Virginia is for Voters: Virginia State Elections thread

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thewalk: Mar 16, 2018

just watched colbert and found out the elections went bad. How bad are we talking? virginia went republican. NJ went...republican? somewhere else narrowly went Dem. Doesnt sound so bad so I must be missing the picture

critical race theory was a big one for this election? I didnt know that was a serious issue. How wide spread is critical race theory? I figured it was some hyper liberal private school somewhere teaching it to 9 year olds. Not at most public schools. How young are they teaching this complicated concept? I agree with the existance of racism baked into society. But its a hard concept to grasp so I wonder how young theyre trying to lay it on kids

I generally agree with what trevor noah, colbert are talking about. So in general I assume Im left enough. But its hard to win elections while shoving change down peoples throats. People dont like change. Also the story of the tower of babyl applies to the democrats. So many intelligent people arguing and dying of a thousand self inflicted paper cuts. Incapable of rallying behind a leader.

Biden...rather than having an army of democrats helping him push whatever agenda he feels he can get pushed through congress. Has sanders yelling for more and manchin yelling for less. So we get nothing for 2 years until the mid terms when republicans sweep the elections on the promise of no change.

Democrats have too many chiefs and not enough indians. I would love biden to pass a 3 trillion build plan. But we cant lose manchin if were going to pass anything. So figure out what manchin will approve and push it thru. You better pass something before the mid terms or else republicans will regain control and you can forget about what little manchin would have passed youll get nothing until next general election when republicans will control all 3 branches and pass a horror show of legislation

Pass what manchin will stomach now...or you get nothing. And if you dont get some wins up on the board then dems will get crushed

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:17

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# ? May 4, 2024 09:23

Bel Shazar: Sep 14, 2012

thewalk posted:

Pass what manchin will stomach now...or you get nothing. And if you dont get some wins up on the board then dems will get crushed

If that is the best democrats can do they don't deserve the progressive or leftist vote and they can get crushed and die as a viable national party.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:31

thewalk: Mar 16, 2018

Bel Shazar posted:

If that is the best democrats can do they don't deserve the progressive or leftist vote and they can get crushed and die as a viable national party.

ok your wish will be granted. watch as republicans sweep in mid terms and general. Youll get all the horrors republicans are capable of until democrats learn to rally around the leader that was elected

Feel free to push for the most liberal president you can get over the finish line. And then rally behind him to push through what policies will actually pass. Real politics > failed idealism

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:35

Nix Panicus: Feb 25, 2007

Decon posted:

Yeah I feel like I'm back on Reddit.

Lack of acknowledgement of neurodiverse issues is indeed a severe problem. The fix for that isn't to stop talking about the issues more visible groups indeed face.

What loving "unstated but understood conclusion"? No, you aren't expect to shut up and get in the back of the line. You're just expected to try to keep your learned negative assumptions in check. That's it. I literally finished my company's yearly DEI series last week and that was it. My white rear end didn't experience some kind of spectre of expectation that I yield to others based on some points system; it was just a bunch of "hey society probably taught you some negative assumptions and you should try to consciously combat those". And yeah it did. I have biases around race and gender ingrained in me from the racist sexist place I grew up that I have to actively combat.

You don't fix poo poo by throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Facts don't stop being facts just because some consultant hurt your feelings. The core concept is sound even though someone has implemented it poorly.

You're hung up on what intersectionality *should be* presented as versus what it actually *is* presented as when normal people encounter it in the wild. I'm glad you had a good experience, but because I've had to deal with the fallout from lovely consultants a few times now - not me personally, but coworkers with a history of personal trauma that felt invalidated and terrified to speak for themselves because they felt they didnt have the right external markers to be taken seriously - I'm very negative on DEI training *as Ive experienced it*. Perhaps your DEI training kept to the societal level and didn't make it personal, in which case good for that consultant, write them a nice email.

But when you tell people with no real societal power that they, personally, are the cause of discrimination expect it to affect people.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:36

Valentin: Sep 16, 2012

thewalk posted:

Pass what manchin will stomach now...or you get nothing. And if you dont get some wins up on the board then dems will get crushed

"What manchin will stomach" and "nothing" are more or less the same thing, given that he won't commit to BBB and the BIF is explicitly stuff Republicans are mostly fine with.

thewalk posted:

Youll get all the horrors republicans are capable of until democrats learn to rally around the leader that was elected

also literally everyone elected has "rall[ied] around the leader that was elected" except Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, so I really don't quite gather what point you think you're making.

Valentin fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Nov 4, 2021

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:48

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

Kavros posted:

yeah, I know. It leaves the open question of what you can do about it.

The republicans have a structure which adapts to cater to the base, the democrats have a structure which caters to the perpetuation of existing party orthodoxy. They obviously feel threatened and have gone on the offensive against actual progressives and leftists in the party, which is entirely to the benefit of actual fascists who are more than happy to benefit from the party's mummification and inability to run on any sort of inspiring agenda

R's internal structures are just as saddled by grifters as ours, even more so by a quite a lot actually.

What's notable is that Republicans don't even bother pretending to care about policy anymore, they didn't even change the party platform between 2016 and 2020. Their entire electoral strategy has congealed to become "appeal to basest human instincts". Just 1. Fear of the other. 2. These smart people think you're stupid, get 'em. And 3. whatever modern variation of Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic they can come up with.

It works because it's the path of least resistance through the human mind. They might as well have a list of every logical fallacy, cognitive bias, and human brain network exploit to just turn the dial on whenever it's necessary. It bit them in rear end with Trump because he's the logical endpoint of the consequences of their strategy; simply Freud's Id personified. But otherwise it generally works pretty well for them and the only time we get back into power is the briefly calm nadir when the dust clears and enough of the country, agape in horror, collectively has that "Look at my works, Ye mighty, and despair" moment.

