Chaos2Frozen
Member
In my opinion it's not worth the risk.
Just like how Brexit empowered all the bigots in U.K., Trump just made it okay to be openly racist and a sexist... AND they have guns.
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Asian-GAF: We're all the same, like Stormtroopers |OT| |AT|
- Thread starter Cybit
- Start date
In my opinion it's not worth the risk.
Just like how Brexit empowered all the bigots in U.K., Trump just made it okay to be openly racist and a sexist... AND they have guns.
BLOODED_hands
Member
In good news! Dumbfoundead released his latest work:
We Might Die
Finna dive into it. Title is appropriate for this week.
We Might Die
Finna dive into it. Title is appropriate for this week.
Someone already posted a link about this here, but I do want to talk about it in more detail. The Democratic party had actually been doing Asian voter outreach this election, anticipating an increase in Asians as a percentage of the population in upcoming years. And hoping to capitalize on this election to increase their support.
Instead, the race that swung from D to R the most this election was Asians.
I don't know if it was the particulars of the candidates or what not. I would just like to know why this happened.
Was there something appealing about Trump, specifically to Asians, that swung this significant chunk of the Asian vote his way?
Zoe
Member
Been hearing about all of my Chinese friends getting hounded by other Chinese who want government out of their lives.
Septimus Prime
Member
I'll do my best to try to tackle this, but let's lay out a few problems first:
1. "Asians" is a hugely diverse group, with myriad life experiences in the US
2. As a group, Asians only account for 6% of the US population, so swings in their voting will appear larger if we're looking at them by percentage
3a. This post is going to be very anecdotal and will probably digress a lot
3b. I am a relatively well-off, US-born Chinese-American in California, and most of my friends are in a similar social class, regardless of ethnicity or nationality
3c. I don't know a lot of Trump supporters, and the ones I do know aren't poor white "racists" or "xenophobes" in the Rust Belt
Anyway, with that all on the table, I tried to have conversations with people I know who voted or would have voted for Trump to get a sense of their thought process (and I think I'm actually pretty close to convincing one of them that he made a mistake by voting that way). Aside from one person flat out saying she didn't want to vote for "a girl" because she didn't buy the "empowerment message," (wow, right!?) the general consensus is that they think that it's time for a businessman to lead the country. I do feel like there's a general disdain for Hillary, though, but I don't think it's due mostly to sexism or misogyny.
One person I talked to said she voted for Trump but it doesn't matter because her vote doesn't matter anyway, and I find it hard to disagree with that. There's definitely a general feeling of disenfranchisement because of our electoral system, which particularly holds down the electoral power of Asians (and Latinos). I've posted about this in the GAF thread about the EC, where the HillGAF people are still insisting that the EC isn't an awful anachronism, but I just said "minorities" there; it definitely holds down all minorities, but it affects Asians (and Latinos) the most because we tend to congregate in enclaves in mostly blue states. This produces two effects:
1. Our votes in the blue states, like CA and NY, where most of us reside, don't really matter because the states lean blue no matter what.
2. Our votes in the red states don't matter because there aren't enough of us to swing things either way.
So there's definitely a feeling that our votes in presidential elections don't matter. And then we have to contend with an "inevitable" candidate who isn't well-liked in Hillary Clinton. I spoke with my grandmother--who I remember being a very enthusiastic supporter of Bill Clinton in '92--before this election, and she said that, yeah, she'll go ahead and vote for "Clinton's wife" because there isn't anyone else to vote for. That's not how you energize a base.
And if I may intercede here, what outreach? I didn't see a damn thing, and I even pay attention to these things. All I saw was Hillary's supporters shitting on anyone with any criticism of her. These same people, who patronized us by talking about "pragmatism," are now the ones talking about flipping electors. Get real.
Anyway, I do think the biggest factor here is the feeling of disenfranchisement. There's a sense of our votes meaning nothing (and I know about down ticket and referendums, but it's not really consoling when we don't matter for the title match), so why bother voting. Or worse, what does it matter if we vote for Trump, since our votes mean shit? You and I can prattle on to them all day about how that isn't true, but it's not going to change the sentiment that it is (and it kind of is, because why should a person in, say, Montana, have a stronger voice than all of us?) and that our party gives no shits about us and wants to ram down our throats their candidate and expect us to fall in line?
