The Most Active Threads Since Friday

by Jeff Steele — last modified Nov 11, 2024 12:18 PM

The topics with the most engagement over the weekend included whether posters really thought that Vice President Kamala Harris would win, men and support for women's rights, the support of working class women for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, and where to go from here with friends and family that voted opposite of you?

Over the weekend, the most active threads were, once again, all related to the election. The most active of the bunch was the one about Democrats engaging in self-reflection that I discussed last week. After that was a thread titled, "Did you really think Kamala would win? Deep down inside, did you?", and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster says that she had doubts about whether Vice President Kamala Harris would win the election. I think we should stipulate that, by nature, nearly every Democrat is predisposed to pessimism. Harris could have had a poll lead of 40 points, and the majority of Democrats would still be having sleepless nights and imagining scenarios for an upset. In this case, the polls always showed a very tight race that was never anything more than a toss-up. Therefore, a certain amount of doubt was justified. But now with the benefit of hindsight, you would get the impression that nobody thought that she could win. Some posters say that they always feared that what they believe to be the innate sexism and racism of American society would be too strong for a Black woman to overcome. Others claimed that race and gender were not issues but rather Harris' own shortcomings. The same criticisms that were made during the campaign — such as complaints about her media interviews — were repeated. I often felt during the campaign that many people were looking for an excuse not to support Harris instead of reasons to support her. Votes for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump would be justified by the smallest fault that could be found in the Vice President. This impression is strengthened by responses in this thread. There is a general feeling of, "Well, Harris has this or that flaw, so I had no choice other than to vote for Trump". Never mind Trump's innumerable more and worse flaws. For my part, I believed that Harris would win the election, but I also had reasons for concern. One, that I voiced here repeatedly, was the impact of her position regarding Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. This did turn out to hurt her in Michigan and likely had a negative impact elsewhere. My other worry also appears to have turned out to be true. Harris clearly predicated her campaign on the assumption that moderate Republicans, particularly women, could be persuaded to vote for her. My belief is that these Republicans may not like Trump, but were prepared to vote for him minus a compelling enough alternative. Late in the campaign, I became convinced that Harris was not successfully providing that alternative and, therefore, moderate Republicans would return to form and vote Republican. I still thought, or perhaps hoped, that Harris could pull out a victory, so I am not retroactively claiming that I didn't think Harris would win. The other thing happening in this thread — and I know I am paddling upstream trying to change anyone's mind about this — is that Harris' defeat is being exaggerated. With the exception of Arizona, her losses in swing states were by less than 2%. All the geniuses in this thread who claim that it has been obvious all along that Harris would lose should realize that it wouldn't have taken much to swing 2% of the voters in those states a different direction.

The weekend's next most active thread was also posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Convince that there are young men who believe in women’s rights", the original poster says that her 25-year-old daughter has lost all faith in men after voters elected a "misogynistic rapist" as President. The original poster's daughter does not believe that there are any men worth dating. The original poster is trying to convince her otherwise and asks for examples of young men fighting for women's rights. MAGA posters started exactly where the campaign ended with one of the first posters to respond writing, "No one cares about you [sic] cat lady daughter. She's free to move to another country if she doesn't like it here." As I have repeatedly written, one of the biggest motivators for MAGAs is resentment. The movement thrives on White men believing that they are the greatest victims of mistreatment in world history. While this resentment is often focused on immigrants and minorities, there is plenty left over for women as well. Misogyny was a central theme of supporters of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's campaign. On DCUM, I have had to remove hundreds of posts using derogatory sexual terms to describe Vice President Kamala Harris or making sexually explicit attacks on her. Even in Trump's formal campaign, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance referred, like the poster above, to "childless cat ladies" and derided Harris for not having given birth to children. While the original poster didn't mention abortion, posters immediately started debating abortion rights. Abortion opponents attempted to frame their opposition to abortion as actually pro-women. Abortion rights proponents argued that even red states have voted in favor of abortion and, therefore, supportive of women. But, as the original poster returned to stress, misogyny goes well beyond abortion. She writes that her daughter is scared "that a misogynistic (grab em by the p*ssy) rapist was elected president again and that men (and women) are OK with that. She is scared that respect for women doesn’t matter in society anymore and this is just the beginning of a downward spiral of women’s rights." The first reply to this was by a poster claiming that the allegations against Trump were false and politically motivated and the women that he grabbed by their private parts were sluts and asking for it. There is a ton of denial going on in this thread. One of the most common responses was to criticize the original poster for being a bad parent and a failure in raising her daughter. As one poster noted, those responding were "proving OP's daughter right". The MAGA movement blends a number of different political trends together. There are leftovers from the Tea Party, aging gamergaters, QAnon holdovers, Silicon Valley autocrats, and a not insignificant number of neo-Nazis. Among these groups are proponents of the "Trad Wife" movement and men's rights activists who believe that women should be required to have sex with them. Nick Fuentes is on social media bragging "Your body, my choice". I don't think that anyone believes that every Trump supporter is a misogynist, but every Trump supporter has decided that misogyny is not a deal-breaker. Trump and Vance have been explicit about it, as have a great many of their most vocal supporters. Yet, poster after poster thinks that the original poster's daughter is the crazy one.

