> why doesn't the left understand what the right believes because about five minutes of conversation with a typical rightoid reveals that they want everything that i do, but they then proceed to continuously vote for people who in practice will actively work against them.  or in other words, we don't understand what the right believes in because the only thing they demonstrably believe in is "voting against democrats", even if it's against their own self-interest. you can't appeal to someone when you can promise to give them everything they want, actually *give* them everything they want, but then they'll vote against you anyway because your party's color is blue. you want a great example of this, look at the most recent election. the number-one reason voters gave for voting for trump was "the economy", and more specifically "inflation".  on the day of the election, inflation was under 2% and wages had been rising faster than inflation for the better part of a year or so. we had the lowest inflation rate in the western world. the reason for high inflation at the start of biden's term could be directly attributed to a worldwide plague screwing up supply chains, which would have happened no matter who was in the oval office. harris was promising to essentially continue biden's economic plans, i.e., continue the plans that had put inflation under 2%. at the other end of the spectrum, donald trump had two actually articulated economic policies: massive tariffs and deporting 20 million workers that disproportionately work in the agricultural industry during a period of high employment in america, actions which every economist on the planet was saying will lead to large-scale inflation. trump was flat-out telling people "i will raise the prices of groceries." the right voted for trump in spite of this. you can't reason with people who act like this.
United States