The New York Times - They're even more evil now

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid?

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid?

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

so that's it huh? After thousands of posts of mine here, your conclusion is that I'm solely driven by disagreement?

your reading skills need some work.

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid? [emphasis added]

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

DB Question:  why are they so stupid?

Question to DB:  who is "they" in the above question?

RFA_Q1.:  Do you think your question has any bias built-in?

RFA_Q2.:  Do you think this type of question solves any problems, or issues?

RFA_Q3.:  Do you think this type of question helps to stereotype coastal elites?

Food for thought excerpt from October 31, 2016 New Yorker article by Caleb Crain:

"It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians [emphasis added]. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn’t have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea 'useless.'”

URL:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

mjc said:

This is a group i'm very interested in, so will read the article. 

At a guess:  In 2008, Obama was "Hope and Change," right?  And a lot of people really needed those, after a few decades of voodoo economics.  But then over the course of Obama's 8 years, for starters: (1) the wing nuts got hold of his "difference," and (2) there were predictable problems getting Obamacare started.  (Any big new program is going to need tweaks, and iirc he no longer had the congressional majorities, and of course the GQP has been the Party of No for ages.)  So then along comes Trump, who promises the best health care plan ever, and speaks in terms "they" can understand, and with the simplicity and repetition of a polished con, about how "they" have been disregarded and disrespected by the "elites" (and reading this thread, you can see he/they have a point there), and he's going to fix all that (never mind that he has no ideas, just promises).  And bingo.  Now to go actually read the article and see if any of this is true...

eta: Not to lump all BHO-->TFG voters together.  The above is just one path that seems plausible to me.

eta: So okay, having read the article, i see that it's looking at the present situation while my response is about past actions.  Oops. But i'll let my response stand, because i do think these are people the D's need to understand and appeal to (these are Obama voters, so not unreachable), for the sake of winning in 2022/24, and for the sake of the country.

if you can some up with a campaign that both appeals to these stupidos and also to the other millions that you really need, you deserve a prize.

I say it's impossible. They are not reachable in any way. They are wild cards. Random noise in the electorate.

drummerboy said:

what can possibly be enlightening about the opinions of these voters, except to let us know what kind of stupidity exists within the electorate?

these people are not understandable. There is no logic or reason to their beliefs. They are not reachable by political campaigns. Their voting decisions are essentially random.

The only thing that might possibly be useful to know is how many of them there are. But a piece like this doesn't tell us that.

A: What makes them so disaffected.

In a word, that’s what they are, and if you’re disaffected the irrational act would be to keep voting the same way and expect a different outcome. (There are a lot of “yeah, buts” in response, as there are for almost any voter, but that’s the root of the logic as I see it.)

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid?

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

so that's it huh? After thousands of posts of mine here, your conclusion is that I'm solely driven by disagreement?

your reading skills need some work.

Well, I think calling a group of I voters "America's stupidest" is a provocative assertion that begs an explanation as to why you believe they are all mentally deficient. But all you provided was some weird if/then clause based on my follow-up question -- a follow-up question that in actuality has zero relevance to your initial statement.

So your non-answer leaves me with the most likely explanation.

RealityForAll said:

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid? [emphasis added]

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

DB Question:  why are they so stupid?

Question to DB:  who is "they" in the above question?

RFA_Q1.:  Do you think your question has any bias built-in?

RFA_Q2.:  Do you think this type of question solves any problems, or issues?

RFA_Q3.:  Do you think this type of question helps to stereotype coastal elites?

Food for thought excerpt from October 31, 2016 New Yorker article by Caleb Crain:

"It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians [emphasis added]. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn’t have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea 'useless.'”

URL:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

Just wondering, do you write footnotes or endnotes or compile appendices for a living?  Or is formatting text just a hobby of yours? 

Smedley said:

RealityForAll said:

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid? [emphasis added]

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

DB Question:  why are they so stupid?

Question to DB:  who is "they" in the above question?

RFA_Q1.:  Do you think your question has any bias built-in?

RFA_Q2.:  Do you think this type of question solves any problems, or issues?

RFA_Q3.:  Do you think this type of question helps to stereotype coastal elites?

Food for thought excerpt from October 31, 2016 New Yorker article by Caleb Crain:

"It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians [emphasis added]. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn’t have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea 'useless.'”

URL:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

Just wondering, do you write footnotes or endnotes or compile appendices for a living?  Or is formatting text just a hobby of yours? 

Fair questions.  Before I retired, yes to Q1.  Q2 response:  not a hobby.  Rather, my humble attempt at clarity.

Smedley said:

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

You seem to be intolerant of drummerboy's views.

DaveSchmidt said:

nohero said:

How much do you value the opinion of someone who decided they could vote for Obama, and then vote for Trump?

