man he really hates trans people huh. what is going on in your head where you think harris was one charlie kirk beer summit away from flipping all the swing states she lost?
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it happens. As we grow, sometimes our sources, acquaintances, or friends end up on different paths... or walk farther down a bad path they had already been on. Life's too short.
I don’t know much about Yglesias but it’s astounding how batshit insane his takes are.
Like yeah I’m sure everyone would have voted for Harris if she was a monster who threw people under the bus when it was *debatably* politically convenient.
ANYTHING to avoid admitting they ran a shitty campaign thats entire message was "Tomorrow will be like today, because things are actually pretty good as they are right?", and "Genocide? What Genocide?" btw I voted for Harris.
I dont know if I will ever vote for a Dem on the national level again.
"We would be in this mess if only the Democrats would have had the courage to throw more Americans under the bus. If only they would act more Republican."
the only reason he's coming out with the trans-hostile shit NOW is because he's term-limited as CA governor and will have to run for bigger office if he wants to stay in politics
going to backfire horribly anyway, Newsom will get shellacked in any national primary. nobody outside CA wants him
They made it way too obvious there’s a whole thing going on—a dumb think-tanky thing where some billionaire or billionaires are dumping money on people to get the Democrats of 2026 to be the Republicans of 2020. It is always happening but this time it’s extra stupid because it means going 5/6 Nazi.
I just don't get the idea that voters whose main issue was trans rights (in the negative) would end up voting Dem if they just weren't as nice to them.
Look how he says stuff like "firmer" instead of confirming it. Bro only wants to take half measures while pretending to do a lot. People are sick of that mentality
You're being disingenuous. Just because someone thinks trans people shouldn't play women's sports because of inherent muscle advantage does not mean they hate trans people. Also you are aware that the ad Trump used the most against Harris was a trans ad. An incredibly huge issue for Republicans.
and yet if that happened, curiously we wouldn't be talking about acceptance of trans people in the workforce or opening up access to gender affirming care, or coming to terms with the realities of hrt and transition.
If I didn't know better IU would think matt doesn't see transgender americans as people... and as american citizens being run roughshod over by their country
Democrats have to grow up. Elections are about building winning pluralities, not ideological purity. Medicaid and Medicare services millions. If we trade ideological purity on trans in girls sports for the loss of universal public goods, we will continue to lose elections.
matty should be less concerned with giving democrats advice and more worried about figuring out how to undue the witch's curse that's turned his head into a giant egg.
Oh for sure, talking about issues your opponents want you to talk about and adopting their framing of the issue and shitting on your voters, yeah that's the ticket.
I really love how reactionary centrists are just pretending that Harris lost the election because of their personal bugaboos rather than because of inflation and post pandemic resentment that resulted in almost every incumbent party losing.
If enough people get super self-righteous and channel their anger and hate on fellow citizens, that will surely stop the fascist coup faster than anything.
Right?
I refuse to apologize for my anger at people who abandoned their basic civic duty and left this country to be torn apart by a gang of thieves and traitors.
Well, she prioritized the votes of moderate Republicans over the votes of anyone to the left of Chuck Schumer. And those people DID vote. For Trump. Seems like it was a pretty shitty strategy.
Just going to note that Harris performed better relative to 2020 in places where she campaigned than where she did not. People who saw Harris liked her more. Somehow I don’t think that would be true if she tried to out-jerk Trump. This is imaginary nonsense to throw vulnerable people under the bus.
The abortion rights comment is somewhat giving the game away, since in 2022 MattY was earnestly arguing for running to the right on abortion. None of this actually matters to him.
chasing bigotries is just a total political dead end. okay, today’s it is trans people. tomorrow it is black people in positions of influence. then it’s immigrants and refugees and so on and so forth.
The only reason Matt Y isn't calling for the return of Jim Crow is that black Twitter mostly ignores him, instead of yelling at him when he says stupid stuff, the way trans folks (quite reasonably) often do.
Or that Jim Crow is unpopular and what he said is extremely popular? Have you considered that the black voters you pretend to represent or care about agree with him?
I can scarcely conceive the level of historical ignorance, selfishness, and/or plain villainy it takes to essentially say "Well, if we scapegoat just a few people, it will surely stop there and our progressive dreams will come true in all other respects"
As a Wisconsin resident who saw a lot of ads and lots of candidate visits, the day-to-day messages from the campaign were about "kitchen table" issues, as well as "freedom", reproductive and otherwise. The ones who were obsessed with trans issues were the Republicans and 1/2
you can't really do anything about it because they're just going to lie about you and your priorities, plus obviously the kind of people who vote for Democrats are more likely to be supportive of trans rights, that's all they need. You may as well exhibit some leadership and stand up against bigotry
Yglesias doesn't advocate punching left. He advocates ignoring the left - he thinks punching left only serves to raise the salience of the issue you think you're weak on.
