Support NeoGAF

[Spoiled Milk]

People who say the DNC is beholden to money interests and corrupt and all this fucking bullshit... Do you realize that the DNC is 2 million dollars in debt? And that the RNC has like 20 mil on hand?

 

[B-Dubs]

Somewhere in a GOP oppo file there's the handwritten record of a disastrous job interview Bernie Sanders had with Goldman Sachs in 1964.

I would die laughing.

 

[Suikoguy]

People who say the DNC is beholden to money interests and corrupt and all this fucking bullshit... Do you realize that the DNC is 2 million dollars in debt? And that the RNC has like 20 mil on hand?

Well, when you expect to have Republicans pass your legislation by having people protest outside, what do you expect? (and yes, Sanders has said this)

 

[Armaros]

Oh my God, Tesseract got banned. I can believe in a just world again.



I have no idea what BNR is, and I don't see how these two statements have anything to do with each other. Tesseract's shitpost ratio is so high that if there were any actual non-shitposts it was impossible to tell because of the shit all over them. I don't see what a poster that does nothing but shitpost adds to any thread.

I wonder what was the final straw that broke everything? Cause it was going on for a while and got steadily more annoying.

 

[Grief.exe]

Every state should have secure online voting. Guess which party will never let that happen?

But voter fraud is so rampant!

 

[aspiegamer]

After Easter breakfast with family my faith in humanity is partially restored. A bunch of people who, individually should probably be a bunch of Sanders fanatics, are completely sick of him. A few testimonials of annoying Facebook contacts. Overwhelming consensus that we love the theory of Sanders, but not the thought of him governing. Also that you absolutely 100% must attract minority voters, which is the one thing that's still completely eluded Sanders. A Democrat can't win on his demographics. As a group of progressive that were all duped by fresh faces while in college we pity the people going through the same process right now.

Would still all vote for him were he the nominee (achievable via Clinton, Biden, Cuomo, Al Gore, Howard Dean, half a dozen other governors and about 20 senators all dying of heart attacks on the evening before the convention), but acknowledge he could never win a GE, which is a shame because the American public shouldn't automatically throw out his agenda as too extreme. Impossible? Right now, sure, but extreme? Not necessarily.

TLDR, Nader 2000. Never forget.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I'm pretty sure that the GOP is currently in a realignment to a white nationalist party. Suggesting that the GOP is in a realignment that could get minority voters would be like suggesting that in 1964.

Even the non-Trumps unanimously hate #BLM, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims. There's not a soul in the Republican Congress that would defend #BLM right now.

My God, the GOP House is currently considering a "Blue Lives Matter Act." come on, people.

 

[Kyosaiga]

I'm pretty sure that the GOP is currently in a realignment to a white nationalist party. Suggesting that the GOP is in a realignment that could get minority voters would be like suggesting that in 1964.

Even the non-Trumps unanimously hate #BLM, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims. There's not a soul in the Republican Congress that would defend #BLM right now.

Oh, how I wish a debate would've asked EACH of the candidates one simple question.

"Do you believe the Black Live Matters has been beneficial in bringing race relations in America to the light?"

 

[Spoiled Milk]

Well, when you expect to have Republicans pass your legislation by having people protest outside, what do you expect? (and yes, Sanders has said this)

If we actually ever had a political revolution in this country, our government would go pretty conservative and gay marriage would be overturned.

 

[Cybit]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say re: Nixon. Pre civil rights act, most black voters were republican because republicans were the party of lincoln and composed of a lot of abolitionists. That ended in the 60s when the dixiecrats broke away from the democratic party and joined southern republicans. Black voters have consistently gone where the racists weren't, and this is going to be the democratic party until all of us are dead because of the way the democratic party has built their coalitions. With a republican party in the position it's in, trump or not they have to do "nothing" to win elections. They'll rack up victories by default.

I guess I'm wondering whether a reverse Nixon ends up happening at some point due to things we can't foresee. I'm a big believer in the pendulum theory, and I think (as pigeon pointed out earlier) that a GOP re-alignment ends up naturally doing better with minorities because they realize they can't win with just white voters.

