[eropple]

> When Suzy soccer mom says she wants some stricter vetting for refugees

I don't disagree with most of your post--but in the land of the real, it is very difficult to say that vetting for refugees in the United States is not already an intensely strict process. The people asserting it's not are self-described nationalists who wish to stop immigration...or are sourcing what they're saying from them. That's where the meme (in the original sense of the word, not the 4chan sense of it) comes from. Your hypothetical soccer mom is getting this from dog-whistle sources because she listens to them and can hear the frequency. In today's political climate, that is basically a lost cause. The epistemic closure is real; you're not clawing that person back. (Some of them--myself included, years back--will eventually find their way out. But you gotta want it and nothing anybody outside the bubble does or says will make it happen.) It's not a fight to turn people, and to be honest I don't think throwing good money after bad makes sense. (I advise ignoring these people entirely, not trying to argue with them or teach them because you don't have the hooks into that person that the news sources they choose to pay attention to do.

Instead, it's a fight to turn our people out. And I'd agree that picking on randoms doesn't help turnout. But one thing I'd caution about is that what you're saying is very frequently extended to everybody not merely randos. "That literal fascist is a literal fascist, he checks all the 'what is a fascist?' boxes and he's down with Richard Spencer" still needs to be said. Though I'll decry my liberal forebears' willingness to use the word to mis-describe earlier generations of Republicans. Because we are in a real bad place and the literal fascists are actually at the gates. And in the White House.

(The deeper concern, and that's why it's a turnout fight, is gerrymandering by overwhelmingly right-wing/Republican/there's-not-really-a-difference-anymore groups in order to crack and pack those who don't vote for them. But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish...)

[dotnetisnotdead]

>but in the land of the real, it is very difficult to say that vetting for refugees in the United States is not already an intensely strict process. The people asserting it's not are self-described nationalists who wish to stop immigration...or are sourcing what they're saying from them.

I see your overall point, but the problem with the assertion here is Suzy's opinion is WRONG, not just different and it must be wrong because of where she gets her information. So you take that and then amplify it a little and you get "Suzy is a Nazi" and that's where everything breaks down.

Suzy may not be wrong, and may have a valid opinion based on her own personal research or experience but that's unacceptable to the left of today. Everything is absolute and if Suzy doesn't agree with it, she is wrong and watches too much Fox News! Dog Whistles! Gaslighting! Facism!

It's not just the left that does this of course, but as a member of the team I feel disenfranchised when it happens.

[AnimalMuppet]

> I don't disagree with most of your post--but in the land of the real, it is very difficult to say that vetting for refugees in the United States is not already an intensely strict process.

Agreed.

> The people asserting it's not are self-described nationalists who wish to stop immigration...or are sourcing what they're saying from them.

Here I disagree. A big chunk of it is people who think that nothing bad should ever happen, and if any refugee ever does anything bad, that proves that refugees are not adequately vetted, and we have to do something. They may then listen to the self-described nationalists, but that's not where they start.

And it seems to me that writing off all the people who disagree with you is not a winning strategy. (A whining strategy, perhaps, but that's not the same thing...)

You're going to have to persuade them, or you're going to have to live with them (and their votes). And you don't like the consequences of their votes.

> Because we are in a real bad place and the literal fascists are actually at the gates. And in the White House.

Yup. At least as advisors. (I'm not willing to place Trump himself in that literal category, at least not yet.)

[eropple]

> A big chunk of it is people who think that nothing bad should ever happen

Those people may exist. I don't think, if that's their base axiom, they are practically (in a world where we have scarcity of time and effort) reachable. Convincing somebody to change their axioms is...well...not a particularly good investment of time.

> And it seems to me that writing off all the people who disagree with you is not a winning strategy.

This is pretty much what Republicans have been doing for a very long time, and doing pretty well at the levels that matter (i.e., state legislatures and Congress). They have not tacked to the middle, they have not tried to drum up moderate voters. They've kept their people and they have whipped them into a frenzy to vote to the point where gun-to-head obstinacy (the debt ceiling comes to mind) is a positive that rewards them even when moderates are aghast.

Turnout fights aren't won from the middle. You can have the occasional figure who appeals to the middle--Obama, I think, is one such figure--but I don't think that is replicable at scale. And the problem is at scale. There really are more of us than there are of them; ours just don't get out and vote. (And there are efforts by the party in power to make that continue.)

> At least as advisors.

To be clear, I agree. (I don't think Trump has a political position. I know Bannon and Miller do.)

[AnimalMuppet]

> I don't think, if that's their base axiom, they are practically (in a world where we have scarcity of time and effort) reachable.

On reflection, I may have to agree with you here. It's an emotional axiom, not a rational one, and so you can't fix it by rational argument. (You might be able to fix it by emotional argument, but I'm not sure even that would work, nor do I know how to go about trying.)

> This is pretty much what Republicans have been doing for a very long time, and doing pretty well...

But it seems to me that the Democrats (or at least the left wing of the party) has been doing the same. The message has been, if you don't agree with us, you're a racist, sexist bigot, and you should just shut up and crawl in a hole (or die). And it turned out that (pick one): The Republican base was bigger, or the Democrats alienated more people, or the Republicans alienated them less.

> There really are more of us than there are of them; ours just don't get out and vote.

If by "ours" you mean Democrats (as opposed to centrists), then I'd say that Hillary was a very uninspiring candidate. Also, when the DNC chose to hinder Bernie, it turned off a lot of Democratic voters.

> I don't think Trump has a political position.

I don't, either. I hope that's good news - if Bannon and Miller prove to be political albatrosses, Trump is somewhat likely to jettison them. (The bad news is that Trump, not having positions of his own, is more susceptible to the positions of those around him.)