As much as I value a window on anything I don’t understand.

STANV said:

Are we to be "tolerant" of every point of view?

Before I decide not to tolerate something, I like to understand it. If you already understand these voters (or don’t find interviews like this one enlightening), then that Opinion piece isn’t for you.

Not a bad rule but there are certainly exceptions. I do not need to understand anti-semitism to not tolerate it. I might want to understand it to combat it. The same is true for Al Queda, QAnon, racism. 

I have very little understanding of COVID 19 but I do not think I should "tolerate" it

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid?

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

and be careful - you're starting to sound like mt.

As do you when you refer to Cooperman.

I didn't read the NYT article closely, but what I gleaned is that particular group of 14 people seems pretty convinced the country is going to hell.  They may not be ill-informed as much as they are probably consuming news that treats issues superficially and sensationally.  They sound like they consume a lot of right-wing media. (One guy is actually blaming Democrats for trying to weaken democracy!). Frankly, it seems like the votes they cast for Obama were out of character given the way they view the world.

I don't think Democrats should concern themselves with trying to reach people like this.  The only solution would be to get them to consume other kinds of news.  Because no matter what message the Democrats try to put out to them, the news they watch is going to tell them something else.

RealityForAll said:

"It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians [emphasis added]. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn’t have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea 'useless.'”

URL:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

Thanks for providing the footnote to my post. I left it implicit, but of course it is precisely in opposition to any kind of epistocracy that I wrote. Rather the worrying about making sure more decisions are good decisions (an impossible task, to my mind), better to ensure that the are more decisions.

I suppose that the truly implied position I'm making is that if we push for a system that's essentially regression to mean, I'm arguing that the "mean" is a better outcome for more people than other systems would give us.

Dennis_Seelbach said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid?

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

and be careful - you're starting to sound like mt.

As do you when you refer to Cooperman.

well, that's due an explanation.

how do I sound like mt?

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

Why are they so stupid? Because their views don't match yours?

I love the smell of intolerance in the morning. 

why are they so stupid?

If you have to ask that, I can't explain it.

Or more likely, the answer is "because their views don't match yours", but you won't admit it. 

so that's it huh? After thousands of posts of mine here, your conclusion is that I'm solely driven by disagreement?

your reading skills need some work.

Well, I think calling a group of I voters "America's stupidest" is a provocative assertion that begs an explanation as to why you believe they are all mentally deficient. But all you provided was some weird if/then clause based on my follow-up question -- a follow-up question that in actuality has zero relevance to your initial statement.

So your non-answer leaves me with the most likely explanation.

apparently you missed my post where I explain my thoughts on the stupidest.

not sure why it's provocative. Some group of voters has to be the stupidest, right? I'm just offering my pick.

you're welcome to offer an alternative.

ml1 said:

I don't think Democrats should concern themselves with trying to reach people like this.  

Democrats shouldn't concern themselves with reaching independent voters? That is an interesting and contrarian viewpoint. How do they win the electoral vote in '24?  

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

I don't think Democrats should concern themselves with trying to reach people like this.  

Democrats shouldn't concern themselves with reaching independent voters? That is an interesting and contrarian viewpoint. How do they win the electoral vote in '24?  

that's what you think these people are? "independent" voters?

LOL

the independent voter notion is one of the most damaging parts of our political discourse. calling them independent mostly just elevates ignorance. they're not independent. they mostly just have no clue as to why they cast their votes the way they do. yet we pretend they're independent - that they make sound, objective choices not based on party affiliation.

but I guess we mustn't offend them by telling the truth.

drummerboy said:

yet we pretend they're independent - that they make sound, objective choices not based on party affiliation.

Sound and objective aside, how do you figure "people who had voted at least once for President Barack Obama and at least once for President Donald Trump" based their choices on party affiliation?

Here’s the part you left out of his post. And no… they’re not Independent voters.

I didn't read the NYT article closely, but what I gleaned is that particular group of 14 people seems pretty convinced the country is going to hell. They may not be ill-informed as much as they are probably consuming news that treats issues superficially and sensationally. They sound like they consume a lot of right-wing media. (One guy is actually blaming Democratsfor trying to weaken democracy!). Frankly, it seems like the votes they cast for Obama were out of character given the way they view the world.

Smedley said:

Democrats shouldn't concern themselves with reaching independent voters? That is an interesting and contrarian viewpoint. How do they win the electoral vote in '24?  

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

I don't think Democrats should concern themselves with trying to reach people like this.  

Democrats shouldn't concern themselves with reaching independent voters? That is an interesting and contrarian viewpoint. How do they win the electoral vote in '24?  

they don't appear to be independent voters.  And I don't suspect they swing back and forth every four years.  They seem like Democrats who turned into Republicans between 2008 and 2016.  They may not be insane enough to be Jan 6 people, but they are Fox News type conservatives.

