Kenny left a response to Skeptic’s comment, here:

No way PA chose Climate Change, Abortion and Trans/Pedo Grooming over Inflation, Energy Jobs, Crime, The Economy, Education and other bread and butter issues and even the gaslit polls admit that. THOSE were the hot button issues and Frankenstein Two Headed Man was on the WRONG side of every one.

Now, Kenny is a great guy, a well-read, smart, and knowledgeable guy. I feel myself privileged indeed to be able to count him as a friend, and to have him amongst us here at CF as an active participant. But he’s missing something in this one instance, something YUGE. To wit: he’s making the mistake of imagining the shitlib Left, in Pennsy or anyplace else, think more or less the way Normal Americans do. By the numbers:

• Climate change? You mean “saving Mother Gaia” from the wanton, destructive depradations of greedy, venal, outside-Nature Hoomon Beenz
• Abortion? You mean “a woman’s right to choose,” a sacramental right to “health care” which MUST be protected at all and any cost
• Trans/Pedo Grooming? You mean the fundamental right to enjoy total, unrestricted sexual liberty, not that this “Grooming” nonsense ever happens anyway, you H8ful liars
• Inflation? Ain’t none, since our most excellent President did such a marvelous job reviving a US economy Trump, in his supreme arrogance and incompetence, had so idiotically wrecked
• Energy? If it ain’t green, it’s mean, you H8RRZZ
• Crime? What are you, scared or something, you big coward?

And so on from there. Not only is there no shared opinions between Us and Them on the issues of the day, we don’t even agree on which issues are legitimate matters of concern and import among sensible, well-meaning people in the first place.

Shitlibs in PA, along with their likewise cognitively-challenged brethren, sistren, and whatevren scuttling fearfully about in their decaying urban hellscapes across the blighted plain, will always and forever vote against Real Americans, America That Was, and absolutely everything Our Side holds dear, worthwhile, and righteous. Because reasons, that’s why. Previous Presidents have been pleased to begin their every public address with a reference to “My fellow Americans,” which for a long, long time held at least some water. Not anymore; not since the mid-1960s at least, possibly longer. The TWANLOC acronymic is a Thing, and it’s all too apt a descriptor nowadays.

Update! The way they think. If you want to be generous and call what they do “thinking.”

If you’re reading this, chances are that when you cast your vote, your focus is on real-life issues. Gas prices. Inflation. You care about law and order, and hence didn’t like it when Democratic mayors and governors allowed Antifa and Black Lives Matter to run riot. You care about individual liberty, and hence resented the restrictions imposed during the pandemic by many of those same Democratic mayors and governors.

Millions of Democratic voters, however, don’t think like that. Many of them can afford not to. They’re part of the social, cultural, and political establishment—or at least think they’re part of it, or want to be seen as being part of it. They’re well off enough, for example, not to have to worry too much about rising prices at the gas pump or supermarket.

But even those Democrats who aren’t so well off, and whose lives are affected by grocery bills and lawlessness in the streets, won’t let such phenomena change their vote. Because their politics, take them for all in all, aren’t very firmly grounded in reality.

On the contrary, millions of them are driven, to at least some extent, by ideology. They buy the idea that American capitalism—and the American consumer—should take a serious hit to stop climate change, an ideologically rooted concept for which they’ve seen no evidence whatsoever. They defend the depredations of Antifa and BLM as noble assaults on a corrupt system, even if their own windows end up being broken.

Their own individual liberty, if on their radar at all, is far lower down on their list of values than gestures in the direction of collective well-being, so that during the lockdown they welcomed state-ordained limitations on their movements—even though those limitations had no basis in science. They believe that certain groups are by definition oppressed, and so will automatically oppose any action, however reasonable or just, that might conceivably harm illegal immigrants, offend Muslims, or make trans people uncomfortable—and by the same token will support almost anything that will presumably make members of these groups happy.

Moreover, the media that they trust have taught them to view with contempt voters who are preoccupied with such issues as crime and the cost of living. They’ve been persuaded that when some voters speak of crime, it’s a coded way of expressing racism, and that when some voters complain about high gasoline prices, they’re simply being selfish: for isn’t it far more socially responsible to worry about climate change—to which fossil fuels contribute massively—than to gripe about whatever one has to pay to fill one’s gas tank?

They see themselves as taking the long view. The unselfish view. Yes, you can describe their politics as “virtue signaling”—and you’d be right. But there’s something else they want to signal: the boundary between themselves and the rest of us. They’re desperate to make it clear to the world that they’re not MAGA folks—not grubby little “deplorables,” always preoccupied with their own narrow interests and their own so-called freedom.

After Biden took office, his handlers defined him largely in opposition to Trump. Trump wanted to build a wall, so Biden opposed it. Trump made the U.S. energy-independent, so Biden had to undo that, prontissimo. Millions of establishment Democratic voters operate the same way, perhaps often unconsciously: they define themselves in opposition to the likes of us.

By George, I think he’s got it!

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