6 ms·

Because for probably the vast majority of Republican voters, this is effectively a religion (identity politics). It doesn't matter what the Republican party cho

Because for probably the vast majority of Republican voters, this is effectively a religion (identity politics). It doesn't matter what the Republican party chooses to do, voting Republican is a part of who people are and to do anything else is simply unbelievable.

mingus88 1y ago
To expand on this a little, even before this hyper-tribalism consumed politics, conservatism has always had an in-group / out-group mentality It has been remarkably effective to find a niche wedge issue and drive it to the forefront. Abortion, guns, big city crime, religion…the practical impact these issues have on most people’s daily lives is dwarfed by economic policy but it hits the emotional nerve centers and has a crisp message. And that’s how you get people voting against their best interests time and time again
- pstuart 1y ago
  tl;dr -- make 'em angry and point them at others to hate.
- jimmydddd 1y ago
  I think the old "har har those dopes are voting against their best interest" is over simplified. It seems to assume that the only best interest is immediate simple financial self interest. But people are complicated and have many interests beyond immediate simple financial interests.
  - krapp 1y ago
    I mean, they're voting against their long term financial interests as well.
  - dpkirchner 1y ago
    The only explanations that makes sense are immediate financial reward, standard christian "bring about armageddon/death cult"-ism, or proud ignorance.
    - xnx 1y ago
      Spite / revenge/ "owning the libs". Some people don't care if their lives get worse as long as someone else is suffering even more.
  - ARandumGuy 1y ago
    The thing that any "voting against their best interests" critique misses is that most people are willing to vote "against their best interest" if they feel like it's the morally correct thing to do. Like, I'm an adult who never intends to have children, but I still support robust public education. I could make some arguments about how paying taxes for schools is somehow in my best interest. But the reality is I support public education because I think it's the right thing to do, not because I think it will personally benefit me. The thing is, conservatives and Republican voters don't lean that way because they're just too stupid to vote for Democrats. It's because they have a different moral framework. And that's something that can be hard to reconcile and address. Changing someone's political views requires changing their entire worldview, which is incredibly difficult.
    - danaris 1y ago
      I do believe that supporting public education will benefit me. (And I, too, have no children nor any intent to have any.) Robust public education would have gone a long way toward preventing the disaster currently unfolding. The very fact that Trump is aggressively gutting every part of the government that once supported education and science is (indirect) evidence of this. An educated populace makes better decisions, and requires me to spend less time standing out there with a sign stating the painfully obvious.
      - CamperBob2 1y ago
        [flagged]
  - beardyw 1y ago
    > I think the old "har har those dopes are voting against their best interest" is over simplified. It seems to assume that the only best interest is immediate simple financial self interest. You can't mischaracterise a phrase and then say it's wrong. That isn't what it means.
  - assword 1y ago
    > It seems to assume that the only best interest is immediate simple financial self interest I blame Clinton and his “it’s the economy stupid” nonsense people believed.
- Frost1x 1y ago
  I sort of fear tribalism will typically win more and more in the future. There’s a large enough population in the conservative end that’s fine with tribalism. And while there’s certainly a fair share of it on the democratic side, the democratic side tends to lure in educated and anti-authoritarian folks who question things, formulate opinions outside the pack, and will have more difficult electing a cohesive candidate. Meanwhile the Conservative Party targeting religious folks already have a group of people who tend to be OK with just me following whatever it’s told to them without question or with little question.
  - ElevenLathe 1y ago
    This is why I think Liberalism is on the outs. Its whole premise is that we can rationally manage society, but there's no romance in this. The Old Left had romance, as did Fascism. Trumpism has a certain amount of it. Abundance and the traditional neoliberal platform of the Democrats simply don't. Only a very small percentage of the population can get their blood up about means-tested social programs. A Democratic party that was serious about winning elections would turn sharply left, get new candidates, and start the long process of selling voters on things that they can feel some romance in: ending suffering, universal childcare, universal healthcare, good union jobs, a struggle to take back our country from the money interests. Imagining a future where we aren't all climate refugees in Northern Canada. Unfortunately, the Democratic party is not serious about winning elections. They keep their fossilized leadership in place while their mental capacity deteriorates until it's simply no longer tenable to pretend that they are capable of governing. Younger candidates are considered a success if they can successfully fundraise, even it they can't actually win the elections that they're fundraising for. In every instance, party operators are out for themselves rather than trying to win and deliver material benefits to voters. Republicans at least win (barely, and usually with some extreme gerrymandering), even if they can't deliver materially. The only alternative I can see right now is a return to the Old Left playbook: a confrontational labor movement. Maybe there are other alternatives that will emerge but I've yet to see one as promising as just organizing your workplace.
