General News Thread

[Tobias]

If your slogan requires you to have to defend the slogan, change it. I mean it’s really that simple. Also while I’m a little lukewarm on the optics of Black Lives Matter (I guess I’m like 60/40 in favor? Not awful, could have been done better) it doesn’t suck nearly as much ass as defund the police.

I get it, it’s hard to admit a mistake has been made, but the way this election played out functions as multiple independent experiments on the efficacy of that little one liner and it didn’t go over well, to put it mildly.

seriously, a short pithy slogan is supposed to be a cudgel you wield against political enemies, not a freaking chain around your ankles. Being right isn’t good enough. It also has to be effective. Else you just empower everyone who is fighting to stop your otherwise justified goal.

“defund the police” needs to die and whoever came up with it needs to be placed in a psych hospital and required to wear a helmet for their own protection

[LegalLoliLover]

Are you suggesting that the same place that does human "enhancements" are not also doing viral "enhancements"? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...diers-n1249914 https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...john-ratcliffe

[Trubo]

You keep saying that it's solely because of Defend the Police that caused Dem loses, yet those that lost their seats were also very vocally against healthcare reform, explicitly M4A, Green New Deal, and other really popular policies. Hell, one of those losses was branding themselves as a Trump Democrat, and all of them did an absolute garbage campaign overall and in the last two weeks of the election.

But sure, keep blaming stuff like Defend the Police for why Reps running as Dems keep losing.

[Tobias]

Nice straw man. I didn’t say it was “solely” responsible. But it was effectively weaponized against democrats on the grounds its moronic. Also it’s kinda funny you say that it was the progressives that did the best when the guy who excelled the most vs direct competition was a little known institutionalist by the name of joe Biden.


yeah snap election night takes that he did poorly vs local blue state and federal candidates aged like the child of an anti vaxxer after counts of vote and split ticketers willing to vote for him but nobody else started getting tabulated. And one of the most effective things he did was say to a national audience he supports reforming the police but not defunding or eliminating it, thus rendering toothless arguments that were used to great effect against other blue candidates.

one of the most interesting stories of the election interestingly was that the expected blue wave people were crowing about...actually indeed materialize just as predicted. However there was a smaller but very real red wave. Republican voters turned out in larger then expected numbers, reducing Biden’s margin and securing victories in the house and senate. Most of that came from red election groups convincing low information and otherwise disaffected groups of conservative and conservative leaning individuals that there was a danger in allowing democrats to have unchecked control. And indeed even now, pluralities of voters in polls are actually hoping for a divided government after the Georgia run offs. Is defund the police the “only” reason for that? Hell no, but you put that slogan overlaying an image of a riot (fair or not) and a low information voter without context is going to get scared.

scared people vote.

[Trubo]

Nice straw man. I didn’t say it was “solely” responsible.

You don't have to say "solely" when you don't bother to list other reasons, as the implication is that the absence of a Defund the Police movement would have guaranteed victory.

But it was effectively weaponized against democrats on the grounds its moronic.

Not denying it's been weaponized well by the Right, but don't give the Democrats a pass for trying to ignore it like most issues where they can't virtue signal by supporting vocally before acting against.

Also it’s kinda funny you say that it was the progressives that did the best when the guy who excelled the most vs direct competition was a little known institutionalist by the name of joe Biden.

The guy that barely managed to win the election despite 4 years of effort to undermine Trump? The guy that was supposed to have ended up winning in a landslide at 351+ electoral votes like Obama 08/12, but only managed to eck out 306 similar to Trump's 303 in 2016 [Edit: Also, lol at not even getting +10% of the popular vote]? The guy that was supposed to safeguard downballot races but whoops lost 8 House races and extremely unlikely to get both of GA's 2 Senate seats that would give Democrat's tiebreaker power and unseat McConnell's bullshit obstructionism?

Progressives have very real reason to be satisfied that they performed well during the election. Justice Democrats won all their re-elections and gained seats with Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman, with Georgette Gomez performing remarkably well for a newcomer. Democrats in general did pretty well if they ran on progressive ideology even if they don't fully embrace progressive viewpoints, as seen by how races turned out for those that supported various progressive policies versus those who didn't in a variety of district environments. (this part is really pissing me off because the article I want to link I can't remember who wrote it and I've already spent way too much time on this post as is).

yeah snap election night takes that he did poorly vs local blue state and federal candidates aged like the child of an anti vaxxer after counts of vote and split ticketers willing to vote for him but nobody else started getting tabulated.

