if living in russia taught me anything, people in distress reduce themselves (and got reduced) to the most basic questions, like who is to blame, and populists have them like a piece of cake.
Most vatniks, not unlike MAGAs, don’t have answers to many questions, they want to be left alone to manage the hole they happened to be born into, and the promise of a candidate or ideology that does just that or even paints their quest as a herioic one, or a sacred sacrifice, would win again and again until there is someone to work with that and educate them.
They are used to live in shit and depend on themselves, don’t know anything better and become pretty jealous if others get that. Others having it worse, especially their ‘enemies’, kinda makes their own living more bearable. Their struggle is a downpainment for a mission of punishing the unworthy ones.
When a person is downscaled to that childish level of consciousness it’s impossible to reach them with rhetorics that don’t directly benefit them.
As long as they continue to be like that and their thoughts are unchallenged, they’d always vote maga.
Really well said
I haven’t seen an analysis from your perspective before. Lines up very well with my experience from the Southern US.
And as they continue to vote against their own interests it becomes a self-perpetuating system.
If you look at the impacts to their lives from the Clinton presidency, it is understandable that they would think that Democracts are not necessarily working in their interests.
Clinton really did fuck us over, though I guess the Bosnians like him.
Well lets hope we can correct course and make changes, unless Trump triggers a civil war or removes too much load bearing duck tape from the federal government and it more or less implodes
Another way to view this is that the poor are voting republican now. Trump won those making less than $100,000 handedly while Harris won those making above. Probably because he’s offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won’t work but at least he’s putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
The democrats are slowly becoming the party of the out of touch elite, and memes like this don’t help. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems, and trump has shown it doesn’t matter if they’re viable or will actually help. If these “dumb poor people are rubes who will fall for anything” give them something to fall for. Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don’t cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don’t cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
That was basically Harris’ tax plan.
What Would Kamala Harris’s Tax Plans Mean For You? | Kiplinger - https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/kamala-harriss-tax-plans-2024
It doesn’t matter what your platform is if it’s not communicated effectively to the median voter
How do you communicate effectively to someone with their fingers in their ears screaming nananananananana? Please advise, oh political oracle.
With all the fucking TV ads and mailers the campaign spent billions on. If the average voters is just covering there ears then why spend so much on advertising or why even campaign at all? Yeah some people are like that but they’re deep in the maga cult, there’s still a large amount of people open to both sides if the messaging is right that decided this election. Harris’ messaging didn’t work though.
I mean the marketing was effective. A lot of people including Donald trump thought he was going to lose. Just not effective at getting people who support Biden to get off their ass.
Trump seemed to get through.
Democrats are forbidden by their patrons from using too much populist rhetoric. That’s the number one reason why they fail to connect with what has become a very populist country, thanks to decades of wealth transfer to the top.
Bernie used populist language and the Democratic establishment pulled out all the stops to give us “anybody but Bernie”. Now we are living the consequences.
What’s neat is that you appear to have internalized the conservative view of the Democratic machine in this country. They are completely incompetent…but also such shadowy and powerful figures they control what everyone says and does and control who votes for who…except when it comes to republicans who these scary shadowy figures are unable to competently manipulate ever…
If you want to argue today that the Democrats aren’t failures at fighting Republicans and specifically Trump, I would love to hear that argument.
There was nothing “shadowy” about the “anybody but Bernie” effort in 2020. They might have preferred it to be quieter, but I think just about every relevant detail of that scheme leaked, and it played out quite transparently. Are you arguing that it didn’t happen?
It’s not as much about competence as it is about perspective. The Democratic establishment is somewhat competently running strategies that are well suited for the 90s but completely out of touch with where voters are today.
So basically you lie to them and tell them what they want to hear? Stoke fear of “the others” among them to keep them scared and angry?
Yeah, no, I’m good.
Is that what you think Bernie does?
People are scared and angry already. Not everyone has the financial stability you apparently do. Republicans focus that fear on the powerless. Democrats pretend it’s not there. You can’t respond to struggling families with “the economy is great!”
