3 ms·

Yeah.. that's how tribalism works. Dems don't really understand the kind of blank-check popular backing that Trump has. Studies have shown for a long time the

by Herring 9mo ago

Yeah.. that's how tribalism works. Dems don't really understand the kind of blank-check popular backing that Trump has. Studies have shown for a long time the human brain is frequently wired to prioritize group loyalty over factual accuracy. Probably something left over from when we were living in caves in small groups. Trump understands it extremely well. He just has to bring up immigrants and their brain reasoning centers turn off and they start frothing over Haitians eating dogs. Prior to Trump, most white Americans only encountered this if they brought a black girlfriend home. After Obama, Trump literally rewrote the republican party. Congressmen who weren't falling in line got fired or forced to retire. Many many times, eg see Liz Cheney. The last time a purge like this happened was at the time of the Civil War. Even super-popular FDR tried taking out conservative democrats but wasn't successful (which btw is one of the main reasons we didn't get stuff like universal healthcare in the 1930s; southern democrats decided it was a threat to segregation). That probably shows us how to stop it: wait for a massive failure like WW2 or the Great Depression, then implement strong safety nets, media, education, etc pretty much everything Western Europe is doing & more (eg housing).

lateforwork 9mo ago
Another solution is for Democrats can move a bit towards the center. Maybe relent on immigration, for example. Obama was more centrist than Biden on this issue. He deported millions of illegal immigrants, while Biden housed them in New York hotels.
- SilverElfin 9mo ago
  I think this is the bare minimum needed to change the current environment, if approval polls are staying where they are. If Dems support secure borders, protecting women’s sports, and sentencing repeat offenders, they would take away many of the “common sense” things that the GOP can use to hold onto independents. Otherwise, it lets people be outraged at the Dems enough that they would tolerate the extremism we see normalized now.
- Herring 9mo ago
  It's not gonna work. Dems have been meeting Republicans in the "center" for a long time. Republicans just go further right. You think conservatives like Obama? It's not a rational thing. Like you said "Biden housing immigrants in hotels" and the implication is that he personally spent trillions on it and the sky is falling. You need to train people to switch their brains back on, because it's a national security issue. All kinds of policies from free college to a shorter work-week so they have less stress and more time to think. Again, just copy what Western Europe does. They went through it before.

by Herring 9mo ago

lateforwork 9mo ago

Another solution is for Democrats can move a bit towards the center. Maybe relent on immigration, for example. Obama was more centrist than Biden on this issue. He deported millions of illegal immigrants, while Biden housed them in New York hotels.

SilverElfin 9mo ago
I think this is the bare minimum needed to change the current environment, if approval polls are staying where they are. If Dems support secure borders, protecting women’s sports, and sentencing repeat offenders, they would take away many of the “common sense” things that the GOP can use to hold onto independents. Otherwise, it lets people be outraged at the Dems enough that they would tolerate the extremism we see normalized now.
Herring 9mo ago
It's not gonna work. Dems have been meeting Republicans in the "center" for a long time. Republicans just go further right. You think conservatives like Obama? It's not a rational thing. Like you said "Biden housing immigrants in hotels" and the implication is that he personally spent trillions on it and the sky is falling. You need to train people to switch their brains back on, because it's a national security issue. All kinds of policies from free college to a shorter work-week so they have less stress and more time to think. Again, just copy what Western Europe does. They went through it before.