[B]y picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved, and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong… The politics of cultural resentment, the obsessions of white anxiety, are so intense that his voters are determined not only to preserve minority rule but to leave a dangerous sociopath in the Oval Office. Even the candidacy of a man who was both a political centrist and a decent human being could not overcome this sullen commitment to authoritarianism.
November 5th, 2020 at 2:38PM
They voted for Trump, who is lazy, to keep Democrats who are not lazy out of power. In the world of negative partisanship, keeping the others out of power has become the most important.
November 5th, 2020 at 8:37PM
superdestroyer: This may be one important motivation – total hatred of government in any form.
November 6th, 2020 at 2:15AM
Tulsi Gabbard said a few years ago the DNC has to be cleansed, or eliminated, if the Democratic Party has any chance of surviving. As a Dem for nearly all my adult life, I have to agree. As Chris Hedges points out time and again, the DNC abandoned workers, the poor, the environment, the elderly, so as to be more suitable supplicant for donor money. The result is a updated version of Tammany Hall overseeing the majority political party. Progressives can no longer blame DJT for DJTing the nation. Build a better party to get better candidates…
November 6th, 2020 at 11:44AM
UD, have you considered that it’s not so much total hatred of government as it is frustration with what High Modern Authoritarianism has made of government? People treated as so many hamsters to be nudged with a regulation here, a favorable tax, there, or as collectivities with ascriptive categories, such as “the” Latinos or “the” LGBTQ+, rather than as individuals receptive to more or less of the bundle the political class is offering? While that political class keeps bidding up house prices in Bethesda.
Charlie’s advice applies to both parties. I heard at least one Republican court intellectual musing about having to be more competitive in New England, and the infighting in the Dem’s House caucus is spec-tac-u-lar!
Time to head outside and enjoy the early fall weather.
November 6th, 2020 at 12:49PM
Here in the North West, Repug campaign tactics depicted Dems as the party of socialist communists that don’t believe in guns or god. Ads for the Repug challenger of the long time Oregon senator carried images of hysterical AOC and Bernie, as if these two were KGB agents, inciting Antifa to burn down orphanages. This was the kind of idiocy seen during the 50’s Cold War hysteria. If, in fact, Repugs increase their Congressional tally, and maintain the WH, I doubt we’ll see an emergence of a Repug intellect. As John Candy said in “Splash” “I stick with what works.”