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[kirblar]

No, that's exactly what it fucking means. You saw it happen w/ Brexit. You saw it happen with Trump. But you deny what they were- white supremacist/nationalist political campaigns.

When we "were hurting their feelings", that does translate to "we shouldn't have talked about black people, muslims, or immigrants", because seeing/hearing about people who don't look like them makes these people very fucking upset.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

No, that's exactly what it fucking means. You saw it happen w/ Brexit. You saw it happen with Trump. But you deny what they were- white supremacist/nationalist political campaigns.

Of course I don't deny that. Trump ran an explicitly racist campaign. Leave was more subtle in its approach, but there was a lot of heavily coded dog-whistling and it was the decisive factor for a large bloc of voters.

Are there any more blatant mistruths you want to spread, or are you finished with your Trump imitation?

 

[Blader]

This is the first time since (iirc) 1928 that the Democrats have failed to control all of the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. At the same time, they are at a post-war low in state government. It is not at all hyperbole to point out the Democrats have not had less institutional influence than they do now in over a century. The margin of the loss was small. The consequences are catastrophic.

The Republican Party had a unified government for most of the Bush years (technically starting from January 2003, but I'd argue it started Sept. 12, 2001) and liberals haven't had a majority on the Supreme Court since Nixon was in office.

Then suddenly, Obama/Biden decide to push for Perez. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but since the argument is usually "they're both ideologically basically the same and they would both be fine", what purpose does them specifically pushing Perez serve People make the comparison to Clinton/Sanders ("haha, ironic that BernieBros wanted a coronation!"), but the main difference is that this isn't an election by regular voters, the ideological differences are way smaller (and also aren't as applicable to this position), and it's not like there was some organic surge in Perez support that people were clamoring for, so I don't think the "coronation" comparison holds.

In addition to that, this all happened to coincide with Ellison being attacked as some crazy anti-semitic person, from other Democrats.

So even when it comes to a relatively symbolic gesture that even people here in Poligaf were arguing for that seemed like a no-brainer to at the very least shut the BernieBros up for a second, Democrats still favored insidery politics over grassroots energy + insidery politics. The angry BernieBros were doing exactly what everyone says they should do (work within the system!), yet with the specific help of Obama/Biden, they couldn't even get that. If Ellison lost to Peter Buttedge or Saoirse Ronan, I don't think this would've had the same reaction, but losing to the hand-picked Obama/Biden candidate is obviously make it much tougher to challenge the idea that the DNC is controlled by a small group of powerful interests and not the people (I mean, that would be true even if Ellison had won, but you would think they would try not to be as blatant about it). So why do this at all, if, again, they were both "basically the same anyway"? Because they wanted to keep progressive champions like Alan Dershowitz in the party?

Saorise Ronan as DNC chair, now THAT is an outsider! :lol

I obviously can't speak to why Obama and Biden pushed for Perez to get in the race and can only assume it's because they believed, based on his background and track record, that Perez was a better fit for leading the party toward the rural working-class votes that the Dems have been bleeding over the last four years. My preference from the beginning was to just have Perez and Ellison be co-chairs -- which I guess isn't that different from the setup now -- but otherwise agree that, for the sake of optics at least, it would've been better to just give Ellison the job, as I figured his losing would cause more consternation than Perez losing.

That said, my girlfriend had dinner last night with a handful of Obama administration and Clinton campaign executives who sounded quite opposed to Ellison, so maybe Perez losing would've sent the party into quite the fit too, who knows.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Oh hooray. We're relitigating the primaries again. That hasn't happened in a while.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Oh hooray. We're relitigating the primaries again. That hasn't happened in a while.

 

[NeoXChaos]

The backlash was front loaded(many of the legislatures were lost in 2010), I think Kentucky's shift to Republican controlled government was a more natural pace, but Beshear's coat tails helped a lot here. There's a reason why he's the first person who was chosen to give a Democratic response to Trump.

most of those shifts in the South were already happening post 1964 federally and then statewide starting in the 80's. The 1994 wave broke the dam and 2010, 2014 finished the job.