It's been pointed out before that Democrats generally have an uphill battle in gaining support because many Democratic positions, particularly social ones, require a level of training and socialization in empathy and emotional maturity. Liberals aren't really any less racist than Conservatives (try moving into their neighborhoods while black if you think otherwise), they're just more self-aware of it, combined with the fact that they often live in white enclaves that allow them to safely critique racist systems without the consequences of actually being inside those systems and you get what we have now, an ally that exists because they're rarely put to the test in real world conditions, and for the same reason charity is a massive subculture among the wealth class. If we're being honest the intellectual Left isn't any different either, which is why there's such a disconnect between them and the current populist labor uprisings.

But from an electoral strategy perspective Democrats having positions that require nuanced thought and empathy, while Republicans just smugly turn the racism dial without putting any thought into policy doesn't necessitate that we must always be ice skating uphill. Kraftworks post in USCE bares repeating, and honestly deserves it's own thread (I'll quote it below for anyone who missed it). Dems can exploit psychology, marketing, and cognitive heuristics just like Republicans. The gospel that Dems lose support because they don't deliver good things shouldn't go unquestioned. In fact there's good arguments that it's actually messaging that should be the priority. There's a good reason that insurance companies have to be forced to spend money on improving client services rather than dumping 90% of their reinvestment into marketing.

Kraftwerk posted:

So I've noticed a lot of people here have been saying "Well what if America is actually a conservative country and running on leftist policies won't win you elections even if you tried".

I understand this sentiment and it's probably true. A lot of Americans probably are conservative. They like their cars, they like the luxuries and "freedoms" of modern 20th century America and many people already have things like rising home equity or a decent enough life they don't want to compromise on. They don't want to be told that they're bad people or that you're going to take away something they already have and replacing it with something "risky" complicated and difficult to understand.

However I don't think that this is the time to lose faith in the system. It just means you're gonna have to pick and choose what you campaign on and focus narrowly on it while figuring out the pain points of common voters and running elections on the promise of addressing these problems.

This is not a new concept. The fact of the matter is we're a bunch of misfits of predominantly urban and white collar background.

In Tsarist Russia there were all kinds of proto-communist movements that fixated on replacing the Tsarist regime by any means necessary, including violence only to find they faced severe repercussions and a discrediting of their movement. Everyone thought "If we could just go to the people and plead our case they'd be sympathetic and activate as a revolutionary cause"

Then we had something called "Going to the people" as summed up in this wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_to_the_People

quote:
It was ultimately a failure, and by the Autumn of that year more than a thousand arrests were made. They failed to inspire "unrest even on a local scale" or to establish local footholds for future activities.

Yet almost 40 years later we had a revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union.

TulliusCicero posted:
Here's the deal: we might be in one of the most pro-labour political environments of our lifetime. Strikes everywhere, millions quitting their lovely jobs in solidarity, the Great Resignation is upon us. This is an absolute goldmine opportunity to get true Leftist grassroots movements going everywhere in this country.

...And the supposedly pro labour party wants to chase rich suburban voters. They can't engage at all with the groundswell of pro-labour sentiment because they are completely out of loving touch and just want status quo business time for the olds and white rich who vote. Like I don't know what else to say here: the Democrats squandered arguably one of the biggest pro labour culture shifts I've ever seen.

Until the Third Way liches are destroyed and their donor phylacteries smashed the Dems will never change.

This guy gets it. We're never going to get anywhere by imposing leftism on America, the people hate that and will vote Republican to spite you just as Russian peasants turned in would be anarchists and revolutionaries to the police for political crimes during "Going to the people". Many of us are middle class computer touchers and educated urban "elites" in the eyes of the masses we all think we represent.

There is a massive pro labor movement that is taking place in spite of us rather than because of us. You want an alternative to current Democratic Party/GOP orthodoxy? It starts by you going out and figuring out what the pain points are of every day people. We already know most of them, healthcare, low pay, abusive management, lovely inflexible working conditions. It's nothing new. One of the biggest pain points for working class people in Imperial Russia was that their pay was garbage and often even worse than what was officially stated because management would dock their pay with fines for stupid procedural errors. Lenin was a lawyer and he wrote simple, easy to read leaflets that condensed this grievance into an understanding of what the worker's rights were and how they could work with socialists to agitate for and demand better rights. In some cases these rules violated existing labor laws. This was a time when peasants were deeply religious people with conservative values and a secret police often infiltrated every aspect of society and arrested people for political thought crime... If the Russians could change their country in this scenario, there's no reason Americans can't do so in the comparably freer and more permissive American system.

But you aren't gonna do it by declaring yourself a socialist mayoral candidate and then running scab labor in your election operation. You aren't gonna do it by telling people they can't have things that make their lives easier in a capitalist hellscape. You sure as hell aren't gonna do it by demonizing people's way of life.

You also are not going to sit on the peak and preach about leftist politics and hope that if people just understood where you're coming from they'd vote you..

None of that is going to work. I've said it once and I'll say it again. You have no responsibility or obligation to get into the weeds to explain HOW you are going to make things better for people. That's a white collar upper-middle class academia sort of audience and it lets your political enemies nitpick sound bytes out of your long winded academic explanations and come up with reasons to oppose you...

No it's much simpler. You bring out good old fashioned agitprop.

You're not getting paid enough- We'll fix it by making them pay you more
You can't afford your medical bills? We'll make healthcare free.
We'll use new technology to create jobs in the energy sector (Read: Green Energy)
We'll create new jobs and opportunities in X industries.

