Here’s what happened in 2022:
Roe v. Wade got overturned: This was bad, Dhaaruni cried a lot, and enough text has been written over it, but in case you needed another reminder.
Democrats did much better than expected in the 2022 midterms: Partly as a result of Dobbs, Democrats didn’t get blown out of the midterms, they gained a net 2 governorships (lost Nevada, gained Massachusetts, Maryland, and Arizona), didn’t lose any Senate incumbents and picked up the open seat in Pennsylvania, and lost less than 10 House seats. That said, the turnout of traditionally heavily Democratic demographics sucked bigly, and the reason that Democrats did okay was because a narrow sliver electorate broke with their own often heavily Republican voting history to reject openly extremist Republican candidates and vote for Democrats.
I think we should really spend more time talking about how WEIRD conservatives have gotten like what even is this shit?
This article, “In rural Georgia, an unlikely rebel against Trumpism,” made me cry, especially this part:
He graduated from high school. He told the librarian he wanted to keep the Emerson essays, and she did not resist. He enlisted in the Army and got posted to South Korea, where he remembers how it felt telling fellow soldiers about his life for the first time, and looking out his window at the vast city of Daegu, thinking, “I could be on the side of the mountain right now, and I’m glad to be where I am.”
A reminder:
This year, I have learned that white liberals really love whitesplaining the politics of immigration to me, an immigrant.
Donald Trump announced his second run for president, and his campaign didn’t start out well: I honestly personally think that Trump is a washed-up loser, which Americans hate, but the American people have disappointed me before and they very well might do it again.
It’s kind of weird that due to educational polarization, the current Democratic coalition is extremely dependent on rich liberals for votes and for donations, but still considers raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations a prerequisite to being the party. Maybe I’m off-base but it feels unsustainable for Democrats to continually demand people pay for a government social net they don’t personally benefit from (although of course, Republicans being unhinged freaks helps Democrats electorally, with a lot of registered Republicans in swing states voting blue during the midterms). Joe Biden promised to not raise taxes on people making below $400k but the reality is that there simply aren’t enough truly wealthy people to fund a social safety net without taxing the upper-middle and even the middle class.
More holistically speaking, the best and worst thing about the United States, especially the west, is that it’s very libertarian at the core, which means that socially speaking, most people don’t care what others do in their private lives and hate government overreach a la Dobbs v. Jackson, but it also means that economically speaking, Americans really don’t think it’s their responsibility to help others outside their immediate communities. Bootstraps mentality is intrinsic to the American ethos, and extricating that from our national identity is extremely difficult if not impossible.
Finally, for a (likely better) video recap than whatever this was:
Really good points! #9 definitely has a lot of truth to it. Reminds me of some lessons from the Affordable Care Act which was in many ways the defining political battle of my lifetime. The work of expanding our social insurance system requires careful rhetorical framing that emphasizes giving hardworking people a hand up when they need it, and Obama did this very well. It also takes pragmatism - you pass what you can rather than holding out for too much. Then once a new social program takes root, people tend to like it and don't want to lose it, and further improvements become possible. This story has played our with everything from the original Social Security to the ACA.
On #8, it is definitely true that the current Dem coalition is more upscale compared to 2012 because of educational polarization (and this is mostly to our geographic disadvantage). But it's still true that, among basically every demographic group, people vote more Republican the more money they make - Trump only won outright in 2020 among voters making >$100k per year. I suspect that Democratic support for expanded social programs will hold up over time. Middle-incomr to high-income people can support them and even value them as a form of insurance, and it's still the case that the difference between the two major parties in the USA on welfare-state issues is bigger than any of our peer nations. You're definitely right that much more ambitious social program expansions like a big permanent CTC would require broader-based tax increases. Guess we'll see how it goes!