Lets take this in two points. first, yes the GOP did well with latinos as recently as 2000- if losing them to democrats 40/60 is "doing well." The self destruction with latinos is not a recent invention by Trump. It's been going on for more than a decade as the latino population expanded and the border states went into panic. Arpaio was being paraded around as a national hero. Conservative gun nuts were running to the border to "patrol" it themselves to keep the mexicans out. Arizona passed crazy racial profiling laws to crack down on hispanics. NONE of this went unnoticed by latinos.

Trump did not invent this. He simply said outright what the party establishment had been tacitly endorsing and dancing around with coded language.

True. This is the crux of my "Trump got asked by the Clintons to annihilate the GOP for them as a favor, and is doing so" conspiracy theory. But, as pigeon pointed out, I think that the end state of any GOP realignment, whether it takes one year or 8 years, ends up re-orienting the party towards minorities in a better way, and starts trying to split the minority votes, because they will (eventually) do what it takes to win.

I agree that Jeb! was absolutely trying to repair the damage and he got dismantled for it. The base simply was not interested in anyone who wanted to reach out to hispanics. It doesn't take much searching to find people roasting jeb for having a hispanic wife! Can't trust what HE says, he's a mexican lover!

I am not sure yet whether it was the "base", or Trump + plurality, Watching Trump wreak havoc on everyone in the party, I'm not sure if this wasn't just Trump taking advantage of a split GOP field. To me, I think had the primary been down to Trump vs Bush, Bush would have fucking crushed him.

Minorities aren't blind, friend. We see this and we know EXACTLY what kind of party the GOP is. "Dog Whistle" has always been a misnomer, because it implies that only racists would understand the messaging. Minorities understand it just fine. "Dog whistling" has always simply been to give "moderate" republicans a plausible excuse for endorsing racist messaging.

Also being a minority, I am well aware . My best example is my parents - they LOVED GHWB - since he was the first US president to try to normalize relations with India post Cold War (since the US had allied with Pakistan, and India allied with Russia in response). They loved GHWB. But when GWB ran, my parents switched to Dem so fucking fast my head spinned. They've voted Dem ever since (even if my dad goes to Trump rallies for the lulz of being the brown guy with a beard at a Trump rally)

That actually isn't true. Political preferences tend to ossify in your early 20s and stay there.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/

As the chart shows, go back to the 2000 election and the greatest generation that came of age under FDR tended to vote democratic, not republican. Subsequent generations that came of age under eisenhower/truman/ford/reagan trend republican in their voting preferences. The sole exception being those that came of age under president nixon's administration and the watergate scandal. Right now we're looking at a vast amount of millenials that are came of age during an obama administration and a GOP that is completely unhinged. This is not going to change as they get older, those voters will likely remain lifelong democrats- again because it is VERY difficult to change perceptions once they ossify. The GOP is branded the racist lunatic party and that's how it's going to stay for millenials.

Holy shit, I am super duper happy to be fucking wrong on this one. That actually does make me feel a lot better. Thinking about it further, the graphic makes sense, it's just that since you had an outsized percentage of the population born in a single generation, it comes off as age rather than just generation. That's just faulty / incomplete analysis on my part.

you're making the classic error of "clearly X thing is going to happen because that's what typically happens" without considering context. The democrats are positioned to win presidential elections going forward and KEEP winning them because the share of the white vote is declining and they have an irreversible lock on the minority vote. You want to explain how clinton loses 2020 with an electoral college map? barring an economic disaster there's no plausible way she loses, just as there isn't this year.

A) I think we have a significant recession coming between 2016-2020. The way the economic recovery has been stratified makes me think that a significant middle class targeted recession is coming. (Many of Obama's campaign workers actually made a plea to Obama in early 2007 not to run for president, because whichever president ran after Bush was going to get stuck cleaning up his mess, and would get blamed for it. I personally wanted a GOP candidate to win and then have the recession hit, and then hopefully the GOP would be rightfully blamed for fucking everything up and pay the price electorally for a generation. I wanted Obama to finish his Senate term and be governor of IL, because lord knows we need a good governor, lol).

