My husband just voted Republican for the first time in his life

[Girlsontour]

For anyone who really wants to understand what is going on in American politics and how the Midterms will shake out, this is an excellent episode of the podcast "Honestly" with Bari Weiss, (November 3rd 2022 Episode) with a round table of political punfits

"Who Do Voters Hate More? A midterm roundup"

I was going to post a bunch of opinions basically saying class and a realignmrnt around class and values is happening, but they cover the key state races really well.

* Shocking for Democrats, Oregon and New York state Governships are up for grabs.

* NEWSFLASH just asked my husband what he voted (I cannot vote, not a citizen) he said for the first time in his life he voted Republican! And all down the ticket: i.e. for every open position. We are in a deeply Democratic area of the West Coast.

He said he is "sick" of the Democrats and their lies.

Here’s the link:
www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/1a645c00/who-do-voters-hate-more-a-midterm-roundtable

I’m also currently in a deep blue part of the West Coast. Our local politics is corrupt. Convicted in court corrupt with clear indications it’s endemic. It’s entirely Democrat (Republicans don’t even stand for a lot of positions, it’s Dem v. Dem) and not a single thing has been said about the corruption. We’ve had deeply incompetent people in some local roles and the state as a whole has one of the worst records on poverty in the US - a rich, supposedly progressive state with horrendous homelessness. It is far more interested in ideology than impact. And there is no real concern for children.

But the Republicans are horrendous too and not looking to fix any of the issues that bother me. They are also blinkered by ideology, possibly more so than the Dems. Plus, the Supreme Court and the whole Roe v. Wade catastrophe means I cannot be a part of giving them any power.

I find it as bad as the UK in terms of feeling disenfranchised.

Thanks for posting thr link which I missed somehow!

Yeah its a great title "Who Do Voters Hate More" ! So true.

Its ridiculous that in an enormous country there are only 2 partied, although perjaps if there were more ot would cause even more division.

Whichever party decides to abandon extremism and talk common sense (at least some of the time) is more likely to win, and currrently that's the GOP.

Corruption is always a problem in politics it seems, thats why you have to have the ability to chuck people out of office.

Please excuse typos.

Men can change to republican more easily. For women with the abortion debate it's impossible. I'm too old to need one but couldn't deny any woman the right to one.

My ex pat Welsh friend moved to NYC 20 years ago. She's rabid democrat all over Facebook not a whiff of critical thinking. It's depressing.

This is really interesting to me as an outsider who studied US politics at university. Obviously being overseas we get the broader reporting of US politics and with things like the capital riots, overturning of Roe vs Wade, the cult of Trump I look at the US and think who on earth could vote Republican, but I have to remind myself that the US is still very state minded and I have no idea about local issues.

I casted my postal vote yesterday. Democrat all down the ballot.
A woman’s right to chose and democracy itself are too important to be sacrificed to local issues.

We live in a state which has abortion rights in law, as does the entire West Coast. So that is not an issue in our state and people vote for what is best for their state. Remember each state is at least as big as a European country.

As a Brit it’s really important to explain that neither the Democrats or Republicans represent more than about 12.5% of the potential electorate each. For a start, by only having two major parties in an enormous and diverse nation (as big as the entirety of Western and Eastern Europe) its means that each party has to appeal to an enormous group to get elected and most voters will be independent/non-aligned/centrist.

Of the people who are eligible to vote in the USA elections, only about 50% actually do. Of this group roughly 25% are Democrats and 25% Republicans, the independents are 50%. A big problem which seems to have been exaggerated by social media, is that each party has moved more to the extreme end in the last 25 years, rather than having an mixture of extremists blended with moderates.

So the majority of Americans don’t feel represented, and are in fact NOT represented. Congress generally has about a 30% approval rating nationwide. That’s why “Who do Voters Hate More” is so accurate. If you gauge American politics by AOC (Progressives are 6% of the National vote) or Mitch McConnell (deeply hated by most Americans) its the same as thinking Owen Jones and Pritti Patel represent most Brits.

That’s why it looks like there is going to be an almighty Red Wave, because the Democrats have ceded the Common Sense middle ground. It also explains why the same voters that voted for Obama could later vote for Trump. It has a lot to do with who is talking about the issues working class voters care about, in this case, both were anti-war and both claimed they would help the working class (what is often called the Middle class in the US) economically. Many of my extended family members voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump.

When people let themselves think Americans are racist, bigots, or whatever, they are lead astray. Most Americans are reasonable and vote they way they do for logical reasons. As mentioned in the podcast, Trump’s policy platform was more something you would expect on the Left. He was anti-war, pro an infrastructure bill and pro bringing manufacturing jobs back to the USA. It’s also why the Old Guard Republicans were so unnerved by him, as he moved the party into a much more populist direction.

@Girlsontour If you have a Republican President and a Republican Senate abortion can be made a federal crime.
It won’t matter if state law allows abortion.

