2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[chipwich]

Wow, police ignoring petty crimes is woke? I guess that word really does mean absolutely nothing.

[DGuller]

Also, I think asking for "practical impact" of wokedom is already biasing a discussion in a certain direction.  The guiding question should be "why is the left losing some on the left"?  The "practical impact" question implicitly assumes that there had to be practical impacts causing it, but that goes down the well-worn path of "your feelings are wrong, look at these statistics".  I think one of the issues with wokedom is that it disenfranchised people from opining on issues.  Even if those issues are not practical to them, people really resent being disenfranchised.

[DGuller]

Wow, police ignoring petty crimes is woke? I guess that word really does mean absolutely nothing.

With all due respect, this is an incredibly stupid post that indicates lack of willingness to ever engage in a discussion.  Now this kind of behavior is a woke trait.

[Solmyr]

Pandering to moderate Republicans is a losing strategy. They will never vote Democrat. Democrats should get their votes from people on the left who can actually be swayed.

[Grey Fox]

Can't do that. The Capital class doesn't like that.

[Tamas]

Ok DG trying to understand your point. Rise in petty crime is because of wokeism preventing police to tackle it by making them afraid to act.

In this context, is the woke part an overreaction/cancellation due to perceived racism (police won't catch an ethnic thief because they'll get fired), or simply the woke part is using force (not lethal, just force) against who are considered downtrodden victims by the woke crowd?

In the latter case, do we know of any actual instances, where police stepping up to throw homeless off subways got into trouble with the public?

[Solmyr]

I dunno, in the example given it seems to me that the way to solve it is to help the homeless person via social work instead of having the police throw them off the subway. But I guess that would be woke.

[DGuller]

Ok DG trying to understand your point. Rise in petty crime is because of wokeism preventing police to tackle it by making them afraid to act.

It's not wokeism that prevents police from acting, it's the policies and the direction from above.  Police are afraid to act against policies (and should be).  The policies are enacted as a result of a debate that is devoid of critical thinking.  Social justice arguments get uncritical acceptance, and a lot of arguments in favor of status quo policing (as of then) wouldn't even be made because you could get canceled making them (even if they're factually correct).

A week ago I watched a John Oliver video about traffic stops, and the element of race involved.  I had to stop watching because the lack of good faith in the statistical arguments presented was just too much.  Frankly I don't want to get into the details of why I found his arguments to be in incredibly bad faith, because tI'm not comfortable talking about that publicly.

[Sheilbh]

In the latter case, do we know of any actual instances, where police stepping up to throw homeless off subways got into trouble with the public?

Not so much with the public but there have been controversies about this in New York.

See the Guardian article and condemnation of "criminalising homelessness" for plans to enforce transit rules (from Cuomo):
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/12/new-york-homeless-subways-police-crackdown

Three years later there was a NYT article about the city planning to enforce transit rules more strictly and provide more mental health services following a reported increase in violence (from Adams):
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/nyregion/homeless-people-subway-trains-mta.html

I think there have been a lot of rows around this issue in New York specifically, not least because there's 24 hour trains and a long history of the homeless sleeping there. It's one of those issues where I'm very left wing (we have in the past basically ended rough sleeping and it shouldn't exist in a wealthy society), and right wing (trains are for transit not being a dual purpose homeless shelter). I also think a lot of the public are similarly placed.

With petty crime I have similar fairly draconian views because I think it is only petty if you don't live in an area affected by it, or don't work in a sector (I've seen multiple thefts from my local Co-op which is now basically like a bank in security levels round the till - and spirits section crucially). The quality of life impact is really high for people in those areas and jobs (I think there's something about privilege here of the views on petty crime). I also always think about the City of London police seeing a 90% reduction in bike thefts because they arrested 4 people who were basically organised criminals stealing and fencing bikes. It is petty but has a quality of life impact and, in this case, was actually also not petty - it was low-level organised crime.

I wouldn't frame this around woke - I think a lot of it for me is about erosion of public trust and a shared, public common space. I think the next step (which you already see in the US) will be private security, private communities, insurance filling that gap - again leaving the poor exposed.

[Gups]

Pandering to moderate Republicans is a losing strategy. They will never vote Democrat. Democrats should get their votes from people on the left who can actually be swayed.

Check the figures for independents

[Gups]

Isn't this an obvious example of woke activism impacting on people and dragging down the Dems with it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest

[Barrister]

So Iowa went Trump 55, Harris 42.  I guess that poll everyone was going on about (which had Harris up by 3 points in Iowa) was just a good old-fashioned rogue poll.

[HVC]

So Iowa went Trump 55, Harris 42.  I guess that poll everyone was going on about (which had Harris up by 3 points in Iowa) was just a good old-fashioned rogue poll.

I wonder if polls like that actually lowered on the fence Democrat voter turn out.

*edit* although, I guess with these results I don't know if it would have made a huge difference

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally I thought this was interesting and something I got totally wrong - as I thought Harris should have gone even harder on abortion. But I feel like this is maybe an area where voters really see Trump as different from the rest of the Republicans, that Harris only leads among people who think it should legal in most cases by 3 points:

[Barrister]

Please give examples of how "woke dogma" has majorly impacted people's lives. Shit made up by conservatives doesn't count.

So here's the thing - sometimes people vote on issues that DON'T majorly impact people's lives.

You wouldn't tell a man they shouldn't care about abortion because it doesn't impact them, would you?  Or tell a white voter they shouldn't care about racism?

We know a certain number of people made up their minds because of "wokeism".  Telling those people that "wokeism" doesn't exist is not going to convince them to change their vote, because they certainly think it does.