B) Party re-alignments usually ultimately lead to something that makes them more likely to win elections. I assume that the GOP re-alignment, whenever it finishes, will lead them to a better place with minorities. Pigeon brought up a great point about how Obama could have been the Dem realignment, and moving the Dems away from a Clinton-esque "court white voters" strategy that came from post McGovern which I hadn't thought about. (Usually because re-alignments are messier)

C) Ultimately, I think the fatigue of 3 consecutive presidencies + economic downturn + GOP re-alignment towards non auto electoral defeat will doom a Dem president in 2020. (We still haven't realized that the president doesn't have that much control over the economy)

SCOTUS comes down to who the president is when a nominee retires. Obama has had the last 8 years, and its extremely likely democrats maintain the presidency for the forseeable future as the GOP is no longer viable in national elections- unless they can somehow figure out a way to leverage 80+% of white voters to vote for them.

I guess I am assuming that the GOP re-alignment ultimately leaves it in a better place with minority voters. As much as I love the Dems - the GOP is really, really good at politics. Outside of Obama, I've always believed the National GOP party has been way better historically at playing the political game than the National Dem party (Thanks DWS!). Though, 2016 is starting to seriously make me question that belief. (I currently feel there is a doofus-off between Reince and DWS)

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

The GOP Congress just passed a motion declaring that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians, Jews, and Yazidis... And not Shia Muslims.

Trump is just the logical result.

 

[Wilsongt]

The GOP Congress just passed a motion declaring that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians, Jews, and Yazidis... And not Shia Muslims.

Trump is just the logical result.

Of course the GOP doesn't care about Muslims.
They're all the same according to them.

 

[NeoXChaos]

Cybit you forgot 1988 in that long post of yours.

 

[pigeon]

I'm pretty sure that the GOP is currently in a realignment to a white nationalist party.

That's not a thing that a national party would realign to because it is utterly doomed. Like, parties in a two-party system always attempt to configure themselves to capture 50% of the vote. White nationalism just won't do that any more.

I think what you're seeing is that the GOP has BEEN a white nationalist party, with a thin veneer over it, for the last fifty years, and now has to realign AWAY from that.

Even the non-Trumps unanimously hate #BLM, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims. There's not a soul in the Republican Congress that would defend #BLM right now.

Rand Paul and Paul Ryan both already have. They are the frontline of the GOP realignment. Paul Ryan is likely to be the next GOP president, in my view.

 

[User 463088]

New GOP Cali Poll

Trump 36
Crux 35
Kasich 14

 

[Cybit]

Cybit you forgot 1988 in that long post of yous.

Herp derp; you are right - it should be the last time the Democratic / progessive party won 3 in a row.

 

[ivysaur12]

New GOP Cali Poll

Trump 36
Crux 35
Kasich 14

How soon do you have to be registered to vote in CA before the primary? And it's open, yes?

 

[Suikoguy]

New GOP Cali Poll

Trump 36
Crux 35
Kasich 14

Interesting, Cruz made up some ground IIRC.

 

[Drakeon]

How soon do you have to be registered to vote in CA before the primary? And it's open, yes?

May 23rd, so quite some time still.

 

[NeoXChaos]

Herp derp; you are right - it should be the last time the Democratic / progessive party won 3 in a row.

1940 for technical purposes was the last time the Democrats won a "third term". Different era and time with the same person winning it for their party. Truman got the "fifth term" Stevenson failed to extend it to six.

The takeaway from campaign history since 1951 is not that an incumbent party faces long odds in winning a third term. It is rather that campaigns matter. It is hard to imagine McCain prevailing in 2008 given unhappiness with the war in Iraq and the economic collapse under George W. Bush. Yet Humphrey almost won despite Johnson’s disastrous Vietnam escalation, and Ford almost won notwithstanding Watergate and his then-unpopular decision to pardon Nixon, the mastermind of the cover-up. George H.W. Bush won, in part, because he ran a much better campaign than did his rival, Michael Dukakis, and he successfully enlisted Reagan to advance his cause. Had Nixon (1960) and Gore (2000) won, as they should have, and/or Humphrey and Ford, as they could have, no one would be claiming that presidential candidates from a party that has won two in a row are disadvantaged.

 

[metalslimer]

Trump needs to do well in California. He can't afford a tiny victory there'll even worse a loss.

 

[User 463088]

How soon do you have to be registered to vote in CA before the primary? And it's open, yes?

Semi-closed. Voter deadline is May 23rd. To vote, you have to be registered as a Democrat or No Party Affiliated, which is not the same as an Independent.

 

[TheAbsolution]

Is Tesseract's ban a permanent?

