Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Winning

I think we’re looking at two different mindsets. Political strategist looks at winning elections. Then you have democrats like Pramila Jayapal who’s more than willing to lose elections if it means getting a piece of legislation passed.

“Jayapal was asked early Friday ahead of an expected vote on the legislation if it's worth the party passing the legislation if it could help the GOP take back the House next year, just as Republicans did in 2010 following passage of the Affordable Care Act.

“Of course, it's worth it if we're making people's lives better,” Jayapal said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/...ng-spending-plan-even-if-dems-lose-house

There’s a downside to this type of thinking and an upside. The ACA was passed, which promptly made Obama a lame duck president for his last six years. He was unable to accomplish anything else outside of the use of executive orders. Who knows what would have happened if Obama and the Democrats back off the ACA then, perhaps more legislation passed on other things like immigration reform, campaign finance reform, a host of other things that never happened due to losing the House in 2010. The upside is the ACA is still with us. The ACA being saved by the filibuster during Trump’s first year when the GOP controlled congress. It was one shot and done.

In early 2010 the Democrats had every reason to believe they would retain control of congress. So why not pass the ACA. The 63-seat loss in the house was totally unexpected and unseen during the first 3 or so months of 2010. Today is different, whether the BBB is passed or not, if the present trend continues along with inflation, the Democrats will lose the house next year. Perhaps Jayapal is correct. If you’re going to lose the next election anyway, you might as well pass it. I don’t think the fate of the BBB will have any effect at all on next years midterms.

Jayapal mindset is different from mine or any political strategist who places winning elections as the top priority.

So who exactly are these "Dems" you talk about?

Registered Democratic voters?

Democratic elected officials at all levels?

Neither of these groups functions as any sort of organism or with any organization.

Or are you talking about the somewhat nefarious Democratic Party in and of itself?

They just passed what will probably be Biden's signature legislation, possibly his only legislation. Don't expect much more action out of the Dems for a while.

The Jan 6 Commission is kicking ass and taking names, they'll be able to roll out a TON of anti-trump propaganda for the midterms and I look for it to work just like it did in Virginia.

It is scary to see what you describe as a resurgence of the primitive simplistic Know Nothing Party. Once again, if voters are too stupid, ignorant, or apathetic to understand about the cause of the inflation, which is mostly from the intentional incompetence and willful malevolence of Rump and almost total cowardice and conspiracy of the GOP in dealing with Covid for political gain, then the country is doomed. I would be mortified, humiliated, embareaased and or apoplectic to chose to be identified as an "independent" let alone defend them or worse advocate that their positions are rational or intellectually honest.
Since the civil war, I doubt if there has been a more obvious, to even the most casual observer, distinction between the two major political parties in terms of good vs evil, right vs wrong, honest vs dishonest, honorable vs dishonorable, and democratic vs authoritarian. Your frequent assertion that "independents" find both parties equally "disgusting" , a term used frequently by GOP because it seems effective, show that there is a dyed in the wool position of independents that cannot be changed by obvious facts. If so , they should change their name from independents to something more appropriately descriptive for the party. We could take a poll for statistics.

It reminds me of the joke about someone being chided by their parent or boss: Are you ignorant or just apathetic? Response: I dont know, and I dont care!

TAT

Actually independents aren't politically ignorant. They just don't buy the bullsh*t being sold as beefsteak by both parties.

Of course, there must be a classification for anyone who would vote for Trump, or 'Trumpism'. They may not be buying the beefsteak of either party, but must be buying the boolshit of King Kon instead?

I would rather have well composted dem manure than a Trumpsteak even after 2 weeks of sous vide at 190. Dems havent conspired to try to kill me, my kids, or grandkids, or the general public for political gains, the GOP particularly in Florida have. Seems like an obvious false equivalence to me. I'm ambivalent on encouraging anti-vaxers to die, but on the other hand it could be in the greater evolutionary good, but I remain skeptical that this is DeSantis' motivation to improve the GOP gene cesspool.

TAT

If one looks at questions 89A and 89B You’ll see only 23% of independents have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, 67% unfavorable. This is combining the very and somewhat favorable and unfavorable. The Republican Party is view favorably by 22% of independents, unfavorably by 68%.

