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Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.

> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did

I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.

I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.

These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.

Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?

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A problem many people have with Democrats is they think that they're condescending, smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.

Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.

There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.

Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.

In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.

> Democrats [are] condescending, smug assholes...going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests,

Totally. No one likes an asshole. But assholes can be right. What's a kinder label than "misinformed" for someone who rejects the truth because of its source?

There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others. People vote based on if their life is getting better or worse and who seems most focused on changing that if it's getting worse.

> There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others

This is easily disprovable. People care about gas prices. They were unhappy with gas prices under Biden and said so loudly. They voted for the candidate that increased them even more.

Reason: ignorance and misinformation.

Outcome: voting against one's own declared interests.

I'm not denying preferences exist. But preferences are shaped by lies. They easily lead to outcomes contrary to those preferences.

What you're saying is just factually incorrect. They had a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency. Prices went up much faster and more painfully under Biden than under Trump.

So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.

Turns out things didn't happen that way but that's a different criticism. You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.

> So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.

So they made the ignorant choice at choosing the candidate who teed up the highly inflationary environment and enacted policies which driectly drove the inflation. Like, the $450B in cash handouts and the near trillion dollars in forgiven PPP loans with zero enforcement. Loans which his family directly abused.

> You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.

No, I'd expect people to not make stupid choices. Anyone actually paying attention would understand Trump is bad for the economy long term. But here we are.

Wars and pandemics that begin on the other side of the world cause inflation.

When "smug asshole Democrats" explained why this wasn't Biden's fault, given that it happened on the other side of the world, they got called "smug assholes".

Enacting tariffs and waging war also causes inflation. Tariffs were a campaign promise - zero omniscience required.

And gas wasn't this expensive in 2022. So you're wrong about that.

> There's no truths or untruths here.

"They're eating the cats and dogs!"

There are. There's a subset of Republican voters who absolutely believe that in Democrat states you can:

- get an abortion up to one month after delivery

- get gender reassignment surgery coordinated at your school without parental awareness or consent.

"There's no truths or untruths here". There absolutely fucking are. And then people like you are acting like we're the ones contributing to it, "Well, have you considered why they might think that way?"

You're not asking them "Have you considered how what you're saying is utterly disconnected from any reality whatsoever?"

Why not?

> smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.

Trump literally said he could say the stupidest things to his supporters and they'll still cheer. Trump is a smug asshole who thinks he's better than his supporters, talks down to them, lies to their faces over and over, and knows they'll support him because they literally see him as God's anointed one.

Now do the other guys. That's the problem here. We have two competing elitist political parties. They unite on their agreement that capital should rule everything and everyone, and disagree on a bunch of other stuff.

Tell me again about how this applies to a candidate showdown like James Talarico versus Ken Paxton.

> There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests.

This is truly as nonsensical opinion as people always choose healthy choices. People can absolutely make self destructive choices. A smoker choosing to smoke isn't making a good choice, but to you they couldn't possibly choose something against their interests. It would be in their interests to stop smoking, but they're unable or unwilling to make that decision.

You're almost there.

Now see if you can figure out why self-destructive choices can be rational at times?

Can you formulate a hypothetical where smoking is a rational decision? I can.

> self-destructive choices can be rational at times

It's not a rational choice. It's choosing to make the irrational choice.

A drug addict choosing to shoot up isn't making the rational choice. It's a choice we can examine on why they made that choice, but it wasn't reason that drove them to make that choice.

Thinking Trump is the anointed one isn't a rational decision. Voting for Trump to get rid of corruption isn't a rational choice. Voting for a rapist in the middle of a big pedophile ring isn't the rational choice at fighting the pedophiles.

Is it irrational to smoke cigarettes if you're in a concentration camp?

Is it irrational to take out yourself as well as your enemies if you have no realistic prospects for improving your situation but you do have the ability to hurt people who hurt you?

