i regret to inform you that the average american voter is a moron and thinks the black female senator from california is a marxist, regardless of any "Sister Souljah moments"
Replies
Margaret Brennan once again accused Democrats of trying to defund the police while interviewing Wes Moore today. This country is drowning in right wing lies
aug 24, 2025, 7:37 pm • 1 0 • view
tbh if this is true it probably would mean that choosing minorities and women as candidates outside of generational talents is a bad idea...
aug 24, 2025, 6:23 pm • 10 0 • view
On the bright side, someone who is the living embodiment of trans Marxism (in the eyes of the median voter) almost won despite horrendous political headwinds and middling political skill.
aug 24, 2025, 10:56 pm • 0 0 • view
One of my (untested) beliefs is that weve advanced enough as a society that being Californian probably hurt Kamala more than being black or a women
aug 24, 2025, 7:13 pm • 10 3 • view
I think you're right. Fairly or not California has a horrible reputation nationally. And while sexism and racism are certainly common, Democrats will have the "stigma", so to speak, of being the "soft on women and minorities party" no matter who they nominate.
aug 24, 2025, 7:42 pm • 4 2 • view
Its so dumb!! California is a place like any other, with its own set of problems stretching back decades. It also has tens of millions of Republican voters! But for some reason it became the Ur-Liberal state, to the extent running someone from New York would probably be better than a California pol
aug 24, 2025, 10:28 pm • 2 1 • view
I've always found this whole pattern profoundly weird because Americans do so much domestic tourism - far more than they do international by a huge percentage. A lot of Dems who demonize Tennessee have had a drunk night in Nashville and Rs who hate NY liberals have been on the subway.
aug 24, 2025, 10:30 pm • 4 1 • view
Oh well. Honestly it's just not worth thinking about it. Either it matters or it doesn't, there's no way to get people to put themselves backwards in line.
aug 24, 2025, 6:37 pm • 5 0 • view
aug 24, 2025, 6:26 pm • 9 0 • view
[this is about severian but i didnt want to interact with that person]
aug 24, 2025, 6:26 pm • 11 0 • view
I think even more, a lot of people looked at the black female senator from California and said “hey that’s Sister Souljah.” There was nothing she could have said to persuade them otherwise. I (still) think and hope that isn’t most people, but it’s a lot.
aug 24, 2025, 6:17 pm • 53 2 • view
I still don’t know what the fuck a “Sister Souljah moment” is
aug 24, 2025, 6:21 pm • 15 0 • view
It’s when a white (centrist, straight, cis, etc) politician scapegoats a representative of a minority group to please pundits who haven’t learned anything new since 1992.
aug 24, 2025, 6:27 pm • 12 0 • view
Comes from Clinton giving a speech to condemn a black rapper who had a bunch of political lyrics but scared white people. It is punching left but specifically at black leftists to make moderate white voters think you aren't controlled by black radicals.
aug 24, 2025, 6:32 pm • 27 1 • view
Wow. Thats fucking craven and stupid.
aug 24, 2025, 6:57 pm • 7 0 • view
It’s both those things, but it was also ineffective: while the polls had already been turning in Clinton’s favor beforehand, pundits embrace a folk narrative that it was the Sister Souljah incident that did it. I think they just like it when politicians push black people around.
aug 24, 2025, 7:09 pm • 1 0 • view
Finding an inflammatory example of something and condemning it to appeal to certain voter segments is a really common strategy. It is why we hear so much about students at Oberlin. The problem is acting like because one guy did it and won that you must do it every election to win.
aug 24, 2025, 7:06 pm • 14 0 • view
We don't hear much scapegoating of the ultra-rich though. Curious, that...