It really doesn't matter what you do to make this a reality, as long as you do it effectively and deliver on the promise to shore up your support with those constituencies.
The best part is we have modern technology and data science techniques that with some money would allow you to build a database of voters and cross reference data of the biggest pain points and political grievances people have right now. Then you just agitate and focus on those core issues.
Boris Johnson won the British Election by repeating "Get Brexit Done" almost constantly and I think that works a lot better than a complex explanation of why we're gonna do yet another referendum on Brexit to see if you really want it after everyone was sick and tired of hearing about it for 2-3 years.

No more talking about getting rid of coal and fossil fuels. You do that discretely with your political comrades at party HQ when you write up your policy and bills. You don't talk about taking away people's cars. You focus on simple statements that address people's problems. Most importantly you go out and you LISTEN. You don't impose your beliefs. You go around to red states and you ask what it is that makes people feel lovely about their lives or their jobs. You don't ask as a carpetbagger or some Yankee either. You find someone the community trusts who's also willing to talk to you and you get them to ask those questions. Then you take the bulk of those grievances compatible with socialism or social democracy and you condense them to simple, easy to read points of view that fit on a leaflet or a soundbyte you can repeat on TV.

These are things conservatives and the GOP innately understand while Democrats go all half cocked on TV like a Rhodes scholar and talk down on people with complicated "Scary" plans they later pare down for obscure procedural reasons nobody understands. That kind of poo poo pisses people off and it doesn't surprise me in the least that people vote Republican because of it. Republicans know how to tap into deep emotional fears and concepts that people can easily understand unless they're a well educated urban political junkies who can spend hours of their free time pouring over the information.

Most people don't care. We're in an information saturated world where ideas fight for oxygen with extreme attention grabbing statements. The winning political formula in my opinion will be when the left stops being so academic and starts doing research on popular bi-partisan policy planks and then finding out how to "go viral" with simple statements and catch phrases that drive turnout on those policy planks. The Russian Revolution seized opportunities provided by the times to enact political change in an analog era. We have unique times in the digital era that are offering us a similar opportunity.

-Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Nov 4, 2021

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:52

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

thewalk posted:

critical race theory was a big one for this election? I didnt know that was a serious issue. How wide spread is critical race theory? I figured it was some hyper liberal private school somewhere teaching it to 9 year olds. Not at most public schools. How young are they teaching this complicated concept?

They aren't teaching it to kids. CRT is a legal theory. Republicans are framing things like teaching that slavery is bad and Columbus was an rear end in a top hat as "CRT" to try and rewrite history to their liking, where slavery wasn't actually that bad and they were basically just servants who got free room and board.

Most people leading up to the election didn't take it seriously because it was seen as just a "flavor of the month" right wing talking point that would fall out of favor. It seems like it's got some staying power though, so Dems should (but probably won't) have to figure out how they're going to counter that line of attack in the elections next year, because Republicans are absolutely going to keep up this line of attack for other states now that they've seen it working in Virginia.

But, as many people have mentioned in the thread, Youngkin's victory wasn't as simple as "He said CRT was bad and parents got scared." There's been some real problems with how Virginia has handled schools and education the past couple of years, with Virginia schools being closed longer than other states. Without things like paid leave from jobs and extended unemployment benefits, it meant that it was genuinely stressful and frustrating for parents to have to deal with no school while being told "Get back to work!" Add to that McAuliffe's blunder where he said "Parents shouldn't be dictating what schools should be teaching" and that got a lot of people angry. This is ignoring all the other problems with McAuliffe's campaign, but even just on the issue of education, Republican lies about CRT wasn't the sole deciding factor (though it probably helped).

thewalk posted:

Pass what manchin will stomach now...or you get nothing. And if you dont get some wins up on the board then dems will get crushed

Given that Manchin said "How about zero?" (in reference to someone asking him how much the bill should be) what Manchin will stomach probably actually is "nothing."

Your problem is that you're viewing the Democrats as people who are generally in agreement on politics when that isn't the case. Manchin is essentially a Republican, he has a D behind his name and that's nice for determining who the majority leader is, but Manchin is right wing as hell and that's why he's not on board with the bill as originally presented. It's not because Manchin is some sort of wise, pragmatic man who's trying to control the raging torrent of leftism that would destroy the country, it's because he's a rich rear end in a top hat who wants to keep being rich and stay in power. He knows if he goes too far towards the center, he's out on his rear end because he's from West Virginia.

You're not wrong it the Dems don't get some wins legislatively, the Republicans are going to win hard next year. The problem is what the hell can they do about it? Manchin and Sinema are gumming up anything that the House wants to pass, and playing the game of "How can we make them happy?" isn't going to work because again, Manchin can just say "I don't want you to pass anything" and then there's no wins that can be had.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:54

thewalk: Mar 16, 2018

Valentin posted:

"What manchin will stomach" and "nothing" are more or less the same thing, given that he won't commit to BBB and the BIF is explicitly stuff Republicans are mostly fine with.

also literally everyone elected has "rall[ied] around the leader that was elected" except Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, so I really don't quite gather what point you think you're making.

machins seems to be around the 1.5 trillion mark? doesnt sound like nothing. I dont know what bbb and bif stand for I dont follow this stuff like I used to. I just vote straight ticket D and watch the failures

I was reading an article about how sanders was putting his foot down on anything less than what he wants.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 20:59

Police_monitoring: Oct 11, 2021; by sebmojo

I'd advise not voting democrat party

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:03

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

Police_monitoring posted:

I'd advise not voting democrat party

Well, you're part of the police! Of course.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:05

