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Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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