Let Bernie be Encharge. I am jealous that the US has Bernie. Seeing all this shit storm from afar, I now just believe the US doesn’t deserve Bernie at all. He is too good for the US.
Ah yes, now that you made fun of the prior commenter, we have convinced the world and now Kamala is president?
Bernie is fucking right.
?
You lumped a huge percentage of people as putting their fingers in their ears.
Maga is going to vote maga. And there’s a huge chunk that didn’t vote or were surprised Biden dropped out. Those folks didn’t put their fingers in their ears. Like Bernie said, they were ignored.
People who were surprised 5 months after Biden dropped out didn’t have their fingers in their ears in your version of the world? I think you and I mean very different things by that phrase.
Who do you think the people putting their fingers in their ears are, in this case?
Check out leopards eating faces for the next few years…those people, whether it’s moms surprised the education department is again going to punish their kids, Muslims surprised trump hates Muslims and wants them eradicated, EV company owners who think being allowed to support means being part of the narcissists inner circle, Latinos shocked that their friends or family members there illegally won’t get special protections no matter how many times McCarthy rears his head.
“EV company owners” aside, most voters in this country just want something to change, and they’ll vote for whoever promises the most of it. Harris’ campaign didn’t do anything nor promise anything that resonated, and practically everything she said ended up morphing into her highly-rehearsed stump speech. No talks about Medicare for All, no talks about the minimum wage, no talks about legalizing weed, and kowtowing to the right on border policy by accepting the ‘crisis’ framing. Harris also failed to address the situation in Gaza in a way that mattered, even though it was a major issue for undecided voters in key states like Michigan. Over 100,000 Democratic primary voters there cast an uncommitted vote over Biden’s handling of Israel and Gaza, which is more than the margin by which she lost the state.
The right took advantage of this. An EV company owner paid a PAC to distribute ostensibly pro-Harris pamphlets in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in Michigan saying she was the most pro-Israel candidate on the ballot. The right helped put abortion rights directly on the state ballots as propositions, letting people believe the choice could be separated from who they voted for (see Florida, where the proposition lost at 57% support when the state voted roughly the same percentage for ol Don).
Harris had a potential base on the progressive left, but the DNC insisted on tweaking her campaign to try to win over right-moderates. That doesn’t work anymore, precisely for the “sticking fingers in ears” attitude you mentioned from right-wing voters. It’s asinine for the DNC to continue to try and appeal to them, when the median Republican voter thinks Democrats are agents of a satanic agenda. Regardless, the message the DNC seems to have gotten from Nov 5 was that they lost this election because they failed to move to the right hard enough. The ratchet effect continues.
As a side note, I know several trumpets who would’ve voted for Sanders in 2016 were he the Democratic nominee, and would’ve voted for Walz even this election were he the main guy on the 2024 presidential ticket. Such people are not very coherent ideologically, they just want someone in who has big ideas.
Unfortunately, it’s just not enough to be “not the other guy”, even if the other guy is a convicted felon, rapist, and just all-around a downright awful human being.
edit: grammar and wording in a couple spots
Many of those people will inexplicably be against a 50% tax on billionaires for two reasons: 1) they have no concept of how progressive tax brackets work, and think that means they’d be taking literally half that person’s wealth, and 2) they believe that one day they could be in that situation, and when they are, they sure as shit won’t want to pay half of their wealth! (spoiler alert: they won’t)
And until we can change this type of thinking, we will never make those people pay their fair share.
This is what decades of American Exceptionalism, and Rugged Individualism, does to a nation; Empathy dies, and it becomes every man for themselves.
Probably because he’s offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won’t work but at least he’s putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
This is exactly what I was pointing out to my friends. Every one of us are making six figures, and could not understand why anybody would vote Trump.
And I asked them how many people in their lives are poor, living paycheck to paycheck. I have family members who are working two or three jobs to get by. All the work Biden did is not being seen or recognized by them.
Are they are under-educated yokels? Are they morons for not keeping up with politics? You can call them what ever you want. Theyre still a voter.
Face it: what they’re hearing from Democrats vs what they’re hearing from Trump are pretty clear cut and we can stay in this echo chamber all we want on Lemmy. Those folks aren’t listening to us. They’re just trying to survive and will vote accordingly.
