politics

Good piece, thanks for posting it. This part really struck home.

One of the mistakes a lot of political people make is that voters have rational and reasoned choices about which party they support; if you vote for a Far Right party you must love Far Right policies.

That’s not true.

Most decisions are vibe-based. We have enough data to show that the lowest of low information voters who are behind Reform have zero idea of the party’s policies. In fact, many of Reform’s aims are in direct opposition to what those voters want.

While they can be considered Far Right on some fronts — massively racist, “hanging’s too good for ‘em” — in other areas they have what would be classed as socialist beliefs. Tax the wealthy till the pips squeak. Invest in public services.

They’re better characterised as Smash the System voters. It’s not working for us how it used to - I’ll vote for anyone who looks like they’re going to upend the status quo.

That bitterness at losing their place in society has made them easy prey to those who promise the clock can be turned back to the days when they were on top. Right now those disillusioned voters feel they’re in an existential fight and they’ll take the support of anyone who says they will break the new way of operating. Trump. Farage. Le Pen and Bardella. Weidel.

I live in rural America. Trump and the right have a lot of vocal support in my area. But when I talk to people, leaving out names of politicians and parties, and just talk to them about specific policies, a huge fraction support policies that, if supported by a republican politician, would get that politician primaried so fast their heads would spin.

This article rings true to me in that all most rural voters know is that the system doesn't work for them anymore, so they will support anyone who claims to want to break the current system and restore it to what used to work for their grandparents.

This does ring true. And the right has been systematically attacking public education for decades, with considerable success. They have created the constituency they knew they would need to do what they actually want to do. The worst of it is that there's nothing we can do about it, in the short term. Education operates on a generational time scale. We desperately need to fix this, but even if we had the political power to do that, which we currently do not, it would be at least twenty years before it could begin to affect things.

I think we are nearing the point where even the far-right base is realizing that what's being done is making things worse for the, not better. We may get a window of opportunity to start fixing things. When and if we do, progressives need to be decisive and daring. Big changes need to be made and made quickly.

The Democratic party, as it currently stands, is not going to do what is needed. It needs to be reformed or replaced if we're going to make this work. The best of the alternatives would be the return of something like the Great Depression.

I don't think the system we have will allow the practical creation of a new party, but I have begun to wonder if we can't get away with bypassing the Democratic "leadership". If we get progressive candidates through the primaries as Democrats, and support them directly with funding and volunteers, we can get them elected.

It’s an education thing.

Wealth inequality causes the vast majority of economic and societal issues.