Except that won’t happen because then they know they lose the next election. Where the majority of the electorate is on abortion is that they want it to be legal but maybe only for the first trimester and then in emergencies only later. This is also very common law in Europe.

NOW supports abortion up to birth which most American women do not support. When either side is radical they lose the majority by a large amount. They want to win 2024. I think they will just say it’s now a State’s Rights issue and leave it at that.

Most Americans are pragmatic and reasonable, if you push either way on the extremes you lose.

Rather than vote absentee, i opted to not vote. I have some small regrets that i didn't send in a blank ballot 🗳️ but not much. If they can't tell you what a woman is, they cannot protect your rights. The options are terrible awful bad and awful terrible bad.

I agree with your description of how the parties have moved to the extremes and do an atrocious job of representing the public. And the Dems are totally failing the groups they purport to represent.

But there’s nothing middle ground and sensible about the Republican plan for Medicare and Social Security. It’s a nightmare that a lot of middle ground voters don’t seem to have read up on (which is somewhat surprising given that it’s often a place they focus).

Exactly @RascafríaMom most people are unrepresentative by either party. Often voting for the other side is a protest vote, i.e. voting for Biden because he wasn’t Trump.

@NumberTheory they will have a huge rebellion on their hands if they try and implement that, especially right now as prices go up and the value of assets sinks. Not saying they won’t but it would be the end of any party that tried to, or did it. People’s patience is very thin right now.

Republicans have a couple of their own party who would be very unlikely to vote for an abortion ban in any case, so even if they get a majority they might not get that through.

But if they did get it through they would need the President too. At the moment Biden would simply veto an abortion ban and there’s no expectation the Republicans would get the seats to to over ride the veto.

But it does highlight how vulnerable abortion is.

I think Girlsontour is naive to think the Republicans wouldn’t try to get it banned Federally. It isn’t popular generally but it’s a rallying point for their base and the way politics works here, that’s what parties cater to even though it’s resulted in an electorate who don’t know who to hate more.

I don’t believe I am naive because their base is only a small % of who gets them elected. It would work out about the same as the Democrats pushing Gender Ideology throughout society = a huge backlash. It only works in specific states, not on a national level. Let’s see what happens in the midterms on the West Coast because if the Dems lose votes the electorate will be sending the message they have gone too far, especially into woke territory. Although the economy is the big issue for the majority.

I lived and worked in Washington D.C. for a number of years and was a grad student at Georgetown, I know how pragmatic politicians are behind the scenes. In fact I dated a guy before I meet my husband who worked in the office of a Senator on the Hill.

The entire Trump Presidency was spent saying Republicans won’t really do this or that right up until they did it.
If there is a Republican President, Senate and house they will absolutely introduce a federal ban on abortion.
As we know what the majority want doesn’t always happen in the US. The way the Senate and the Presidential college work means it is what most states want that matters not what most people want.
If it was majority rule then Al Gore and Hilary Clinton would have been President.

It’s exactly what they’ll try to do. It’s what they’ve been saying they’ll do for a long time. It’s what they just tried to do. It is what the Republican Party currently is. They aren’t centrist or middle ground. They are extreme tax and welfare cutting and they’ve been getting more and more extreme on this agenda since Reagan.

@ChimneyPot I am no fan of Republicans but you have the Democrats trying to wipe out women’s rights in law. The Democrats lost their ability to fight back intelligently about abortion because they couldn’t even talk about female biology! All the Democrat leaning women’s rights groups are totally captured and they are not fighting back against Gender Ideology, redefining the meaning of what a woman is or children being groomed and medicalized under trans ideology. There is no meaningful opposition because the Democrats are not standing for women.

Trump is a republican so basically your husband just voted for trump's return (he said he's going to run again). 😞

Well my husband gets to vote for who he wants. I am just using him as an example of how Democrats are losing voters who never voted Republican before.

The Dems do push gender ideology. The Equality act is their landmark legislation that they have been pushing for and are still trying to get through. If it succeeds it will push gender ideology throughout society.

@NumberTheory exactly, we agree.

Girls - Is he doing it because of the Equality Act? Or is it something else that pushed him Republican?

I agree that the Dems have been losing votes and are out of touch. They seem to have totally avoided discussion of the fact more people voted for Trump the second time round (compared with the first) and, in particular, that more people of colour did. However much you hate Trump, the way the progressive left has refused to really try to understand that is going to hurt them badly.

@Girlsontour
you keep coming up with various reasons why the Republican Party are not a threat to a woman’s right to chose and when each is shown to be untrue you try to cloud the issue by saying the Democrats can’t be trusted on a woman’s right to chose because of their position on transwomen.
These are two different issues and only one of the major parties are defending a woman’s right to chose and that is the democrats/ The Republicans are actively dismantling it.
The Republicans also want to dismantle Social Security and Health Insurance protections not to mention environmental protections.

As for people changing their vote for the first time the Republicans in Kansas we’re very surprised that their attempts to make abortion illegal were blocked by what they thought were solid Republicans

Trump however remains a racist bigot and therefore should be unelectable.