not_IOfunny voting
DagwoodIIIBack in 1980, a lot of people didn’t want to vote for Carter because he wasn’t progressive enough on South Africa.
TheTechnician27Slapping a big ol’ “citation needed” on that simultaneously hyperspecific (“Carter’s foreign policy toward South Africa”, barely a footnote) and weasel-wordy (“a lot of people didn’t want to vote”) claim. Like, are you talking about Namibian independence? Apartheid? The arms embargo? Turnout was 54.2%, down only 0.9% from 1976.
How many American voters in 1980 not only took foreign policy toward South Africa into account, not only were hesitant or unwilling to vote because of it, but were hesitant or unwilling in the face of Carter’s opponent Ronald Reagan?
I’m not saying you’re making shit up. I’m saying that “a lot” has to be doing some enormous lifting – to a point where this alleged contingent of voters would’ve been functionally inconsequential even in a hypothetical 1980 election that Reagan didn’t win by a landside.
Liberals generally reacted to Jimmy Carter’s stance on South Africa with disappointment and frustration, finding that his administration’s practical policies did not match its strong anti-apartheid rhetoric. While praising his human rights-centered approach and his moral opposition to apartheid, many liberal activists, African American leaders, and progressive Democrats criticized his reluctance to implement severe economic sanctions, preferring “constructive engagement” to promote gradual change.
From Google, so probably not 100% accurate, but this seems about right.
I won’t use the term “far-left”, but there is and has always been an outspoken, powerful minority among progressives that makes a LOT of noise about not compromising. At all. On any issue. The right suffers this phenomenon, too, but right-leaning voters don’t seem to split their votes quite as noticeably as the left.
It was easy to lose faith in Carter, though, because his presidency was plagued at every turn. The energy crisis was frustrating to many Americans, as was the insane inflation. Carter had a tiger by the tail from Day One in office, and he never got it under control.
So you just asked Gemini, provided no actual, auditable source, and apparently expect anyone here to take that as anything but a joke.
If you’re too lazy to find a source, then why are you even participating? If I wanted an LLM to crank out a hallucination for me, I could do that on my own.
Um, no. I expected that one of two things would happen:
A knowledge expert would come by and offer more detail and/or correction
Nobody would care
Apparently, I should have prepared myself to be publicly shamed for trying to add to the conversation. Perhaps you missed the part where I said “…but this seems about right”, and then offered my own analysis. As I offered my personal thought about the presidental administratin that I fucking lived through, of articles I read in real time from a newspaper that was dropped at my door every fucking morning. You want me to source the Kansas City Star from 1976 -1980? Or my civics class in high school?
To you, Carter is ancient history. To me, he is a vivid living memory. I lived through his administration; I remember his policies.
Setting aside how embarrassing this whole LLM thing is:
You want me to source the Kansas City Star from 1976 -1980?
That’s 100% possible these days. I can’t find jack shit to support the original statement after about 20 minutes of reading, and I don’t know how you propose there’s going to be anything but circumstantial evidence at best, but I guess it’s better than copy–pasted bullshit from an LLM followed by “that sounds right in my anecdotal opinion”.
Specifically, The Kansas City Star from 1976 to 1980 – the only thing you’ve cited that actually approximates a traceable source but that you apparently thought (practicably) wasn’t – seems to have zero evidence that Carter’s foreign policy on South Africa was even remotely controversial enough (let alone specifically not progressive enough) to have any meaningful impact on votes.
Articles on the subject are sparse – mainly the Associated Press who report South Africa’s situation and sometimes (usually minimally) cover Carter’s involvement. The opinions that do exist are basically neutral on Carter’s involvement (and even if they weren’t, we loop back to circumstantial evidence). Even looking specifically around the time of the election returns nothing. Having looked through several dozen articles across those four years, this is all routine coverage of international geopolitics. It’s not even close.
Maybe you’re misremembering. Maybe you thought I’d have to go spelunking through microfilm in a Kansas City library to call you on this. I’m assuming the former. Either way, I appreciate something tangible regardless of intent, even if it’s wrong.
Yeah…I forgot what the original statement was. But I just spent the last hour in an internet rabbit hole, reading about Carter’s administration. Was fun, love ya, thanks for coming to the show.
I’ll try to do better next time.