    - intended 1y ago
- lisper 1y ago
  Saying that people are voting against their best interests assumes that you know what those interests are. Maybe what they really want is not what you think they want, or what you think they ought to want. This is an attitude common among liberals. They know best, and if you disagree with them, you are simply wrong. Electing Trump was a big FU to that attitude. The astonishing thing is that liberals are so cocksure of themselves that they have not yet figured out this simple truth and are still carrying on as if Trump were simply an anomaly rather than a predictable response to their own actions. The magnitude of the tone-deafness in the Democratic party is simply staggering. And I'm a Democrat, or at least I was until I realized how utterly incompetent they are. [UPDATE] Ironically, the fact that this comment is being downvoted into oblivion actually demonstrates the very point I am making. [UPDATE2] With regards to my saying that Democrats are incompetent, this is manifestly true at least with regards to 1) winning elections and 2) controlling Donald Trump. Maybe they are competent at other things, but that seems like a bit of a moot point to me under the present circumstances.
  - AshleyGrant 1y ago
    I disagree. When it comes to "voting against their best interests," these best interests are not determined at an individual level, but rather through what is in the best interests of that group of individuals. It is provable that, for example, having a strong emergency response infrastructure is in the best interests of the people of the United States, and especially in the best interests of, e.g., Floridians. Natural disasters happen, and having a strong, coordinated response to assist the victims of natural disasters is in society's best interests, even if individuals (generally wrongly) think that they are self-sufficient enough to handle that situation. So what I'm saying is that while folks that are "voting against their best interests" may on an individual level have decided that their best interests are different from the best interests of their neighborhood/region/state/country, it doesn't make them <i>right</i>. A rural voter voting for candidates who will enact policies that will close the only hospital within 100+ miles of where they live is, by definition, voting against their own best interests, as it is in their best interests to have access to that hospital when it becomes necessary, as it could literally be a matter of life or death. Those voters opinions of what might be in their own best interests don't actually matter in terms of determining their best interests, but it matters a lot in terms of getting them to vote against their own best interests. What Democrats are incompetent at is coming up with messaging that stands a chance of being more convincing than the blatant lies and propaganda of the modern Conservative media machine.
- liveoneggs 1y ago
  I was thinking about the "against their best interest" argument recently and connecting it to the democrats.org "who we serve" page made it even worse than it seemed. Rational people not on the list should avoid them? It appears that they have (finally!) removed that stupid page but it's still linked-to (https://democrats.org/who-we-are/ https://democrats.org/who-we-are/) on their website. Here's a copy from June https://web.archive.org/web/20250615042752/https://democrats.org/who-we-are/who-we-serve/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250615042752/https://democrats...
  - dpkirchner 1y ago
    What's wrong with that page?
    - liveoneggs 1y ago
      if you aren't on the list why would you vote against your interests?
      - dpkirchner 1y ago
        It seems like a broad list. Who's missing that is underrepresented in government and representation?
        liveoneggs 1y ago
        I assume you are being obtuse or whatever but anyway -- I will attempt clarify a little more. Why did you add qualifiers like "underrepresented" in your reply? I am not on the list. My brother is not. My son is not. Most men I know are not. That's the entire problem with making a list; you can't help but exclude. Do democrats support me and my interests? Have I been voting against my own interests by supporting a party who excludes me from their stated in-group? You can find many articles pointing out problems with that page, which is probably why they finally took it down.
andsoitis 1y ago
My observation is that “both sides” (EDIT: of the electorate) are locked in this dynamic. In the ideal world people are able to evaluate specific ideas, but instead people judge ideas based on who it comes from.
- estearum 1y ago