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

If I had to guess, I would think the GOP is going to realign to be more like, basically, Rand Paul - acknowledging the inequities of the world, and desiring to end them, but offering lower taxes and less federal regulation, on the grounds that this will be both more efficient and more in line with the proper philosophical place of government.

 

[Daniel B·]

This is not a cause for a "five-alarm fire", at the Clinton campaign headquarters, but she does have issues and problems and weaknesses, and Bernie Sanders is exposing them, on his economic message, and with certain demographic groups, and organisationally, in these caucus states, and Senator Sanders, if this continues, ..., would be five of the last six; that's momentum

 

[Cybit]

1940 for technical purposes was the last time the Democrats won a "third term". Different era and time with the same person winning it for their party. Truman got the "fifth term" Stevenson failed to extend it to six.

Hrm - that's actually a pretty good point. You switch one or two results and the third-term disadvantage does melt away. So it looks like it basically comes down to how well Clinton campaigns vs Trump / GOP nominee.

 

[Manmademan]

If I had to guess, I would think the GOP is going to realign to be more like, basically, Rand Paul - acknowledging the inequities of the world, and desiring to end them, but offering lower taxes and less federal regulation, on the grounds that this will be both more efficient and more in line with the proper philosophical place of government.

while this would be nice, you also need to consider that besides racists, a full third of the GOP base is evangelicals- and they vote way, way out of proportion to their actual numbers in primaries.

Part of the difficulty in moving the party anywhere but "further right" is that GOP senators and representatives that are perceived as being "too moderate" get primaried by tea partiers and evangelicals and forced out in favor of extremists. This is what happened to Arlen Specter and the reason why he ended up switching to the democratic party in 2009.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

That's not a thing that a national party would realign to because it is utterly doomed. Like, parties in a two-party system always attempt to configure themselves to capture 50% of the vote. White nationalism just won't do that any more.

I think what you're seeing is that the GOP has BEEN a white nationalist party, with a thin veneer over it, for the last fifty years, and now has to realign AWAY from that.



Rand Paul and Paul Ryan both already have. They are the frontline of the GOP realignment. Paul Ryan is likely to be the next GOP president, in my view.

Rand Paul on #BLM: "They should change their name to Innocent Lives Matter" ehhhhhhhhhh.

The idea that the GOP will shift over to a Randian Party is absurd after this primary. Ron Paul's supporters went to Trump largely (the least libertarian candidate possible) and Rand died in the water even as he tried to appeal to extreme racists. Libertarian economic ideas not centered in racism (reducing military spending, privatizing Social Security and raising the age, cutting taxes for the 1%, etc) are wildly unpopular. The only thing a Randian Party would have on its side is that they would be unanimously supported by the donor class, but Jeb and Rubio and Walker just showed that the donor class doesn't matter anymore in presidential elections.

 

[Bowdz]

New GOP Cali Poll

Trump 36
Crux 35
Kasich 14

FUCK.

Trumpy, don't do this to me. Please don't fail me in the final stretch. GODDAMNIT

 

[Plinko]

New GOP Cali Poll

Trump 36
Crux 35
Kasich 14

Cruz being the GOP candidate and rigged voting machines or indictment away from the White House makes me vomit in my mouth.

 

[Manmademan]

Rand Paul on #BLM: "They should change their name to Innocent Lives Matter" ehhhhhhhhhh.

The idea that the GOP will shift over to a Randian Party is absurd after this primary. Ron Paul's supporters went to Trump largely (the least libertarian candidate possible) and Rand died in the water even as he tried to appeal to extreme racists. Libertarian economic ideas not centered in racism (reducing military spending, privatizing Social Security and raising the age, cutting taxes for the 1%, etc) are wildly unpopular. The only thing a Randian Party would have on its side is that they would be unanimously supported by the donor class, but Jeb and Rubio and Walker just showed that the donor class doesn't matter anymore in presidential elections.

I'm not sure that I would go so far as to say they don't matter- Trump just happens to be brilliant at media manipulation, and had the benefit of a field of candidates that was way, WAY too large for way too long.

had trump not run this year I think Bush still would have had a fairly easy time cruising to the nomination as everyone else tried and failed to outspend him.

FUCK.

Trumpy, don't do this to me. Please don't fail me in the final stretch. GODDAMNIT

I expect a trump bump after he racks up wins in NY/NJ/etc before heading into Cali. also a lot of crossover democratic voters as the dem primary will have been decided by then.

