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The DeSantis gambit

Brainster said:
There used to be a pretty strong positive correlation between the level of education a person had and their likelihood of voting Republican. High school dropouts voted for the Democrats in strong numbers, high school grads in less strong numbers, while those with a college degree tended to go for the Republican. At the advanced degree level things did swing back to the Democrats, so if you want to raise the argument that the very highest and very lowest information voters were Dems, feel free.

My point is that since Trump, things have changed. High school dropouts are now reliable GOP voters and college grads have shifted over to the Democrats. I see no alternative to believing that now, in fact the low-information voters are more likely to be Republicans. As a partisan you may wish that was always the case, but remember the Democrats have always billed themselves as the party of the working man (well, until they substituted working family).
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Back in the 90's there was no clear edge for either side and it's been trending Democrat ever since.

FT_16.09.14_educationGap_liberal.png


It's also worth remembering that many people with some college or even an undergraduate degree form a special class of low information voter. Undergraduate level courses generally lack nuance and at times give students just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Eg in Economics these early courses focus on basic free market theory while the more advanced courses look at how the basic theory breaks down and what can be done about it. Conservatives exposed to only the idealized basic theory don't know about the practical problems associated with it and are vulnerable to claimed the more nuanced practical implementations of free markets are "socialism" because they require regulation and government action. Thus these voters tend to reject functional implementations of free markets while believing themselves to be pro free market.

Historically, something similar has happened a lot on the Liberal side as well, with students learning about social issues first but not getting into the more advanced topics on the complexities of resolving these issues. This leads them to support simplistic but unworkable fixes to complex issues.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
I think Crist should be seen as a poster boy for centrist politics, seeing as he can't even make up his own mind whose side he's on, and his failure speaks for itself.

It's a fine strategy in theory, I get it: so long as you're ever-so-slightly left of whatever Klan rally the GOP is raiding for candidates these days you should be able to grab all the left votes, all the center votes, and a fair number of non-deplorable right votes too. Against a fascist thug like DeSantis it should have been a landslide, if it worked that way. But it don't. Enough Democrats are never going to vote for a Republican, even one pretending to be a Democrat, even when the alternative is DeSantis, and enough Republicans are never going to vote for a Democrat, even one secretly Republican, even when the alternative is DeSantis, that the numbers falter. Hell I'd put money on there being more voters turned off just by Crist's cowardly fecklessness than turned on by DeSantis's arrogant authoritarianism. Running nearly-Republicans against actual-Republicans is a failing strategy no matter how many times it fails and the best you can think of is "oh so you think you could have done better?!"

What exactly that means for the party in terms of where its ideological preferences for candidates should be, I don't think we have enough data to say. Obviously I'd argue it'd be better for America in the long run if it was pushed as far left as possible to try and rebuild the social safety nets the GOP seems so eager to tear down, but all we have here is evidence that where we are right now is NOT where we need to be.
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We don't need no stinking centrists. That is a winning strategy for the Dems.
And you idea of making ACO de facto dictator of the US. How is that working out for you?
 
Brainster said:
There used to be a pretty strong positive correlation between the level of education a person had and their likelihood of voting Republican. High school dropouts voted for the Democrats in strong numbers, high school grads in less strong numbers, while those with a college degree tended to go for the Republican. At the advanced degree level things did swing back to the Democrats, so if you want to raise the argument that the very highest and very lowest information voters were Dems, feel free.

My point is that since Trump, things have changed. High school dropouts are now reliable GOP voters and college grads have shifted over to the Democrats. I see no alternative to believing that now, in fact the low-information voters are more likely to be Republicans. As a partisan you may wish that was always the case, but remember the Democrats have always billed themselves as the party of the working man (well, until they substituted working family).
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I also think the power that religious fundies have gained in the GOP has a lot to do with this. The 'Preachers" as Barry Goldwater called them, frown on secular learning, and have a basic dislike of science since it clashes with the Bible.
One of Goldwater's last statments was to warn the GOP against allowing the religous right to domnate the party since he learned as Senator there was no working with them. They considered all compromise evil. Goldwater predicted if they came t dominate the party, they would ultimately ruin it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I admit I didn't see the revival of cuius regio, eius religio in an American state in the twenty-first century.
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De Santis is one of a new breed: Raised as Catholics, but bending over backwards to kiss the butt of Protestent Fundies, despite the fact that most Protestent Fundies ,deep down, still hate the "Papists".
Though I would not put it above DeSantis to convert to a Proteetent Fundy church if he thought it would help him politically.
Yes, I think the man has no real principals. he only belief is in De Santis. He is like Trump in that respect.
 
dudalb said:
We don't need no stinking centrists. That is a winning strategy for the Dems.
And you idea of making ACO de facto dictator of the US. How is that working out for you?
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That's what you got out of Beelzebuddy's post?
 
what if they are writing from out of state? What if the piece is published on servers not hosted in Florida?
 
