- So, let’s talk about how the vibe is changing, in the United States.
Public outrage does not work anymoreIf you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and very rarely raises his voice
This is super important, and reflects a major change that has happened in the American politics
I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American public space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
The thing I’m missing from the Zohran discourse is that they stay approachable, calm and collected while also discussing issues that voters actually care about. There’s an article I can’t find now about the success of some Italian(?) mayor who won by a landslide against a populist screamatron by simply promising to once and for all fix the trash problems plaguing the city. Outrage has little to say against pragmatism.
I voted for Clinton. I voted for Harris. But I'm Inside Baseball enough that I'll vote for any dipshit that looks like they know what they're doing. I frickin' supported Paul Tsongas in 1992. As a high schooler. I am not the median voter. The median voter is sick of everything being too expensive. The Democrats had 4 years to make things cheaper and they didn't. They can argue "it's complicated" but "complicated" is not a place the median voter goes. Trump promised all this shit "on day one" while the Democrats had to deal with the fact that Biden looked fucking cooked. The Democrats are still deeply involved in their circular firing squad. I'm hoping The Olds get the fuck out of the way in time because fucking hell anybody with an eye and an ear can tell that the gerontocracy is bad for everyone.
https://x.com/zohrankmamdani/status/1857410216733651146 From Ryan Broderick this morning. Mamdani released a video last year right after the election where he went to the New York City neighborhoods that supported President Donald Trump the most. And it’s a fascinating watch because the majority of what Trump supporters said they wanted from Trump are almost verbatim what Mamdani ran on: Lower prices on food and gas, cheaper rent, and an end to the conflict in Gaza.
Now, of course, Trump is a liar and nothing he’s done over the last six months has made life easier for anyone, let alone working class Americans, especially the immigrants in the neighborhoods that Mamdani visited, but Trump’s promise to do something about those issues clearly resonated with people. And it’s, frankly, shocking that it took a leftist candidate this long to capitalize on those false promises. Definitely seems like a better strategy than whatever the heck Project 2029 is.
To be fair to the democrats, they have a "credibility issue" in that Democratic voters will assume Democrats have absolutely no credibility unless they absolutely run the gauntlet on every single fucking wedge issue they believe in. Republicans, on the other hand, are all in on "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats" because Republicans don't give the first fuck. But to be fair to the democrats, they have so much fucking low-hanging fruit it isn't even funny. Fuckin' legalize weed. Fuckin' come up with a pathway to citizenship. Fuckin' act like you're going to do something about global warming. Shit that polls consistently at like seventy, eighty percent approval and they're down here getting dragged about prison sex changes. And I mean look. Every 90 seconds or so, I run a nine minute pride flag at eight feet wide by five feet tall that says "you are safe here." I employ a physician whose specialty is gender-affirming care. We paid extra to have a consultant go through all our documentation and ensure it was gender-neutral. "Birthing person?" Yeah, that's me. No regrets. But I played through this day before yesterday and FFS My kid? She's twelve. One of her good friends went she/her at the age of six. There's a kid in her class that she just learned was born a girl. I'm about this. But she's also got four classmates who have changed their pronouns at least twice in the past eight weeks. One of her friends decided she goes by "all of the above" now so she (she. there's no language construction around "all of the above") can use whatever fucking bathroom she wants. There's a very real need for very real trans people to be accepted so they can live their lives. But for the overwhelming majority of people out there, gender and its recognition has become the flag pin of the left. They don't know, they don't care, but they can beat you over the head with it if you don't thread the needle and that threading the needle has become so fucking empty and performative that I'm getting annoyed with it. I'm coming around to the cynical conclusion that the modern hidebound Democratic party is so heavily focused on cultural bullshit issues because it means they'll never have to actually do anything. Because the last time they did anything it was Obamacare and they got slaughtered. Because it was the only fucking thing they'd done since blocking Robert Bork. PS. How did we go from Parvati Holcomb to this tedious shit in six short years?