Corn Woman 🌽

(Long tweet warning) In which I anger everyone. 1. The Democrats won because the Democrat candidates persuaded more people that the Democrat positions would answer the problems that those people have. I can hear the instant but that's not true, those answers are not answers, they are actions that will compound the problems! Agreed. And the Republican candidates failed to persuade people that was the case. I will type this until my fingers bleed: the locus of responsibility for a candidate being elected to office lies with the candidate, not with the voters. It is the candidate's job, indeed, the candidate's only job, to persuade people to vote for said candidate. Positive persuasion (vote for me because I can fix that) is far more appealing than negative persuasion (do not vote for that other person, they will make it worse). People want to support something, not prevent something. The reason why saying the only thing that a prevent defense prevents is winning is funny is because it has the ring of truth. The Democrats listened to what the public was saying it wanted and then replied that hey, the Republicans haven't done anything to make that better, in fact, the Republicans made it worse, and we can make it better! I repeat, that I (and likely most of those reading this) think that the policies the Democrats advocate will make those problem worse is irrelevant. What is relevant for getting elected is persuading people that the problems facing those people matter and that the candidate has a plan to fix it. The idiotic central premise of What's The Matter With Kansas, namely that voters don't actually know what's in their best interest, the political class does, does not become less idiotic when it is being spewed by those on the Right. People are screaming, as loudly as possible, that they are drowning. The response by far, far too many people on the Right is to sneer to paddle harder. Contempt is met with contempt, as it should be. The Republicans in Congress have failed, catastrophically so, to take any actions to implement the policies that those self same Republicans claim will improve matters. If those policies are so important and so good and so necessary, then why has legislation implementing those policies not been passed? The Democrats most decidedly are able to pass what the Democrats deem important. Why have the Republicans not done the same? You cannot beat something with nothing is a truism for a reason. I will also type until my fingers bleed the following: there has to be a pay off for a sacrifice or people will not make that sacrifice. That pay off does not need to be immediate, however, there has to be some visible progress toward that pay off for a person to keep making the sacrifice. Put the hours in to get the promotion, exercise and diet to lose the weight, take political positions which may make you a social pariah, possibly even a professional pariah must have at least tiny tangible steps towards pay off. What did support for a Republican trifecta get? Judges, yes. The tax bill, yes. And what else? What other actions by Congress took place to make the sacrifice worth it? Any action by the Executive can, will, and, arguably, should, be undone by the Executive who gets elected who opposes those actions. What actions die the Republican Congress take to codify the positions the Republicans claim are so important? Well. Pretty much none. It is reasonable for a person to look at that and say those policies must not be that important to solve problems. Demanding sacrifice while acting to prevent the payoff will result in the rational conclusion the sacrifice is not worth it. The Democrats persuaded more people that the Democrats would solve their problems. The Democrats persuaded more people that the Democrats agree that the problems are problems in the first place. The Democrats did not treat voters as recalcitrant children who don't actually know what is important. Funny how that resulted in the Democrats winning. It's a mystery, really. II. And if you weren't furious with me before, you will be now. The other side gets to win. That's how the entire representative democracy system works. Each side presents its case to the voters. The voters decide which case the voters find more persuasive. That's how it works. Only children scream that the other side winning means the election was illegitimate and the voters were stupid. The other side gets to win too. The other side gets to say, hey, our ideas will work better. Voters get to decide that the voters believe that. That is how it works. Refusing to accept the legitimacy of the other side winning is toxic to the very idea of representative democracy. Sometimes, my side loses and the other side wins. That is life. It is incumbent on me, and I do mean the personal me here, to consider that maybe my ideas aren't actually the best for most people and maybe my premises are wrong and maybe my ideas and premises are better but I need to recalibrate how I present them. That's what adults do. Screaming that the voters are stupid and the other side isn't legitimate is what children do. To sum up, the Democrats persuaded more people to believe they would do what they say and fix things and so be it. /fin