That said, let's digress a bit. I know cdyhybrid (RIP) will disagree, but I personally believe the Democratic Party failed and gave Trump the win. When I voted for John Kerry, the DNC's golden boy, in '04, I left the booth thinking, Oh fuck. We lost. I felt it again this year, but I pushed it aside because I sipped the Kool Aid. Now is a
Heh, I'm alright. At least for the IL boy here, the asian racism isn't "coming back", it's that it was never gone. I think for the first time in a bit urban areas may have to deal with it - which is why everyone is freaking out. Can't say it's gotten much worse so far <knock on wood> in rural areas - I think it was just unseen for long. Plus, when it comes to brown people, even something like 30-40% of Democrats are ok with islamophobia. >_<
Trump beat Romney on all minorities if I remember correctly.
Also, pretty sure cdy is back fwiw.
Could the Dems have done better? Absolutely. Do they get the largest slice of the blame pie? Not a chance.
The fact remains that the only demographic that Trump won is white people. Don't give them a pass.
And I'm not really interested in doing a post mortem on the campaign at the moment. Not when we've got the KKK throwing victory parades.
The fact remains that the only demographic that Trump won is white people. Don't give them a pass.
And I'm not really interested in doing a post mortem on the campaign at the moment. Not when we've got the KKK throwing victory parades.
Septimus Prime
Member
I really can't agree with you on this because this is the path to losing again and again. If we don't at least try to understand why they voted the way they did and instead just ostracize them (look at me; all the fancy words are coming out of my lexicon today), we aren't going to make progress. You don't have to agree with them, but you should at least know your "enemy."
We know exactly why they voted for him. They put his promises of returning jobs to poor rural communities over basic human rights for disadvantaged groups.
If you want to compromise with that, go ahead. Count me out.
Septimus Prime
Member
You don't think we should have paid that lip service, too, without the part about the human rights violation? We can take the moral high ground all we want, but it amounts to nothing if we keep losing, which is what's going to happen without some introspection.
We both know Trump won't be able to do a damn thing to bring those jobs back. Why didn't Clinton also go and make that empty promise as politicians do?
ActStriker
Member
Zoe
Member
Good luck convincing everybody of that though.
Except Dem policies have been helping these communities. Trump handily won rural communities where unemployment went down during Obama's tenure.
Clinton definitely should have paid it lip service, but the fact remains that these people voted for him despite all the bigoted shit he was spewing. That's not something I'm letting slide. Ever.
Edit: Conveniently enough, this thread just popped up explaining how I feel about it pretty clearly: http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1312773
Septimus Prime
Member
Yes, I agree. They very stupidly voted against not just their own self-interests but of everyone else's, as well, and that's a terrible thing.
What I'm saying, though, has nothing to do with letting it slide. It happened, and we lost. If we keep going the way we did or, worse, double down on it, we'll lose again. We need to get some of these people onto our side if we want to stop losing forever.
We can do it. We can still get the people who subscribed to, but don't watch, Cinemax to sign up for a different package next time. But continuing to push them away and yelling at them about how raw a deal everyone got is just going to have them dig in their heels and talk about how much value HBO has. And some of them might tune to Cinemax eventually.
Is that what you want? Softcore skin flicks all day and night?
This is where we fundamentally disagree. I'm not going to coddle people who voted for a white supremacist so their feelings remain intact enough to possibly get their votes.
They did something awful and they need to thoroughly understand that. If that means we have to abandon traditional methods of winning elections, so be it. I'm not interested in having to bail out liberal white people anymore. If they want to get their asses in gear and get their compatriots in line, great, but I'm pretty much going forward with the assumption that we're on our own now.
I think the point Sept is making is that, in the next election, the Democratic Party will have to do more to engage the demographic groups that overwhelmingly supported Trump. Nearly every group's support for Clinton was noticeably less than for Obama just four years ago, and the decline in support despite gains in the economy or health care clearly point to some other forces at work. Trump's election mirrors Brexit's success, despite everyone's expectations, even down to the same racial and economic tensions.
But as we found out in the aftermath, the Clinton campaign absolutely failed themselves when they assumed states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were in the bag. This particular failure falls squarely on the campaign and their strategists/pollsters.
"How do we coddle and tolerate bigots?" is not a question anyone here is asking. We're just trying to figure out a path to winning, because the alternative is what we have now. Blame is irrelevant.
But as we found out in the aftermath, the Clinton campaign absolutely failed themselves when they assumed states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were in the bag. This particular failure falls squarely on the campaign and their strategists/pollsters.
"How do we coddle and tolerate bigots?" is not a question anyone here is asking. We're just trying to figure out a path to winning, because the alternative is what we have now. Blame is irrelevant.
Coddling bigots and racists IS the path to winning if they keep doing what they're doing.
Septimus Prime
Member
No, I don't think so. The margin for victory in this election was less than 1%, and I'd like to think that there are more people on Trump's camp than that who voted that way despite the baggage.
But even if I'm wrong about that, which I might be, consider the 46% of the electorate who sat out. Just getting 2% of them to come back out and vote would be enough to flip the table, but that's contingent upon the opposition also not upping its numbers. To do that, we would need a much better candidate and campaign, but we also need to not energize and bolster the opposition to vote against us.
And to do that, we need to not have them see us as monsters that they need to go out and slay.
Anyway, here's the basic message that I think is important: win first. That's the part we fucked up this time.
If stopping a white supremacist isn't enough to get people out to vote, I don't know what is.
This isn't a difference of political opinion that can be negotiated and bargained.
Is America for white supremacy or not? There's no middle ground.
Septimus Prime
Member
I'm going to be honest here. I think Trump will do most of the work for us when he fails to deliver on most of his promises. We just need to be around at the time to catch some of the fallout so his successor will hopefully be someone we'd prefer.
The worst case would be that they hate Trump but still hate us more at that time. Then we just get more Trump.
That's just a false assumption. You are basically arguing the real voting electoral body will forever stay 48% of the actual voting populace in America.
That has never been true. In 4 years, a more charismatic candidate with a better ground game can and will convince more people to show at the polls and vote.
If not, then it's another 4 more years of Trump.
Clinton didn't build as big of a coalition as she needed to. Simple as that. She thought she didn't need to and got burned.
Nah, the voting demographics will shift in this country dramatically over the next two decades. The problem is that the critical mass of old white baby boomers might bury this country so deep before they croak that it might be too late.
Yes, she could have ran her campaign better in multiple ways, but the fact that she even had to is the issue.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
Why does Americans need to be charmed and pampered into voting for their best interest? That's the part I seriously do not get.
I mean even people from countries not as democratic as America can tell Trump is a bad idea. Americans are now back to their pre-Obama image.
I mean even people from countries not as democratic as America can tell Trump is a bad idea. Americans are now back to their pre-Obama image.
Leave nothing to chance. She had more money and people than Trump.
I don't get the argument that she had to basically network and build and maintain that firewall. That was what she was depending on, of course you have to secure it.
While you made a long post with quite a lot of thought put into it, you also poison your own words with your attitude.
For starters, PoliGAF was not insisting the EC isn't an awful anachronism. There's been discussion and debate about the merits and demerits of such a system and what it is designed to do. If you can discuss that, do it.
Moreover, most of them gave up on using the term Berniebro a long time ago. A lot of Sanders supporters complained about that, but it seems they have no qualms about their own hypocrisy in labeling others "HillGAF". If you honestly are sitting yourself on some kind of high horse, you should probably conduct yourself better. "Get real".
Two, you yourself note that the concentration of Asians in CA and NY makes it difficult for their vote to count. So where would the Democratic party go seeking Asian votes with more weight? In Nevada and Atlanta, Georgia. NV has doubled its Asian population in the past 15 years and Atlanta is a burgeoning city with a sizable Asian population. They were on the streets canvassing and getting Asians registered. Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it wasn't happening.
Three, I feel like you started off focused and then you meandered into your own personal bitter feeling territory. You're regurgitating the names of people you dislike, like a Republican spits out Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic party gave a shit about Asians, because they started reaching out earlier. For comparison, Hillary established Asian outreach in CA in Jan 2016. Likewise, the first Sanders Asian outreach HQ didn't set up shop in CA until the week before the CA primary (end of May, roughly). Which one was actually working for your vote? The Democrats are not stupid, they know the Asian population in the US is growing, which was why they were using this election to jumpstart an effort in courting the Asian vote.
But because of misinformation even on part of the so-called intelligent, informed liberals, people like you run away with falsehoods about what the Democratic party is doing or not doing.
I digress, since much of your post ended up digressing. The question here is why the margin, why the flip. I think sexism has a factor, because of some oddities of Asian culture. The businessman thing also makes sense, for reasons I can believe are probably related to money (that I feel very bitter about when it comes to Chinese people, particularly with my mother who measures success based on the number of zeros on your paycheck).
If we expect white people to clean up their own house, then I think we as Asians probably have the obligation to do the same. It was somewhat appalling when working as a poll worker to hear a Chinese voter say, "Where's the Chinese people on the ballot? I only want to vote for Chinese people!" Because it is pretty self-centered, racist, and myopic, and perhaps we have the obligation as the next generation to explain that to our parents and elderly.