  The difference is that the actual output of good policy versus bad policy from the two sides are wildly uneven.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    I don’t disagree. My point is that there are good ideas from both sides and there are poor ideas from both sides. We’d be much better off if we can judge those ideas and sort the bad from good, rather than who they come from.
    - miltonlost 1y ago
      id love to know some of the good ideas from republicans, because for the past like 50 years or so, nearly every one has been a disaster or discriminatory
      - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        Here's where I think the bulk of the US population is: - They're in favor of giving asylum to those who really deserve it (yeah, I'm sweeping a huge amount under the rug of the word "deserve"), but they're not in favor of "open borders" or large numbers of people coming here not through the legal process. - They're in favor of equal opportunity and helping those who are downtrodden, but not in favor of "white guilt" or hiring/admission quotas. - They're in favor of giving someone a break, but not in favor of giving criminals an infinite number of breaks (whether violent criminals or just shoplifters). When the Democrats won in 2020, they took that victory as an endorsement of everything they believed in. It wasn't. It was a declaration that we didn't believe in where Trump wanted to take us. When the Republicans won in 2024, they took it as an endorsement of everything Trump stood for, and everything he will decide to stand for in the future. It wasn't. It was a vote against the Democrats implementing everything they wanted to over the last four years. In fact, it's not just the Republicans who make that mistake. I keep reading "you voted for this". Well, not exactly - there are a bunch of people who voted against open borders, but did not vote for militarized thugs grabbing people off the street based on skin color. (Yes, I know, their vote enabled that. My point is that their intent was not that at all, but only to vote against an open border.) The bulk of the population doesn't want the Democratic platform or the Republican platform. They want some kind of sanity, avoiding the extremes of both sides. (You say that the Republicans only have extremes? Not so. They also have "stop doing what the Democrats are doing". In some cases, that's not a bad idea.)
ryandrake 1y ago
This is why arguing politics with these guys is pointless. I once naively thought I could bring around one of my MAGA friends to the light side by focusing on policy but it just doesn't work. He admitted that everything Team R is doing is not really helping him but in the end it's always something like: "Look, I was born a Republican, my family is Republican, I will never vote Democrat, no matter what any of them do. We have to trust Trump to do the right thing." It's truly a religion. There is no getting to these people.
- jimmydddd 1y ago
  Don't you think it cuts both ways though? I saw a video where a guy was asking (presumably liberal) NYU students about quotes relating to immigration policy. He initially said they were from (republican person T), and they stated that they thought the comments were racist. Then the interviewer said, oh wait, sorry, they were actually from (democrat person O), and the students immediately shifted their opinions and said the comments were reasonable.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    I'm sure there's a little tribalism on the (D) side, too, but I don't know anyone who decorates their house, yard, and truck with Democrat merchandise and flags, wears Democrat political shirts and hats, has a shrine at home with a life-size figure of a Democrat politician, or brings up Democrat politics in social settings that are not even remotely political like a kid's birthday party. I've seen real life examples of all of these from the (R) side.
    - dfee 1y ago
      Really? You’ve never seen a life sized Barack Obama cutout? You’ve not seen an “in the house we believe” yard sign? It goes both ways.
    - schnable 1y ago
      You've never seen evidence of cultural/tribal signaling on the left? Never seen an "in this house" sign, somebody wearing a mask outside and alone/spread out, NPR tote bag, "Anti-Racist Baby" book on the shelf, brought up Robin Deangelo or random Trump jokes at a bbq... Fish don't know their wet.
s5300 1y ago
[dead]
dfee 1y ago
From the perspective of an independent, I’m not sure why you’re singling out Republicans here. It reads just as true if you’re to swap in the word Democrat. - from California
- shaftway 1y ago
  As a fellow California independent, does it? If it turns out that Obama is in the Epstein files, my friends won't have to get rid of their Obama hat, or their Obama sneakers, or their Obama cologne, or their Obama watch, or their Obama bible, or take down their Obama flag, or delete their Obama NFT trading cards. Both parties are alien and hostile to me, but for very different reasons.
  - gatlin 1y ago
    Now do Clinton!
    - shaftway 1y ago
      I mean, in all fairness I stole that bit from somewhere about Clinton, so it's been done.
    - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
      do you suspect that this person was using Obama as an example because they secretly had a bunch of Clinton flags on their truck?
renewiltord 1y ago
[flagged]
- tastyface 1y ago
  Word salad.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    [flagged]