Six figures? Lucky you.
That’s like an average cali salary man. You gotta pump those numbers up
California has one of the highest CoL’s in the country. 51% of Americans made $15k or less in 2021.
And yet. Manufacturing was down under trump in 2016 even before covid hit and under Biden manufacturing is the highest it’s been in decades.
The Democrats must be doing something right, if their states have better everything.
Maybe if the Republicans would listen to us, we could all have the best schools and hospitals.
he also proposed nuking a hurricane…
but yes, democratic leaders have left us, so it’s easy to say both sides are corrupt, especially as long as insider trading and conflicts of interest are OK to them.
bring manufacturing back. … unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same…. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems
Perhaps like the CHIPS act or IRA? Instead of demogoguing, democrats followed through with actual investment in manufacturing, unionism, infrastructure. Supposedly 80% of that manufacturing investment went to red states
Is this one of these scenarios where people are too impatient with the time it takes to get a factory off the ground, so votes out the group making that investment over someone who’s “good for business” or at least taking credit ?
Yeah, but what about the vibes, man?
The chips act was more about national security then employment. Semiconductor manufacturing doesn’t require much labor and isn’t a mass employer. Even in Taiwan it only employs around 300,000 or 2% of people. Even if the chips act somehow brought all 300,000 of those jobs over here, which it wont, it would still be a drop in the bucket in the u.s.
The ira was better but was still limited in it’s effect. Most Americans don’t see the effect it had or don’t think they’re effected. You need universal programs that are easy to see the effects: Free school lunch, Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, subsidized child care, student loan forgiveness etc.
Also I don’t believe Americans actually want to work in manufacturing. They really just want the stability, dignity and pay that union manufacturing jobs provided. If they got those from unionizing a Walmart or Starbucks then they’d probably be happier as those jobs are safer and less monotonous. This combined with the fact everything would get more expensive if it were manufactured here, no one could afford an iPhone built in america, makes me think the onshoring movement is a dead end politically and we should instead be focused on unionization.
So according to you it’s worse to acknowledge we can’t go back in time than to lie to people and promise that which we (in the 3rd party pov sense, meaning NYC republicans) actively subvert every day? One would have to be exceptionally stupid and stubbornly uninformed to believe this is reasonable.
No, the point is to come up with solutions, ANY solutions. Democrats aren’t even in the game, so the other guy gets to eat the pieces.
The solution proposed was stop mining coal and learn to make modern devices, I think.
That’s like saying you’ll fix unemployment by just getting people jobs! Great… How?
Time is a circle.
when is it from?
Probably from 1972 when Nixon swept the country, except Massachusetts and DC
About 1974. Massachusetts was the only state to not vote for Nixon during his re-election and the bumper stickers appeared after the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation only a year and a half into his second term.
I love the “Have you actually considered that the state doing the worst under consistent Republican policy is voting because they’re unhappy with the DEMONRAT status quo???”
They really don’t give a shit about consistency in their arguments. People have or lack responsibility for their moral and political choices according to whatever suits their “LIBERALS BAD” talking point of the day.
Republicans have had a vice grip on our state and local politics for 40 years…BUT ITS THE LIBRULS FAULT
That would make sense if Oklahoma hadn’t voted that way every time regardless of who the previous president was. But I mean, conservatives are pretty good at inverting their arguments. So I’m sure when Bush left office, they voted for Romney because they were so happy with how the Bush admin went. But when Obama left, they voted for Trump because they were so unhappy with how the Obama administration went. Simple!
That would make sense if Oklahoma hadn’t voted that way every time regardless of who the previous president was.
They probably mean at the state level which has been consistently led by Republicans since Obama was elected.
Maybe they voted against the incumbent so overwhelmingly because things are hard.
People vote based on their feelings.
When they were feeling pain, the message from the Dems was about how great the economy was, but the reality is that the stock market and GDP don’t speak to the quality of life of these people. To them the Dems saying how great things were was dismissive of their real concerns.
