GlyphI appreciate that pundits are looking for a silver lining, evidence of the Trump coalition fracturing, points of leverage for political persuasion, but that just isn't what's happening and we should probably stop wishcasting that it is
What is going on with the Kimmel thing is the same as what is going on every time: people who used to have principles pre-trump making a sort of flaccid gesture in the direction of wishing they still had them, in the hopes they might influence the Trump machine to be slightly less embarrassing to follow, before inevitably abandoning some tattered shred of those former principles and falling in line behind Dear Leader.
It's the same as wishing 3-time Trump voters whose spouses are getting deported or whatever are "waking up" when they express disappointment in the administration. These people do not perceive "voting for a democrat" as an option; they know he's a pedophile, they know he's a racist, at this point they know he is literally going to kill their family members, but the alternative — a Democrat — is to ally oneself with Lucifer directly, so it is not conceivable as an option.
When you see someone doing this, what they're doing is praying to their political diety, wishing that they will be able to keep voting for their own destruction but praying for the miracle of not getting destroyed.
At the edges, on the margins, within the statistical grey area, yes, a few folks will be convinced and pull off. And this is probably enough to shift the majority, at least for one cycle. But none of this is going to result in a major realignment. Nobody is coming to save us.
Nick Sloan@glyph I desperately have to hope that you’re wrong here. The thing about Ezra Klein’s ill-conceived Kirk piece that is true is that the opposition has been persuasive to a whole lot of people that the Democrats have not been. If we want to beat fascists, we have to present a more compelling case to their voters. (1/2)
That means extending an olive branch to people we don’t agree with. We’ll have to find a way to build a coalition with people who have been wrong on Gaza, immigration, trans-rights, and more. Not by abandoning our principles, but by selling the value and virtue of them.
We’re just simply out of voters who never had a bad opinion, and the other side are happy to take our discards. (2/2)
@nick I think you might be interpreting what I said metaphorically. I do not mean we must stand fast to our principles and purity and not debase ourselves to make arguments to bad people, I mean quite literally that a pretty significant chunk of the opposing coalition sincerely believe that we are corporeal demons, sent from hell to test them. The first case you have to make is that we are human beings, which is unfortunately exactly what a demon would say https://wordandway.org/2023/02/13/democrats-devils-and-democracy/
Democrats, Devils, and Democracy - Word&Way
Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy writes that we will never understand conservative evangelicals until we understand the theological construction of the dominant trope that "Democrats are devils." This has become the most successful propaganda campaign in American politics.
@nick and gosh I hope I am wrong but I have yet to see an alternate theory of the case that takes into account and explains how evangelicals talk about us in their own spaces, when they use this type of literal demonizing language
@glyph I always thought the line in The Newsroom about the US having the most adults that believe angels are real was a benign jab, but there is a cohort that thinks about religion like fantasy fiction in the real world, and this is perhaps the inevitable conclusion of that way of thinking.
I think (hope?) it’s a small but vocal share of the population.