mingus88 1y ago

To expand on this a little, even before this hyper-tribalism consumed politics, conservatism has always had an in-group / out-group mentality It has been remarkably effective to find a niche wedge issue and drive it to the forefront. Abortion, guns, big city crime, religion…the practical impact these issues have on most people’s daily lives is dwarfed by economic policy but it hits the emotional nerve centers and has a crisp message. And that’s how you get people voting against their best interests time and time again

pstuart 1y ago
tl;dr -- make 'em angry and point them at others to hate.
jimmydddd 1y ago
I think the old "har har those dopes are voting against their best interest" is over simplified. It seems to assume that the only best interest is immediate simple financial self interest. But people are complicated and have many interests beyond immediate simple financial interests.
- krapp 1y ago
  I mean, they're voting against their long term financial interests as well.
- dpkirchner 1y ago
  The only explanations that makes sense are immediate financial reward, standard christian "bring about armageddon/death cult"-ism, or proud ignorance.
  - xnx 1y ago
    Spite / revenge/ "owning the libs". Some people don't care if their lives get worse as long as someone else is suffering even more.
- ARandumGuy 1y ago
  The thing that any "voting against their best interests" critique misses is that most people are willing to vote "against their best interest" if they feel like it's the morally correct thing to do. Like, I'm an adult who never intends to have children, but I still support robust public education. I could make some arguments about how paying taxes for schools is somehow in my best interest. But the reality is I support public education because I think it's the right thing to do, not because I think it will personally benefit me. The thing is, conservatives and Republican voters don't lean that way because they're just too stupid to vote for Democrats. It's because they have a different moral framework. And that's something that can be hard to reconcile and address. Changing someone's political views requires changing their entire worldview, which is incredibly difficult.
  - danaris 1y ago
    I do believe that supporting public education will benefit me. (And I, too, have no children nor any intent to have any.) Robust public education would have gone a long way toward preventing the disaster currently unfolding. The very fact that Trump is aggressively gutting every part of the government that once supported education and science is (indirect) evidence of this. An educated populace makes better decisions, and requires me to spend less time standing out there with a sign stating the painfully obvious.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      [flagged]
- beardyw 1y ago
  > I think the old "har har those dopes are voting against their best interest" is over simplified. It seems to assume that the only best interest is immediate simple financial self interest. You can't mischaracterise a phrase and then say it's wrong. That isn't what it means.
- assword 1y ago
  > It seems to assume that the only best interest is immediate simple financial self interest I blame Clinton and his “it’s the economy stupid” nonsense people believed.
Frost1x 1y ago
I sort of fear tribalism will typically win more and more in the future. There’s a large enough population in the conservative end that’s fine with tribalism. And while there’s certainly a fair share of it on the democratic side, the democratic side tends to lure in educated and anti-authoritarian folks who question things, formulate opinions outside the pack, and will have more difficult electing a cohesive candidate. Meanwhile the Conservative Party targeting religious folks already have a group of people who tend to be OK with just me following whatever it’s told to them without question or with little question.
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  This is why I think Liberalism is on the outs. Its whole premise is that we can rationally manage society, but there's no romance in this. The Old Left had romance, as did Fascism. Trumpism has a certain amount of it. Abundance and the traditional neoliberal platform of the Democrats simply don't. Only a very small percentage of the population can get their blood up about means-tested social programs. A Democratic party that was serious about winning elections would turn sharply left, get new candidates, and start the long process of selling voters on things that they can feel some romance in: ending suffering, universal childcare, universal healthcare, good union jobs, a struggle to take back our country from the money interests. Imagining a future where we aren't all climate refugees in Northern Canada. Unfortunately, the Democratic party is not serious about winning elections. They keep their fossilized leadership in place while their mental capacity deteriorates until it's simply no longer tenable to pretend that they are capable of governing. Younger candidates are considered a success if they can successfully fundraise, even it they can't actually win the elections that they're fundraising for. In every instance, party operators are out for themselves rather than trying to win and deliver material benefits to voters. Republicans at least win (barely, and usually with some extreme gerrymandering), even if they can't deliver materially. The only alternative I can see right now is a return to the Old Left playbook: a confrontational labor movement. Maybe there are other alternatives that will emerge but I've yet to see one as promising as just organizing your workplace.
