alt Hacker NewsI totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
A problem many people have with Democrats is they think that they're condescending, smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.
Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.
There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.
Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.
In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.