Reginald Fairfield
Senior Member
I would be nice if large youtube people on a downward mental spiral kept their shirts on.
I agree with you that there was more than one factor—Harris trying to win over conservative voters was probably a lost cause and I’m sure it contributed to the millions of liberal voters who simply didn’t show up. But pretending like racism and misogyny aren’t influential factors in our political system seems pretty disingenuous to me. (Notice how you refer to them as Kamala, Hillary, and Biden? Not blaming you—but that’s how a lot of the coverage has sounded.)Kamala didn't lose because she's a woman, she lost because she fumbled a bag handed to her on a silver platter.
Soon after announcing her campaign she immediately expressed wanting to strengthen the military even more, having Trump-like stances on the border and immigrants, and their biggest detriment - doubling down on her support of Israel. She had it all when Biden dropped out, which people were practically begging for, but like always the Democrats never learn and chose to try to appeal to the right & center republican vote instead of securing the left vote. It's the 2016 election all over again; people didn't dislike Hillary due to being a woman, they disliked her because she's incompetent.
Edit because I hit enter sooner than I meant to; We can't rely on politicians to change our lives, we need to rely on each other. Look toward your community and organizers who are providing resources to make a difference. Instead of pointing fingers at each other, which is exactly what those in power want, start pointing upward at the system that enables this to happen in the first place.
i agree with you on bigotry having a strong hold on young men, especially with rightwing ideals being pushed by social media (elon's twitter being a huge example of this). racism, misogyny, and other types of bigotry are always going to influence politics. but people who voted trump definitely weren't thinking of voting democrat before going "wait that's a woman! i'm gonna hard pivot to the right".I agree with you that there was more than one factor—Harris trying to win over conservative voters was probably a lost cause and I’m sure it contributed to the millions of liberal voters who simply didn’t show up. But pretending like racism and misogyny aren’t influential factors in our political system seems pretty disingenuous to me. (Notice how you refer to them as Kamala, Hillary, and Biden? Not blaming you—but that’s how a lot of the coverage has sounded.)
My goal is not to point fingers at other people with relatively little power, but until we acknowledge that racism and sexism still have strong footholds in the U.S. (Gen Z voters, in exit polls, voted most similarly to the 65+ crowd and on average express far more hostile views toward women than voters aged 27-64) we will not be able to address those things. I do actually think that the white male power base in my country benefits from the insistence that sexism had nothing to do with two women losing to Trump while a white man solidly beat him in between. Meanwhile prominent politicians are going public to say that their wives would NEVER dare to vote in a way they don’t approve of, and that telling women their vote is their own is “repugnant.” I believe that “those in power” want us to turn a blind eye to continuing prejudice. I don’t think ignoring the contributing factor of oppression will stick it to the man somehow.
I respect your opinion and your presence here on TBT, and I’m only replying because you quoted me directly.
i agree with you on bigotry having a strong hold on young men, especially with rightwing ideals being pushed by social media (elon's twitter being a huge example of this). racism, misogyny, and other types of bigotry are always going to influence politics. but people who voted trump definitely weren't thinking of voting democrat before going "wait that's a woman! i'm gonna hard pivot to the right".
are many voters poisoned by misogyny? absolutely. but saying kamala lost because she's a woman is disingenuous because these people wouldn't have voted blue regardless of who was running. she pretty much ran on "i'm not gonna be much different than biden, but at least i'm not donald trump!" which is just not enough especially after blue voters made it clear they didn't want another joe, they wanted someone to do things differently.
biden had a lot of things going better when he was running too - he had the overall reputation of being obama's VP, where hillary's reputation is covered in scandal and kamala's just sleepy joe's supercop VP who did nothing while the country crumbled under him - which included roe v wade being overturned and tens of anti-trans/anti-lgbt bills popping up around the country. dems were also mailing out ballots in 2020 which influenced more votes, meanwhile we're seeing a lot of voter suppression this time such as absentee voters being straight up denied. there's corruption happening here plain as day. yes misogyny contributes to election results, it always does to some extent with abortion always being a major issue. but there's way more to it than that and imo pinning her loss down to "because she's a woman" ignores all the other factors and ignores her major flaws, whether intentional or not
also don't know what you mean by the name thing hence i didn't respond to it
I don't think only staunch trump voters have bigotry in them, trust me, i dislike the "blue no matter who" crowd as well and think everyone whose favourite political party is part of their personality needs a reality check. even leftist men have a misogyny problem. i think we're agreeing on most things while just disagreeing on why kamala flopped so hard and semantics - imo saying "she lost because she's a woman/person of colour" waives democrats of their own responsibility and absolves them of accountability. you aren't doing this personally because you're actually engaging in discussion, but it can be dangerous to put it all on The Other Guys.Thank you for the respectful reply - I know this election was really intense for a lot of reasons and I sincerely appreciate being able to go back and forth with someone about it without overt hostility.