 

[Holmes]

Scholars will be quoting that John King quote for generations.

 

[tomtom94]

Plausible Republican party direction: targeting "I'm a liberal but" voters. ("I'm a liberal but BLM deserve everything they get." "I'm a liberal but political correctness has gone too far." etc)

Tbh you can see this already with the rise of the 'alternative right' which Trump is bringing out.

 

[royalan]

I was watching CNN yesterday. You do realize that the subtext of John King's comments on Bernie exposing Hillary's weaknesses was "...for the general" right?

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Plausible Republican party direction: targeting "I'm a liberal but" voters. ("I'm a liberal but BLM deserve everything they get." "I'm a liberal but political correctness has gone too far." etc)

Tbh you can see this already with the rise of the 'alternative right' which Trump is bringing out.

The Alt-Right are actual NeoNazis though...?

Here's the founder of the Alt-Right:

Spencer advocates for a white homeland for a "dispossessed white race" and calls for "peaceful ethnic cleansing" to halt the "deconstruction" of European culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer

Spencer has become a leader in white supremacist circles that envision a 'new' right that will openly embrace 'white racial consciousness'. ... Although Spencer began his career The American Conservative, he has since rejected conservatism. He believes that conservatives can’t or won’t represent explicitly white interests.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

while this would be nice, you also need to consider that besides racists, a full third of the GOP base is evangelicals- and they vote way, way out of proportion to their actual numbers in primaries.

Part of the difficulty in moving the party anywhere but "further right" is that GOP senators and representatives that are perceived as being "too moderate" get primaried by tea partiers and evangelicals and forced out in favor of extremists. This is what happened to Arlen Specter and the reason why he ended up switching to the democratic party in 2009.

On the local level, the GOP is completely fine. What they need to do is figure out how to build an effective coalition for themselves to become competitive on a presidential level again, which means either A) peeling away white democrats, because only 30% of the country is currently composed of minorities, so they need at least SOME white people for the foreseeable future, or B) finding platforms that capture some minority voters and lock in more of the soon-to-be age of majority minorities than they are, currently. If they could find a reasonably charismatic black or Hispanic guy to espouse Rand Paul's basic platform, with maybe some evangelical undertones (i.e. anti-abortion, opposing the extremes of modern social justice activism), they could probably make themselves a force to be reckoned with by, say, 2032 or so.

 

[Cybit]

Rand Paul on #BLM: "They should change their name to Innocent Lives Matter" ehhhhhhhhhh.

The idea that the GOP will shift over to a Randian Party is absurd after this primary. Ron Paul's supporters went to Trump largely (the least libertarian candidate possible) and Rand died in the water even as he tried to appeal to extreme racists. Libertarian economic ideas not centered in racism (reducing military spending, privatizing Social Security and raising the age, cutting taxes for the 1%, etc) are wildly unpopular. The only thing a Randian Party would have on its side is that they would be unanimously supported by the donor class, but Jeb and Rubio and Walker just showed that the donor class doesn't matter anymore in presidential elections.

Uhhhhhh...you do know Clinton more or less did a shift in less than 8 years from white voters to minority voters, right? Let's go take a look back at Hillary Clinton, Democratic primary nominee, 2008.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/clinton200808

Hillary found her underdog voice in Austintown that day, channeling the righteous anger and voicelessness of the white working-class voters who were her prime target.

Patti Solis Doyle told colleagues she believes firmly that Hillary’s showing her vulnerability in New Hampshire brought out the women who saved her there. But Penn insisted she button up. Any further exposure of her human feelings would cost them white male voters.

After New Hampshire, Bill broke away to South Carolina, vowing to wrest the January 26 primary for Hillary from predictions of Obama’s win there. When David Wright of ABC News asked him about it taking two Clintons to beat Obama, Bill spontaneously raised a comparison with Jesse Jackson, linking Obama’s post-racial campaign with a far more incendiary black candidate. A powerful black leader interpreted it as denigrating Obama’s blowout win there as a simple matter of racial preference on the part of black voters: “I’m told he referred to Obama at one point as ‘a kid,’ ” House majority whip James Clyburn told me. “When I was growing up, whites often called a black man ‘boy.’ ”

Starting with the Ohio primary, Penn made it clear their target was white, working-class men. Hillary would have to do factory-floor speeches, sit around trailers in Appalachia, find a bar to throw down a shot and a beer, and talk about jobs, jobs, jobs.