Except that's still a bad stance to take. Sure, Biden won the popular vote, but that's not the sole metric people use to determine how well a presidential election performs. Biden failed to get more than 10% of the total vote (fun fact, Trump's 2020 loss is still the 2nd highest popular vote total in history, but nobody seems to acknowledge that). Biden will fail to get 400+ electoral votes unless an extreme number of faithless electors decide to switch from Trump to him. Biden underperformed, and cheering such a pathetic win against someone like Trump is frankly sad.

And one of the most effective things he did was say to a national audience he supports reforming the police but not defunding or eliminating it, thus rendering toothless arguments that were used to great effect against other blue candidates.

Must be nice being able to bullshit how something like Defund the Police both cost and didn't cost elections. A better take would be that a Democratic President promising to be more Republican only depressed his and downballot turnout.

one of the most interesting stories of the election interestingly was that the expected blue wave people were crowing about...actually indeed materialize just as predicted. However there was a smaller but very real red wave.

Pretty disingenuous to say there was a small red wave given that Biden's only noticeable improvement was among white men 45 and older. Trump got a pretty noticeable bump in all other voting blocks.

Republican voters turned out in larger then expected numbers, reducing Biden’s margin and securing victories in the house and senate. Most of that came from red election groups convincing low information and otherwise disaffected groups of conservative and conservative leaning individuals that there was a danger in allowing democrats to have unchecked control. And indeed even now, pluralities of voters in polls are actually hoping for a divided government after the Georgia run offs. Is defund the police the “only” reason for that? Hell no, but you put that slogan overlaying an image of a riot (fair or not) and a low information voter without context is going to get scared.

scared people vote.

Things like this have been brought up by AOC, Beto, and other somewhat fringe Democrats regardless of whether they're left-leaning or centrist. There was also a good post by AOC about how the attack ads used against those blue-dogs that lost had the most success when linking the candidate to Pelosi and Schumer more than anything else, but I'm currently drawing a blank on that one as well to link.

Edit: Not the exact article I was thinking, but the points I was bringing up throughout show up in this article so might be easier to go through that than try and slog through all the stuff I was already doing.

[SpoonyViking]

If your slogan requires you to have to defend the slogan, change it. I mean it’s really that simple. Also while I’m a little lukewarm on the optics of Black Lives Matter (I guess I’m like 60/40 in favor? Not awful, could have been done better) it doesn’t suck nearly as much ass as defund the police.

I get it, it’s hard to admit a mistake has been made, but the way this election played out functions as multiple independent experiments on the efficacy of that little one liner and it didn’t go over well, to put it mildly.

Funnily enough, the city of Minneapolis doesn't seem to think so.



This whole " 'Defund the Police' scares people away" spiel doesn't seem to be backed up by any real evidence. Oh, some people were definitely put off by it, of course, but by and large they're the same people who would gladly fellate Reagan's corpse if they could - that is, people who wouldn't have supported progressive proposals anyway.

[Tobias]

Really? I wonder if there are any national assessments on that question

https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.c...-democrats.amp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethi...an-itself/amp/


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pol...reforms-324774

Also while I ultimately declined to put it here on the grounds it wasn’t a poll and for the sake of fairness I’m only posting those, I do find it note worthy that Minneapolis specifically ended up not being as blue as expected and republican strategists are crowing about how they were able to cut adds with “so and so wants to defund the police!!!” Leading to unexpected wins

[Deathhappens]

I dunno, as an unrelated bystander I find "the police is being paid too much" to be a pretty damn unlikely problem. Graphs are pretty, but trivially easy to manipulate in order to present the image you want to present.

