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Comment by gremIin | Hacker News Reader

It's the southern strategy at work. It's not about what is true or what is morally right. It's about not letting *the other team* get any wins. This is why they needed to pretend COVID wasn't a big deal, because otherwise you are admitting that *the other team* was right.

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That’s not what the southern strategy was. It was a cynical ploy by Republicans to court racist Democratic voters in the south who were unhappy with the civil rights bill. It worked and they switched to the Republican party, which realigned the ideological tilt of American politics.

Not letting the other team get any wins will be known as The McConnell Strategy in the history books, as he has practiced a policy of complete obstruction while in the senate.

> Not letting the other team get any wins will be known as The McConnell Strategy in the history books...

Absolutely right. He is Lucy with the football to the Democrats' Charlie Brown.

And he's just so damn good at it too.

That's not completely true. For example, the rationale behind the war on drugs (Nixon era and revived by Reagan, long before McConnell) was not about truth or moral virtue.

That appears to be everyone's strategy.

Trump had a win on getting covid vaccines made

And another one on setting a timeline for getting out of Afghanistan

His administration wasn't very good at running a government, but they still had a couple wins

Afghanistan is more complex, but I agree about the vaccines. But interestingly he can’t capitalize on it, because his fans are so locked into the anti-vax stance. He got booed by his own fans at a rally when he said he was vaccinated!

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