The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:

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11 Responses

  1. Jaybird
    Ignored
    says:

    Yes. Excellent.

    Here’s the #1 tell:

    “Could we have done better if we did something different?”
    “WHY IN THE HELL SHOULD WE HAVE DONE SOMETHING DIFFERENT?!?!?”

    There are a lot of ways that the response can be worded… “Oh, who do you think we should have abandoned? Who do you think we should have denied were human? Whose human rights do you think we should have trampled?” is a light paraphrase of one I’ve seen in the wild.

    It’s not really a question, is it? It’s pretty much an attack that attempts to get the person trying to figure out, specifically, *WHICH* mistakes were made/avoidable to shut the hell up and get back in line.

    “Let’s talk about this.”
    “Let’s *NOT*!”

    We just had yet another election where the people who weren’t allowed to talk about stuff in public decided to vote in private.

    Maybe it’s time to talk about stuff in public.Report

    • Chris in reply to Jaybird
      Ignored
      says:

      I think the most amazing thing about liberal election post-mortems is that you hear the same thing every time they lose, and have as far back as I can remember (OK, at least since 2000): The Democrats have a messaging problem. Everyone likes what the Democrats are selling, but the Democrats aren’t selling at well. Many articles and books have been written selling various messaging fixes. The writers of these articles and books have then served on Democratic campaigns. It’s a great racket, and allows the Democrats to never, ever make a change to what they’re selling no matter how often they lose.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chris
        Ignored
        says:

        First you have to admit you have a problem.

        My suggestion would be something like what Jonathan Pie yells about in his 2016 Election Rant about the importance of persuasion over cancellation.

        But I work at the persuasion store and so of course I would argue that.Report

        • Chris in reply to Jaybird
          Ignored
          says:

          I just don’t think wokeness and cancelling people is a salient part of mainstream Democratic discourse. Yeah, it’s big on Twitter, and maybe in some universities, but I don’t recall any wokeness or cancellation talk from Harris, or from Biden before her, or from Bernie ever. You might say the “basket of deplorables” remark is a cancel not persuade remark, but other than that, I don’t even remember much from Clinton, and I doubt there’s anyone here who thinks less of Clinton than I do.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Chris
        Ignored
        says:

        that, and also “the problem with Democrats is that they’re just too darn nice, they don’t attack so viciously as Republicans do”.Report

        • Philip H in reply to DensityDuck
          Ignored
          says:

          something something bringing charts and graphs to bazooka fights something something.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck
          Ignored
          says:

          The take that is currently wandering around is that the whole “BernieBro” thing is where everything started to go awry.

          Bernie was more attractive to a handful of people in 2016 than Clinton was. How to turn this around? Just accuse anybody who liked Bernie more of sexism! #MeToo wasn’t *THAT* far away and so you could just imply that someone preferred Bernie over Hillary of being a broski who wanted a white dude.

          At the same times, there was a BLM thing going on… remember when the Bernie rally was interrupted by protesters who demanded equal time on the mic?

          People who disliked this were racist and sexist.
          Prove that you’re not. Vote for Hillary.

          It wasn’t about socialism vs. a more realistic liberalism. It was about Identity.

          Remember MTVnews’s 2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys?

          Good times.

          Anyway, James Carville is nobody’s idea of a guy who won’t attack viciously… and his argument was that they needed better targets than HALF OF FREAKING EVERYBODY.

          Ah, well. Luckily Trump is surely so bad that he’ll only get one term again.Report

  2. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    The election was basically “It’s inflation, stupid” and now it appears to be dawning on people that perhaps they should have taken Trump seriously and literally and they have buyer’s remorse.Report

    • John Puccio in reply to Saul Degraw
      Ignored
      says:

      I’d say it’s more likely that almost everyone who voted for Trump last week are willing to wait until he actually takes office before regretting it.

      But I do admire your optimism!Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw
      Ignored
      says:

      I’ve already talked to three people who have told me “I wish that Nathan Hochman didn’t get elected, even though I voted for him”.

      Did LA really know what they were doing? Maybe they just wanted Gascon to tighten up a little and wanted to, you know, make a shot across his bow without outright replacing him.Report

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