Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has openly acknowledged that the GOP strategy is to make it so miserable for Democrats in red and purple states that they will move to blue states. That would, in turn, cement Republican power in the White House, Senate and thereby the Supreme Court.
I'd say it's a valid strategy, abhorrent though. Because of the rural bias in GOP there will naturally be more counties, states etc that run gop if Dems move to denser blue areas.
More importantly, pushes everything closer to the tipping point where Republicans can pull off Constitutional amendments without meaningful opposition. I see no reason to expect there won't be a significant push towards cementing Christofascism Constitutionally at that point, given the way the party is currently angled.
Yeah, but the strategy’s multi-pronged, so even if you stay and suffer for your suffrage, they can find new reasons to prevent you from voting/discount your ballot. And then you’ve put your life and happiness in jeopardy for nothing. Not a great recruitment pitch for the Stay Put Brigade.
Right? I’m also in Texas because Uncle Sam sent me there. The moment my contract is up, I’m fucking OUT of here.
Wish I hadn’t changed my state of record to be Texas, but that just means I’ll keep voting there until I can bounce. Right now I’m mad favoring Allred to unseat Cruz in 2024.
Me too. I’m a clinical social worker here, and so many of my LGBTQ+ patients have been struggling with suicidal ideation with the politics here, especially with the most recent legislative session. I’m gonna stay here as long as possible and vote in every fucking election possible. Lately I’ve even been voting in the Republican primaries against the extremist candidates. It’s so sad, because it wasn’t this bad here when I was growing up in the 90s. We even had a Dem governor.
How “Christian” of him, eh? It’s disgusting. We are human souls who deserve safety and to not live in fear. I have hope that many Gen Z Texans feel disgusted as well, won’t move, and can turn Texas blue. Once more and more are able to vote, we can transform this state. Maybe that is too idealistic, but it keeps me sane while I am unable to move.
And you don’t even have to be poor. We live in Indiana. Our house is worth far less than any blue state houses. We couldn’t afford to buy a house in a blue state. I hate it here, but I’m here to stay until the housing market collapses.
Or just be willing to hustle? Being young helps too.
I got the job before heading to SF. But another friend of mine in tech sold everything he owned in Ohio, and rented a room in a house for like 800/month and lived with 4 other dudes in a huge house in the inner Richmond. Got by on app hustles until he found a gig coding.
He’s back in Ohio now bc he decided to breed and be closer to family because of it. But he had a solid couple of years more in SF than I did. I kind of regret not just going for it sooner like he did.
This argument needs to die. The EC is never going away, so stop pinning various strategies and hopes on it somehow magically disappearing. If people spent 1/2 as much time on actually voting and campaigning for center and left candidates as they do complaining about the EC, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today.
I have worked on campaigns and studied politics for years. With the EC, the current SCOTUS, and the voter suppression and gerrymandering tactics of the last few decades , there is no reasonable long-term path to left, or even center, power. People are allowed to complain. People have been organizing, for years. Nothing has worked, and basic human rights are now being violated in ways and for groups that they hadn’t been before. You’re right that with our current governmental structure, the EC isn’t going anywhere. But democracy’s not about elections alone; it’s about the consent of the governed. A whole lot of us don’t consent, and I don’t think the current institutional infrastructure’s going to survive the blast when that pressure gets too high. And if anything (other than a Constitutional Convention based on the same principles as the EC) happens to the current arrangement, the EC goes too. No one in an underrepresented state would willingly accept those conditions.
HALF the population can’t be bothered to vote in most elections. The country is being dragged to the Right and has been for years now and election after election a massive percent of the population doesn’t seem it is worth going out to the polls. In presidential elections it is higher, but still - there are a LOT and I mean a LOT of elections that could have swung the other way if only a few hundred more people got off their butts and voted. We could have gotten rid of that blowhard Lauren Boebart (however it is spelled) last cycle. She won by only a few hundred votes in an election where less than 60% of the population of that district voted. Apparently Colorado is a mail-in state, so these people didn’t even have to go drive anywhere.
The situation is even worse if you look at demographics. No one had more to lose than the youth of this country and their voting numbers are pitiful. What’s worse is that they have the numbers to change elections. They are a massive group that at this point in time have more people than the dreaded Boomers. Yet their numbers are abysmal.
So when I hear about people complaining about the EC or gerrymandering or a host of other roadblocked set up by the Right for them to get their way on election day, I just think back that these are mostly just excuses. I am not saying that gerrymandering isn’t real - it absolutely is - but even some of the most gerrymandered districts could swing the other way if enough people voted.
If you’re overwhelmed by the enormity of the threat the right poses, and you see structural change is impossible, I sympathize. But blaming people who are struggling for not doing something they see as unlikely to produce positive change and that the state is simultaneously actively making it hard for them to do isn’t helpful. I’ve been politically involved since 2000 (academic study, campaign volunteering/work); Barring major disaster, I’m not seeing voter numbers going up from here significantly without legistative changes. You can yell at clouds all you want, but that’s not the point of leverage you’re looking for.