Meanwhile, Trump latched onto their fears and concerns. Yeah, his policies are idiotic, and millions will suffer and be in worse shape. But when they said they couldn’t pay the mortgage or buy groceries, he listened. The Democrats didn’t because they’ve abandoned the working class that should be their backbone.
Maybe they voted against the incumbent
I wouldn’t be so confident about assigning such motivation.
They haven’t been unanimous in the counties all those times.
So then the trend is getting reder with time then? I don’t see your point.
It’s not saying 100% of people always vote red. But the majority have for a VERY long time.
Yes. it got redder across the country this election.
But the point, for this population and this meme, is that they have consistently voting in the same people and the results they have received are similarly consistent, and they keep voting that way.
Yes broadly there’s been a “vote out the incumbent”, but this illustrates why that’s misguided, as it illustrates the different results of two states with consistent policies for each party.
Not even just consistently, the person accidentally made the point for them that they’ve actually gotten more red over that time. So they’ve somehow kept convincing more people to vote for them despite them never doing a thing to help them.
Again, not really sure what point your trying to make?
When an entire country shifts away from a party, it means the party is doing something to drive them away. Trump is the worst candidate in the history of the country, yet he’s won 2 elections. Why is that?
It’s because the Dems have abandoned the economic policies that formed the heart of their party and lost the working class vote they’ve relied upon since the Depression.
Well that and the fact Trump has a cult of personality that will only disappear when he dies.
In that one case, they’re a pretty consistent electorate. The general sentiment across America and around the globe since the post-pandemic inflation crisis began has been anti incumbent, which is why we see a lot of changed governments and populist uprisings now.
Sounds like making an avg citizen feel heard was the Trump card
The audacity!
This type of meme isn’t helpful when people already think the Dem Party isn’t for working class people and elites only lol. Trump listened to people issues about material needs even if he lied. It still worked. Harris and Dems went on the whole time not addressing issues with the economy. Adopting a real working class agenda and free college would do wonders and putting resources to getting the crazy folk away from Education.
Working classes don’t need healthcare or education? Quality of life is irrelevant? A strong economy doesn’t matter? One of the highest minimum wages doesn’t affect working class? I
Free college (depending on income)doesn’t matter?
It’s probably more like no one has helped us improve our healthcare / education / quality of life, so we’ll take a gamble on someone different.
Misses the actual pain points. These are good things objectively but these are not the things that people want change
Maybe we’re learning that democracy fails when the people vote for the things they want over things that they objectively need.
And yet people in Massachusetts generally elected not to change. Maybe not as big a majority as expected, but by a solid amount. Maybe all it takes is paying attention to healthcare, education, quality of life, free college, etc. maybe we have at least one model and all we have to do is follow it, instead of negativity and blaming mysterious pain points that you never actually identify
i think you’re missing their point. the working class does want these things, but the meme reinforces the idea that the dems only take care of the rich.
How? Does Massachusetts not have working class people in it? Is it a state comprised entirely of the wealthy?
im not saying i agree with this interpretation. just that the meme reinforces an erroneous causal relation depending on the bias of the reader. im dont know these places very well, but im used to seeing govenrments treating lower class neighborhoods with less attention. its a common perception.
“the people” seem to want to change ‘THEYRE SEATING THE CATS, THEYRE EATING THE DAWWGS’…so, fk if “the people” know what they want.
No it doesn’t. Massachusetts is full of working class people.
I think you might be confusing cause and effect here. Perhaps the people in MA are “rich” (I would say, doing well. There are tons of working class people in MA, they’re just not necessarily living in squalor) because the dems took care of them. Almost as if we have tons of data backing this up… That Democrats consistently do these types of things, while Republicans constantly walk them back.
Ever been to MA?
Crapton of working class people there. I mean a lot. It is possible to have top-tier education and health care yet have working class people in the same State.
Being a rural state does not by default equate to “working class”. If anything it probably means more people per capita on government assistance or in poverty.
Are Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh not “working class” cities? I think there are a whole lot of people who would like a word with you for writing them off.
Almost as if working class people don’t have to be stupid.
Sadly Mass is also close to #1 in terms of cost of living.
I like it here but I don’t like what it costs.