[Tobias]

Plus if people have enough information to interpret the slogan as “the police are being paid to much” they probably aren’t in that sliver of voters being effected by the slogan anyway.

really my reading of “defund the police” starts and ends with two major problems. First it’s unnecessarily confrontational. It sounds like something someone came up with in the heat of anger, frustrated at the actions of various police groups and therefor is pointlessly aggressive, punitive. Actually contrary to my initial belief while I had originally thought it to be just poorly worded some googling around suggests that at least some of the people verbalizing the slogan actually mean it in its entirety, as in, defund the police entirely and build upon the ashes. I still however believe that to be a very minority view. Anyhoo, the second problem is now that the error in using that slogan has been made apparent, the second problem is some people have somehow taken the premise that the idea is sound but the slogan itself needs tweeking as some sort of moral failing. Take this little ditty

here we have someone responding to president Obama who, quite correctly, had attempted to steer some folks to a smarter way of expressing themselves. Instead of recognizing the advice of a canny political operator, it’s treated like some sort of transgression against the cause

[Mattias]

I dunno, as an unrelated bystander I find "the police is being paid too much" to be a pretty damn unlikely problem. Graphs are pretty, but trivially easy to manipulate in order to present the image you want to present.

Isn't there video of small town police forces having enough budget to buy tanks and APCs?

[SpoonyViking]

[...] republican strategists are crowing about how they were able to cut adds with “so and so wants to defund the police!!!” Leading to unexpected wins

Oh, well, if they're saying that, then it MUST be true!
(Do we have an eyeroll emoji? This feels like it needs an eyeroll emoji.)

Plus if people have enough information to interpret the slogan as “the police are being paid to much” they probably aren’t in that sliver of voters being effected by the slogan anyway.

Not sure what you're sayin here, Tobias - it seems as if you're arguing something in the vicinity of "poor people can't inform themselves", which is a hell of a statement.

here we have someone responding to president Obama who, quite correctly, had attempted to steer some folks to a smarter way of expressing themselves. Instead of recognizing the advice of a canny political operator, it’s treated like some sort of transgression against the cause

See, this here is your fundamental misunderstanding: Obama and Biden *don't* share a progressive cause; they're centrists *at best*. They didn't and won't push the US further right, but your country's default state is already right-wing neoliberal hell, so that doesn't count for much. Oh, sure, that won't affect the ever-shrinking American middle class, and will continue to only benefit the rich and powerful, but it won't do much to help the people who are literally murdered without consequences by the police, to circle back to the initial topic.

- - - Updated - - -

Isn't there video of small town police forces having enough budget to buy tanks and APCs?

Don't know about small town forces, but they did bring out the tanks and assorted weaponry against the protests in large cities.

[rxrx]

Don't know about small town forces, but they did bring out the tanks and assorted weaponry against the protests in large cities.

Sure didn't see that on news all right.

[Tobias]

Not sure what you're sayin here, Tobias - it seems as if you're arguing something in the vicinity of "poor people can't inform themselves", which is a hell of a statement.

...where the hell ass derp did you get that interpretation? To paraphrase K, that response is an example of go home and read it again.

also on your odd Obama Biden tangent once again it’s not about being progressive or moderate. It’s not about policy at all. As a matter of fact as far as I can tell both Obama and Biden want the exact same thing you do. They are just correctly saying the optics of the defund the police slogan are hurting you.

[SpoonyViking]

...where the hell ass derp did you get that interpretation? To paraphrase K, that response is an example of go home and read it again.

Fine, then break down your statement "Plus if people have enough information to interpret the slogan as “the police are being paid to much” they probably aren’t in that sliver of voters being effected by the slogan anyway" for me, please.

also on your odd Obama Biden tangent once again it’s not about being progressive or moderate. It’s not about policy at all. As a matter of fact as far as I can tell both Obama and Biden want the exact same thing you do.

They really don't. That's what you don't seem to grasp.

[Tobias]

Ok. There is a nice swath of folks who are what we call low information voters which also bleeds into a second but overlapping group called low propensity voters. The first type are people who usually do vote in elections but never read the news and actively change the channel when ads come on so are oftentimes misinformed or less informed as their primary information sources are Facebook ads and water cooler talk. These are the kind of people who would tell you that California is a lawless hell hole burning to the ground and overwhelmed by riots because “that’s what I saw on the teeh veeeh!!”

but hey, they usually get to the polling station so their vote is as good as anyone else’s.

the second type, low propensity voters are people who at best only make it out to presidential elections and half the time not even then. They show up to polls on a whim. Because the girl at front directing traffic was hot. Sometimes just for a single issue, abortion for example, or legalization of marijuana.