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/anoy7rtkl2/econTabReport.pdf

I would say equally disgusting is a fact and not just something the GOP made up. You’ll find in poll after poll the numbers remain within 5 points up or down on independents view of the two major parties at least going back to 2006. Perhaps the reason they’re independents is they don’t view the world, the world of politics through deep red or blue colored glasses. I would add, most independents don’t trust either party, they don’t trust their elected officials. They’re tired of being lied to and being led around like some puppy on a leash.

Isn’t ironic that it’s the democrats pushing harder and harder to get more of these non-interested in politics folks, these ignorant’s to get out and vote. For some reason Democrats have come to believe that a high voter turnout helps their party which is totally B.S.

Trump was a passing fancy and will soon be gone from the picture entirely.

Unless Biden screws the pooch so thoroughly that even another Trump term looks better than more of Biden building back better...

Here’s the current favorable/unfavorable ratings from RCP of our current political leaders which Trump is included.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/other/FavorabilityRatingsPoliticalLeaders.html

Trump and Biden are just about as even as they can get in their favorable/unfavorable ratings. I’d add a caveat here. Trump is gone, ancient history and as such he probably looks better today than he did when he was president. Biden is president now, he’s the present. Trump is nothing more than an alternative, a bygone alternative. Not an alternative for today. If Trump were to challenge Biden today, it wouldn’t be long before people would remember why they disliked him so much last year. The reasons are for now forgotten. It’s may be a case of I remember 2 dollar a gallon gas vs. 3.50 a gallon today. I think given a week or two of Trump being center stage, on the boob tube constantly, his favorable’s would fall and his unfavorable’s rise. That’s the way these things work. Biden would once again look like an adult, Trump like the four-year-old spoiled brat when memories return to full bloom.

Don’t underestimate the economy or as I like to say the price of a gallon of gas in determining an election. Neither Trump nor Biden are on the ballot next year. Right now, if this continues since the price of a gallon of gas, (inflation) is viewed as this nation’s number one problem, all other issues are way down on the list. I’d say this, the price of a gallon of gas will determine the fate of the midterm elections. Everything else is secondary. At least as of tonight.

disgusting

Actually, the "disgusting" pejorative designation seems to be hard wired in conservatives, so favoring "disgusting" over the less evocative "unfavorable" suggests that disgusting users are likely to be hard wired conservatives.
Ya just can't fool the functional MRIs.

TAT


Ever wonder why someone becomes a Republican? Hint: it's disgusting.
Seriously, Science?By Seriously ScienceNov 4, 2014 12:00 PM

Previous studies have hinted that our political views may stem from unconscious responses we have to intense stimuli, like disgusting pictures. To directly test this hypothesis, these scientists scanned people's brains while showing them regular or disgusting images (be sure to check out the horrifying list below...if you dare). It turns out that the brain's response to disgusting images could accurately predict whether a person is liberal or conservative. But, even more surprisingly, the subjects' voiced opinions about the images did *not* correlate with their ideologies, suggesting that this response is hard-wired and not under our conscious control. Perhaps we are all robots after all...

Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology "Political ideologies summarize dimensions of life that define how a person organizes their public and private behavior, including their attitudes associated with sex, family, education, and personal autonomy. Despite the abstract nature of such sensibilities, fundamental features of political ideology have been found to be deeply connected to basic biological mechanisms that may serve to defend against environmental challenges like contamination and physical threat.
These results invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated food or physical threats) should be highly predictive of abstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion). We applied a machine-learning method to fMRI data to test the hypotheses that brain responses to emotionally evocative images predict individual scores on a standard political ideology assay.

Disgusting images, especially those related to animal-reminder disgust (e.g., mutilated body), generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even though these neural predictors do not agree with participants’ conscious rating of the stimuli. Images from other affective categories do not support such predictions. Remarkably, brain responses to a single disgusting stimulus were sufficient to make accurate predictions about an individual subject’s political ideology. These results provide strong support for the idea that fundamental neural processing differences that emerge under the challenge of emotionally evocative stimuli may serve to structure political beliefs in ways formerly unappreciated." Bonus excerpt from Appendix S1: