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| Europe |
| European Elections: It's Not Just Immigration Driving People Right |
| 2024-06-22 |
| [HotAir] The conventional wisdom that mass migration was a driving force in the sharp rightward turn in the European Union's Parliamentary elections is absolutely correct, but a lot of people are missing another crucial factor: what is being called "Greenlash." ...The European elite has been going Green even longer and harder than the United States and, consequently, has been paying the price longer and harder than we have been here. And Europeans are getting fed up with the expensive and damaging policies. ...European elites have been making life miserable in Europe, closing farms, driving up energy prices, and trying to convince everybody that the key to saving Gaia is to live meanly and have shorter lives surrounded by migrants who hate them. It's not a pleasant picture, at least if you aren't a member of that elite. ...The Greens have been promising a utopia in which everybody owns nothing and is happy, to (not) coin a phrase, and people are finding that the two things don't go together that well. Life with cheap and abundant energy is just better, and bashing fossil fuels is a lot easier than living without them. ...Things have changed so drastically in Europe that Ursula von der Leyen's European People's Party (what a deceptive name!) is reversing course on banning internal combustion engine cars in the near future, calling the move a "mistake." We'll see if they follow their rhetoric with action. Ruy Teixeira sees similar resistance to green policies in the United States, although he thinks that the Democrats don't grasp that reality sufficiently. The Greenest voters are the most Democrat of voters--more loyal than Black voters have been, if not nearly as large a constituency. They are, however, loud and active, while Blacks are generally not politically motivated to the same extent. Recent polling by Impact Research for Third Way vividly demonstrates these realities. Just 4 percent of voters attach enough priority to climate change issues to be described as "climate-first" voters, dwarfed by the ranks of voters most concerned about lowering costs and reducing inflation. This mighty 4 percent of voters supports Biden by 96 points (!), a margin that would have made a Soviet Politburo candidate happy back in the day. Doesn’t seem like these voters, unlike the economy-first voters, are really in play. Green may be a bigger issue than many people think in American elections if the polling and the European results translate into voting behavior. Climate change fanatics are getting more extreme as voters have become more skeptical, and that is a bad combination for the Democrats. Their most devoted fans want fealty to their issues, while ordinary Americans want relief from high prices and more austerity. If Democrats can pull out a victory in this election it will be despite, rather than because of any appeal to voters. The results would have been driven by an appeal to fear, hatred, and a turnout operation of questionable ethics and legality unseen in recent US history. They will have to improve on their 2020 turnout operations, and it is hard to see how they can do that within the rules. As if they care about rules. We have to win beyond the margin of fraud. |
| Posted by:Grom the Reflective |
| #2 Deindustrializing AND higher prices for everything strikes at the 'working class' ...hard. |
| Posted by: magpie 2024-06-22 15:05 |
| #1 Certainly, the EU farm policy has woken folks up. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2024-06-22 08:33 |