aug 25, 2025, 12:08 am • 0 0 • view
God Im fucking old
aug 24, 2025, 8:21 pm • 1 0 • view
And most voting age ppl weren't voting age (1992) when ot happened, I guess its a more updated reference than Watergate or Bork, but its an artifact from a world b4 even fucking Gingrich, a politics foreign to today
aug 24, 2025, 7:14 pm • 1 0 • view
The other replies are on point, but I think we also have to tie it to policy. Sis. Souljah was basically saying “we need more welfare programs for Black people, and by Black people” in an era when Clinton and co were trying to trim the safety net.
aug 24, 2025, 6:49 pm • 4 0 • view
the Sister Souljah is coming from inside the house
aug 24, 2025, 6:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Also it would have gotten ~0 play in the news
aug 24, 2025, 7:13 pm • 0 0 • view
This also was not the actual context of Clinton's Sister Soulja Moment. Being asked a couple questions about someone saying "it's fine to kill white ppl" and having the opportunity to go "yeah that's bad" is not the same as going up on stage to say "hey some people on the internet sound weird huh"
aug 24, 2025, 6:37 pm • 35 1 • view
If he was so great at triangulation he should have been able to say that Public Enemy is cool as hell despite the fact that their politics don't stand up to close scrutiny.
aug 24, 2025, 7:47 pm • 2 0 • view
Our best strategy is one from 30 years ago, what does that say?
aug 25, 2025, 7:16 am • 0 0 • view
Is your thesis Harris could never have won a presidential? It’s clear there’s some minimum of people who will stick with that preconception, but surely we should expect there to be at least some voters whose perceptions will shift.
aug 24, 2025, 6:41 pm • 4 0 • view
the deck was stacked well against her and i suspect that even in the counterfactual case she did win, her margins would be tight and she would be dealing with a GOP Senate regardless
aug 24, 2025, 6:42 pm • 20 0 • view
Things Dems could have done: Sucked up to RFK Jr. enough to keep him onsides. Appointed someone other than Garland AG. Had Biden resign presidency well before he dropped out of the campaign.
aug 24, 2025, 7:23 pm • 1 0 • view
The campaign was too short for any “sister souljah” moments to be effective, but had she presented herself more moderately in 2019 it’s hard to argue that would have had no effect on her odds. A progressive voting record is not as consequential as branding.
aug 24, 2025, 6:57 pm • 7 0 • view
I think if she presents herself more moderately then it is unlikely that she would have ended up getting the VP spot
aug 24, 2025, 6:59 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m not sure who else could have gotten it. Coalition politics and her voting record still make her the natural choice when you’re running an old white guy at the top of the ticket.
aug 24, 2025, 7:04 pm • 1 0 • view
Yeah I have no clue who else would have made sense but I don’t think the version of Harris that tacks more moderate ends up with a profile that is running for president and getting VP consideration
aug 24, 2025, 7:08 pm • 1 0 • view
She’s accomplished and a black woman going for the presidency. The mood of the moment might have given her even more coverage had she taken a moderate tack when the progressives seemed in ascendancy.
aug 24, 2025, 7:12 pm • 1 0 • view
I think it may of improved her performance in the primary slightly but I think for coalition management purposes it might have taken her off the table as a VP choice. I don’t think Biden performs as well as he did in 2020 if Harris is perceived as more moderate
aug 24, 2025, 7:15 pm • 1 0 • view
The problem is then you wind up with so many confounding variables-the mood of the dem electorate, the real question of what the long-term results of BLM would be, Biden’s own tendency to see her as a threat, the Gaza War…
aug 24, 2025, 7:14 pm • 0 0 • view
well yeah but she was running as a Californian senator in 2019 during Trump I she is going to be well to the left of the average electorate
aug 24, 2025, 6:59 pm • 4 0 • view
I understand why she did what she did, my point is that if she had chosen to make an effort to signal moderation in her self-presentation, that would have been helpful to her chances. It’s not purely her race, gender, or origin, but a choice to tack progressive.
