environment and the irony is that those people are rich and can do a lot of posturing around these issues, precisely because those poor people exist to take those jobs.
- Herring 1y ago