Gumball Gumption: Jan 7, 2012

thewalk posted:

just watched colbert and found out the elections went bad. How bad are we talking? virginia went republican. NJ went...republican? somewhere else narrowly went Dem. Doesnt sound so bad so I must be missing the picture

critical race theory was a big one for this election? I didnt know that was a serious issue. How wide spread is critical race theory? I figured it was some hyper liberal private school somewhere teaching it to 9 year olds. Not at most public schools. How young are they teaching this complicated concept? I agree with the existance of racism baked into society. But its a hard concept to grasp so I wonder how young theyre trying to lay it on kids

I generally agree with what trevor noah, colbert are talking about. So in general I assume Im left enough. But its hard to win elections while shoving change down peoples throats. People dont like change. Also the story of the tower of babyl applies to the democrats. So many intelligent people arguing and dying of a thousand self inflicted paper cuts. Incapable of rallying behind a leader.

Biden...rather than having an army of democrats helping him push whatever agenda he feels he can get pushed through congress. Has sanders yelling for more and manchin yelling for less. So we get nothing for 2 years until the mid terms when republicans sweep the elections on the promise of no change.

Democrats have too many chiefs and not enough indians. I would love biden to pass a 3 trillion build plan. But we cant lose manchin if were going to pass anything. So figure out what manchin will approve and push it thru. You better pass something before the mid terms or else republicans will regain control and you can forget about what little manchin would have passed youll get nothing until next general election when republicans will control all 3 branches and pass a horror show of legislation

Pass what manchin will stomach now...or you get nothing. And if you dont get some wins up on the board then dems will get crushed

When D&D is arguing about why people don't vote democrat remember that your messaging needs to get to people who find out elections happened days later and don't know how legislation works outside of it being good to pass things.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:10

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

thewalk posted:

machins seems to be around the 1.5 trillion mark? doesnt sound like nothing.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/577917-manchin-threatens-zero-spending-in-blowup-with-sanders-reports

quote:

Manchin apparently confirmed this saying, "I'm comfortable with zero," and forming a zero with his fingers, according to Tester. Tester told Axios that he believes Manchin when he says he is fine with none of Biden's multitrillion-dollar social spending plan being passed.

Coons described the verbal quarrel as a "vigorous, 10-minute discussion." According to Coons, Manchin said, "We shouldn't do it at all," when speaking of the social spending plan.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:12

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

Twelve by Pies posted:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/577917-manchin-threatens-zero-spending-in-blowup-with-sanders-reports

Am I correct that's from October 21? God knows what's happening now.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:18

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

It's from a couple of weeks ago, yeah. Still, if Manchin said "We shouldn't be spending any money at all" and that he was comfortable with it (he mentions it would make inflation worse), I can't imagine he's changed his mind on the issue.

Last I heard Sanders is still pretty upset that the bill contains huge tax cuts for the rich, especially since the idea that "it won't cost anything" was that the spending would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:24

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

Twelve by Pies posted:

It's from a couple of weeks ago, yeah. Still, if Manchin said "We shouldn't be spending any money at all" and that he was comfortable with it (he mentions it would make inflation worse), I can't imagine he's changed his mind on the issue.

Last I heard Sanders is still pretty upset that the bill contains huge tax cuts for the rich, especially since the idea that "it won't cost anything" was that the spending would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/580116-progressives-declare-victory-in-spending-bill-fight

I know the Hill's about as reliable as a British Leyland vehicle, but I guess something's going forward?

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:29

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Eric Cantonese posted:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/580116-progressives-declare-victory-in-spending-bill-fight

I know the Hill's about as reliable as a British Leyland vehicle, but I guess something's going forward?

Yes, the House vote.

Politico hed says:

"Manchin will get last word, even as House races to pass megabill

House Democratic leaders and progressives want to speed toward passage of a bill that won't have a smooth ride through the Senate."

eta: I'm sure some piece of horseshit will pass the Senate, but we still don't know what will be included.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:33

Decon: Nov 22, 2015

Nix Panicus posted:

You're hung up on what intersectionality *should be* presented as versus what it actually *is* presented as when normal people encounter it in the wild. I'm glad you had a good experience, but because I've had to deal with the fallout from lovely consultants a few times now - not me personally, but coworkers with a history of personal trauma that felt invalidated and terrified to speak for themselves because they felt they didnt have the right external markers to be taken seriously - I'm very negative on DEI training *as Ive experienced it*. Perhaps your DEI training kept to the societal level and didn't make it personal, in which case good for that consultant, write them a nice email.

But when you tell people with no real societal power that they, personally, are the cause of discrimination expect it to affect people.

My DEI training made it personal, but it wasn't anything unreasonable. The argument was simple and sensible: you probably absorbed biases about various groups people from your childhood environment (family, school, television, hometown) without realizing it and probably don't realize your brain still uses those biases for quick judgements (because that's what brains do). This is true of everyone about many things, including many things.

But, like it or not, that bias does affect people negatively. So, sorry, I'm willing to hurt feelings and say "You probably have racial biased you don't realize you have. I do. Everyone does. It doesn't make you a bad person, but you should try to consciously combat it."

