Having said all that, for those of us stuck here your presence will very much be missed. I can understand why some people are trying to pull the crab bucket meme on you. I appreciated the break from the noise you provided.

Social media toxicity is inherent to the frictionless-ness and constant emotional manipulation that drives it. It's always there as an outlet, it's addictive and it's pushed out a lot of healthier online distractions, so it's easier to stay than leave, but it will never stop being toxic.

I wonder what kind of beat he's the king of.

People vent annoyance to pollsters far more easily than they change fundamental beliefs. Dem voters who were pro Israel 3 years ago are generally not looking for a hardline anti Israel stance.

Democrats say working class all the time, obviously it's deranged to suggest otherwise, but I don't want to lose sight of how deranged it is to be mad at politicians for talking about the class that 85% of voters consider themselves part of. Not every "party" has the luxury of ignoring voters.

Eric Adams had an insanely popular media style, and so obviously you should be careful not to exaggerate the importance of a charismatic media presence. Or at least, it's obvious if you're able to make the distinction between "popular with you" and "popular".

AOC tried to gin up outrage against federal reserve emergency measures during covid, just to give a particularly sinister example of her pretending not to understand economics. She's a politician, and honestly a fairly populist one, not some paragon of truth telling.

Wait until you hear what they have to say about windmills.

bsky.app/profile/pkru...

Obama ran to the right of Clinton in the primary. It wasn't by much, but on basically every issue where there was a split he positioned himself more towards the center. This wasn't a secret, they literally had debates. The drone war in Pakistan was a campaign promise!

You're almost certainly better informed on this stuff than the average person, which kind of highlights the challenges we face. Any serious reform (and we need reform!) will face a tsunami of misinformation, and voters scare easily when it comes to healthcare.

They were moving to a set payment per procedure, because anesthesiologists (notoriously the most overpaid specialty in our overpaid healthcare system) were systematically padding procedure times. The whole procedure would still be covered, this was 100% a needed price gouging reform.

Notably your only example is something that was made worse. Anesthesiologists were gouging patients, that was actually an important reform. People are unthinking reactionary freaks about healthcare, and the forces that oppose reform (mostly doctors and hospitals) are very good at exploiting that.

Also non-voters don't actually like AOC. She's a candidate for people who want the Democrats, only tilted more towards the high SES professional segment of the coalition, which tends to be the opposite of what non-voters want (insofar as they want anything, they're incoherent and apathetic mainly).

That was a huge part of Biden's winning margin vs Clinton's loss. People correctly write off the demo, but votes in a demo you lose count the same as everyone else.

Same reason a bunch of pompous "prestige" journalists caped so hard for Nuzzi.

Hasan and Luigi are also both insanely upper class. There's a reason streamers will rent stuff they can't afford to project luxury. People long to be part of that world and they reflect that in their parasocial obsessions.

Whatever they accomplish things can and should be better (reasonable enough), and if things should be better then how dare you applaud politicians for giving us crumbs (significantly less reasonable).

Polling shifts more wildly than real opinion does. Dem voters are angry right now and they're expressing that to pollsters, but only part of that polling shift represents fundamental sympathy shifts. The cautiously skeptical tone is likely electorally sound, whatever else people may think of it.

Disdain for weight didn't used to require any pretense of health concerns, and the need for that pretense has caused people to badly misjudge the health impact of obesity. This stuff is measurable, the health impacts are real, but the real impacts don't line up with people's vibes.

People trying to make this about Israel never have an explanation for Venezuela. Iran was the second war of aggression Trump launched in basically as many months. The truth is Trump likes launching wars, it makes him feel strong, and he was always going to keep doing it until one blew up in his face

Change that first point to "invent time machine, prevent Iran war", and honestly it's not completely crazy. It was unlikely but not impossible that they might improve vibes enough for a bad but not brutal midterm. Good luck with that now though!

Being evil makes someone more likely to join the evil party, but not by the margin people want to believe. So not only can a person have evil beliefs while being personally kind, belief is not the main thing that influences party affiliation.

It's no different for straight men, whose authentic tastes are also poorly represented by mainstream beauty trends. But the key thing to understand is that those trends represent status, and for a lot of people that will drown out their own taste. People want what is viewed as desirable.

Manchin voted to convict both times! There were no Dem holdouts, they simply didn't have the votes. There was no way to remove Trump then, there is no way to remove Trump now, people need to deal with that reality.

Also called thermostatic public opinion. Basically whichever side is ascendant, a bunch of voters think they're going too far and so public approval swings the opposition direction. Electing anti-immigrant Trump was always going to make the country swing pro-immigrant.

It mostly suggests thermostatic backlash. We saw these same pro-immigration swings the first time Trump was elected. The public then swung anti-immigration in backlash to Biden, now pro under Trump, and back again next time Dems are in power. It's one of the most well documented effects in politics.

Platner's "blue collar" rollout really leaned into oyster farmer and marine vet though. I don't think you can say with confidence bartender was even that strong a credential for him.

I think the real sin of Trump coverage in 16 was how long they treated him as a harmless novelty candidate. No need to actually hold him to account, they could just have fun (and enjoy the ratings!) because obviously he wasn't going to win.

Trump winning felt more shocking, so the wins got more dramatic coverage. And honestly, by the time they were treating him as inevitable he probably was. In practice he wasn't going to bleed enough support even with winner take all. It wasn't mathematically over like the Dems, but it was over.