> Is it irrational to smoke cigarettes if you're in a concentration camp?

Yes, I'd agree it's irrational to willfully give yourself a chemical addiction in a place where you are already have enough stressors and it'll be hard for you to continue to feed that addiction once started. It's probably a terrible choice to start an addition in a concentration camp. I can understand why people would choose it, and I don't fault them for making such a decision in such a bad place, but it's definitely not the rational choice.

Have you ever really been at any kind of rock bottom? Or known people who have been around situations like that? Just purely from a self-improvement standpoint, you should try to open your mind to what that might be like and how people make decisions in those kinds of situations.

Yes, I've been homeless, in debt, with only a minimum wage job.

Just purely from a self-improvement standpoint, you should try and not assume you know everything about someone through a short conversation.

I'm not passing off a moral judgement over someone choosing to smoke in a concentration camp. I don't fault someone making that choice. There's a good chance I might make the same. That doesn't make it a rational choice.

The largest problem with America is a strong culture of believing that my ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge.

This is because 35% of the country identifies as rejecting all science and asserting the belief that the earth is 6000 years old because they explicitly believe a "plain reading" of the bible trumps all

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credits-god-hum...

This statistic is at a historic low

The believe that the earth is 6000 years old or "Young", a belief that is explicitly taught in hundreds of private schools funded through school voucher programs that only hand little timmy very special textbooks that assert that scientists are evil and trying to keep them from gods light.

This belief requires you to not learn how science works. It requires you to reject empiricism entirely. It requires you to believe that science in general is an evil cabal directly in league with satan to make you stop believing in god. It requires you to believe that democrats are in league with these satanists to "brainwash" your good little god fearing kid in school, so you should put him in a private school where he won't be brainwashed because instead he will be taught the truth of god, which is to just do whatever the Pastor and his leaders say, and don't think.

How would you describe a belief that says that technology and technology companies will improve people's quality of life and that the people who run them should be given more power and authority within our culture as a result?

If this was why you voted for Trump you once again failed to pay attention. If anything this administration is down to let billionaires and their tech corporations do whatever they want to do, far more than the administration actually starting to make regulations and antitrust proceedings.

Yet another example of "voting against your interests" due to massive amounts of ignorance.

Trump owns a social media company. The leaders of the other big social media companies backed his run to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.

There's no scenario where I'm voting for Trump. I'm a lifelong progressive and I've been involved in Democratic Party politics for about 30 years. Worked on my first campaign in the early '90s.

So you can dispense with that assumption. Hopefully you can pick up on the point I was making, which is that there are a lot of irrational belief systems in politics. You can find them everywhere.

What I dislike is this tendency among overeducated elite, nominally Democratic Party-type commentators to focus on this meta discussion: Why are they stupid? Why are they misinformed? What bots are influencing them?

How about we just focus on the merits? What exactly is your favorite politician proposing to do? Do they have a conception and understanding of how power works and will they use it to achieve goals of any kind? Can we evaluate them on those goals? The last time your team got a chance, what did they do with it? Can people trust you? Who do you serve and who do you fight?

If the answer to that last question is that you serve Wall Street corporate interests and Silicon Valley and you fight against labor and wage earners then you're not on my team either.

We don't talk about the merits because the merits are clearly not running the show as far as voter decisions. It's all emotion, mostly loyalty and fear. (Using "we" very broadly, since I'm nowhere near being nominally Democrat.)

We could go on and on about the merits of voting for Kamala or Biden in that election, but ultimately it didn't matter because tons of people think voting for a Democrat is a vote for post-birth abortion, forced gender reassignment surgeries, migrants coming to murder you and eat your pets, allowing transgender people to sexually assualt your wife and daughter in public bathrooms, forcing Sharia law on everyone, and force injecting people with dangerous vaccines which are more likely to kill you than the disease they're protecting against.