Making everyone a victim who is on some pre-determined path and they have no control over the things that happen to them is exactly the nonsense that I see the youth are falling for. I see posts by Zoomers all the time that essentially boil down to “we’re screwed, so fuck it” or “I give up” or some such. That’s not the America that I grew up in and I refuse to buy into this idea that change is impossible. Americans need “tough love” - coddling them in this idea of “IF ONLY so-and-so was different” then we could fix the environment/housing crisis/healthcare. Be the change you want to be. Expecting that it will simply be handled to you leads to this apathy and tuning-out that far too many Americans already fall into.
I don’t think you understand. No one in my position thinks things will he handed to/handled for us. (Your word choice is unclear.). I think we’re on the Titanic and we’ve struck the iceberg, we just haven’t done the horrible dying in the North Atlantic part. And if I wanted boomers who’ve probably studied our political structure less closely, spent less time doing actual campaign work, and seen less of the way things work than I have, telling me I’m entitled, I’d have asked one of those guys who likes talking about millennials like we’re children whose biggest problem is not laying off the avocado toast. “Kids today are weak, entitled whiners playing the victim card, and I know better because I’m older” may pass for discourse some places, but not here.
Ok. I think people’s actual lives are more important than a 250-year-old document that can’t differentiate between a flint-lock pistol and a machine gun. Don’t you?
Had to scroll too far to find this! I also read that it was totally about strategy in those purple or starting to lean purple states as more young people lean liberal, and the older, evangelical crowd is not being replaced enough with young people to keep a good footing for the Republicans. If the liberal people leave, the states turn solid red, and then they don’t need new people so much to keep power.
Of course no one wants to live in a place that is contrary to their beliefs so you can’t blame anyone for moving somewhere else… but the implications of that are scary for the country as a whole.
No they did not. Napolean was not the bourgeoisie that ruled a decade prior. The French Revolution ended their monarchy and feudalism. The Bourgeoisie lost.
No, the Revolution got rid of the monarchy and neutered the clergy and nobility, but it was an urban revolution of the Parisian middle class, or bourgeoisie. The situation of the peasants changed little through the revolution, and it was persistent efforts of the bourgeoisie to impose Parisian culture on the countryside. It took until WW1 to construct a coherent French nation. Weber (not that Weber) showed that in Peasants into Frenchmen in the 70s.
And Napoleon had family connections in the Italian nobility. His uncle was a cardinal. His father was a lawyer and inherited a fair chunk of change. Napoleon was hardly any sort of peasant.
The rich waged wars on democracy since the beginning of European colonization in North America. They’ve been winning steadily, with few losses since the beginning of money in society.
The argument is that blue states make more money and pay more taxes. Those taxes are then used to prop up red states’ economy. But that said, based on what I’ve researched in the last 10 minutes, it appears to be more of a mixed bag than I thought and the answer as to which “side” is more dependent on federal funding is murky. This is the best resource I’ve found that breaks it all down.
That's a better study honestly. I won't be trusting an article written by a journalist with a mononym, thanks .. that article you listed puts California as the single most dependent state, and that's absurd. There's no study there, it's just the mononym journalist's very poorly organized citations..
And the study I linked does demonstrate that red states are more dependent on the federal government than blue states, by ten ranks on average.
Edit that's actually just a crappy blog and that journalist isn't a journalist at all, she's a video game blogger. Yeah.
Unreal. You must have gone to like page 12 of Google results to find one that gave you California as the worst owner, and without any irony at all that blog you linked is called "balancing everything". FFS talk about disingenuous "sharing a source".
Eh, they are becoming so extreme that they are leaving some of their voters behind. They were supposed to win the house in a landslide and they barely hung on. They are losing special elections because their candidates are too extreme. Even the Supreme Court can’t stomach some of their gerrymandering on race. I don’t buy this.
This. The GOP has lost something like 12 out of their last 10 special elections. If demographics have their way, there is a decent chance the GOP won't even be a national party by 2028.
I am so damn sick of hearing about how the Republican party is dead or dying. People have been claiming this for literally decades now and seemingly every time you think you can count them out, they come back stronger than ever.
I would love to see it happen, but it isn’t happening, and to a large degree it is because the Democratic party is sooooo bad at selling their ideas to people and connecting with voters.
Agreed, first pass the post voting ensures a biparty system, full stop. It’ll always be close, too many disparate groups of many sides that splinter, coalesce, engage/disengage to create the 2 parties. The Overton window can move however.
You don’t have to enjoy any of that to move there. If you bring your liberal community with you, you can just keep doing what you enjoy, just in a significantly cheaper state.