Hillary spent that month blaming sexism and the media for the din of calls for her to quit. Making the racial subtext of her argument all too clear, she said in an interview with USA Today that “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and … whites who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Once she began to run against the media as biased, her coverage was eclipsed by Obama’s and McCain’s. She was grinding her way through an editorial-board meeting in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when she carelessly invoked an American tragedy to bolster her case for carrying on the nomination fight until June. “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

In retrospect, it was inevitable that, after racing on a nonstop, five-month marathon, never stopping to rest or reflect, some dark clot of wishful thinking would break loose. Both Harold Ickes and Bill had been admonishing super-delegates for months, “Wait it out. Anything can happen.” Her mention of assassination voiced the fear latent in so many minds that a unity-preaching black man might be brought down just like Kennedy and King 40 years before.

I didn't even add the quotes about Bill Clinton chastising black legislators for being traitors for supporting Obama. Bill basically called Af-Am voters traitors for abandoning his wife. Yet, 8 years later, no one a) remembers or b) cares, and the same candidate is winning Af-Am voters by ridiculous margins. The shift can be very, very quick.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

Rand Paul on #BLM: "They should change their name to Innocent Lives Matter" ehhhhhhhhhh.

The idea that the GOP will shift over to a Randian Party is absurd after this primary. Ron Paul's supporters went to Trump largely (the least libertarian candidate possible) and Rand died in the water even as he tried to appeal to extreme racists. Libertarian economic ideas not centered in racism (reducing military spending, privatizing Social Security and raising the age, cutting taxes for the 1%, etc) are wildly unpopular. The only thing a Randian Party would have on its side is that they would be unanimously supported by the donor class, but Jeb and Rubio and Walker just showed that the donor class doesn't matter anymore in presidential elections.

Let's be honest, Trump is a very special case. He has a weird mix of charisma, anti-establishment gravitas, don't-give-a-fuck attitude, a great sense of humor, and a masterful mind for media manipulation that has allowed him to galvanize the support he's gotten. But he's ONLY gotten 35ish% of the total GOP electorate. It's the divided field full of weak candidates that has gotten Trump this far, not the great mass of the party really being on board with him. The GOP are going to rejigger the rules to prevent someone like Trump from doing this well again, and nobody after him is going to have quite the perfect cocktail that got him this far. They'll start to introduce more moderate, social justice-compatible (to an extent) talking points, disseminate them via their very well-ordered media outlets, get people used to them, and get Paul Ryan elected once it's all sunk in.

I dunno, I think liberals are starting to use "racism" TOO loosely and lazily w/r/t the GOP, and are going to see the pendulum swing back against them at some point because of it.

Edit: And yes, pigeon is right, the GOP are not going to realign to become a LESS electable party.

 

[Manmademan]

On the local level, the GOP is completely fine.

This whole debate started based on speculation they might deny trump the nomination at the convention, which risks splitting the party should they go this route and Trump is clearly the frontrunner. If that happens the GOP will absolutely NOT be fine at the local level or otherwise. Democrats will sweep everything from president down to dogcatcher for the next ten years.

If Trump keeps the nomination or they avoid a split somehow they'll be fine in the short term but screwed in the long term as the share of the white population continues to decline.

What they need to do is figure out how to build an effective coalition for themselves to become competitive on a presidential level again, which means either A) peeling away white democrats, because only 30% of the country is currently composed of minorities, so they need at least SOME white people for the foreseeable future, or B) finding platforms that capture some minority voters and lock in more of the soon-to-be age of majority minorities than they are, currently. If they could find a reasonably charismatic black or Hispanic guy to espouse Rand Paul's basic platform, with maybe some evangelical undertones (i.e. anti-abortion, opposing the extremes of modern social justice activism), they could probably make themselves a force to be reckoned with by, say, 2032 or so.

This won't happen. Forget about black voters- they're gone. Voting democratic is inexorably tied into the concept of blackness itself. Blacks who openly advocate for the republican party are not treated kindly as the support does not hold up under scrutiny and they end up being painted as uncle toms- Look at stacey dash or condoleeza rice as examples here. Or hell, look at Ben Carson, Alan Keyes, or Allen West. All three are openly mocked, dismissed, and have no support.