  - intended 1y ago
lisper 1y ago
Saying that people are voting against their best interests assumes that you know what those interests are. Maybe what they really want is not what you think they want, or what you think they ought to want. This is an attitude common among liberals. They know best, and if you disagree with them, you are simply wrong. Electing Trump was a big FU to that attitude. The astonishing thing is that liberals are so cocksure of themselves that they have not yet figured out this simple truth and are still carrying on as if Trump were simply an anomaly rather than a predictable response to their own actions. The magnitude of the tone-deafness in the Democratic party is simply staggering. And I'm a Democrat, or at least I was until I realized how utterly incompetent they are. [UPDATE] Ironically, the fact that this comment is being downvoted into oblivion actually demonstrates the very point I am making. [UPDATE2] With regards to my saying that Democrats are incompetent, this is manifestly true at least with regards to 1) winning elections and 2) controlling Donald Trump. Maybe they are competent at other things, but that seems like a bit of a moot point to me under the present circumstances.
- AshleyGrant 1y ago
  I disagree. When it comes to "voting against their best interests," these best interests are not determined at an individual level, but rather through what is in the best interests of that group of individuals. It is provable that, for example, having a strong emergency response infrastructure is in the best interests of the people of the United States, and especially in the best interests of, e.g., Floridians. Natural disasters happen, and having a strong, coordinated response to assist the victims of natural disasters is in society's best interests, even if individuals (generally wrongly) think that they are self-sufficient enough to handle that situation. So what I'm saying is that while folks that are "voting against their best interests" may on an individual level have decided that their best interests are different from the best interests of their neighborhood/region/state/country, it doesn't make them <i>right</i>. A rural voter voting for candidates who will enact policies that will close the only hospital within 100+ miles of where they live is, by definition, voting against their own best interests, as it is in their best interests to have access to that hospital when it becomes necessary, as it could literally be a matter of life or death. Those voters opinions of what might be in their own best interests don't actually matter in terms of determining their best interests, but it matters a lot in terms of getting them to vote against their own best interests. What Democrats are incompetent at is coming up with messaging that stands a chance of being more convincing than the blatant lies and propaganda of the modern Conservative media machine.
liveoneggs 1y ago
I was thinking about the "against their best interest" argument recently and connecting it to the democrats.org "who we serve" page made it even worse than it seemed. Rational people not on the list should avoid them? It appears that they have (finally!) removed that stupid page but it's still linked-to (https://democrats.org/who-we-are/ https://democrats.org/who-we-are/) on their website. Here's a copy from June https://web.archive.org/web/20250615042752/https://democrats.org/who-we-are/who-we-serve/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250615042752/https://democrats...
- dpkirchner 1y ago
  What's wrong with that page?
  - liveoneggs 1y ago
    if you aren't on the list why would you vote against your interests?
    - dpkirchner 1y ago
      It seems like a broad list. Who's missing that is underrepresented in government and representation?
      - liveoneggs 1y ago
        I assume you are being obtuse or whatever but anyway -- I will attempt clarify a little more. Why did you add qualifiers like "underrepresented" in your reply? I am not on the list. My brother is not. My son is not. Most men I know are not. That's the entire problem with making a list; you can't help but exclude. Do democrats support me and my interests? Have I been voting against my own interests by supporting a party who excludes me from their stated in-group? You can find many articles pointing out problems with that page, which is probably why they finally took it down.

andsoitis 1y ago

My observation is that “both sides” (EDIT: of the electorate) are locked in this dynamic. In the ideal world people are able to evaluate specific ideas, but instead people judge ideas based on who it comes from.