I find the assertion that individuals hold guilt or responsibility for decades old societal problems to be idiotic and, hell I'll go there, race essentialist. I think some CRT "thinkers" have gone so far up their own navels as to think of different races as insurmountably different. But, again, I'm not gonna throw out the baby with the bathwater; that doesn't make the analytical tools useless

But again, I neither want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, nor continue letting reactionaries steer the ship. These are valid analytical tools and "you probably have unconscious biases" is a valid assertion. Some idiot exec at your company hiring a grifter doesn't change that, and we don't fix it by ceding yet more ground to the chuds.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:41

Gumball Gumption: Jan 7, 2012

It's also still a squirt gun against a 5 alarm fire. You're getting those DEI messages in your work appointed training that, if it was like mine, starts out as "Diversity is good because it means we make more money!" and you get all the other messages all day every day from all of society and also a lot of the structure of this country exists to reinforce those beliefs. I'm still with you about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater but it's hard to not feel like it's all a big nothing when you're using that bathwater to try to put out an inferno that's going to burn you and the baby.

edit: I also just have a dumb personal story which isn't evidence but I remember the most openly racist guy at work complaining that the whole thing would just mean in a year or two when they didn't hit racial quota numbers they would just fire some white people to make the math work. I told him no, that doesn't make sense, and if it happened it would be a failing of the plan. What needs to happen is that we need to change how we recruit people and the processes we use and if we're doing it right we're going to hit targets that match those numbers. And he agreed with me! And then the company refused to change any of that poo poo and I ended up hearing a big told you so from him that it was all just to make people feel bad/good about themselves and how none of it really mattered. And I really couldn't disagree with him because even when we improved those numbers it was by hiring people from the same handful of schools and networks with similar opportunities provided to them and money. They just had some different physical features.

Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 4, 2021

# ? Nov 4, 2021 21:53

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

thewalk posted:

just watched colbert and found out the elections went bad. How bad are we talking? virginia went republican. NJ went...republican? somewhere else narrowly went Dem. Doesnt sound so bad so I must be missing the picture

critical race theory was a big one for this election? I didnt know that was a serious issue. How wide spread is critical race theory? I figured it was some hyper liberal private school somewhere teaching it to 9 year olds. Not at most public schools. How young are they teaching this complicated concept? I agree with the existance of racism baked into society. But its a hard concept to grasp so I wonder how young theyre trying to lay it on kids
snip

CRT has been really effective for the GOP nationally for reasons that would take a bit to get into, but it seems to be getting a bit more accolades in this particular instance than it deserves. The big takeaway seems to be that people seriously underestimated how bad things were for parents impacted by the pandemic response as it related to school closures and generally the way schools were handled during the crisis. That combined with a last minute gaffe on McAauliff's part basically acted as a multiplier on that existing resentment and sent parents into the stratosphere.

There's been a lot of conclusions about the negative impact of his broader campaign strategy and McAauliff's faults as a candidate and the like, all of which certainly had an overall dampening effect on his performance, but most of those things were true throughout the entire election going back months and he was still in the lead until the very end...

Sir John Falstaff posted:

Until very late in the race, it looked like that strategy would probably work for him, too:

It was only around the last few weeks of October that the polls shifted and the gap narrowed.

So while improving upon those things from the start would have given him a bigger cushion, what technically sunk him at the last minute was anger about the pandemic handling of schools boosted by his tone deaf response to that issue.

This is a good article covering it, and it also correctly points out that schools are a good issue for Dems if they go about it the right way and the economy is also key.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/virginia-election-youngkin-education/620596/

quote:

Republican Glenn Youngkin�s victory in Tuesday�s Virginia gubernatorial election was about schools. It wasn�t about Donald Trump, or inflation, or defunding the police, or Medicare for All, or President Joe Biden�s infrastructure agenda. It wasn�t really about critical race theory or transgender rights�though those issues shaded the situation a bit by highlighting anxieties surrounding the education system. Fundamentally, the contest was about schools�specifically, how many parents remain frustrated by the way public schools have handled the coronavirus pandemic.

Whether the Virginia results translate to other states will depend on how schools in those states reacted to the spread of COVID-19, and whether a major national issue can take the place of these local frustrations in voters� minds. All the usual caveats about drawing too many conclusions from a single contest apply. The national political environment could change, the 2022 midterms are a whole year away, and Virginia isn�t a perfect microcosm of America. But given the very public, ongoing dysfunction among Democratic leaders in Washington, the party�s devastating loss in Virginia looks like a five-alarm fire for its near-term electoral future.

Everyone expected a close race, but the results are worse for Democrats than even the most optimistic Republicans had any right to expect. Not all the votes have been counted, but in an election that shattered turnout records for an off-year gubernatorial race, Youngkin defeated the Democratic candidate, former Governor Terry McAuliffe, in a state that Biden carried by 10 points just a year ago. In 2017, the state�s last gubernatorial election, Democrat Ralph Northam won by nine points.

The unraveling began at the schools. COVID-19 has been terrible for everyone, and it has been especially hard on parents. Unpredictable school closures didn�t just screw up parents� work schedules; they drove millions of parents, including 3 million women, out of the workforce altogether. Remote learning doesn�t work well for most kids and has been accompanied by rising levels of depression and anxiety among students. From April to October last year, the nationwide share of doctor visits that were related to mental health spiked 24 percent for kids ages 5 to 11, and 31 percent for kids ages 12 to 17. Existing disparities in learning got worse, with the biggest hits coming to kids with disabilities, kids from low-income families, and kids from Black and Latino families�all demographics that Democrats expect to do well with at the ballot box.

Most students in Northern Virginia public schools went almost a full year without in-person schooling, and both teachers and teachers� unions pretty consistently supported keeping the schools closed in the name of public health. Whether these decisions were ultimately reasonable is hard to measure�but the governor was largely absent on school policy at a time when a lot of parents were really angry.

Polling indicates that they are still really angry. Education was the top issue in the contest, according to the latest Washington Post/SCHAR poll, narrowly edging out the economy, 24 to 23. Democrats typically do very well on education in Virginia�suburban voters organize their lives around well-funded public schools. But this year, Youngkin entered Election Day up nine points over McAuliffe among voters who said education was their top priority.