You'd have to bring a whole city. What I'd be losing moving from D.C. to Wyoming is not fixable by bringing a few friends. Museums? Enough population that shows and bands play there regularly?
Also, who can actually convince friends and family to move themselves across the country to a shithole for politics? Have you done that?
Yeah, it’s hard enough to get blue voters to stay in those red shitholes. Why would any sane person who already lives in a blue state want to move to a red one?
The cost of living in my “red state” is much lower than most places in “blue states” so I’ll be staying here and enjoying my financial well-being even though I’m not a Trumptard. While I don’t enjoy seeing rednecks everywhere showing off their dumb opinions, I still enjoy having money more than I don’t like that other stuff.
I’ve said before, and ill say it again. For myself, I’d rather be poor in a place that respects human rights, instead of rich in a place that shits on them.
Sounds mighty principled of you. As for me, I’ve spent enough of my years in poverty already, so now that I’m out of it I’m pretty content with my situation.
It’s not principled. Some people just read history. Money only means safety when equal, stable, rights (ownership is a right) are enforced by the state. Not trying to change your mind, just be careful. The people you think are being “principled” may see threats you don’t.
I think more Democrats moving to swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina would be higher priority if people are free to move wherever purely based on political reasons.
Who's going to give up their entire quality of life to be a small snowflake hoping to make an avalanche? For the politics, it's a very small contribution. But for the family, it's huge. You'd be losing job prospects, friends and family, activity availability, local politics, healthcare quality and access, and most importantly: being treated like a person if you aren't a right-wing cishet white male of means.
Almost no one's going to take that trade and they shouldn't.
If I could relocate to a state where my views aren’t swamped by the overwhelming redness of the state, I would in an instant, but sadly it’s not in the cards until retirement.
Yeah… living in a deep red state goes against every bit of my moral fiber. But I can’t leave. I can only sit here, helplessly trying my best to vote for equal rights but then I see people are voting for red no matter what is at stake. The party system is trash and it needs to be gone.
Your comment fits me perfectly. Listening to my coworkers discuss the most garbage vitriol and bullshit mental gymnastics to justify they’re beliefs while trying to shoehorn them into their religion. Good times
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TBF considering red states want to make my existence illegal and send me to jail for being me(Trans) it does make sense for me to go to a place where I’m not threatened. Pennsylvania is more of a purple state but at least I know they aren’t going to turn on me for some political points.
From a political perspective, moving to purple states (e.g. PA, GA, AZ, NV, NC, WI, MI) makes much more sense than sorting into blue and red states, which would give Republicans disproportionate power at all levels.
You are legally protected from driving over protestors in Oklahoma. You can pull up the law and argue that it requires the “reasonable belief” that your life was in danger. But all it takes is a jury of conservative Oklahomans to agree that it was okay to flatten a group of BLM protesters. It’s the level of freedom from prosecution that police enjoy.
I’m a progressive living in a red state and I would love to leave, but who has the money or connections to just fucking move states? Like who the hell do I know in Washington state? And because the cost of living tends to be higher in blue states, it’s impossible to save enough to move to one of those areas from fucking Arkansas.
No, it’s just me and my wife. But we both have stable, decent paying jobs. Plus it’s really the people that make this place terrible, the area itself is beautiful. I was born here, so I’d like nothing more than for this place to be better, but with the current political climate, leadership (both state and federal), and the unwillingness of anyone on the right to even have a conversation about progressive talking points, I just feel really hopeless that anything will ever get better.
Casual reminder that Arkansas is one of the poorest states, and as such, wages suck. Moving to literally ANY other state will increase your cost of living significantly and immediately. That’s hard to tackle, my dude.
We’ve done it more than once. It was easier this last time due to being fully remote, so no need to get new jobs. The previous time we visited a few times to look at housing and apply and interview for jobs, and when one of us landed one, we sold everything that wouldn’t fit in our cars and just drove to the new state. It took a while to get the house fully setup, but it worked out.
This also isn’t accurate. There are bright blue cores of red states like Austin in Texas. I doubt that the wealthier republicans are moving to a trailer park in Alabama.
I don’t think so, I think this is actually disastrous for Republicans. You have a number of trends and statistics reducing their voter count and appeal in battleground states. Consolidating their base in safe red states hurts them even further here, and some of the people they drive away are going to settle in swing states instead.
Important data to understand, there are fewer blue states than red states. These actions allow for Republicans to gain far more power in Government as the states elect the President and Congress. Democrats are essentially giving Republicans full control of the Federal Government which will be used to erode all progressive laws in blue states.
I’d care a lot more about that if I didn’t think the right would try to take power either way, by force if chicanery fails. Why sacrifice your family’s life for a pipe dream when you can shore up blue areas in case we need to secede instead? Your life will be better short-term, and the only way it won’t be better long term is if the fascism you’d have had to fight anyway wins.
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