estearum 1y ago
The difference is that the actual output of good policy versus bad policy from the two sides are wildly uneven.
- andsoitis 1y ago
  I don’t disagree. My point is that there are good ideas from both sides and there are poor ideas from both sides. We’d be much better off if we can judge those ideas and sort the bad from good, rather than who they come from.
  - miltonlost 1y ago
    id love to know some of the good ideas from republicans, because for the past like 50 years or so, nearly every one has been a disaster or discriminatory
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      Here's where I think the bulk of the US population is: - They're in favor of giving asylum to those who really deserve it (yeah, I'm sweeping a huge amount under the rug of the word "deserve"), but they're not in favor of "open borders" or large numbers of people coming here not through the legal process. - They're in favor of equal opportunity and helping those who are downtrodden, but not in favor of "white guilt" or hiring/admission quotas. - They're in favor of giving someone a break, but not in favor of giving criminals an infinite number of breaks (whether violent criminals or just shoplifters). When the Democrats won in 2020, they took that victory as an endorsement of everything they believed in. It wasn't. It was a declaration that we didn't believe in where Trump wanted to take us. When the Republicans won in 2024, they took it as an endorsement of everything Trump stood for, and everything he will decide to stand for in the future. It wasn't. It was a vote against the Democrats implementing everything they wanted to over the last four years. In fact, it's not just the Republicans who make that mistake. I keep reading "you voted for this". Well, not exactly - there are a bunch of people who voted against open borders, but did not vote for militarized thugs grabbing people off the street based on skin color. (Yes, I know, their vote enabled that. My point is that their intent was not that at all, but only to vote against an open border.) The bulk of the population doesn't want the Democratic platform or the Republican platform. They want some kind of sanity, avoiding the extremes of both sides. (You say that the Republicans only have extremes? Not so. They also have "stop doing what the Democrats are doing". In some cases, that's not a bad idea.)

ryandrake 1y ago

This is why arguing politics with these guys is pointless. I once naively thought I could bring around one of my MAGA friends to the light side by focusing on policy but it just doesn't work. He admitted that everything Team R is doing is not really helping him but in the end it's always something like: "Look, I was born a Republican, my family is Republican, I will never vote Democrat, no matter what any of them do. We have to trust Trump to do the right thing." It's truly a religion. There is no getting to these people.

jimmydddd 1y ago
Don't you think it cuts both ways though? I saw a video where a guy was asking (presumably liberal) NYU students about quotes relating to immigration policy. He initially said they were from (republican person T), and they stated that they thought the comments were racist. Then the interviewer said, oh wait, sorry, they were actually from (democrat person O), and the students immediately shifted their opinions and said the comments were reasonable.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I'm sure there's a little tribalism on the (D) side, too, but I don't know anyone who decorates their house, yard, and truck with Democrat merchandise and flags, wears Democrat political shirts and hats, has a shrine at home with a life-size figure of a Democrat politician, or brings up Democrat politics in social settings that are not even remotely political like a kid's birthday party. I've seen real life examples of all of these from the (R) side.
  - dfee 1y ago
    Really? You’ve never seen a life sized Barack Obama cutout? You’ve not seen an “in the house we believe” yard sign? It goes both ways.
  - schnable 1y ago
    You've never seen evidence of cultural/tribal signaling on the left? Never seen an "in this house" sign, somebody wearing a mask outside and alone/spread out, NPR tote bag, "Anti-Racist Baby" book on the shelf, brought up Robin Deangelo or random Trump jokes at a bbq... Fish don't know their wet.

s5300 1y ago

[dead]

dfee 1y ago

From the perspective of an independent, I’m not sure why you’re singling out Republicans here. It reads just as true if you’re to swap in the word Democrat. - from California

shaftway 1y ago
As a fellow California independent, does it? If it turns out that Obama is in the Epstein files, my friends won't have to get rid of their Obama hat, or their Obama sneakers, or their Obama cologne, or their Obama watch, or their Obama bible, or take down their Obama flag, or delete their Obama NFT trading cards. Both parties are alien and hostile to me, but for very different reasons.
- gatlin 1y ago
  Now do Clinton!
  - shaftway 1y ago
    I mean, in all fairness I stole that bit from somewhere about Clinton, so it's been done.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    do you suspect that this person was using Obama as an example because they secretly had a bunch of Clinton flags on their truck?

renewiltord 1y ago

[flagged]

tastyface 1y ago
Word salad.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  [flagged]