Both of these groups can be successfully motivated by fear. So if you put something that sounds scary to someone who doesn’t understand it “they hate cops! Look at them, they want anarchy in the streets! No police! Someone breaks into your home nobody will help you, oooga booggo boooga!” That shit works. That’s shit works really well.

however nothing I said either noted or even implied that this was in any way tied to income inequality or even intelligence at all rather then laziness and a bit of world weariness hence my raising an eye brow at that whole poor people can’t educate themselves interpretation


secondly unless I have somehow missed your premise, it is my current understanding that the primary goal of “defund the police” is to repurpose monies (not all of them, not even most of them, but a good amount nonetheless) away from direct enforcement of activities and refocus such towards community outreach, prevention, and reintegration strategies, which is the exact stated goal of the Biden team.

so again I say, it’s not a policy question. He wants the exact same thing you do. Either him or former president Obama saying the “defund the police” idea is not some sort of moral failing, it’s a simple understanding that you are pushing away voters who otherwise would at least be willing to head out your policy proposal.

[SpoonyViking]

however nothing I said either noted or even implied that this was in any way tied to income inequality or even intelligence at all rather then laziness and a bit of world weariness hence my raising an eye brow at that whole poor people can’t educate themselves interpretation

Well, nothing you said earlier actually tied that to any group at all other than "those who understand what 'defund the police' means", so when you then said "people who are..."

Oh, wait, ok, I see where I misread you. When you said "affected by the slogan", you meant it as "convinced by the slogan to change their views", not "people whose lives would be improved by defunding the police". Yeah, that one's on me. Sorry!

Still, "the people who can understand the thinking behind the slogan aren't the same people who would be convinced by it" is very close to a tautology.

secondly unless I have somehow missed your premise, it is my current understanding that the primary goal of “defund the police” is to repurpose monies (not all of them, not even most of them, but a good amount nonetheless) away from direct enforcement of activities and refocus such towards community outreach, prevention, and reintegration strategies, which is the exact stated goal of the Biden team.

Hold on - Biden has explicitly put out statements to the effect of "police need more funding and better training", which would fall more in line with a "reform the police" goal, which isn't the same objective at all. And on a more general outlook, Biden is very much a "back to the way things were" type of guy, except "the way things were" sucked for a whole lot of people.

[Tobias]

To put the tautology as you put it into a slightly different way then, a slogan should encourage other people to join your cause, not just rally those who already believe in it. But “defund the police” really only is going to sound like a good idea to someone who already has understanding of the premise and nuance. But any converts you might desire to gain are going to hear it and their brain is going to shut off.

it goes back to what I was saying earlier. Right or wrong, that little three word slogan was almost certainly created by someone angry. And it’s fine to be angry, but it’s dangerous. Defund the police sounds combative, aggressive, punitive. Aside from the military and maybe nurses during COVID, the police as an organization enjoys majority support throughout the nation. Setting yourself as an enemy of them (and yes, I’m aware you actually aren’t, that’s the entire point of this conversation, to low propensity voters defund the police sounds like you are) hurts the cause.

[Pendant]

Police officers support Trump to the tune of like 80%. Such noble heroes are they.

[LegalLoliLover]

To put the tautology as you put it into a slightly different way then, a slogan should encourage other people to join your cause, not just rally those who already believe in it. But “defund the police” really only is going to sound like a good idea to someone who already has understanding of the premise and nuance. But any converts you might desire to gain are going to hear it and their brain is going to shut off.

it goes back to what I was saying earlier. Right or wrong, that little three word slogan was almost certainly created by someone angry. And it’s fine to be angry, but it’s dangerous. Defund the police sounds combative, aggressive, punitive. Aside from the military and maybe nurses during COVID, the police as an organization enjoys majority support throughout the nation. Setting yourself as an enemy of them (and yes, I’m aware you actually aren’t, that’s the entire point of this conversation, to low propensity voters defund the police sounds like you are) hurts the cause.

It's like those self-proclaimed "armies of God" that wonder why they're losing when fighting battles where they are obviously outnumbered. It's just instead of some divine entity, these guys think that secular morality can give them superpowers.

[Tobias]

Police officers support Trump to the tune of like 80%. Such noble heroes are they.

you know what I bet would help? Not coming up with something that sounds like you want them all to lose their jobs, livelihoods, and pensions.