The most important data point for the election is public-school enrollment in Northern Virginia, and it�s very bad for Democrats. Fairfax County, the largest county in the state, has lost more than 10,000 students since the start of the pandemic�a decline of about 5 percent. In neighboring Arlington County, the dropoff is 3.9 percent; in Loudoun County, it�s 3.4 percent. Those may look like modest declines, but they should not be happening in prosperous counties where the population is growing quickly. The public schools in all three counties have a reputation for quality. People move there for the schools. (Some of the influx into those areas can be chalked up to white flight from D.C. and other suburbs�particularly in Loudoun�but a lot of it can�t. Northern Virginia is a pretty diverse place.)

Most of the coverage ahead of the Virginia elections focused on culture-war issues. Youngkin ran an ad featuring a wealthy suburban mom who wants to ban Toni Morrison�s Beloved in Fairfax County Public Schools. The press published a flood of stories about Republican rage over vaguely defined problems with a vaguely defined critical race theory in history classes, and paid a lot of attention to a sexual-assault case in Loudoun County that conservatives successfully transformed into a battle over transgender bathroom access. (The case was much more complicated than activists claimed.)

Conservative political activists want these issues to prove that �wokeness� is unpopular and that an anti-woke backlash will bring Republican salvation not only in Virginia, but across the country. The truth is a bit more complex. Polling suggests that there is something of an anti-woke backlash taking place, but the right has settled on K�12 schools as the epicenter of its narrative for a reason: A lot of suburban parents lost faith in Virginia�s public schools over the past year, and as a result, they�re more open to conservative narratives about problems in public schools.

I grew up in Northern Virginia and attended Northern Virginia public schools and was back in Northern Virginia from March 2020 until September 2021. Anecdotally, I�ve never heard so much anti-teacher sentiment in the region as I did during the pandemic. Every parent I talked to had at least one horror story, and I mostly talked to affluent, upwardly mobile, pro-public-goods liberals.

Losing the Virginia suburbs is a bigger problem for Democrats than it might appear. Democratic Senator Mark Warner has been winning statewide elections since 2002, but he almost lost his seat in 2014 after running a bad campaign in a Republican wave election. The GOP has held the governor�s mansion for only four of the past 20 years, after Bob McDonnell won the seat in 2009, one year after Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1964. (Keen observers will note that this year�s election also takes place one year after a Democratic presidential victory.)

In 2009, a Republican winning back the governor�s mansion wasn�t particularly frightening for Democrats as a national party. But in the years since, Virginia has become a model for the party�s strategy in other states: maintain big margins with Black voters, win over immigrant families by pointing to GOP xenophobia, and turn suburban homeowners into Democrats with appeals to competence and moderation.

This became a model because it worked, at least in Virginia. In 2002, both Virginia senators were Republicans, along with eight of its 11 House members. Today the governor, both senators, and seven House members are Democrats. The key to those wins was a shift in suburban and exurban voting, a phenomenon familiar to people who follow national political demographics. Republicans have figured out how to swing a bunch of these voters back into their camp. If they can sustain this trend in other suburbs in other states, the Democratic Party�s national viability is in serious trouble.

The good news for Democrats is that education is only narrowly beating out the economy as the top issue for Virginia voters, and that McAuliffe came close, despite running a clueless and lethargic campaign. Democratic leaders in Washington also can�t do that much more damage to local politics than they have this year. By holding up Biden�s economic agenda for more than six months, Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have made it all but impossible for Democrats to highlight achievements on the national stage. Frustrations over COVID-19 school closures may well abate with the passage of time. And Democrats may refocus political attention on issues where they perform better with voters, by simply passing some legislation.

But I wouldn�t put a lot of money on a turnaround. Barring a wild new development over the next year, Democrats should expect to lose Virginia�s Second, Seventh, and Tenth Congressional Districts a year from now, and be ready for a dogfight for the Fourth District. These losses alone would be enough to eliminate the current Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, absent offsetting victories elsewhere.

If you project similar troubles in suburban districts in other swing states, you get a disastrous midterm for the Democrats. COVID-19 has fundamentally changed American politics, and the Democratic Party hasn�t figured out how to navigate those changes.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 22:17

Sanguinia: Jan 1, 2012; ~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Twelve by Pies posted:

They aren't teaching it to kids. CRT is a legal theory. Republicans are framing things like teaching that slavery is bad and Columbus was an rear end in a top hat as "CRT" to try and rewrite history to their liking, where slavery wasn't actually that bad and they were basically just servants who got free room and board.

For the record, every middle school civics class SHOULD be teaching Critical Race Theory, or at least have their teaching informed by it, because its basically just a framework for analyzing laws for disparate impact on protected groups like racial minorities regardless of intent or facial neutrality. Disparate Impact despite facial neutrality being violations of civil rights is literally a key element to multiple major US legislation and is well-established as legitimate by SCOTUS precedent.

The fact that the Right is rebranding Critical Race Theory into "teaching that racism is bad," is only slightly more insulting than the fact that what critical race theory actually IS is something their students should be learning because its loving American law.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 23:07

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD: Jul 7, 2012

Sanguinia posted:

For the record, every middle school civics class SHOULD be teaching Critical Race Theory, or at least have their teaching informed by it, because its basically just a framework for analyzing laws for disparate impact on protected groups like racial minorities regardless of intent or facial neutrality. Disparate Impact despite facial neutrality being violations of civil rights is literally a key element to multiple major US legislation and is well-established as legitimate by SCOTUS precedent.

