[bgun]

Republicans have learned to weaponize attention far better than Democrats. Negative attention is still attention, and where Democrats shrink from "gaffes" or criticism, Republicans just recognize that public criticism is still a form of attention. Even among each other. Whoever gets the most eyeballs, top stories, and headlines for longest wins this game.

Vicious, vindictive, petty, nonsensical, random, and trolling tactics are all strategically useful in this media landscape.

[outside1234]

Republicans have the benefit of not having guilt around saying things that are patently not true while the Democrats are still trying to act within norms.

It is asymmetrical warfare on the truth.

[cooper_ganglia]

It astounds me that anyone is capable of sincerely believing this.

[varsketiz]

Why? I think it's a very reasonable take. Democrats dont go around talking about people eating dogs.

[rayiner]

Republicans don't go around saying a President in obvious mental decline is "sharp as a tack." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHE3jnOAR80

Democrats literally just lost an election because of their tremendous ability to lie to themselves: Biden isn't incapacitated; selecting candidates based on race/gender doesn't compromise on quality; immigration has no drawbacks; etc.

[varsketiz]

I take the sharp as a tack comeback, that is fair.

Regarding selecting based on gender compromising or not compromising candidate quality is a vastly more compex question. It is sad that a lot of people have a simple answer to themselves. That immigration has no drawbacks I have not heard anywhere, seems like a position you assign to democrats, not one they hold.

[rayiner]

> Regarding selecting based on gender compromising or not compromising candidate quality is a vastly more compex question

Except Kamala Harris put the correct answer to that question into stark relief. Everyone knew from 2019 that she was a terrible campaigner and manager. But Biden picked her as VP and then Democrats picked her as the nominee because they were able to lie to themselves that she was an accomplished individual rather than someone who had moved up within California uniparty politics because of her race and gender. Selecting people considering race and gender in an effort to “make history” or correct past wrongs is a deeply misguided practice. But I didn’t expect it to blow up in people’s faces quite so quickly and spectacularly.

[outside1234]

I will add that the media infrastructure around the Republicans have also managed to convince most of their viewers that "up is down" in a way that I would not have believed possible (but should have from reading many books about the Third Reich etc.)

[bayarearefugee]

And yet you fail to make any logical refutation of it.

[cooper_ganglia]

You cannot reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into.

Politicians lie, constantly. All of them. Yes, even the ones you like. Saying Republicans lie and Democrats don't is practically self-propagandizing, convincing oneself of something they'd prefer to be true.

ALL politicians are equal-opportunity liars: if there's an opportunity, they will lie. Sometimes for power, sometimes for money, sometimes because they owe a favor. It's a big club, and we aren't in it.

[ben_w]

> Politicians lie, constantly. All of them. Yes, even the ones you like. Saying Republicans lie and Democrats don't is practically self-propagandizing, convincing oneself of something they'd prefer to be true.

> ALL politicians are equal-opportunity liars: if there's an opportunity, they will lie. Sometimes for power, sometimes for money, sometimes because they owe a favor. It's a big club, and we aren't in it.

If you genuinely believe this, how do you determine which way to vote?

It's not like you can call a particular set of politicians (country or party) pathological liars and then take seriously election promises from any member of that set.

[cooper_ganglia]

I vote for those who lie to me the most convincingly about having my family's best interest at heart, and who claim to have goals for the country that align with my values.

That's about the best any of us can do.

[rayiner]

It's a response to the fact that democrats can create widespread misperceptions through their control of traditional media. For example, in 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies to get Donald Trump elected President." https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/20383-russias-imp.... Hillary Clinton never went out and said quite that. But the barrage of coverage from all angles in the media created the same impression as if she had said that.

In another example: how many people know that, after the 2000 election, the Supreme Court found 7-2 that Al Gore's proposed recount strategy was unconstitutional? Nobody knows that Al Gore had employed a strategy of hand-counting ballots only in counties he had won to find more countable votes that would swing disproportionately in his favor.[1] The media completely blacked that out, and everyone now only remembers the 5-4 part of the decision addressing how to fix that constitutional violation. There's more people under the misimpression that Kathleen Harris or Jeb fixed the election in Bush's favor than understand the sneaky maneuvering by Gore that precipitated the whole mess.

[1] E.g. if Gore won a county 2:1, then statistically, every vote rejected by the machine that could be hand counted would be twice as likely to be a Gore vote than a Bush vote. Gore found a loophole in Florida election law that allowed him to use that principle to find more votes in his favor by seeking hand recounts only in two large counties he had won.

[nuancebydefault]

Another example of whataboutism, this time about a guy who ran for presidency many many years ago. He's the one who gave attention to this now obvious unconvenient truth. Back then they criticized the energy use of his house, which still compares very pale against the consequences of this, still swept under the carpet today, inconvenient truth.

[rayiner]

MAGA didn't happen in a vacuum. Two republican presidents have been elected in the 21st century, and after both of their first elections, the media fostered widespread misperception of the legitimacy of their wins through selective reporting of the truth. For people coming into the leadership of the GOP now, folks in their 40s and 50s like Vance and Johnson, remember the 2000 election very well, but not the Walter Cronkite era when the media was more even-handed. That inevitably shapes their own approach to communication.

[zugi]

Undermining the legitimacy of the new President to try to diminish his power seems common lately, e.g.:

- Clinton only won because Ross Perot siphoned votes away.

- Bush didn't win, the Supreme Court handed him the Presidency.

- Obama isn't American.

- Trump was only elected thanks to Russian interference.

- Biden didn't win, the election was stolen.

It's a tactic that gets used because it seems to work, at least in terms of rallying one's own troops.

[ElevenLathe]

And Kennedy is a Catholic, so you're just voting in the Pope. And van Buren is a Dutchman. This isn't new.