How do you weigh Trump's unilateral trade war and the ongoing destruction of the executive branch? Those things are very concerning even to people who aren't heavily impacted. Consumer sentiment was (slowly) recovering before that

University of Michigan: Consumer Sentiment University of Michigan: Consumer Sentiment

This timeline also doesn't line up with consumer sentiment. It fell at the start of COVID, rose until inflation started rising, then fell until the peak of inflation, when it started rising again. Then it trended up until Trump was elected and started his trade war
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UMCSENT

Ok true, in the sense that it didn't go down at any point. But it is getting consistently worse, which could be a component of negative sentiment. There are certainly going to be additional factors.

fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USSTHPI

Housing prices have continued to rise, people focus a lot on housing when they think about affordability

Housing prices are one indicator that tracks sentiment since 2020

Well like I said, I also knew some people who told me, in person, that they couldn't vote for Harris and that Trump was a "Bogeyman" and not a real threat. Of course I have no idea if they voted for her anyway, but they did ghost me. At the same time, Harris just needed Biden's voters to win

We can't fall into right-wing populism’s lie that the most vulnerable in society are to blame for wealth inequality in our countries. We need to build movements that tell the truth: the story of wealth inequality is not a cultural one, but a class one.

I think a lot of people got tricked by the inflammatory statements of a few radicals. If you know the stakes, and someone tries to tell you otherwise and say they aren't voting, it's hard to shake off. It happened to me in person and it was infuriating. And I consider myself left of the Democrats

I'm concerned that irony isn't strong enough to protect you from a brain injury doing this

The level of confidence you're showing here in the Canadian sense of humor is off the charts

I'm less concerned with a single person's opinion than the general sentiment of people who hold similar views. A single militant "leftist" doesn't define "the left" any more than Stancil defines "the liberals". But if those groups insist on a tightly policed rigid binary, it helps no one in the end

Not that it would change their opinion, but I'd appreciate people responding to the Newsom question with, "Would you vote for Mamdani over JD Vance?" Clearly they are trying to pull a rhetorical trick, so flipping it could be illuminating.

The thing that I struggle with is that liberals and leftists both have a version of this. "Leftists should have voted against fascism" is true. "Democrats should have acted against genocide" is also true. I don't believe non-voters or shitty Dems should be let off the hook. We're all in this thing

Yeah, that's just one of the reasons Newsom is a bad idea. I personally believe that we need a strong progressive who can clearly message about how progressive policies will help people. Unfortunately they also need to fix SCOTUS, repair the executive, abolish ICE/DHS, etc. It's a tall task

I completely agree that "helping people doesn't change anything" is wrong. I think the question is, what kind of help and how much does it take to move the needle? We have to make sure that political support happens or the other side will happily smash the progress that is made

I think the issue is that people's reactions are not always equal. Helping people does move the needle, but it takes time for people to feel the effects of a law. They also saw the inflation spike but treat yearly raises as expected. Helping more would show up more, but requires larger majorities

Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social

i need to admit something. the more i think about how many of our problems are downstream of a very small number of ppl and organizations hoarding all the wealth and power, the less interested i am in discussions of american democracy that prefer to focus on anything else.

I respect the self-reflection. And I'm confident "Will Stancil annoys me" is not an uncommon position. My hope is that we can pull people to the left so more people can be helped. I'm not sure exactly how to do that, but honest discussion helps, so thank you.

I'm just telling you how it came across. If you're hoping for a discussion, you probably need to frame it as such. "Time to take responsibility" isn't a discussion starter. State your disagreement, which you did just there. It's quite possible I agree with your actual position

See, now, that's a discussion. I think it's reasonable to discuss how much is gained politically by helping people. If your goal is to help people (mine is) then it's important to examine how to do that politically. The hate is not required esp. with people who are potential voters for your position

AFAIK we all agree on the fascism. It's a political science question of how we might have prevented it. If you know, I'm sure people would want to hear it. For the record, I do think the government should do more to help people. I just think people will also continue to vote irrationally

But I think that isn't showing what you said. He's not arguing Dems don't have to help people. What if he's just wrong about whether they did help people? I'm not saying I agree with his position. I'm saying people do vote against their interests. He can also be wrong on how much people were helped.

Well, that's where you can reasonably look to critique his position. He posts a lot of charts about median income vs inflation and job growth and other broad economic measurements. I believe the idea is that things got "somewhat" better under Biden. One can disagree but that's not hateful to argue

The last 4 years seems to be a reference to Biden. So I'm assuming the message is something like "real income rose under Biden and that wasn't enough to win another election"

My read is that he's saying you can't ONLY help people and assume that's enough to win elections. You have to reckon with the fact that you can help people and they can still vote against you anyway.

The point is that his lesson from the election was that people won't vote for you just because you helped them. Your lesson could be something else. I fail to see how it's demonstrably false and untrustworthy.

Where does he say that this means you shouldn't help people? It just says that helping people doesn't automatically win you elections. Which is a thing that people have seen so much that it's basically a cliche about low income Republican voters

bsky.app/profile/carl...

You literally have said that people will vote against their own interests. That's what he's saying. Surely you can pick something more objectionable to be mad about.

weir: brooksmaxxing