How do you engage with the many, many millions of Americans which believe these things? You think they give a damn about how some infrastructure bill finally started the planning on replacing that bridge in town that they don't even realize is about to collapse when their pastor says voting against Trump is sentencing you to hell? These same voters that can't put 2 and 2 together and realize the reason why the only hospital nearby closed finally because their state refused Medicaid expansion so long ago.

What's the way you suggest we connect with these topics? What's the right give-and-take here? How do you come to a middle ground when they're off in adrenochrome-fueled lala land?

But hey, according to you, I guess they're acting rationally, and there are no truths or untruths.

People are refusing to vote for Talarico because they know he's a transgender vegan who will outlaw meat in Texas and force your kids to be gay. You think people who think these things will be swayed by another vote for Medicare for All or eliminating the tax cap on Social Security or paid family leave? Nah, he's unelectable because he suggested maybe God doesn't have a penis, as we know for sure God the Father is definitely a dude even though somehow women were also made in the image of God. They can't vote for Talarico because he's against God...as opposed to the guy who's defrauded his friends, practices extreme corruption, got impeached by his own party, and flies around the world with his mistress to party with fugitives illegally supporting him in a Muslim country while costing the public tons of money.

> We could go on and on about the merits of voting for Kamala or Biden in that election, but ultimately it didn't matter

Pretty sure it matters. In fact, I think the merits of the people that you run for president are super insanely unbelievably important. The idea that there's any other way to look at this is completely baffling to me. The fact that Biden was essentially incoherent and Kamala did not appear to have a discernible idea of why she was running in the first place mattered a ton, as did the fact that Kamala was literally selected by an opaque committee process with no voter input whatsoever.

They matter a lot. Try it the other way and run a candidate that has a clear and articulable vision for how people's lives will get better if they're elected, and then starts to act on that vision as soon as they're elected effectively. See what happens. It'll be different. It's happening in New York City right now, if you want one example. When people try this approach instead, the distinction is really easy to see. As is the suddenly vicious opposition from the establishment Democratic Party that's behind these people you're talking about

> People are refusing to vote for Talarico because... Nah, he's unelectable...

This election hasn't happened yet. Once it happens, that will be a better time to explain why he did or didn't win.

I still think that your understanding of the reasoning of the people who don't like him is flawed. The reason people oppose him and don't want to vote for him is because they don't think he's like them and or has their interests in mind. They think he cares about other things and other people besides them and the things that they care about. Conversely, the people that will vote for him will have been convinced that he does care about the things that they care about and will help people like them. Because that's pretty much always how it works.

Have you ever talked to a single person who has the views that you think they have? Or is your opinion of these "people" with these crazy views something that was served up to you by a company run by Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison?

> Have you ever talked to a single person who has the views that you think they have?

Yes. Constantly. Every single day of my life. I've told you that several times now. They're my neighbors. They're my relatives. They're the people who used to be my friends at church. They're my kids classmates parents. They're the people I talk to waiting for the train. They're my barber. They're the person sitting next to me at the bar. Most people I've talked to who support Paxton do so for one or more of the above reasons. The few who aren't like that support him because they're worried about their taxes going up, because their personal financial situation is above all else in their lives. If you truly think these people are rare, you're burying your head deep, deep in the sand.

I've rarely heard any other reasons other than the above as to why vote Paxton over Talarico. These are the arguments I hear in person, on the fliers stuck to my door, and on the TV all the time. And you're failing to give anything different here. You're absolutely right "they don't think he's like them" in that they think he's going to force your kids to be trans and allow for entirely open borders.

If these kinds of lies weren't effective, why would the GOP put so much stock into them? Why would they go on the debate stage and say immigrants are eating your cats and dogs? The answer: because it works. People I talk to in person still routinely think Haitian migrants are likely to eat your pets.

To give you an idea about how much this idea of "Democrats are coming to make your kids trans", it seems some Republican group likely funded a flier here in Texas portraying themselves as a trans youth organization suggesting kids emancipate themselves.