Septimus Prime
Member
Okay, fair enough. I didn't mean to say "HillGAF" in a derogatory way, by the way--just the faction of GAF that strongly supports her. And at the end of the day, it's not like went out and voted for Trump or any GOP because that's not what I'm about. I wanted to speak to you about my anecdotal experience. So if it felt like an ad hominem attack on my end, I apologize.
I don't, however, see the benefit of the EC regardless, though. I fail to see how it succeeds in protecting us against ourselves in any sense other than that it subverts democracy in its truest sense (by design), and I don't see why it's beneficial to give certain people disproportionate electoral power contingent upon where they live. The few times it went against the popular vote, it's arguable that it made the outcome worse, and certainly in my lifetime, the two times it happened, I would definitely argue that the end result was worse.
As for what I think the Democratic Party is or isn't doing, I'll be clear that I don't think the primary was rigged or stolen from Bernie; however, I also very much think that running Hillary in the general against Trump in our current political climate was a grave error. Obviously I didn't voice this concern close to the election, so that's on me, but I don't think it's a coincidence that we ended up electing a populist demagogue in a year where we clearly saw that there was anti-establishment pushback all over the world. Bernie doing as well as he did in the primary, as well as Brexit, as well as the seemingly increasing number of populist conservatives being elected in other countries, and even Jeb! getting owned in the GOP primary, should have been heeded as a warning, but it wasn't. Instead, we ran a candidate who, to the opposition, is the establishment, and then doubled down by running Tim Kaine along with her (anecdotally, most of the Trump people I talked with think Hillary would have fared better with Bernie as a running mate). So that is why I think there's a margin and flip among the general populace.
I was just guessing for the reason for it amongst Asian-Americans, specifically. Maybe we'd get a better answer if we had a better demographic breakdown.
Zoe
Member
You just can't count on people to vote altruistically when they're struggling to put food on the table. You can't.
If you live in a rural area and want more say, the EC provides that.
In essence it's not necessarily the EC itself that is good, but that it is good to have a failsafe against any sort of extreme problem resulting from mob insanity in democracy. In modern elections, EC is probably not the answer, but then we'd have to figure out what to replace it with to ensure more equity between states. Without the EC, the rural areas are ignored; with the EC, the urban areas are ignored.
What is springing up around the world isn't anti-establishment. It's white nationalism and authoritarianism. Even the far left here is not exempt from this fervor, given the extreme fixation on Bernie Sanders as a singular 'savior'.
The Trump people you talked to voted on personality and dumb quirks. Sanders being VP would have been pointless when he could have chaired a committee in the Senate, had the Dems gotten 50 seats. He would have significant policy influence. The ridiculous hang up with wanting Sanders on the ticket ignores what the actual function of VP is.
But it's Trump people, and it's also Sanders people, so who would expect any of them to understand what a VP does versus what a Senate chair does, when they're all so allergic to 'establishment'?
Tim Kaine secured Virginia. That's really all he was needed to do.
They weren't struggling to put food on the table. The poorest people voted for Hillary Clinton. The brackets from I think 90k/year were voting Trump.
Septimus Prime
Member
It makes sense in concept, but such a problem has never come up, and if it were to and the EC overturned something that dramatic, things would be bad for everyone.
As I was saying to cdyhybrid earlier, I don't think it's beneficial to be patronizing to those who disagree with you, and I honestly don't think it even matters what they actually do or don't understand. So regardless what we understand about VPs and senators, it turns out that that doesn't matter when we lose on every front. A toothless VP Sanders may have subverted that, which would have been net beneficial for us all.
And no. I would argue Tim Kaine did not do his job because they lost.
What you're asking is to condemn Sanders to uselessness for the sake of optics. How is that fair to him or to his supporters, exactly?
Virginia was secured. Tim Kaine did the job. Being bitter about the VP slot is a fixation on how things 'look' as opposed to what Sanders himself probably wanted.
Fundamentally, the most important thing about the VP is that the VP should be someone who is willing to work with and have to subordinate to the Pres, regardless of disagreement. Sanders is too independent to want that; Hillary would also know that he would be a difficult partner.
There was no small amount of condescension in your original long post, which you didn't seem to think about when you were writing it. The fact is there are many things you aren't aware of and many things you haven't considered other than the face value: "How does it look? Does the look satisfy me?" You didn't know the Democratic party was courting Asians in swing states (note, they were also working on Asians in PA and VA; in PA, Asians are about 2.1% of of eligible voterseven with a percentage that small they could be pivotal in the future), and you assumed they weren't working for your vote. Perhaps they didn't reach you specifically, but they certainly were chasing Asians.