That said, they're 14 people recruited by Frank Luntz.  So they may in fact be representative of nothing more than themselves.

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

I don't think Democrats should concern themselves with trying to reach people like this.  

Democrats shouldn't concern themselves with reaching independent voters? That is an interesting and contrarian viewpoint. How do they win the electoral vote in '24?  

that's what you think these people are? "independent" voters?

LOL

the independent voter notion is one of the most damaging parts of our political discourse. calling them independent mostly just elevates ignorance. they're not independent. they mostly just have no clue as to why they cast their votes the way they do. yet we pretend they're independent - that they make sound, objective choices not based on party affiliation.

but I guess we mustn't offend them by telling the truth.

This is ridic. I’m an independent voter, which simply means I’m neither a registered Republican nor registered Democrat. I vote for who I think is the best candidate and whose beliefs align closest to my own. It doesn’t mean I’m a better or smarter voter vs a loyal D or R. Doesn’t mean my choices are more sound or more objective than yours, or MT’s. It’s just what works for me. (And also apparently a good portion of the electorate - the portion that just happens to decide most national elections.)

Your rants are just downright weird TBH. “Calling them independent mostly just elevates ignorance”. Huh? WTH does that even mean. And indie voters “mostly just have no clue as to why they cast their votes.” Uh, okaaaaay.

But w/e, you do you. 

I was an independent voter until 2016. Well, more accurately, I was not registered with a party until 2016; my voting record was pretty much exactly what you'd predict based on my demographic and zip codes.

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

yet we pretend they're independent - that they make sound, objective choices not based on party affiliation.

Sound and objective aside, how do you figure "people who had voted at least once for President Barack Obama and at least once for President Donald Trump" based their choices on party affiliation?

er, what?

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

I don't think Democrats should concern themselves with trying to reach people like this.  

Democrats shouldn't concern themselves with reaching independent voters? That is an interesting and contrarian viewpoint. How do they win the electoral vote in '24?  

that's what you think these people are? "independent" voters?

LOL

the independent voter notion is one of the most damaging parts of our political discourse. calling them independent mostly just elevates ignorance. they're not independent. they mostly just have no clue as to why they cast their votes the way they do. yet we pretend they're independent - that they make sound, objective choices not based on party affiliation.

but I guess we mustn't offend them by telling the truth.

This is ridic. I’m an independent voter, which simply means I’m neither a registered Republican nor registered Democrat. I vote for who I think is the best candidate and whose beliefs align closest to my own. It doesn’t mean I’m a better or smarter voter vs a loyal D or R. Doesn’t mean my choices are more sound or more objective than yours, or MT’s. It’s just what works for me. (And also apparently a good portion of the electorate - the portion that just happens to decide most national elections.)

Your rants are just downright weird TBH. “Calling them independent mostly just elevates ignorance”. Huh? WTH does that even mean. And indie voters “mostly just have no clue as to why they cast their votes.” Uh, okaaaaay.

But w/e, you do you. 

oy.

when the media talks about the "independent" vote, they're not referring to people who are not enrolled in a party, they're referring to swing voters.

Most people who are registered independents actually follow a party line, at least when voting for President. They are not swing voters.

More importantly, this group of swing voters includes large numbers of people who can't decide who to vote for until well into the campaign season.

Sorry, but if it takes you more than a nano-second to decide whether to vote for Trump or Biden, you're an idiot.

drummerboy said:

er, what?

You say we only pretend that these voters don't base their choices on party affiliation. How do you figure the voters in the Times focus group -- "people who had voted at least once for President Barack Obama and at least once for President Donald Trump" -- based their choices on party affiliation?

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

er, what?

You say we only pretend that these voters don't base their choices on party affiliation. How do you figure the voters in the Times focus group -- "people who had voted at least once for President Barack Obama and at least once for President Donald Trump" -- based their choices on party affiliation?

no, I don't think I said that. 

Did I?

That's certainly not what I think.

drummerboy said:

no, I don't think I said that. 

Did I?

That's certainly not what I think.

Thanks. I’m still confused, but not enough to pursue a cure further.

yet we pretend they're independent - that they make sound, objective choices not based on party affiliation.

I'm dividing independent voters into 2 groups. The larger group, about 80% according to this Pew poll, align themselves with a party. You'd be hard pressed to find any Obama/Trump voters among them, I think.

I'm talking about the other 20%, or some portion thereof, who might call themselves independent, but are merely befuddled.

I don't know this as a fact. But I suspect a lot of "independent" voters are conservatives who are embarrassed to admit they actually lean toward the party of Trump. 

ml1 said:

I don't know this as a fact. But I suspect a lot of "independent" voters are conservatives who are embarrassed to admit they actually lean toward the party of Trump. 

Yup.