Can progressives learn anything from Republicans?

[Fireball]

I'm inclined to worry more about things like PPP GDP per capita and debt to GDP ratios than any bubble in nominal GDP.  The fact is that Trump has mortgaged our future to big corporations and a massive debt, as well as pissing away money on military spending.  What does GDP growth matter when real wages are stagnant?  And while it's not particularly telling, China has now eclipsed the U.S. in GDP PPP per capita.

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I'm unable to find a source for the "2.5% GDP is no longer attainable" quote.  Would you mind providing a source for these quotes, Neo?

Wear gloves when you get that quote. You know where he pulled it from.

[Pat Mustard]

Republicans/conservatism are most popular in highly rural states. The electoral college is a fact of our politics, it has to be taken into account. The concentration of liberals in urban areas makes them more vulnerable to being disenfranchised by gerrymandering.

If Democrats want to swing highly rural states their way, they will need to appeal to rural and small town Americans. And rural and small town Americans don't have to deal with diversity very much, compared to people in urban areas. They are unlikely to diversity issues as relevant to their lives, because many of them can go weeks without ever seeing a member of another race. It doesn't matter as much if your nearest neighbor wants to shoot their gun in their back yard if they live a mile away from you; and you know that if someone tries to break into your house, the deputies can't possibly be expected to get there in time to protect you.

I grew up mostly in small towns and, for a couple of years once, on a farm. I now prefer to live near a convenient city, because I like things like libraries, more than one movie theater, and being close to the central bureaucracy of my state. But in rural Illinois, you can be looked down of for raising a crop that isn't corn. It's a different world, and I still remember my first HS Freshman school assembly when I realized there was not one black kid in the entire school.

Democrats have winning issues in rural America, if they're willing to frame their message in a way that targets their particular concerns. That means a strong economic message. Preserving coal jobs is a fantasy, the percentage of businesses that are started outside of metro areas was around 20% 40 years ago, compared to 12% these days. Change has not been good to rural areas in recent decades. Some of the counties the Dems lost in 2016 had upwards of 40% unemployment and mortality rates shocking in a developed country. There is a price to be paid for addressing the concerns of rural and small town working class whites. They may be a minority, but they're a large one, and they are the majority in many states. 220 counties flipped from Obama to Trump. It's worth some effort, IMHO, to try to flip them back, and gain some, instead of trying to milk more votes out of the 'urbs' and suburbs.

I don't know what the exact message should be. Something that helps farmers and small businesses (the main businesses in small towns). I'm not an economist or a sociologist, but I think there's a segment of farmers and small business owners that see big, arguably nearly if not actually monopolistic businesses like Monsanto and other big agro-corps and the literal handful of companies that control the meat-packing industry as unfair competition.

They won't vote Dem if the Dems don't offer them anything that will make their lives appreciably better.

Problem is Dems do offer rural white males a lot. They are just blind to who's actually got their backs.

The only lesson the Dems can learn from the republitraitors is how to steal the right to vote from 10million citizens and get away with it. If ten million white low education men found their votes removed from them, you'd find the mechanisms of voting taken out of political party control quicker than you could say "states' rights". And then, maybe you would see a US subject to democratically elected governments.

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Alt-Rightistan.

It is not clear whether Wooster is the dumb moron at the receiving end of the right wing con, or the useful enthusiastic idiot who imagines there is something in it for him to help perpetuate the con.  But the con itself and its origins is familiar:  never allow the gullible moron to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

It is also not surprising the chip off the old trumpster, the most unabashed practitioner of this con in American politics yet, should suggest it is his parent baboon’s enemies who are like the Nazis.

I would kindly ask that you desist in conflating chadwooters with Bertram Wooster. Uou dishonour that great fictional character's good name, sir.

[Anomalocaris]

It is not clear whether Wooster is the dumb moron at the receiving end of the right wing con, or the useful enthusiastic idiot who imagines there is something in it for him to help perpetuate the con.  But the con itself and its origins is familiar:  never allow the gullible moron to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

It is also not surprising the chip off the old trumpster, the most unabashed practitioner of this con in American politics yet, should suggest it is his parent baboon’s enemies who are like the Nazis.

I would kindly ask that you desist in conflating chadwooters with Bertram Wooster.  Uou dishonour that great fictional character's good name, sir.

My apologies to his man Jeeves.