Oh no! #1 in cost of living and #1 in quality if life? And among the lowest poverty?
Do people really just need social support to thrive? No way! It’s gotta be stuff! Cheap stuff! That’s what life’s all about!
No arguments from me, that’s why I don’t want to live anywhere else.
It does sting a bit to be stuck living with high rent in an apartment when my income would allow me to buy a decent house in another part of the country. But then I likely wouldn’t have this income in other parts of the country, either.
When I moved back to the US from China, I immediately had health insurance thanks to Masshealth. Helped me have peace of mind while I was searching for a job back here. And now I get to work for an organization that helps other people land on their feet when big life changes happen, which is easier to do here than elsewhere.
It’s pretty difficult to find anywhere in the US currently that has good jobs, good entertainment and restaurants, access to healthcare, good schools, and isn’t expensive. Sure, you can get a house cheaper in rural Kansas or something but then you have to live in rural Kansas.
Very well said. I live in the other state from the meme and I’m broke af. I could be living in a better state and still be broke af but getting things from my taxes rather than them being used to put Bibles in schools.
Pretty easy to have high quality of life and low poverty if all the poor people leave because there priced out.
if all the poor people leave because there priced out.
What an utterly bizarre take.
You got a better explanation? People are leaving Massachusetts and the cost of living is high . The most likely reason is that poorer people who can’t afford to live there any more are leaving. Otherwise why would you leave a state with such a high quality of life?
The people leaving largely aren’t the poor, though. They’re the middle and upper class looking for lower taxes. They’re leaving because the high quality of life there benefits those with less money disproportionately compared to those with more money; public transport and good public schools matter less to the wealthy than to the poor.
Will also add, not sure how big of a difference it makes, but the data in that article also captures the window of time when Mass implemented its millionaire tax. There was a lot of blustering from the 1% about moving out of state and taking the jobs with them; I doubt the last part but wouldn’t be surprised if a good chunk ended up leaving for elsewhere to avoid paying.
Also worth looking at how the transition to remote work is a contributing factor. Since the pandemic, it’s no longer necessary for a lot of people who used to work in Boston to live around Boston, and so they can keep their high-paying jobs while moving to more affordable surrounding states (or even other parts of the country). That is definitely middle-upper class migration and it affected regions with high percentages of pre-pandemic office jobs the most, which applies significantly to Boston.
That being said, I know anecdotally many members of my generation here in Mass (80’s-90’s Millennials) still live with their parents well into their 30’s, and those who did not have that as an option often resorted to moving out of state. Rent remains high and property is even higher, so it’s a waiting game to see if/when this bubble pops. Mass also happens to be close to the bottom in the US in fertility rate (which is not an inherently terrible thing) but speaks to the difficulty of starting a family here.
I guess the medical care is just so good here that the old people aren’t dying off fast enough!
Every company I know are careful to watch where their employees live and adjust wages appropriately. That’s probably the real reason most are hybrid: if you have to come into Boston twice a week, can you really live up in the mountains somewhere cheap?
I only know that my town has high population of immigrants and if blue collar jobs and we’re growing like crazy.
I mean all the land was developed a couple hundred years ago, so we’re getting taller
Supply and demand. High quality state is going to be more desirable and so more expensive, where the dumpster states that noone WANTS to live in are so cheap anyone can afford to live there, even if they don’t want to. I would rather bring the whole country up to MA standards, increasing supply of QoL, instead of bringing it down to OK standards because “bUt iT CheEp ThEir”.
Well, all it does is drive up the cost for the working class who live there who are then forced to move out.
If you were born there, that does indeed suck. If you bought your way in there, it’s a win. If you were born there and can afford to keep living there, also a win
What’s the wealth inequality metric for them?
Not the worst but top 10 in inequality
Also with the high cost of living most of the poor move out so that would make it seem lower then if you look at the inequality to the neighboring states where people may move to or the u.s. as a whole. Probably harder to find but it would be interesting to see inequality among people born in Massachusetts, including those who left. Would be interesting to see if there system is actually creating successful people, or if they’re just kicking out unsuccessful people and attracting already successful people from other states.