Obviously, this is not about what they can legally do. These bills or initiatives or what you want to call them serve 2 main purposes

1) a trial balloon to see what they can get away with. What will the public stomach and what can the courts twist the law to make legal?

2) the intimidation. Sure, a blogger can sue if they are punished under these laws and probably win, but at what cost?

Think of all those people arrested for "voter fraud" last year who were validated by DeSantis appointees to vote. His base doesn't care and the general public probably doesn't even know how those cases turned out. There's just that image of DeSantis fighting "voter fraud".
 
"Let's so how far I can take this before I get stopped" could not be the point more if they put it on the front of the t-shirts.
 
If this charming bill became law and a paid blogger complied, then what? Would he be free to excoriate the Mob, 'scuse me, the Republicans? Or would he and his employers start receiving special attention, like tax audits, licensing reviews, sewer downgrades, building inspections (w/ discovery of unsuspected violations, perhaps rather novel ones), very frequent traffic tickets, and stuff that I can't think of?
 
"Then what" would be the same as the Texas "Abortion Harassment is Just Super" law from a couple three years back.

It's not about making a new law exactly. It's giving people permission to be an *******.
 
They wouldn't even need to be registered for most of that. Government officials at every level already do that stuff to people who piss them off.

At first, probably nothing would happen to people who register and still criticize the GQP in Florida. This way, DeSantis supporters and centrists can talk about how overblown the problem was. Eventually, people who do run afoul of the republicans will see their license revoked or not renewed and the ones who comply will be given special access to make even more favorable pieces.
 
Donal said:
They wouldn't even need to be registered for most of that. Government officials at every level already do that stuff to people who piss them off.

At first, probably nothing would happen to people who register and still criticize the GQP in Florida. This way, DeSantis supporters and centrists can talk about how overblown the problem was. Eventually, people who do run afoul of the republicans will see their license revoked or not renewed and the ones who comply will be given special access to make even more favorable pieces.
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I think you're saying that DuhShmattis & crew already have an enforcement mechanism. I think you're right.

Here I've been expecting -- rather hopefully -- that he'd organize outright action squads in brown shirts. That would be easier to fight.

Howsomever, if DeBigGuy isn't up for political violence, good. Maybe he's smarter than that, maybe he lacks the stones for it.

ETA: Or maybe he's seen how that worked out for King Trumphff.
 
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The defense is going to be 'you only have to register if you're being paid, you libs are lying again like with don't say gay!'

Of course how are you going to know if someone is being paid? Right, you can investigate. Anyone saying anything about you. The threat of investigation is to have a chilling effect in addition to being pretext for fishing for other charges. 'Oh we were investigating them for not being registered and see if they were paid, and look at all the evidence we found they are a groomer! No, we're not just locking up our political opponents, they're groomers!'
 
lomiller said:
Back in the 90's there was no clear edge for either side and it's been trending Democrat ever since.
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My point was mostly about the low-information voters. Here's an archived NY Times page with exit polling from the 1980-1996 elections. In 1980, Jimmy Carter lost among male high school dropouts by 4 points but won among female dropouts by 15 points, while overall he lost by 10 points, so clearly he did quite a bit better among low-information voters than he did in general. In 1984, Mondale lost among male dropouts by 5 points but won the female dropout contingent by 14, again in an election where Mondale got swamped overall by 19 percentage points. In 1988, Dukakis actually won the male dropouts by a point, while racking up a huge 24-point win among gals with no diploma, in an election he lost overall by 8 points. In 1992 Clinton won the election over Bush by 5 points, but among male dropouts his margin was 18 points and among women dropouts he smoked Bush by 30 points. In 1996, Clinton beat Dole by 8 points, but won male dropouts by 26 points and female dropouts by 38.

These days, high school dropouts are apparently not a significant demographic, as they get lumped into "high school or less." In 2016, Trump won that demo by 7 points, significantly better than his loss by 2 points in the popular vote. And in 2020, Trump won that group by 15 points while losing the general election by about 4.5 points.

So it seems to me pretty plain that low-information voters (using education level as a proxy) have switched parties in the last 30 years.
 
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It would be funny if he is exactly who this was targeted at. Like, DeSantis knows he has a ton of Trump sympathizers working around him, so he targets the outlets they are most likely to gossip to.
 
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