The fact that the Right is rebranding Critical Race Theory into "teaching that racism is bad," is only slightly more insulting than the fact that what critical race theory actually IS is something their students should be learning because its loving American law.

one of the issues we're dealing with is that "critical race theory" is poorly defined for purposes of public discourse. However, in this instance, it's disingenuous to claim that CRT as taught in law schools is at issue. That's not what parents are alarmed by, it's the half-million-dollars spent on fraudlent woke consulting, secret Facebook groups set up to weed nonbelievers on a school committee, and on a more national level the idea that the tenets of risible ideological screeds like White Fragility be taught in public schools as fact. McAuliffe's response to this was "I don�t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." Those parents voted against him and he certainly had it coming.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 23:28

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

I don't feel like CRT fits well in K-12 civics classes because critical theory is a form of sociology which is kind of outside the scope of what you learn in primary school, especially since civics classes tend to focus solely on the mechanisms of how government functions. The closest you usually get to "why are laws the way they are" is when you're talking about stuff like the 3/5 Compromise, and even then it's like, that was more about worrying about the south controlling the federal government.

But whether or not CRT actually should be taught in school is a topic outside of the scope of a thread about elections, probably.

# ? Nov 4, 2021 23:55

thewalk: Mar 16, 2018

I can say as a parent that while racism permeates all our society/laws/politics to some degree. Its such a high level of thinking to understand whats being said it doesnt belong in k-12 there are other things easier to teach that are more important IMO. Leave rooting out subtle racism in laws to professionals.

As for Covid 19 lock downs it was overdone. Pandering to karens and people who were too happy to sit at home virtue signaling. People dont want to work, work sucks. Covid gave people a perfect excuse to stay home while taking the moral high ground.

Bunch of anti social, anxiety ridden, depressed human beings gained control of the rest of society and locked everything down. Im sure it was a great time watching netflix while the government paid the bills but most people are over it

# ? Nov 5, 2021 00:33

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

thewalk posted:

As for Covid 19 lock downs it was overdone. Pandering to karens and people who were too happy to sit at home virtue signaling. People dont want to work, work sucks. Covid gave people a perfect excuse to stay home while taking the moral high ground.

Bunch of anti social, anxiety ridden, depressed human beings gained control of the rest of society and locked everything down. Im sure it was a great time watching netflix while the government paid the bills but most people are over it

This isn't the Freep thread.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 00:44

Timeless Appeal: May 28, 2006

thewalk posted:

I can say as a parent that while racism permeates all our society/laws/politics to some degree. Its such a high level of thinking to understand whats being said it doesnt belong in k-12 there are other things easier to teach that are more important IMO. Leave rooting out subtle racism in laws to professionals.

As for Covid 19 lock downs it was overdone. Pandering to karens and people who were too happy to sit at home virtue signaling. People dont want to work, work sucks. Covid gave people a perfect excuse to stay home while taking the moral high ground.

Bunch of anti social, anxiety ridden, depressed human beings gained control of the rest of society and locked everything down. Im sure it was a great time watching netflix while the government paid the bills but most people are over it

It's like the "That's bait" meme from Fury Road if the lady in that scene had a neon arrow pointing at her and was jumping up and down yelling, "Hey! Hey! Look at me!"

# ? Nov 5, 2021 00:46

Canned Sunshine: Nov 20, 2005; CAUTION: POST QUALITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

thewalk posted:

Bunch of anti social, anxiety ridden, depressed human beings gained control of the rest of society and locked everything down. Im sure it was a great time watching netflix while the government paid the bills but most people are over it

This is quite the take.

But hey, I too would rather see billions and billions spent on building the 11,000th M1 Abrams tank or the F-35 program, instead of on society!

# ? Nov 5, 2021 04:16

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

I know I for one am over people practicing safety and keeping their family healthy, I'm ready for people to sacrifice their lives to make number go up for the rich.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 04:32

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Made me so mad to see the anti-work CDC blowing everything out of proportion so they could sit at home for a year collecting welfare checks and playing video games and popping out more kids on Uncle Sam's dime.

Get a job Dr Birx!

# ? Nov 5, 2021 05:19

Srice: Sep 11, 2011

thewalk posted:

I can say as a parent that while racism permeates all our society/laws/politics to some degree. Its such a high level of thinking to understand whats being said it doesnt belong in k-12 there are other things easier to teach that are more important IMO. Leave rooting out subtle racism in laws to professionals.

As for Covid 19 lock downs it was overdone. Pandering to karens and people who were too happy to sit at home virtue signaling. People dont want to work, work sucks. Covid gave people a perfect excuse to stay home while taking the moral high ground.

Bunch of anti social, anxiety ridden, depressed human beings gained control of the rest of society and locked everything down. Im sure it was a great time watching netflix while the government paid the bills but most people are over it

I'm sitting at home, virtue signalling right now and feeling too happy about it. Jealous?

# ? Nov 5, 2021 12:21

Decon: Nov 22, 2015

Srice posted:

I'm sitting at home, virtue signalling right now and feeling too happy about it. Jealous?

Sitting at home because there's a deadly respiratory virus: vile far left virtue signaling.

Getting in fistfights at IHOP because the host asked you to wear a mask while not at your table, and filming it for social media: normal, healthy, American behavior.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 13:33

Mooseontheloose: May 13, 2003

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

one of the issues we're dealing with is that "critical race theory" is poorly defined for purposes of public discourse. However, in this instance, it's disingenuous to claim that CRT as taught in law schools is at issue. That's not what parents are alarmed by, it's the half-million-dollars spent on fraudlent woke consulting, secret Facebook groups set up to weed nonbelievers on a school committee, and on a more national level the idea that the tenets of risible ideological screeds like White Fragility be taught in public schools as fact. McAuliffe's response to this was "I don�t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." Those parents voted against him and he certainly had it coming.