Overthrowing the whole organization to build a new one to the exacting, purity-tested specifications of people who had not invested as much as those who put a lot into the DNC is time consuming and certainly unfair to those who gave a lot more than the people complaining and making demands. The answer isn't to insist on taking over every aspect but to cooperate. We work on shoring up the base and the Sanders supporters can go embed themselves in rural white areas and chase votes. I'm quite tired of blaming, being blamed, and defending people from being overblamed.
We've moved far off subjects that the thread should be about, so I'm just going to go to bed after this story and leave well enough alone.
In NYC, I worked the election last year and pretty much all of the primaries this year, plus the general. There was a Chinese woman who was functionally a translator for Chinese voters. She was friendly with her neighbors when they came to vote, and very helpful to other poll workers. In this general election, because of the expected amount of voters the pool of poll workers for our particular polling station was greater than usual.
What that meant was the Asian and white usual workers at this particular site were joined by a number of black poll workers.
There was one point where the Chinese translator woman pulled a second translator woman aside and said in Chinese, "You need to relocate your bag, you don't know if that black guy is going to steal it."
Things got really busy so I never had the chance to properly talk to her, but this is kind of the ill I'm talking about. Like the Peter Liang case. If we leave it alone, it'll only fester.
Septimus Prime
Member
Yes. It's great. You need to watch it.
I watched the first episode. It's weird seeing how reserved all of the house guests are. I don't really expect that from people on a reality show. I'm more accustomed to drama and lies and deceit and who's been sleeping with who's crush.
BLOODED_hands
Member
Welp, I got a bottle of Jamesom and a bottle of champagne. Time to drown my sorrows about this week ;_;
I promise you folks that I won't go overboard. See ya in some odd hours.
I promise you folks that I won't go overboard. See ya in some odd hours.
YesNOnoNOYes
Member
Went shopping for some new kicks and I met someone from HawaiiShe was pretty cool and we had a good yarn about the U.S. election. Note I live in NZ.
that is awesome moonie : D i love meeting new people and spinning yarns~
o7 last week was rough. you do what you needs to, bloodie~
see you in a bit <3
Yeah it was real pleasant n. n I overheard her talking to someone from SoCal first and they joked about telling people they're not American but Californian/Hawaiian. Was a little odd at first hearing such a conversation in real life as opposed to online on a forum.
YesNOnoNOYes
Member
it's always a bit surreal when that happens! :>
how is NZ weather btw. melb is sort of undecided if it wants to go warmer or not. it keeps switching between rainy and sunny days like craaaaaaazy~
have a safe flight, srg~ keep hydrated and hope you wont jetlag too much!
All the best
Damn that's not ideal, we've had a couple lousy days but I feel the upward momentum to summer pretty strongly. I live in Auckland where we can get four seasons in one day but the weather has been overall consistent so far.
I actually have a few mates going over to Melbourne for five days next week. Any must-dos I should let them know about? I went to Keith Ape with them last night hehe, was dope.
YesNOnoNOYes
Member
All the best
Damn that's not ideal, we've had a couple lousy days but I feel the upward momentum to summer pretty strongly. I live in Auckland where we can get four seasons in one day but the weather has been overall consistent so far.
I actually have a few mates going over to Melbourne for five days next week. Any must-dos I should let them know about? I went to Keith Ape with them last night hehe, was dope.
i have no idea what's going on in the city, actually. im a homeperson so i mostly just hang out with my circle of friends... but i think the melb music week is next week ish???
and yeah, weather's been up down up down like crazy isn't good. it makes my moods also go up down up down~ XD
Septimus Prime
Member
I actually started it in the middle (when Hikaru and Natsumi joined), since it was one if those shows I watched because my wife was watching it, and then I got totally into it. It's like Jersey Shore, except the cast members are d-bags, and I especially like that they don't try to gamify it like an American reality show would.
Also, the absolutely amazing intro song is called "Slow Down" by Matthew Heath and Grady Griggs.
BLOODED_hands
Member
Ugh..... I don't know why I woke up so early ;_;
I'm getting to that age where noise is getting to be a yuge factor in my hangovers. We had a drunken discussion on how terrible Drumpf is and it was great for a drunken conversation.
I'm getting to that age where noise is getting to be a yuge factor in my hangovers. We had a drunken discussion on how terrible Drumpf is and it was great for a drunken conversation.