It’s why I left 25 years ago, as much as I liked living there, I couldn’t afford it. The house i grew up in is currently on the market for $2.5mil… my mom sold it for $400k in the 90s. All my high school friends have moved away, though some farther than others…
The data certainly deserves a deeper look. It may also be because we just have that much more well paid jobs than what people generally think of as wealth inequality.
I realize that looks inconsistent so let me explain. Most people think of wealth inequality as the different between the Bezos of the world and them. However in this case, I see their measuring by quintile but we have a ton of software and medical- maybe we just have bigger quintiles three and four. Still wealth inequality mathematically but very different from what people expect that means
I have also thought that before I moved from Mass to Oregon. Just my experience of course, but my state taxes increases 2x and everything seemed to be more expensive.
I moved from CA to NC and the taxes were absolutely worse.
EDIT: They were, I even had a check that was half in one state and half in another, and guess what? The CA check was bigger.
Education, healthcare and quality of life aren’t cheap. Want cheap? Go to Oklahoma.
Yeah, I alternate between proud that we have a $15 minimum wage and horrified at what it probably should be
I was advocating for the $15 minimum wage back in 2010 when I was barely earning $9 in retail, as even then $15/hr was considered the bare minimum needed to avoid poverty.
I’d say we should be pushing for $25 now given how much the value of a dollar has changed between then and today. But then by the time the state finally implements that in 10-20 years, we’ll probably need to be at $30 or more to just break even with inflation.
Second in American health care. …
Obviously. What else would it be when comparing two American states.
a decent amount of americans seem to think they are the global best in every category so probably not obvious enough even.
I hate having to explain this to people when I talk about the insane cost of healthcare in the US.
“but US healthcare is the best so of course it’s going to be the most expensive”
No, you moron. It’s the exact same procedure by equally qualified doctors using the same equipment.
meanwhile here it’s generally not expensive, but we can’t seem to come up with a reasonable way for foreign doctors to gain canadian credentials and continue to have waits anywhere from hours to coming the next day instead
I crisscrossed Oklahoma on one of my cross-country trips, the state absolutely sucks and they even know it that’s why you can legally drive like 80mph through the whole thing.
Kansas also sucks but khp uses the highway as a way to punish people with the wrong license plates. A majority of traffic stops in Kansas were of out of state drivers as recently as a few years ago.
Wasn’t Oklahoma supposed to be given back to the native tribes? Like more than 50% of it?
It was. And in fact the Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the reservations still exist. One consequence is that Google Maps now shades the entire eastern half of the state in dark shading showing the borders between the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and so forth.
The tribal governments are taking an increasing role in providing public services to all of the citizens within their borders, as the civil state government descends deeper into libertarianism.
Oklahoma was built on genocide. Is it any wonder those that govern it are garbage people.
America was built on several genocides. Oklahoma isn’t special.
The Cherokee genocide was seriously fucked up and the Trail of Tears ended in Oklahoma.
It was, but Oklahoma passed a law saying tribal lands couldn’t use postal addresses and had to use PO boxes instead. Then they passed a law saying you needed a postal address to vote.
West Virginia also voted straight red, I believe
Holy crap, they did.
I spent a lot of my life there and boy oh boy.
I hear it’s nicer up north, but I couldn’t afford to go anywhere and check it out. It is WILD where I came from.
I can only imagine lmao. I’m an okie currently, so I may have some idea, what with our state mineral being meth.
I’ve only ever heard stories and seen one documentary (The Wild and Wondeful Whites of West Virginia) from out of WV but it sounds…different out there, even compared to OK, haha.
New Mexico also voted straight blue
Some states need to lose their right to self govern
Post civil war, the USA should have imposed rules that enforced integration.
They didn’t have the will, and now we reap the consequences as a nation, to have the south still stuck in the moral degradation that comes with dehumanizing a portion of our population to the point of enslavement.
I’ve recently been imagining separating the countries of the US, or as Americans like to call them; the states.
Unfortunately there are liberals in those red states. That would be death sentence for them.
You can’t come at these people with facts.
First in education, clearly that means education makes you lib’ral, and gay! And trans!