I helped someone run for school committee and they were getting on "teaching CRT" and the answer we came up with was pretty straight forward and seemed to work. CRT is not a curriculum, it is a critical lens to teach history backed by the historical record and academic sources. It's important that children are taught ways to examine history, especially as they encounter these experiences and theories in the real world.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 13:46

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD: Jul 7, 2012

Mooseontheloose posted:

I helped someone run for school committee and they were getting on "teaching CRT" and the answer we came up with was pretty straight forward and seemed to work. CRT is not a curriculum, it is a critical lens to teach history backed by the historical record and academic sources. It's important that children are taught ways to examine history, especially as they encounter these experiences and theories in the real world.

this also strikes me as fairly disingenuous as no proponent of any level or interpretation of CRT is, in reality, proposing merely "teaching children history and ways to examine it." That's how the best public schools have already operated for decades upon decades. You're coming closer to the truth when you call it "a critical lens to teach history." Small-government free-market-capitalism conservatism is also a critical lens with which to teach history and I also don't think that should be used as a teaching tool in schools.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 15:52

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Just teach kids "the facts", you don't need a lens to examine or interpret it, just tell them all "the facts" that we all agree on, everything that's ever happened anywhere and don't leave anything out. It's easy!!!!

# ? Nov 5, 2021 15:58

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

https://twitter.com/donnermaps/status/1455928984315707392

Biden and the Democrats promised a return to a comfortable normal, and it hasn't happened yet due to the Supply Chain Crisis and Delta Variant. Lower education white voters turned out massively against the Democrats about this, even though the GOP would make both of those issues worse if they had more power. Only a really well run campaign could have overcome that, but the actual campaign was another establishment mediocrity.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 16:06

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD: Jul 7, 2012

VitalSigns posted:

Just teach kids "the facts", you don't need a lens to examine or interpret it, just tell them all "the facts" that we all agree on, everything that's ever happened anywhere and don't leave anything out. It's easy!!!!

Lol yes VitalSigns, facts...exist?

Teaching facts and critical thinking skills is how decent public schools have worked forever. Teaching ideology in schools is loving dumb and counterproductive even for its stated purpose of teaching kids to be good anti-racists/Christians/Marxists/whatever. Anyone who did DARE knows that already

# ? Nov 5, 2021 16:18

Ershalim: Sep 22, 2008; Clever Betty

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

Lol yes VitalSigns, facts...exist?

Teaching facts and critical thinking skills is how decent public schools have worked forever. Teaching ideology in schools is loving dumb and counterproductive even for its stated purpose of teaching kids to be good anti-racists/Christians/Marxists/whatever. Anyone who did DARE knows that already

Most of what public schools teach is an ideology. It's just the commonly accepted one so people don't really think of it as such. It teaches hierarchy, social obedience, and a very particular brand of social and historical lessons that lend toward a particular understanding of the US and of one's place in it.

"The view from nowhere" isn't a viable pedagogical strategy because information isn't without bias. Vital Signs' point is that what people are objecting to is, mostly, anything that even begins to encroach on what they've come to understand is objective truth, when it isn't that.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 16:45

Bel Shazar: Sep 14, 2012

Ershalim posted:

Most of what public schools teach is an ideology. It's just the commonly accepted one so people don't really think of it as such. It teaches hierarchy, social obedience, and a very particular brand of social and historical lessons that lend toward a particular understanding of the US and of one's place in it.

"The view from nowhere" isn't a viable pedagogical strategy because information isn't without bias. Vital Signs' point is that what people are objecting to is, mostly, anything that even begins to encroach on what they've come to understand is objective truth, when it isn't that.

They're all going to have a serious problem when they finally realize objective truth doesn't exist and they have never had a justified true belief.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 17:06

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD: Jul 7, 2012

All facts are relative and subject to ideology so we might as well turn history class into a Pentecostal congregation. Hey kids, who's excited to speak in tongues today?

# ? Nov 5, 2021 17:10

Bel Shazar: Sep 14, 2012

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

All facts are relative and subject to ideology so we might as well turn history class into a Pentecostal congregation. Hey kids, who's excited to speak in tongues today?

Texas Education Agency member spotted

# ? Nov 5, 2021 17:16

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# ? May 4, 2024 09:23

Ershalim: Sep 22, 2008; Clever Betty

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

All facts are relative and subject to ideology so we might as well turn history class into a Pentecostal congregation. Hey kids, who's excited to speak in tongues today?

I think maybe I explained that badly. It's not that no facts can possibly matter and so we shouldn't ever bother to teach people anything, it's that the objections to things like CRT and Socialism and gender and all that aren't based on factual understandings of any kind. They're entirely cultural and the animosity they derive comes from challenging a world-view that has been coddled by literally everything most people have ever been exposed to. There is a lot in a school's curriculum that becomes accepted as objective fact, and a lot of it wasn't even put there intentionally.

You mentioned DARE which was a pretty big failure because it wasn't reified in the same way as other things were. It was just a tacked on bit of preaching that wasn't supported by what actually went on in school the rest of the time. It's the same sort of reason why Catholic schools are so good at making lapsed Catholics. The teachings aren't reinforced by the structure or the lived experience. Does that make more sense?

Like, people can't stand common core or CRT not because they know anything about them, but because they exist outside of the objective truth they lived in a way that threatens their identity. Unchallenged beliefs are often very close to a person's core, and so encroachments there feel like direct, serious attacks.

# ? Nov 5, 2021 17:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Virginia is for Voters: Virginia State Elections thread

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