Yglesias generally thinks punching left is a good idea to distance yourself from those ideas on the left that are unpopular, even if you can't do it on things like "the economy."
He's also uninterested in victories, no matter their societal good, that don't have his strategic fingerprints on them. It's all about *him* winning or losing, and constant deflection/scapegoating ensures that he never loses.
Biden’s domestic agenda was actually relatively progressive, particularly on workers’ rights. What was not progressive was his foreign policy, especially his backing of genocide in Gaza. I’m sure Yglesias was down with that though.
Harris was asked point blank if trans people should be allowed access to gender-affirming health care, and she said she would defer to the law, while Trump was pumping out nonstop transphobic campaign ads. She ran the quintessential centrist campaign.
This point has been made but it's fucking insane for the guy who wrote 1 billion Americans to claim he has a pulse on American bigotry. He very clearly doesn't!
I am astounded by the unshakeable faith among so many left-centrists that there is a precise number of disempowered people we must throw to the jackals in order to disarm the cruelty of the right, and satisfy a sort of collective malice in the electorate.
It is also just not going to move anyone in the way these people think it will. The small number of people who vote based on this issue have already picked sides. All you can do is cause collateral damage to your campaign.
One thing I do fault the Biden administration for is lack of moral leadership. Be clear that immigration is good for country, say that trans sports bans are bad, give Ukraine everything they need to win against Russia. Be leaders, godsdamnit!
I really don’t get his idea thag the politically savvy response to fascism is to make common cause on things. Historically illiterate. You run a campaign based upon the exact opposite ideas and put a good communicator out there to sell it.
Today at the bad site, Noah Smith was defending Stop and Frisk as gun control, despite it being completely ineffective. Imagine being more of a S&F dead ender than National Review
There's just no empirical case that 2024 was decided by which candidate triangulated the most popular combination of policy positions. Rerunning the campaign with slightly different messaging is boneheaded.
True, but it’s already been black people in positions of influence. These fascists don’t even have to be shy about it anymore and almost the entire Democratic party thinks they can play footsie with them and thread the needle…
Capitulating is a fool's errand anyway. If a little bit of transphobia is ok, so is a lot of transphobia, so now you're ceding the point to them and also coming out weaker on it in comparison. Same with immigration, you can't accept their shitty, dishonest framing and then beat them at it.
Dem leadership is showing so much contempt for their base, it makes me think they're jealous of the sycophancy on the right and want to chase that by appealing to right wing voters.
matt's really got no idea that it's precisely this wimpy "ok we'll do what u guys want uwu" crap that ACTUALLY tanked harris. because that would take self-awareness.
What you need to understand is that a trans person made him feel icky once by asking him to use their preferred pronouns, so his reaction is totally reasonable
I'm convinced most male transphobes at some point see a gorgeous woman, find out that woman is trans, and rather than examine their feelings they decide that trans women just shouldn't exist.
As usual with these assholes it's all about them and not about other people.
When your group is supported by bigots, guess what? You’re a bigoted group. Supported by nazis? You’re in a nazi group. Supported by people who care about the well-being of one another? Hm. Almost like that’s the better one to be in, since it’s not trying to kill people in the same damn group.
The idea that Kirk would have had a conversation - let alone the same conversation - with Harris as he did with Newsom, let alone that it would have had some measurable effect, is ridiculous. He's just such an unserious person.
he hates Palestinians more, because her choice to not oppose the genocide in Gaza is the biggest single thing that lost her the Presidency. And whatever's in second place isn't even close. Huge numbers of people just stayed home as a result of her genocidal choice.
First of all, fuck you Matt. Secondly this is based on as much pure guesswork as anything the most unhinged dirtbag leftist has asserted. Just absolute mind Palace BS.
She might have had she not said that 2019 line about tax payer funded sex changes on illegal immigrants in federal prisons, or we might have had president Oprah who the hell knows ?!
Newsom has been politically dead to me since he embraced SCOTUS's decision to allow cities to ban homeless people sleeping outdoors in public places. I guess he's extra dead to me now.
Genuine question: why are people so animated over how less than 1% of Americans live their lives? Do they honestly believe that all trans folks are either sexual predators or trying to cheat at sports? Have they really thought this through?
Seriously, the fact that people think that this issue sways elections is astounding to me. The possibility that it does is even more bananas. I guess we really are that cruel.
I think it's really only explainable in psychological terms. Everyone has a gender and feels some kind of a way about the gender they have. That ends up being projected out in irrational ways.
