Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 14 2021 11:10pm)

Republican != conservative.
Also, polls show that faithfulness to the Trump agenda ranks even higher on the list than fealty to Trump the person.

Many people who voted to impeach Trump are not getting purged or even attacked all that much, for example John Katko of New York or David Valadao of California. Why? Well, unlike the Kinzingers and Cheney's of the world, they are not running around on CNN or MSNBC all the time attacking their fellow Republicans. Despite their impeachment vote and their evident distance from Trump, they are team players for Team Red. Cheney et al., the ones who are getting purged and receive all the scorn from the base, are not.







Those structural advantages will keep Republicans the dominant party throughout the decade as long as they get their fucking shit together (and run neither Trump himself nor a Romney or Cheney clone in 2024), and competitive until well into the 2030s. You also imho underestimate by how much even a small shift of latinos toward Republicans would push back the "demographic doomsday clock". And that has to be expected since at least a portion of latinos are bound to go the way of other ethnic groups before them, like the Irish or Italians, and become "white" in a political sense.

Regarding the popular vote: 1. Republicans did not have a really great presidential candidate in a single cycle over said 30 years. Democrats had not one but two generational political talents in Clinton and Obama. 2. Democrats winning the popular vote is kinda easy when they reap the benefits of decades of illegal immigration. (Yes, due to birthright citizenship, illegal immigration will eventually yield additional votes for Democrats.)



I agree with you, however, that the GOP really needs to come up with ideas of their own and will eventually doom themselves if they don't have any platform or ideas to stand for.

Quote (thundercock @ 15 Oct 2021 09:10)

Sure, they aren't equal but given the levels of polarization that we face, you're either a Republican or an "independent" who just happens to vote Republican every time.

Of the 10 people who voted to impeach Trump, I imagine that 8 won't be there in the next Congress. Let me ask you this, what did Anthony Gonzalez do to deserve death threats? How often was he in the media? At the end of the day, the people who voted to impeach Trump are going to face really tough primaries, including the people you mentioned. If that's not a purge, I don't know what is.

Quote

2030s? Who the fuck knows what the world is going to look like in 5 years, never mind 10-15 years! At the current rate though, the GOP is purging more and more educated people and picking up more and more uneducated blacks and Hispanics. The fact that education is now the best indicator of political party is frightening.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 15 2021 12:33am)

To be fair, I don't know the specifics of the Gonzalez case. I might be a politico with a weird interest in American politics, but I'm out of my depth on that one.

Didn't he vote in favor of Pelosi's kangaroo court Jan 6th commission?
Anyway, death threats are of course a no-go.



Why is educational polarization frightening?

Also, I wonder to which extent education is genuinely the cause/driver of political identity here, and to which extent it's just a proxy for "class". If what we're actually seeing is polarization by class, I don't see why that should be surprising (or frightening). Thinking about it, it would make a ton of sense for class divides to manifest themselves via differing social norms, cultural values or preferences along the globalist/nationalist axis in a wealthy, post-industrial society.

Quote (thundercock @ 15 Oct 2021 09:51)

Only two Republicans voted for the Select Committee: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021197
As an outsider looking in, you don't actually interact with people and you just read about us. People like Ghot, TiStuff, Endless, etc. are the bread and butter of the Republican party.

Educational polarization is frightening because if the uneducated win, then we can't compete with our adversaries. While idiotic Americans are trying to figure out complex problems, countries like Russia, China, etc. are running laps around us. I understand that you love having people who never passed algebra design your cars, airplanes, etc. but it really isn't a good way to do things.

No, it's not a good proxy for class because you can be wealthy and uneducated (i.e. you own your own contracting business) or poor and educated (someone with a PhD in molecular biology). The owner of the contracting business is going to love Trump and the other uneducated (who may or may not be poor) while the biochemist is going to surround themselves with lawyers, doctors, etc. America was founded by elites and will always be run by elites. The uneducated are just too stupid to realize that.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 15 2021 10:16am)

You're being melodramatic. According to exit polls, white college men were the most closely divided demo in 2020, Trump (sic) won them 50-48. Even among white college women, a group that conventional wisdom views as staunchly liberal and anti-Trump, he still got 44% of the vote according to these exit polls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#Exit_polling


So no, hillbillies and rednecks are not the only only ones voting for Republicans in sizeable numbers. To your broader point: the party representing working-class people running the country does not mean that smart people have no say whatsoever in how things are handled, how cars are designed etc. In earlier times, when much less people had a college degree (say during the days of FDR or so), the coalitions of the parties were even more skewed toward the uneducated and still able to run the country well and achieve technological and social progress. You're making it seem as if we're straight on our way to "Idiocracy" if the party with the less educateted coalition wins elections. :rolleyes:

Now, if a party actively promotes an anti-science culture, that is a problem - but that's an argument against being anti-science rather than being against educational polarization or pro-elitism. ;)

Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ 15 Oct 2021 11:41)

wow, i was not aware of these numbers tbh

you could have asked me and i would have probably said 70+ for biden among white college women

Quote (thundercock @ 15 Oct 2021 03:51)

Only two Republicans voted for the Select Committee: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021197
As an outsider looking in, you don't actually interact with people and you just read about us. People like Ghot, TiStuff, Endless, etc. are the bread and butter of the Republican party.

Educational polarization is frightening because if the uneducated win, then we can't compete with our adversaries. While idiotic Americans are trying to figure out complex problems, countries like Russia, China, etc. are running laps around us. I understand that you love having people who never passed algebra design your cars, airplanes, etc. but it really isn't a good way to do things.

No, it's not a good proxy for class because you can be wealthy and uneducated (i.e. you own your own contracting business) or poor and educated (someone with a PhD in molecular biology). The owner of the contracting business is going to love Trump and the other uneducated (who may or may not be poor) while the biochemist is going to surround themselves with lawyers, doctors, etc. America was founded by elites and will always be run by elites. The uneducated are just too stupid to realize that.

Quote (excellence @ 16 Oct 2021 01:49)

the so-called “educated” voted for the current admin, which has an executive who has been a punching bag/blank check for our adversaries for decades.

for example: this admin made it a priority to cancel pipelines and oil production here, and then begged opec + russia to “sell more oil for cheaper” all within the span of 9 months.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ 15 Oct 2021 21:57)

Also, can we talk about how Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has been on paternity leave since mid-August (sic!) while the nation crumbles under huge supply chain and transportation issues? Three months of paternity leave is ample to begin with and it's not like he or his husband gave birth and need time to recover from the wounds. And a cabinet post is too important and high-ranking to take extended time off for any reason during a crisis...