Election 2020

[Eric the Green]

(12-20-2020, 02:10 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-20-2020, 08:21 AM)David Horn Wrote: This is a good place to add this.  An Israeli academic from the Mizrahi community has taken-on the task of explaining the entrenched beliefs of that group to the rest of Israel, and why it applies more broadly to other nativist RW movements, like Trumpism.  The language is nearly identical. 

An interesting article, but it leaves out the basic difference between the old world and the new.  The old world mentality will build gas chambers, ship undesirable people off to Siberia, massacre the Armenians, and try to drive Israel into the sea.  We are more rational, enlightened, and benevolent, and only kill or lynch our minorities or renege on treaties one at a time.

The natives of the Middle East are much more into tribal thinking.  The members of other tribes are treated as subhuman.  The ideals of the Enlightenment and WEIRD are rarer, more easily overwhelmed.  Israel was so ready to increase their Jewish population that they neglected to bring in a more liberal immigrant.

The difference is that in the US, WEIRD can beat the tribal in the ballot box.  The difference is that the roundhead culture can overwhelm the cavaliers.

Now most people will see it in other terms.  They understand that the red culture is elitist, sexist and racist, that they will hurt the poor in order that their group will be ‘superior’.  I doubt many see it in terms of each crisis removing the greatest remnant of Agricultural Age thinking.

But the difference and the basic forces involved are being tiptoed around by Professor Mizrachi.

Seems right, but I remember the Israelis were more liberal just 20-30 years ago. Their voting habits have hardened and moved to the right. They are getting more tribal instead of less. Much like in the USA, except our popular vote is moving in the other direction. But in the electoral college, Biden actually won by a narrower total vote margin in 3 states than Trump did in 2016; about 42,000 as opposed to 77,000 in 2016. On that basis, maybe I can understand Trump's unwillingness to admit reality. It was not as close as in 2000, or perhaps even 1960, but it was close.

The red/blue split is increasing in the USA, the margins of victory on one side or the other in each state are increasing, but the reds have a bigger and bigger advantage in the EC and the senate, and still in the House too because of gerrymandering. If it weren't for those conditions, the Democrats would have had a better result up and down the ballot in 2020.

If Harris is nominated in 2024, the Democrats WILL lose. Probably Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Trump again, or his daughter, and Spencer Cox if he gets a national profile, are the repug's best hopes in 2024. But, it is very hard now for the Republicans to win the popular vote. Harris would probably win it, and lose the EC. A strong Democrat can win though, in spite of what the popular vote indicator on my system might say. You all know the candidates I recommend. They are all still the same, and none of them include the 2019-2020 primary candidates, except Biden if he runs again-- although at age 81 it would be hard to do.