Next was a thread titled, "Why do uneducated white women support Trump?" and, like the previous two threads, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster says that President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump would not have won without the support of White working class women and she asks why they voted for him. This is not unrelated to the previous thread, though posters in this thread tend to have more substantive and thoughtful responses. The problem with questions like that asked by the original poster is that, in a victory as close as Trump's, every group was essential to his win. Had educated White women not voted for Trump in the numbers that they did, Trump would have lost. Had fewer White men, educated or not, voted for him, Vice President Kamala Harris would now be President-elect. Therefore, some posters take umbrage at the original poster singling out uneducated women. Of course, the thread is full of Trump supporters who think that these women made intelligent decisions. They provide a number of reasons that White, working-class women might vote for Trump, one of them being condescension by those like the original poster. Posters also point out that women often do the family's grocery shopping and, hence, are more in touch with rising grocery prices. Therefore, they were motivated to vote for Trump because of inflation. There has been a lot of talk lately about a decline in direct human interaction and how that has impacted society. Reading this thread, I see something to that idea. On social media, including DCUM, posters are more apt to say things that they would not say face-to-face with someone. Our audience has traditionally been largely educated women. It would not be surprising if those who didn't fit that mold occasionally felt that they were being put down or insulted. I have already mentioned the nexus of resentment and Trump support, but there is plenty of that on evidence here. For instance, one poster's reply to the original poster was, "Because of a whole swath of out of touch sanctimonious losers like you." I suspect that fewer "sanctimonious losers" are encountered in real life than on social media. Other explanations are that these women "get power through men" or that because "their uneducated white husbands tell them to." One thing that is clear is that despite the importance of "women's issues" such as abortion rights and misogyny to some women, they were not priorities to other women. One interesting post in this thread described the poster's experience working with online marketing for parenting brands. She found that such brands often market to parents by creating fear about what could happen to their children. Many of these brands have a right-wing tilt and their marketing efforts tend to lead their customers to the right. This has created a pipeline that essentially leads from new parents to Moms of Liberty-type organizations. Several posters added more descriptions of this sort of marketing. If what these posters describe is true, a significant number of voters, not just White working-class women, are casting their votes based on the influence of parenting brands or health supplement advertisers rather than campaign activities.

While the final thread that I will discuss today was not posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, it was still political. Posted in the "Family Relationships" forum and titled, "Genuinely asking both parties: where do you want friends/family relationships to go from here?", the original poster acknowledges grievances of both supporters of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, and his opponents. She asks whether others want to heal the divisions and, if so, what role they will play in the healing. If others, instead, want to "write off" the opposing side, the original poster asks what the country will be like if everyone does that. Basically, there are three types of responses in this thread. There are Trump opponents who want nothing to do with those who voted for Trump. They don't want to act like this is just a normal political difference because they think that it is much more than that. They are in the process of ending all such relationships. There are Trump supporters whining that they are perfectly nice people who would never cut off relations with anyone who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and it is not right that people won't be friends with them now. Third, there are posters who simply wish that everyone would stop identifying by their political leanings and just treat everyone nicely. This thread turned political and I eventually locked it. But I want to comment on some of those political posts. One defense of Trump is that he previously served as President and the bad things that his opponents are predicting he will now do did not happen then. This overlooks the bad things that were done. There was a Muslim ban, Trump appointed three members of the U.S. Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. There was the mishandling of the COVID pandemic, there were repeated attempts to get rid of Obamacare, and there were Trump's tax cuts for the rich, which led to a huge increase in the national debt. Trump opponents argue that he is better prepared to implement his agenda this time. Moreover, Trump now has a larger Senate majority and may well end up with a Republican-led House of Representatives. Trump has just threatened Senate Republicans that anyone wanting a Senate leadership position must support his right to make recess appointments. A recess appointment allows the President to appoint government officials while skipping Senate confirmation. All serious contenders for the Senate Majority Leader position have already announced support for allowing Trump to make recess appointments, which means that they are giving up one aspect of Senate authority. If this heralds a period in which Republican legislators cower to Trump's intimidation and simply act as rubber stamps, the U.S. will already have taken the first step toward dictatorship. Democrats have always had to deal with a Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, or Kyrsten Sinema, who was prepared to thwart their efforts. It does not appear that there will be a similar figure willing to stand up to Trump. It is difficult to know which of Trump's many plans he will actually get around to implementing, but many of them will be quite damaging to our country. This was even acknowledged by Trump's pet billionaire, Elon Musk. So, my advice to Trump opponents is to not end relationships with Trump voters. They will likely be suffering soon enough. We will need their votes to help reverse things in the future.

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