the resolution to the debate about “deliverism” is it only works if what gets delivered is substantial, material results prior to the election.
if what’s delivered is just the legislation, maybe some change that will eventually bear fruit but takes time, opponents gin up cynicism and fear no problem.
@admitsWrongIfProven I definitely think communicating kindly on a human to human basis is essential. Everything else can fly off in terrible directions so easily. Reinforcement of our common humanity is our best protection from that.
@akkartik @BenRossTransit You participate, and I bet mostly constructively. I don’t think you lack anything.
@admitsWrongIfProven you are always better than useful. you are not reducible to what others can use you for. the analysis attributing our difficulties to human nature may not be so useful, but that doesn’t say anything about you.
@dpp right back atchu!
@BenRossTransit and that when we act collectively, there are paths to bad action even when the vast majority have only good intentions.
@dedicto not an average. remember, US elections are decided on a very weird margin.
if you are blaming “we” or “the electorate” or “the American people”, you are not doing anything useful.
i am so terrified and heartbroken i am almost catatonic.
but the future is not yet written. the worst outcomes are far from certain. we still, all and each, have our parts to play in writing this story.
all things to everyone, it turns out, is no things to anyone.
@Simplicator i think Biden briefly was enamored of being an FDR, absent sinemanchin might have made more progress in that direction.
do people do event studies of heart attack rates around elections?
suddenly everybody is on-board with american carnage.
one way to think about it is the electorate wanted Teddy Roosevelt and Donald Trump seemed the closest thing on offer.
@FeralRobots Yes. But it’s incoherent. It makes no sense to have kings drawn from very divergent factions with four-year democratic terms. There’s too little continuity. Most policy effects take more than four years to develop, and “throwing the bums out” because green shoots haven’t flowered quite yet just guarantees failure. The logic of the “unitary executive” is a durable executive, at least in party if not in person. 1/
@FeralRobots A legislature, on the other hand, can change in increments without renouncing the work of prior sessions. /fin
@FeralRobots we can blame the electorate in our minds if we want, but it never does any good. assuming we ever have an opportunity to try to rebuild a democracy, we wouldn’t collectively punish them, wouldn’t disenfranchise them. there they are. i think the fundamental fault is US democracy has devolved into electing one king for all every four years, rather than representatives you actually know deliberating in common.
@FeralRobots the hero is an antihero. the mob boss. he does bad things but he takes care of business. he’s not a weasel. you know where you stand with him. he protects his own, which the marginal voter assumes includes him and his, if he votes for the man and cheers him and never snitches.
@artcollisions (meanwhile gas is extraordinarily cheap right now, by any standard other than mid pandemic when most people were staying home.)
the marginal voter was not voting on the basis of “issues”. they were choosing who best fit the role — in their imagination, by virtue of their parasocial attachments — of hero who can fix it.