Can't speak for hispanics- but two of them are/were running for the GOP nomination this year. Cruz is hispanic, as was Rubio. Neither one had any significant support from the hispanic community because again the party and platform itself is blatantly racist and hostile to minorities across the board! Once again, running a token minority candidate does not gain you minority support and its quasi-racist to suggest it would.

Also, as another poster pointed out Rand Paul's positions when not tied up in racist policies that keep minorities from getting free stuff are extremely unpopular. Ron Paul couldn't get elected with them, Rand Paul couldn't get elected with them. Why would a black or latino rand paul do any better?

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

This race sure has shown the virtues of momentum alright. After that NH win all that momentum led to losses in Nevada and SC. All those sweeps in the South led to a a loss in Michigan. After that upset in Michigan that momentum in the midwest led to a clean sweep for Clinton. After that clean sweep for Clinton she lost everything on Saturday.

Momentum is a fucking joke. If Sanders could get all of his best states to vote in order, he'd have "momentum" and so would Clinton.

 

[Armaros]

This race sure has shown the virtues of momentum alright. After that NH win all that momentum led to losses in Nevada and SC. All those sweeps in the South led to a a loss in Michigan. After that upset in Michigan that momentum in the midwest led to a clean sweep for Clinton. After that clean sweep for Clinton she lost everything on Saturday.

Momentum is a fucking joke. If Sanders could get all of his best states to vote in order, he'd have "momentum" and so would Clinton.

Momentum has come to mean 'current news cycle'

 

[Basileus777]

If I had to guess, I would think the GOP is going to realign to be more like, basically, Rand Paul - acknowledging the inequities of the world, and desiring to end them, but offering lower taxes and less federal regulation, on the grounds that this will be both more efficient and more in line with the proper philosophical place of government.

I don't see a national base for libertarianism. The GOP without the social conservatism isn't a viable party. Radical rightwing economic policies on their own without the shield of Jesus and racism won't appeal to that many people.

 

[Macho Madness]

Momentum is what Bernie always has, win or lose. Because someone will have written it.

 

[Diablos]

I try not to think about Dems losing because the conequences would be a disaster. The SCOTUS would be packed with conservative justices. Scary. The republicans can't fucking win. That's why I wish Bernie would tone it down. I sometimes wonder if he really cares about what's at stake if he lets his head continue to grow.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

This whole debate started based on speculation they might deny trump the nomination at the convention, which risks splitting the party should they go this route and Trump is clearly the frontrunner. If that happens the GOP will absolutely NOT be fine at the local level or otherwise. Democrats will sweep everything from president down to dogcatcher for the next ten years.

If Trump keeps the nomination or they avoid a split somehow they'll be fine in the short term but screwed in the long term as the share of the white population continues to decline.



This won't happen. Forget about black voters- they're gone. Voting democratic is inexorably tied into the concept of blackness itself. Blacks who openly advocate for the republican party are not treated kindly as the support does not hold up under scrutiny and they end up being painted as uncle toms- Look at stacey dash or condoleeza rice as examples here. Or hell, look at Ben Carson. Openly mocked, dismissed, and has no support.

Can't speak for hispanics- but two of them are/were running for the GOP nomination this year. Cruz is hispanic, as was Rubio. Neither one had any significant support from the hispanic community because again the party and platform itself is blatantly racist and hostile to minorities across the board! Once again, running a token minority candidate does not gain you minority support and its quasi-racist to suggest it would.

Also, as another poster pointed out Rand Paul's positions when not tied up in racist policies that keep minorities from getting free stuff are extremely unpopular. Ron Paul couldn't get elected with them, Rand Paul couldn't get elected with them. Why would a black or latino rand paul do any better?

It's a matter of what you put front and center and how you frame things. Rand Paul, whatever his faults (and I don't think he or most of his voters, specifically, want to "keep minorities from getting free stuff" so much as they are a mix of people who believe, philosophically, that that is not the proper purview of government and people who believe, pragmatically, that the welfare state is going to bankrupt the country long-term if it is not checked soon), is someone who acknowledges the racist nature of the drug war, and some other issues minorities face, and I don't think it's impossible that you could find a Latino man who puts some of those issues more centrally in their platform but finds a way to make a compelling case for why conservatism is a viable solution to them.

