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Comment by genocidicbunny | Hacker News Reader

> And Republicans are scrambling for answers.

Try this one on for size. Your party's regressive policies that resonated with an older crowd that grew fat and rich off the post-war boom in the US is dying, and the younger generations are starting to see right through your bullshit. No real wage growth, no real improvement in quality of life, no real prospects for achieving the same things that your core constituency got. The tricks you've been playing with electoral districts and gerrymandering are not working as well anymore because the deck is so stacked against you. Now you're wondering why you're losing power after courting the chaff of the electorate.

The choice whether to change, or to be annihilated is yours. Frankly, I wouldn't mind you staying the course to your own oblivion.

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Can you please not post like this to HN? We're trying for something quite different here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

> No real wage growth, no real improvement in quality of life, no real prospects for achieving the same things that your core constituency got.

What have the Democrats done on this either? Neither party represents average Americans. The Democrats have just chosen better wedge issues to pull in the youth vote.

EDIT: Oh and one other thing, let's look at some cities that have been run exclusively by Democrats for decades: Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. Where's the real wage growth, real improvements in quality of life, prospects for achieving the same things that your core constituency got? I'd love to hear an actual answer to this, but I'll probably get a bunch of downvotes instead.

My point isn't Democrat bad, it's that Democrat doesn't mean automatically good.

Lovely, whataboutism. We're talking about the GOP here, and what they have done. It's not the democrats asking 'where is our voting base going'.

> Oh and one other thing, let's look at some cities that have been run exclusively by Democrats for decades: Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.

Okay, let's compare and constrast this to some GOP-led major cities then. It's easy enough to go 'oh the democrats ran these cities into the ground' but lets actually have a comparison against cities of a similar size and status led by republicans.

> My point isn't Democrat bad, it's that Democrat doesn't mean automatically good.

It sure seems the GOP these days is trying to make 'republicans bad by default' the case though.

You answered none of my questions.

What have the Democrats done to improve quality is life?

Which of their policies benefit average, everyday Americans?

> Okay, let's compare and constrast this to some GOP-led major cities then. It's easy enough to go 'oh the democrats ran these cities into the ground' but lets actually have a comparison against cities of a similar size and status led by republicans.

Feel free to. I’m personally not aware of any large cities that have been run by Republicans for decades straight that are in similar condition to the 4 I mentioned, so I’d love to learn of them.

Don’t dodge the basic question of what have the Democrats done for everyday quality of life.

> You answered none of my questions.

Your questions are not relevant.

> Feel free to. I’m personally not aware of any large cities that have been run by Republicans for decades straight that are in similar condition to the 4 I mentioned, so I’d love to learn of them.

You're the one making the claims, you're the one that needs to provide the proof for your claims.

> Don’t dodge the basic question of what have the Democrats done for everyday quality of life.

You first.

Why are my questions not relevant?

I’m not saying the Republicans are good on these issues, honestly I don’t think they are. However the burden of proof is on you to tell me how the Democrats have improved the quality of life of average Americans. The fact that you haven’t so far tells me that you probably can’t.

Notice how I never even mentioned democrats until you did. Your questions are irrelevant because I'm not here to do a compare and contrast.

The article we are commenting on is titled "This Is a Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP". The GOP as we all know are the Republicans.

The other major party is the Democrats, so it is natural that they will come into the discussion when you are talking American politics. You yourself said that this was because "No real wage growth, no real improvement in quality of life, no real prospects for achieving the same things that your core constituency got." I disagree with your assessment.

I'll rephrase, how are the Republicans worse than the other major political party (the Democrats) on these issues?

I would like to counter that they are not, and it is instead largely other wedge issues that drive younger voters to the Democrat party. Neither political party acts in the interests of the average American, but I am tired of people mindlessly parroting that the Democrats are somehow better on these issues while providing no evidence of it.

The fact that you have repeatedly refused to answer what should be a simple question is telling.

What other wedge issues would you say don't fall under 'improvement of quality of life'?

In a two party system it is often a “worse of two evils” …

But when you have people like some of the people put forth by the GOP as candidates… it can be hard to avoid a good vs evil comparison… Democrats aren’t automatically good people and a lot of them at various levels of politics are clearly just in it for the money and power… but some of these Republican candidates… I don’t even know how some of them get votes beyond hardcore republican voters who will vote republican because they believe, at a near religious level, that they are a republican voter be it earnest thought, parental indoctrination, or just outright propaganda, but they have been convinced and are now locked in and will remain “republican voters”.

George Washington had it right, political parties weaken the mind and rot society through the slow abrogation of decision making towards deference to a greater party loyalty when the first loyalty of an elected official should be to their office, and the second to those who elected them. He saw it coming and warned against it in his farewell address to congress after just 8 years as President he could see the seeds of what would become modern political polarisation growing…

Edit: I should mention I’m Australian so my perspective is that of studying history and viewing US politics from the outside and seeing how US foreign policy affects my own country.

I agree with you about how awful a two party system is. I sincerely wish that political parties were not a thing in this country and we simply looked at the candidate and their own personal policies and voting track records instead of the letter next to their name on the ballot.

Just to give you a heads up, be careful what news sources you consume regarding American politics. Most of our media is left-biased.

Oh absolutely. It’s a fun detail that unlike a lot of other other governments, political parties aren’t actually codified in the US at the foundational documents level, when you find political parties backed into government somewhere (like bipartisanship mandates in review processes) it’s centuries of the bureaucratic sedimentation where it has built up rules to handle the changing of time and the changing world.

It’s easy to see the biased nature of media when you have a lifetime of exposure and get even a basic level of education on comparing sources and other media literacy techniques. I live in Australia where the newspapers are long known for bias.

A great example of bias at work is media coverage of the WGA (and now SAG, etc) strikes… all the big news organisations CNN, CBS, Fox, etc are owned by the companies the WGA are negotiating against … you’ve got a neat example of how these companies put their spin on an issue outside of the traditional US political fighting and where the left viewpoint/bias of most of them is now at odds with the corporate agenda and how painfully obvious the editorial biases are counter to that.

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