The idea that Americans will not care about a political issue unless it's described in terms of impacts on their stomachs, or even worse, their gas prices, is not supported by real-world evidence. It is a contemptuous myth propagated by the smug political class.

Many of your faves are completely besotted with this myth, and maybe you are yourself. It's one of the more appalling outgrowths of overeducated liberal elitism, an expression of disgust for regular people that has been disguised an observation about political strategy. It's why liberals lose.

The idea "Americans won't care until it affects gas prices" is perpetuated not through actual experience, but because PEOPLE LIKE US REPEAT IT ENDLESSLY WHILE OTHER PEOPLE LIKE US SIGH IN CONTEMPT AND NOD OUR HEADS. It is NOT TRUE IN ANY EMPIRICALLY OBSERVABLE WAY.

Correct. Revulsion at ICE had nothing to do with gas prices.

But the people who have the emotional capacity to be reviled by ICE (60%) are already angry and against the administration. Support for Iran war sits at 38%. Pretty much the same percentage as the people who still support ICE. The only thing that will move the remaining 38% is severe economic pain.

Yes that's true but on the other hand the media will never ever cover anything Trump does the way they covered Biden on that.

Nor any Republican how they cover a Democrat

Wasn't it also something that Trump set in motion and Biden just carried through?

Yes but Biden/Dems are incapable of messaging and letting people know this. Biden should have spent the first two months in office complaining about all the crap Trump did.

I think you underestimate the media megaphone problem here. I see great messaging from Dems every day on here but nothing catches on like the bad faith RW BS that their media machine spins up. Egg prices were a daily news topic b4 the election then magically disappeared right after somehow 🤔🤔🤔

we can’t rely on the MSM to solve it for us, but luckily social gives us a voice. try to find 1 good Dem msg a day to boost on all your platforms which crossposting tools like can help automate for. Here’s a good feed for for following popular Dem messaging bsky.app/profile/fake...

That's only because they have a media echo chamber to destroy Democrats

Just to interject, the premise that Dems are only objecting to the Iran war on gas prices is wrong. They're talking about troop safety, waste of money, unconstitutionality, and lack of planning (which is typified by the gas prices, buy also failure to get Americans in danger home and more).

I don't think that's exactly it. The opposition knows people like them care about the murdered schoolgirls. Frankly, people like my MAGA relations won't give a shit about that, or even be happy about it. They will give a damn about the gas prices, though. bsky.app/profile/atru...

I agree with this. Ppl don't necessarily reward gas prices going down, but they defo punish gas prices going up. That happened in the 1970s to Jimmy Carter, too.

I'm just old enough to remember that. But its not just a question of people being mad enough that they'll vote for one party to punish the other. Some will never do that. But a portion of those people might be mad enough to stay home and not vote at all, and that has an affect, too.

The reason I have no hope is that everyone in politics outside the reactionary fever swamp is wedded to a series of incorrect assumptions that nevertheless must be held as a condition of their career status.

Furthermore, it isn’t just the case in the US, but is widespread among people of this particular class, at least in “the West”.

Yeah I was talking about everyone

I think it’s hard to agree that he did it successfully, I think it’s “about as well as could be expected,” which was pretty much just a sense that we blew a bunch of blood and treasure plowing the sea, and an unmitigated disaster for the Afghanis.

Agree. But we did lose people. It was inevitable that any withdrawal would be difficult and tragic. Biden had the fortitude to do it. Trump was grossly incompetent on the issue--he was there 4 years.

will i love you but it was absolutely a disaster and a massive abdication of responsibility this is an insane thing to say

How so, in particular? The option was doing that or reneging on the Trump pompeo deal and having the taliban start attacking American soldiers.

What the hell were you doing in Afghanistan in the first place? Same question for Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Irak, Libya, Panama, the Dominican Republic....and a couple more.

biden ends up taking all the blame for 20 years of failure

Does anyone really believe the United States conducted a missile strike against an elementary school? Ive seen a lot of people saying this but IMO claim doesn’t pass the smell test; why would they target an elementary school? Makes no sense.

They used AI. It was a mistake.

We can only speculate. We have years of evidence, however, of Israel striking schools & hospitals & mosques & all manner of civilian targets. Over and over and over. Where does Israel end and the US start? Whose war is this? And whose "laws" is it happening under? And who will be held accountable?

People care about war because it's children of the lower classes who have to fight them, even if they don't care about other citizens. Even if that were true. Harping on this is great messaging to the working class, most of which have relatives serving. Better than gas prices.

The most devastating thing was the debate

Okay but this also means that Americans care about children in Gaza being bombed to death which the democratic establishment pretended they don’t care about So that post from Aaron is about SHIT DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP and that is 100% correct, and NOT about voters Get done reading comprehension.

Yeah but that was basically giving up a war as lost. The war was obviously unwinnable, but whoever actually pulled out would be the one who lost it and that was going to be unpopular. That the Afghan government folded before we were out made it much worse and led to the media portrayal.

I know withdrawal polled well...but that might have been something where a push poll might have been useful. "Do you support American withdrawal from Afghanistan if it means total Taliban victory and control of the country?" Americans like to eat their cake and have it too.

Orange man negotiated the entirety of the withdrawal. His fingerprints are all over it.

The Air Force's finest moment since the Berlin Airlift

Exactly. The coverage has a strong impact on perception. They complained real news was fake until they were awarded actual fake news portrayed as real. It takes a lot of people to get the truth to break through.

It was a disaster for our Afghan allies though...

It was the turning point for his negative approval rating, but it was obviously not as devastating as the effects of the energy crisis after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The former made it unlikely for him to get re-elected, the latter made it impossible for any dem candidate to win.

No, it was the debate disaster...for fuck's sake

Trump voters and Biden voters have different concerns. It matters who you are trying to persuade.

They are falling into a trap. These issues seem to give a veneer of rationality and justification for voting for/supporting the morally repugnant - and we have allowed it. All those vox pops of people claiming whilst they found Trump morally questionable justified voting for him because of gas price

Exactly the same argument has been used for decades in the Uk to justify voting for the Conservatives ‘better at running the economy’ despite no empirical evidence to support it