If this isn't really a worry of GOP voters, why would Republican campaign groups go so far as to fraudulently represent themselves to make such fears seem so salient to their voters?

Due to voting histories I'm on a lot of GOP mailing lists. Other friends aren't. I received the mailer, they didn't. I've heard the same thing widely.

Clearly they see this as a sticking point to try and drive more GOP votes.

It is very easy, remove all hospitals, power plants, etc from red states. Wait a few months. We will see what their opinion is on technology and its relation to quality of life.

What about when what someone cares about and votes based on turns out to not even exist?

There was a lot of campaigning in 2024 based on completely made up claims. Many voters voted based on that, even though they thought the other candidate was better on other issues they cared about.

That only works to a point.

I, and the other poster, are beyond that point. I've actually had it said that it's our fault (liberals) that things are like this, because we are refusing to engage and that we "owe" conservatives the opportunity to listen and understand their argument.

That we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!". Apparently you can take your baby home, come back a month later, and say "Nah, changed my mind on this one", who knew?), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.

That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".

The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.

So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".

"Maybe I need to put more effort into why they think or feel that way?" That won't work, because I'll be the only one doing so. You'll note that it's never framed as a matter "maybe they should think about why people think what they're saying sounds absolutely ridiculous". There's no effort on critical reasoning or discourse that will work there, because it's not grounded in reason in the first place. And when that comes up, crickets. But no, "keep going high", keep working on empathy for people who actively celebrate LE shooting people, and for a President that will say from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, quote, "My kids are insider trading all the time".

This sounds like a conversation about something other than politics.

Do the candidates you support have any kind of track record of making people's lives better, helping average regular everyday working people live lives of dignity where they can afford to live in places and raise their families?

Or do they have a long track record of doing the opposite, favoring the interests of war overseas and corporate hegemony at home?

Those are political questions.

What?

How is "does your candidate favor a corporate hegemony?" a political question, but "does your candidate favor allowing abortion?" not? Politics is the methodology by which we organize a society, which includes legality, morality, and ethics.

I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals. For one, I am unable to vote in US elections. And for two, the candidates I would support would be far left of today's Democratic Party, and I would vote for that Party only if/because the realistic alternative candidates were ... as abhorrent as they currently are.

A candidate favoring or opposing government restrictions on abortion is most certainly a political question. A voter having delusional opinions (or claiming to) is something else.

> I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals.

Yeah, of course I do. The fact that Democratic politicians have failed to improve the lives of regular people and aren't really trying to is pretty fucking relevant to why they lose to obviously corrupt opponents.

Which seems important if your goal involves acquiring and wielding political power instead of lamenting all the idiots out there in internet posts.

You're acting like it's only some small fringe of voters which believe these things. It's not.

Nearly 1/3 of the country think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

Most people I've personally talked to about voting for the MAGA candidate have said one or more of these things. The others are usually wealthy people happy for their tax cuts. As mentioned earlier, I've had close friends and relatives refuse to associate with me because I've voted D a few times in my life and obviously do the work of Satan. This isn't some fringe rare thing, if it was would most TV ads I see against Talarico appeal to these fears? If this was truly some fringe why would the President constantly hammer these points?

The answer is, it's not rare. This is the new base of the GOP. The same people who knew Obama was a Muslim from Kenya.

Let's say these people really are some statistically irrelevant percentage of the population. Let's say it really is just that normal, sane, middle class Joe's are truly the people the D's need to target more. How on earth are the R's the better choice for them? This is the party which cuts their healthcare, works to defund their public education, cutting access to college, is even more in bed with corporate interests, is even more obviously corrupt, and overall has had power more and delivered less for the common person. How does it make sense to vote that way?

For a real concrete and recent example, can you explain the voting base for Paxton versus Talarico? Why would that average Joe voter support Paxton over Talarico?

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