• ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    What Republicans realized decades ago is this is fundamentally true. Every election is the most important election. They just leave off the “…so far” that should be at the end of the statement.

    I think before Reagan (or maybe Gingrich) people could reasonably see some elections as less consequential than others. But the Republicans realized that it’s all about building. Build a bench of charismatic, intelligent, possibly sociopathic individuals. Get them in local government and then state government and then federal government. Tell your base voters that you’re building something that will one day pay off.

    Just keep building, just keep building, and one day you have a juggernaut. Especially if your opponents didn’t build to match.

    Democrats spent the 80s and 90s assuming the status was quo. They spent the last half of the 90s and the 00s living in the fantasy that what people liked about Clinton was the fiscal conservatism without the religion, so they should be more conservative.

    Only very recently have progressives started breaking through.

    Now we have to build.

    Luckily the Republicans have hitched their wagon to a human wrecking ball. That might let Democrats catch up sooner than they otherwise would.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Democrats spent the 80s and 90s assuming the status was quo.

      This was the Golden Age for liberalism. It was the age after the bountiful 80’s, but before the communication age started shining light into all the dark corners of our society. People could live in blissful ignorance of societal problems as the just fed and fed from a growing housing bubble.

        • angrymouse@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Changed what exactly? The way US ppl see the world? Because the government is exactly the same as ever with the rest of the world.

          Edit: Why ppl are downvoting me, you forgot Vietnam? Korea? Gulf? Fuck off boot lickers.