It’s like he doesn’t even understand

Conservatism in a nutshell.

He understands American democracy. PA voted for Trump, so they would probably be more likely to elect a conservative senator next time around as well.

read zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and you'll realize that no one has a "rational" basis for their views. it's always ultimately based on feelings no matter how you disguise it with facts and logic

It's easier to make money as a conservative.

People who are actually Dem don't like playing dirty. The nature of believing in things like equality and justice and so forth tends to mean you believe in telling the truth and doing things on the up & up. Pretending you're something you're not is anthetical to one's upbringing. "Ends Justify Means" isn't usually a belief held by those on the left.

Whereas, if you're a sociopathic grifting opportunistic dipshit, you'll exploit this to nefarious ends.

I’m guessing they get more money since our government was sold to corporations.

Much easier to grift off FUD than hope, and for many that income stream and power are near impossible to walk away from. If they tell themselves a lie enough they begin to believe it almost as much as their base does, and it's easy to get caught up in and go down the rabbit hole and end up outside of reality.

It's also easier to rationalize being the victim of "them" than it is coming to terms with being out of touch.

Less chance of falling out a window

I don't think this is too far off. Synaptic pruning leaves us vulnerable to increasingly relying on heuristics as we age. It is entirely possible that cognitive decline makes us more drawn to less cognitively taxing messaging (generally conservatives).

Lol I can't tell if that was master class trolling or if that guy was serious 🤣

I don't know. My dad drove over a landmine in Vietnam and he was a dick

I don't think it was obvious, honestly. He had a pretty long proven past in PA that made him popular and pretty fairly progressive.

Also this isn't about near death. This is about debilitating strokes that literally kill off parts of your brain. Depending which region was harmed it can drastically alter your personality and perceptions. Eg, the ACC is a key component of the brain associated with leftism.

I didn't think a wealthy elite who primarily lived in NY buying influence from the party that tends to control NY really counts when determining actual political beleifs

He never really liked politics. His handlers chose the republican party because there are more weak-minded rubes to gobble up their absurd propaganda.

Richard Dawkins, the esteemed biologist that coined the term "meme," suffered a stroke and started going hard on "there are only two sexes." Setting aside that gender =/= sex, how does a biologist not remember bimodal models are not clear dichotomies

It never applied to him in the first place. It was always a ruse. If you look at his politics before he ran for Senate, he was always conservative. And very pro-Israel.

What has changed about progressives in the last two years?

Its funny how republicans can send false agents into the left's sphere of influence so easily. It's hard for the left to do the same because who wants to act like a republican. 🤮