aug 24, 2025, 7:03 pm • 3 0 • view
This is one of those things where I think things get messy
aug 24, 2025, 6:59 pm • 0 0 • view
I think this is also part of why the campaign was timid about some of the policy proposals. I believe they operated the campaign and pitched the presidency as if it was already bound by a Republican controlled senate
aug 24, 2025, 6:46 pm • 10 1 • view
Which was so goddamn stupid. If they had pitched policy proposals and coordinated with the Senate and House candidates then we would have had a Democratic Trifecta again.
aug 24, 2025, 6:50 pm • 2 0 • view
there is a reason that the campaign opted for playing it safe and trying to max out efforts in swing states
aug 24, 2025, 6:46 pm • 8 0 • view
2024 was an anti-incumbent year globally
aug 24, 2025, 9:53 pm • 3 0 • view
The only hope you'd have, if you were an incumbent, would be to run the kind of campaign Mark Carney ran, which implicitly trashed theinlr predecessor…and I'm not sure that would have worked if Trump hadnt shot Canadian Conservatism in the head.
aug 25, 2025, 12:11 am • 4 0 • view
A country that would require Harris to explicitly and without prompting reject language used by a very small percentage of people but make no similar demand of a dude claiming immigrants are eating cats and dogs is cooked.
aug 24, 2025, 6:24 pm • 38 6 • view
The average centrist here seems they're in an unwinnable position where they want to call people fags without being considered a Republican
aug 24, 2025, 6:26 pm • 7 0 • view
once again this person is absolutely convinced that elections are won based on rhetoric instead of retrospective voting
aug 24, 2025, 6:16 pm • 122 3 • view
Also, I think we should blame the people who willingly voted for an avowed sexual predator and fascist
aug 24, 2025, 6:19 pm • 4 0 • view
Looking into the goldfish eyes of the people who googled “did biden drop out” the night of the election and saying “Critical theory! Unhoused people!” to see if they understand words
aug 24, 2025, 6:45 pm • 24 2 • view
"no you see left-punching will somehow convince voters voting on a retrospective economic model to somehow come back into the democratic fold" is a fucking idiotic thing to believe
aug 24, 2025, 6:17 pm • 98 2 • view
So many white Democrats are sure that the path to victory is best begun by yelling at black people.
aug 24, 2025, 6:53 pm • 12 0 • view
I mean a lot of white democrats are racists who want an excuse to yell at nonwhite people
aug 24, 2025, 6:56 pm • 4 0 • view
They're not gonna settle for skim fascism when the Rs are offering full-fat
aug 24, 2025, 6:20 pm • 23 0 • view
And they’ve never understood that.
aug 24, 2025, 7:13 pm • 6 0 • view
I'm glad you found a friend. ❤️
aug 24, 2025, 7:58 pm • 0 0 • view
This is the kind of moron that thinks Republican voters are one never used term away from voting Democrat. Like who is the target group for that hypothetical statement from Harris?
aug 24, 2025, 9:04 pm • 2 0 • view
If Al Gore just said he didn't invent the internet he would've gotten those extra dangling chads
aug 25, 2025, 12:56 am • 0 0 • view
No wonder they have the TERF label lmao
aug 24, 2025, 6:17 pm • 6 0 • view
I see. So you are going to quit trying to win elections. Seems like a bad strategy to me 🤷🏻♂️ But I don’t like MAGA, and while I guess you’re OK with it, I want a better future for my family.
aug 24, 2025, 6:19 pm • 1 0 • view
Why would a politician telling people to stop saying cisgender be effective?
aug 24, 2025, 6:21 pm • 15 0 • view
Because it would satisfy Severian's personal bone to pick against trans people, obviously
aug 24, 2025, 6:30 pm • 12 0 • view
I don't even think it's that. I think left punching has just run its course as a good strategy for democrats. Right now, the left is Bernie Sanders, the most popular national level politician in the country. You punch left and you look like an establishment hack.
aug 24, 2025, 6:44 pm • 5 0 • view