An autumn for dictators?

[Alben Barkley]

Lula did everything in his power to run one of the worst campaigns in the history of democracy to a loser, ballot f•••ery notwithstanding. It’s nice for the planet’s lungs but not very bright of a future in a few years.

Protests have been rocking Iran since before this regime even began.

The current ruling regime in Pakistan is a lot worse than Khan

Tankies are usually working people experiencing downscale mobility, so that’s a bad sense of the economy.

I won’t even respond to the rest of this nonsense, to think I thought it would be good to hail you before. Terrible, terrible thread.

LOLOLOLOLOL

No, tankies are terminally online fools. Not "working people" of any kind.

Considering you are one yourself, you should know this better than anybody!

[Alben Barkley]

Lula did everything in his power to run one of the worst campaigns in the history of democracy to a loser, ballot f•••ery notwithstanding. It’s nice for the planet’s lungs but not very bright of a future in a few years.

Protests have been rocking Iran since before this regime even began.

The current ruling regime in Pakistan is a lot worse than Khan

Tankies are usually working people experiencing downscale mobility, so that’s a bad sense of the economy.

I won’t even respond to the rest of this nonsense, to think I thought it would be good to hail you before. Terrible, terrible thread.

I am not making a value judgement. In my view, no matter how much I disagree with them, tankies provide a valuable counter narrative to the fact that the MSM has defense contractor money directly and indirectly influencing it, and the overly hawkish tilt that comes out of that. I am just observing patterns.

No, tankies provide nothing of value whatsoever to society. These people unironically believe Joseph Stalin was good. That's really all that needs to be said. You can argue that actual Marxists provide a valuable counter-perspective, but tankies are even fake Marxists. They are just authoritarian drones who are blindly and irrationally anti-US and anti-West.

[Alben Barkley]

Chalking all of this up to COVID restrictions is a bit much. It seems more like that cost of living crisis that took center stage in people's minds and realities at the end of 2021 and greatly accelerated this year has had a far greater impact on recent elections than residual bitterness over restrictions from over a year ago.

Yeah, and I don't buy the anti-incumbency thing that much either. In the US, the GOP's much touted "red wave" failed to materialize, at least in part due to voters being genuinely concerned about their authoritarian tendencies. There is actual backlash to authoritarianism going on here, it's not just a product of rebelling against whoever is in power. You saw the same thing in France and elsewhere. People in democracies may not love the leaders in charge, but they'll still take them over authoritarian dictators. And in places where they already have authoritarian dictators, they are rebelling against them more and more. That is a real trend and I don't think one has to be exceptionally idealistic to see it.

Hell, I don't even think COVID was the only reason Trump lost by a longshot, and if it was it was certainly not because he was TOO restrictive! Yet some in this thread would have you believe this is all backlash to COVID restrictions.

[Alben Barkley]

Chalking all of this up to COVID restrictions is a bit much. It seems more like that cost of living crisis that took center stage in people's minds and realities at the end of 2021 and greatly accelerated this year has had a far greater impact on recent elections than residual bitterness over restrictions from over a year ago.

Yeah, and I don't buy the anti-incumbency thing that much either. In the US, the GOP's much touted "red wave" failed to materialize, at least in part due to voters being genuinely concerned about their authoritarian tendencies.

In popular terms, it materialised. Democrats got more favourable voter distributions than they usually do for a number of reasons, but in PV terms, this was their worst House result since 2010.

That has to do with dozens more GOP candidates running unopposed, and localized "red waves" in the large states of Florida, New York, and to a lesser extent California. In middle America where we've been told for years right-wing populist sentiment is on the rise, there was if anything a blue wave. Just look at Michigan and Pennsylvania!

In any case you cannot seriously argue that the worst performance for an out of power party in decades was a "wave," and pointing to the House PV as evidence of that is flawed for a number of reasons including all those I mentioned.

Also I'm referring to the exit polls showing that voters genuinely saw democracy as under threat and those voters broke hard for the Democrats. I have little doubt that there would have been an actual red wave had the GOP convicted Trump after 1/6, distanced themselves from authoritarian rhetoric, etc. But as it was, even Lauren Boebert nearly lost in a deep red district! They fatally erred in their strategy by assuming incorrectly that voters don't care about all this "democracy" stuff when they clearly very much do.

Also you are just factually incorrect: 2014 was significantly more R-leaning in the House PV than this election.

[Alben Barkley]

I can't verify this at the moment but recall reading here that even if one adjusts for unopposed candidates, the GOP still won the popular vote.

They might have still won it but it would have been extremely narrow. Definitely not a "red wave."

And since the issue at hand here is whether voters are revolting more against dictatorship or incumbency, I think it counts for something WHERE the votes are coming from and WHY voters are casting ballots. If it's in New York with relatively moderate R candidates and little reason to think your rights will be directly threatened regardless of who wins, it's one thing to cast a vote for an R. If you're faced with Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania (a purple state compared to New York's blue, and a Trump 2016 state), on the other hand? Well we saw how resoundingly voters responded to that! We even saw maybe the most infamous election denier of the year, Kari Lake, lose in the hardly deep blue state of Arizona in a race she was "supposed" to win. And again, even Boebert nearly lost. It's clear that authoritarianism still has a steep political cost in democracies, incumbent party or not. That's my main point.