Playing the Blame Game to WIN
Playing the Blame Game to WIN
Who’s responsible for this mess?
It happened again: A major event confirmed all my preexisting beliefs. It’s truly remarkable how anything that happens proves that I was right about everything, and that my opponents are idiots and perverts. Every single occurrence of my life has shown that if I’m doing anything wrong — and I may not be — it’s that I’m not trenching into my beliefs deeply enough quickly enough. Also, I could also perhaps spend more time calling my opponents pedophiles and racists.
All joking aside: The lessons we take from this election should have some evidentiary basis. Commentators are performing autopsies on the Democratic corpse — which, to be clear is what we should do — because when a patient dies on the operating table, you don’t just say “Weird…well, send in the next one.” But our lessons should have at least some connection to observable phenomena, or else you end up with takes like this:
Jesus Herbert Christ, Bernie — did you write that tweet in 2019 and set it to auto-post Wednesday morning? During Biden’s presidency, wage gains among the lowest 10 percent of earners were substantially larger than any other group. Biden made huge investments in green jobs, treated unions like precious babies who must never have their widdle feelings hurt, and you, Bernie Sanders, encouraged him to do those things! We must always remember that leftists just love being aggrieved, and they will never be satisfied, no matter what.
A good way to start this exercise is to establish which trends were observable, and then start pulling lessons straight out of our asses. A few trends seem clear in the umpteen post-election breakdowns out there:
The Democratic Party got more white and more educated, while the GOP got less white and less educated.
The whole country shifted right, but the shift was particularly pronounced in urban areas.
Harris underperformed other Democrats.
So: Given these realities, what lessons can we learn (and then immediately ignore because our institutions incentivise us to just enjoy the toboggan ride towards oblivion)?