This particular issue, as well as all the other "woke" stuff associated with it, is of far more interest to media people and academics than it is to voters in general. Like all culture-war bullshit, it's a war within the elite they insist on inflicting on the rest of us.
the old line on this is that to the Right, society is saved as often as the list of people who count as people contracts.
as a fun side effect of this, there is no concession to them that will stop them from pushing for this, because that is their eternal solution to social problems.
the long essay/short book that launched Karl Marx's career was an analysis of the first time an absolute right wing dumbass won an election. people were a lot more freaked out back then, they didn't know democracy could do that.
that little observation is just tucked away in a two-sentence corner
Harris would be president today if she said it’s okay not to wash your hands in the bathroom and leave your dishes in the sink for someone else to clean
It's really clear that punching down and left is all centrists have.
They're stuck on blaming third party voters even though the margin of GOP victory was bigger than the third party vote and blaming trans-people even though the Harris campaign barely acknowledged them.
I love the logic this implies. I would have voted to preserve our most necessary and basic of government functions, avoided a tariff war and the surrender of Ukraine to Russia **IF ONLY** Harris had stated she hates trans people. Without such condemnation the destruction of government is preferable.
It's a hot take and probably the wrong one, but I don't know if he believes in taking away trans rights; just that he thinks it was a bigger issue than the price of eggs. Not sure his position is so different than when Biden was to the left of Obama on gay rights.
Two problems with the "If we only accommodated the hate-mongers a little more, everything would've been fine" argument. 1. It's wrong throw other people under the bus to protect yourself. 2. There is no accomodating Kirk and his ilk; they demand total erasure.
The world would be better of in many ways if the winds in Butler were different that day in July. Say it that way instead of shitting on Trans people. That coward.
Once again the "economic anxiety" of 2016 (racism and misogyny) rearing its ugly head ...
Yglesias needs to fuck off to the same island as Axelrod and Carville
It’s not enough for her to have just completely ignored it. She has to wink and nod along w those demanding their extermination to actually be considered a moderate I guess
The smartest people I know are all STEM graduates from flagship state schools. People like Yglesias are kind of smart but mainly they have the right pedigree, went to the right private schools, and know (and know how to flatter) the right people to get ahead
Yeah. These are people that could fundamentally not solve a differential equation because it cannot be done by telling it where their dad works or about the brilliant geniuses they met at Sidwell Friends/Dalton/Harvard
I have a PhD in philosophy. I always found his writing when he touches on philosophical topics to be very pedestrian and reflective over an overall rot in the Harvard education system. You're not supposed to believe in utilitarianism, it's just a strawman to discuss for the first two weeks of class!
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(Spoiler, the rest are sacrificed too)
just the thinnest veil over his bigotry
They each had been worth following at one point.
Like yeah I’m sure everyone would have voted for Harris if she was a monster who threw people under the bus when it was *debatably* politically convenient.
I dont know if I will ever vote for a Dem on the national level again.
Like FDR Raises from the dead, promises a NEW NEW Deal, a NEW Bill of Rights, and apologizes for his concentration camps.
The only reason people like Newsom is because he's purdy and male.
going to backfire horribly anyway, Newsom will get shellacked in any national primary. nobody outside CA wants him
Indian?
Female???
Then, no.
DNC corporatists are just fascists with crocodile tears, part a billion.
Right?
- tack center
- punch left
- abundance + regulatory reform
he got at best one of those things highlighted during the campaign.
Ironically, it was catching it two or four too many times that finally wrecked him.
As usual with these assholes it's all about them and not about other people.
Maybe like a symbolic tying a ribbon around Mitt Romney and her hands
doesn't matter anyway. she made that choice and lost. for whatever reason. maybe it was running hard to the right. could've been anything.
point being, we are all *totally* fucked. unless you're a well-off white cisgendered straight dude.
They say things to manipulate their audience.
Listening to liars is asking to be manipulated.
Anyone who blames Harris for her loss should get the same. 😀
Intersex people compete all the time and they might not even know it. But again, this isn't a issue that affects people. Grey rock them on it ffs
as a fun side effect of this, there is no concession to them that will stop them from pushing for this, because that is their eternal solution to social problems.
that little observation is just tucked away in a two-sentence corner
But like Creationists, they are liars who just repeat the Gish Gallop of bullshit.
They're stuck on blaming third party voters even though the margin of GOP victory was bigger than the third party vote and blaming trans-people even though the Harris campaign barely acknowledged them.
DNC corporatists are just fascists with crocodile tears, part a billion.
He's a gullible putz.
Yglesias needs to fuck off to the same island as Axelrod and Carville
His name doesn't deserve to be written or mentioned in public.
are we too insignificant to mention, or are we so strong that we sabotaged the election?
ffs pick a lane