Political shifts tend to happen quickly, and unexpectedly. The Dems will overstep, at some point, and the GOP will capitalize. Politics tend to be cyclical, not linear, and loss after loss will eventually make the GOP ready for a Clintonian "Third Way" conservative.

 

[Manmademan]

It's a matter of what you put front and center and how you frame things. Rand Paul, whatever his faults (and I don't think he or most of his voters, specifically, want to "keep minorities from getting free stuff" .

you missed the point. Libertarian policies in general have no support and are wildly unpopular UNLESS they're tied up in policies that happen to prevent minorities from "getting free stuff."

reducing the military? unpopular.

cutting off all foreign aid? unpopular.

preventing welfare expansion and slashing medicaid spending? popular!

implementing a flat tax so poor people "have some skin in the game?" popular!

ask yourself why that is.

 

[Cybit]

you missed the point. Libertarian policies in general have no support and are wildly unpopular UNLESS they're tied up in policies that happen to prevent minorities from "getting free stuff."

reducing the military? unpopular.

preventing welfare expansion and slashing medicaid spending? popular!

ask yourself why that is.

I suspect reducing the military could easily be spun as being popular by going at it from the point of "we are spending all this money to defend other countries who don't want to spend their own money on their own militaries, and use that money to give back to their people".

With the sequester, the GOP enacted a monstrous military budget reduction and none of their voters seemed to care.

Libertarian fiscal polices with socially moderate policies has a lot of popularity, especially with the anger towards both the government and corporations.

 

[Basileus777]

Embracing libertarianism would put the GOP on to the path to irrelevancy. There's less of a base for it than for Trump's white nationalism.

 

[Manmademan]

I suspect reducing the military could easily be spun as being popular by going at it from the point of "we are spending all this money to defend other countries who don't want to spend their own money on their own militaries, and use that money to give back to their people".

With the sequester, the GOP enacted a monstrous military budget reduction and none of their voters seemed to care.

Libertarian fiscal polices with socially moderate policies has a lot of popularity, especially with the anger towards both the government and corporations.

none of their voters could even tell you what the sequester is, be realistic here.
No one ever got anywhere running on a campaign of "lets cut the military by 15%". When asked nearly everyone runs to embrace expanding the military AND increasing foreign aid to israel.

And if libertarian fiscal policies have a lot of popularity- where are all the candidates running on them? oh right, there aren't any. The only two of any note struggled to gain any significant support in a presidential primary.

Embracing libertarianism would put the GOP on to the path to irrelevancy. There's less of a base for it than for Trump's white nationalism.

yep. pretty bizarre claim there.

 

[pigeon]

Rand Paul on #BLM: "They should change their name to Innocent Lives Matter" ehhhhhhhhhh.

The idea that the GOP will shift over to a Randian Party is absurd after this primary. Ron Paul's supporters went to Trump largely (the least libertarian candidate possible) and Rand died in the water even as he tried to appeal to extreme racists. Libertarian economic ideas not centered in racism (reducing military spending, privatizing Social Security and raising the age, cutting taxes for the 1%, etc) are wildly unpopular. The only thing a Randian Party would have on its side is that they would be unanimously supported by the donor class, but Jeb and Rubio and Walker just showed that the donor class doesn't matter anymore in presidential elections.

The primary isn't the issue, the general is the issue.

Trump is about to dominate the Republican primary and get blown out hard in the general, tainting downticket races. The GOP can't allow this to keep happening or it really will not exist. Embracing Trump would be the path to disappearing as a national party -- that's why I don't think it will happen.

The Republican establishment ultimately defines the GOP primary. If they want to eject the white nationalists from the GOP base, they can do so. Yes, it's hard, and yes, it will put them in a really bad position for a while, but it's not impossible. They just didn't realize until this year how little time they had to do so.

Embracing libertarianism would put the GOP on to the path to irrelevancy. There's less of a base for it than for Trump's white nationalism.

I honestly don't think this is true. Libertarianism that is intrinsically tied up with racism has no future in American politics. But a libertarianism that focuses on civil liberties, the power of disruptive private industry, clearing away "unnecessary" regulations, and embraces social justice as an intrinsically libertarian issue can succeed, in my view.

I still hate it, obviously, but I think socialism vs. libertarianism, with social justice accepted by both parties, is the next American political front.