And yes, I absolutely don't think that Trump's adherents were going to swing to Harris somehow. (Like I said, I agree with you that she should have taken more hardline progressive stances to win more votes instead of trying to reassure anxious conservative voters, since that train had already left the station by the time she knew she was running.) However, I don't think it's accurate to say that only staunch Trump voters are influenced by racism and sexism. I don't think liberal/progressive voters are free of those biases either and I definitely think that they influenced the rapid willingness that so many democrats showed to say "well, wait a minute--does the Vice President of the US REALLY have any experience, though?"
I also do think that more moderate voters still exist; for example, my parents were generally Republican while I was growing up, but have never voted for Trump because he's just way too off the rails for them. And I think that people like that, who are really uncomfortable with his rhetoric but also don't consider themselves loyal Democrats, are subconsciously influenced by our widespread cultural fear of what will happen if a woman is in a position of power. It also provides an additional justification for those who calm their voting anxiety by simply not voting.
At the end of the day, though, neither of us can prove our opinions. You can't prove that none of the stay-out-of-it voters would have otherwise voted for Biden or another white male candidate, and I can't prove that a large number of those voters were influenced by the prejudices they hold. We're both just analyzing the current political climate, and there's probably truth to both stances. I'm sure there is a strong contingent of voters, especially young voters, who would have protested Biden by refusing to vote for him a second time, I just don't think I'm convinced that those people swung the election. But yeah, many intersecting factors--the situation with the mail-in ballots is absolutely alarming and I'm sure Harris is missing many legitimate votes, though perhaps not enough votes to actually have a majority. I also genuinely suspect online election interference since we've already seen it in previous elections--online accounts posing as progressives insisting that young people should refrain from voting for Harris because she'll [X] or doesn't care enough about [Y], even when Trump would be proudly, unequivocally worse for human rights on those issues. I'm sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes that neither you nor I have any way of seeing.
(The name thing is that it's extremely common for journalists and political commentators to refer to female candidates by their first names while using last names for all male candidates, which is a subtle way of making the female candidates seem less formal/serious/professional and very much bleeds into public vernacular. Hillary is the most excusable imo, since we had another recent Clinton president, but it's an overarching trend and once I noticed it, I saw it everywhere.)
Anyway, thanks again for the back and forth! I don't want to derail this whole thread, so I'm going to stop with the election posts now, but feel free to reply if you want.
Yeah, I've just been trying to avoid the election stuff on here mostly besides occasionally reacting to a couple posts. It hasn't even been over a day and I think I'm already burnt out on seeing this stuff. Not trying to say people shouldn't be able to talk about it even on here because it's important to talk about, but it's already gotten to the point seeing anything related to the election is very exhausting to me.I am sick of people talking about this ****ing event, I'm too young to vote and I know my partner says I shouldn't worry about it, but it's ALL OVER THE ****ING PLACE (EVEN AT ****ING CLASS) and it makes me want to jump off a cliff. Please, I wanna go back home...
Okay wee update.Found more blood on my white kitten's chest today. These wounds are new and much worse than before (initial was surface level) - I believe they are self-inflicted from the pattern they form and the fact he keeps scratching.
I've made him an appointment with the vet for 6:30PM tomorrow night. It'll be a tight turnaround as I also have a vaccine appointment at 4:40PM. Wish I could have gotten him seen tonight - it'll be a long 24hrs. Work will drag tomorrow.
I won't show the wounds of course, but here is a photo of him cuddled up with me from 20 mins ago after I got him cleaned up:
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