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On A More Constructive Note Moving Forward...
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2022 Nov 9, 11:07am 209 views 0 comments
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From: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/you-cant-beat-something-with-nothing
it’s far less about “candidate” than about “team and about tribe” and to move people off their spot requires vast impetus.
you are not asking them to pick you.
you are asking them to change families.
f you do not vote for your tribe, the other tribe will eat you.
tribal leaders ensure tribal loyalty by being always at war.
it’s not dissimilar to prison gangs. “join the donks or the phants will shank you in the shower.” nobody is safe alone. and it persists because it works. (well, for them it works; for you, not so much…)
this makes change exceedingly difficult.
no one defects from corrupt to corrupt or venal to venal.
that takes inspiration, not a sense that no matter what you do, the boulder is going to roll over you.
and so long as voters perceive the trade off to look like this, you aren’t going to get any.
if you do not vote for your tribe, the other tribe will eat you.
tribal leaders ensure tribal loyalty by being always at war.
it’s not dissimilar to prison gangs. “join the donks or the phants will shank you in the shower.” nobody is safe alone. and it persists because it works. (well, for them it works; for you, not so much…)
this makes change exceedingly difficult.
no one defects from corrupt to corrupt or venal to venal.
that takes inspiration, not a sense that no matter what you do, the boulder is going to roll over you.
and so long as voters perceive the trade off to look like this, you aren’t going to get any.
with a few notable exceptions (like ron desantis or rand paul or kari lake) the GOP did not really stand for much in any high profile or cohesive sense. they did not state as a simple positive “this is who we are, this is what we will stand for, and this is what we will do.”
they ran as hecklers. biden bad. world bad. economy bad. inflation bad. and that cannot really take you very far.
they ran on vagaries and vague promises rooted in ideals but lacking in substance and substantive plans.
they sounded like the vacuous politicians that so many of them were.
this is not how you flip a straight ticket from one team to another.
this is how you lock them in place.
changing teams requires a reason to join the new team.
and that was mostly absent.
there was no solution.
there was no dream into which to buy.
there was oz and walker blowing easy pick ups (though the latter may get a run off) in an environment where 75% of the country thinks it’s going in the wrong direction.
just agreeing with voters that “this is not going well” will not make them follow a candidate, much less leave their political family for a new one.
voters desperately wanted to get on board with a plan. but there was no plan.
there was the party of mitch fricking mcconnell who is about as inspiring as a bag of wet paper towels and vague hand waving from leadership.
my advice to team elephant is simple:
blaming "the system" or "mail in" misses the point.
people voted for courage, vision, and character.
go find some or get used to losing.
the absolute red rout in florida is telling. districts that NEVER go red went red because there was a leader. there was a vision. and there was a brave guy who stood tall and faced down the whole rest of the country and the federal government along with it to protect the rights of floridians.
there was confidence, swagger, and stature.
there was character.
and the people fricking love him for it. he flipped the “straight tickets” past crimson and into outright ruby and everyone got to come along, house, senate, and dogcatcher. he barely squeaked into office the first time in a seriously purple state but showed what he has and put up a crushing 20% win this time to the point where folks are saying “i think FL is red now.”
personally, i am less sure. maybe. maybe not. perhaps florida is not so much R as RDS because, at the end of the day, people follow teams and tribes and thus parties, but parties are led by people and who those people are matters and so too does their vision.
and this brings us back to “you can’t beat something with nothing.”
say what you will about team donkey, but at least they have a vision. it may not be one you like (i certainly do not) but they have one and they can state it as a simple positive. they have a whole pile of stuff they are trying to do, agendas, laws. they have a dream to sell, a set of tangible plans to put forward, and villains to vanquish. and some seem to like these ideas. it’s “something.”
and the GOP brought “nothing.”
you know what’s not compelling? this: