alt Hacker NewsMy Bangladeshi immigrant mom and her sister are complaining on Facebook that they were "good Democrats" until "Obama, AOC, and Bernie" brought their "radicalism." Democrats wave away this stuff as "performative," but people feel it viscerally and it subdivides and splits the coalition.
Most people don't vote based on policies and data. They are naturally skeptical about whether your five-point plans are actually going to have the intended effect. Instead, they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
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> they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
You can't really simplify it to such a degree. I believe humans are creatures of action. We like it when things happen. Sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, our morals are downstream of that desire to "be effective". We will align ourselves, no matter the violence we have to do to our own senses, with what is useful.
Specifically, their willingness to skeptically engage with your five-point plan demands that you're actually able to execute it. If you categorically can't make anything happen, then people will cling to an explanation and a morality that can. American democracy has been at a standstill for upwards of 30 years, If the American people have to believe that all their politicians are pedophiles to get some sort of movement again. Then that's what they are going to believe.
Anyone who says Obama, of all people, was radical clearly listens to too much Fox News and conservative talk radio (which is an entirely different problem).
The only way Obama was objectively radical as a politician and president was the color of his skin.