I frankly think that while Bernie should be right, he’s not. His strategy would have also failed, though I’d rather that have been the attempt.
Simple fact of the matter is that out of 10 major countries with elections this year, all the incumbents lost. Didn’t matter whether they were left or right or whatever, they lost. Democrats were doomed by being the incumbents at a time when just so many are unhappy with how things currently are, and people are eager to change everything for a shot. Between having the pandemic become endemic everywhere, economies struggling to digest the massive COVID stimulus, supply chains still off due to both recovering from shutdowns and war, and just the overall situation in Ukraine and Gaza, there’s a lot for people to want a change of course, and they don’t know specifically how this all could get fixed.
Even if they went all-in on more leftist policies, most voters won’t see beyond the ‘D’ and know ‘D’ is what we had today, therefore ‘R’ must be attached to the answer. A critical mass of the electorate either can not or will not critically consider the respective platforms and instead just decide based on ‘keep the same’ or ‘change course’.
Meanwhile, in political circles, everyone is talking like the specifics and strategies made this huge difference or that huge difference and what it means, when the fact is likely that this result was pretty much a given no matter what.
I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but this makes a lot of sense. Especially in a 2-party system the election is inevitably going to be a vibe check on the status quo as much as it is a specific election focusing on specific candidates and policies. I’d like to look more closely at the margins to get a feel for whether the Republicans could have run a ham sandwich and still been successful as opposed to the specific appeal of Trumpism.
Not that that changes how rough the next 4 years are going to get for a lot of people.
I frankly think that while Bernie should be right, he’s not. His strategy would have also failed, though I’d rather that have been the attempt.
Simple fact of the matter is that out of 10 major countries with elections this year, all the incumbents lost. Didn’t matter whether they were left or right or whatever, they lost. Democrats were doomed by being the incumbents at a time when just so many are unhappy with how things currently are, and people are eager to change everything for a shot. Between having the pandemic become endemic everywhere, economies struggling to digest the massive COVID stimulus, supply chains still off due to both recovering from shutdowns and war, and just the overall situation in Ukraine and Gaza, there’s a lot for people to want a change of course, and they don’t know specifically how this all could get fixed.
Even if they went all-in on more leftist policies, most voters won’t see beyond the ‘D’ and know ‘D’ is what we had today, therefore ‘R’ must be attached to the answer. A critical mass of the electorate either can not or will not critically consider the respective platforms and instead just decide based on ‘keep the same’ or ‘change course’.
Meanwhile, in political circles, everyone is talking like the specifics and strategies made this huge difference or that huge difference and what it means, when the fact is likely that this result was pretty much a given no matter what.
I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but this makes a lot of sense. Especially in a 2-party system the election is inevitably going to be a vibe check on the status quo as much as it is a specific election focusing on specific candidates and policies. I’d like to look more closely at the margins to get a feel for whether the Republicans could have run a ham sandwich and still been successful as opposed to the specific appeal of Trumpism.
Not that that changes how rough the next 4 years are going to get for a lot of people.