Fox News host Sean Hannity blamed liberal politicians for the actions of two would-be assassins of former President Donald Trump and falsely claimed they were Democrats.
That’s moderately useful for statistics purposes, but that’s all. It does not mean every individual person who registers as Republican believes in Republican values and votes for Republicans. Nor is it a complete list, plenty of states don’t require registration for primaries so there are lots of people who don’t bother declaring either way.
I personally prefer the idea that democrats and republicans are elected party members and party officials and that voters are Americans, who can choose to support any of (or none of) these independent organizations. In the same way that I am not a Seattle Kraken.
(ETA: also, you can track a direct line of interest in treating politics like a team sport and what Hannity is trying to do, so literally as far away from that as you can get is what I’m talking about.)
yeah I mean you could say that first sentence about anything 😃 but also yeah it’s increasingly uslessly reductive (other than to divide endlessly) to talk about individual Americans that way, in my opinion. I wish we’d stop. I think Hannity has a vested interest in promoting the idea that americans line up into two neat camps.
The same way I define if someone is gay, christian, or whatever other personal label, I ask them. If that’s not an option, I’m not going to make a judgement based on random shit.
This guy was a complicated person who doesn’t seem to strongly identify with either party, obviously Hannity is full of shit, but that doesn’t mean we should lose sight of nuance in our reality.
How do you think the parties count their numbers?
That’s moderately useful for statistics purposes, but that’s all. It does not mean every individual person who registers as Republican believes in Republican values and votes for Republicans. Nor is it a complete list, plenty of states don’t require registration for primaries so there are lots of people who don’t bother declaring either way.
Then how do you define whether or not someone is a Democrat? Because Hannity insists this guy is one.
I personally prefer the idea that democrats and republicans are elected party members and party officials and that voters are Americans, who can choose to support any of (or none of) these independent organizations. In the same way that I am not a Seattle Kraken.
(ETA: also, you can track a direct line of interest in treating politics like a team sport and what Hannity is trying to do, so literally as far away from that as you can get is what I’m talking about.)
Then Hannity was lying. The assassin was not a Democrat.
yeah I mean you could say that first sentence about anything 😃 but also yeah it’s increasingly uslessly reductive (other than to divide endlessly) to talk about individual Americans that way, in my opinion. I wish we’d stop. I think Hannity has a vested interest in promoting the idea that americans line up into two neat camps.
The same way I define if someone is gay, christian, or whatever other personal label, I ask them. If that’s not an option, I’m not going to make a judgement based on random shit.
This guy was a complicated person who doesn’t seem to strongly identify with either party, obviously Hannity is full of shit, but that doesn’t mean we should lose sight of nuance in our reality.