 

[kirblar]

Of course I don't deny that. Trump ran an explicitly racist campaign. Leave was more subtle in its approach, but there was a lot of heavily coded dog-whistling and it was the decisive factor for a large bloc of voters.

Are there any more blatant mistruths you want to spread, or are you finished with your Trump imitation?

You do not fucking get it. These people are racist. They voted the way they did, because they are racist. They got a white nationalist candidate, and suddenly they came out in droves to support him.

Blaming it on Democrats "hurting their feelings" is indeed a conclusion to throw minorities under the bus because the "hurt feelings" were and are their feelings of terror upon seeing someone with brown skin!

This is not hard. Trump won voters for whom immigration and terrorism were their top issues.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I would say that "no other choice!" explanations don't work well for France.

Lots of WWC people in France are voting for a fascist even though they get the choice of a Reagan-like, a centrist, a Socialist, and a Tankie. Lots of options, but many still picking the fascist.

 

[Blader]

Oh hooray. We're relitigating the primaries again. That hasn't happened in a while.

This didn't occur to me much before, but this whole thing has me worried that many upcoming primaries -- like VA governor's race, for one -- will be used to relitigate the presidential primary. Like, are Perriello and Northam going to be the new Bernie and Hillary stand-ins?

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

This didn't occur to me much before, but this whole thing has me worried that many upcoming primaries -- like VA governor's race, for one -- will be used to relitigate the presidential primary. Like, are Perriello and Northam going to be the new Bernie and Hillary stand-ins?

Perriello is avoiding the comparison, unless you mean a primary fight for "left or center" is relitigating the primaries. I don't think of Perriello as being a populist anyways, and I don't think he has a Sanders endorsement.

 

[metalslimer]

I'm still trying to make out what being insensitive to the rust belt fucking means

Even if you didn't mean it that way it sounds like a dogwhistle

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Hillary talked about Macy's being mean instead of heroin and looked out of touch obvs.

 

[RastaMentality]

http://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2017/02/marco-rubio-town-halls-109889

 

[Carpe Libertatem]

Perriello is avoiding the comparison, unless you mean a primary fight for "left or center" is relitigating the primaries. I don't think of Perriello as being a populist anyways, and I don't think he has a Sanders endorsement.

Perriello is tied to Obama, if anyone, since it was Obama who urged him to run. So it probably depends on if Obama is the new "Hillary" since she's not around anymore.

 

[Poodlestrike]

This didn't occur to me much before, but this whole thing has me worried that many upcoming primaries -- like VA governor's race, for one -- will be used to relitigate the presidential primary. Like, are Perriello and Northam going to be the new Bernie and Hillary stand-ins?

To be honest, until the Bernistas go away, or the current mainstream Dems just hand them the keys to the party, this is going to keep happening. The Reps didn't have this issue with their hardliners because they just did the latter immediately.

(Although teaparty vs. Bernista isn't a great comparison, since the latter doesn't seem nearly as policy-focused as the former).

 

[kirblar]

To be honest, until the Bernistas go away, or the current mainstream Dems just hand them the keys to the party, this is going to keep happening. The Reps didn't have this issue with their hardliners because they just did the latter immediately.

(Although teaparty vs. Bernista isn't a great comparison, since the latter doesn't seem nearly as policy-focused as the former).

You have it backwards. The Tea Party had a very defined set of views. Bernistas are a cult of personality.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

You do not fucking get it. These people are racist. They voted the way they did, because they are racist. They got a white nationalist candidate, and suddenly they came out in droves to support him.

Blaming it on Democrats "hurting their feelings" is indeed a conclusion to throw minorities under the bus because the "hurt feelings" were and are their feelings of terror upon seeing someone with brown skin!

This is not hard. Trump won voters for whom immigration and terrorism were their top issues.

Here's what you're saying.

1) There is a bloc of voters who have been, are, and always will be persuaded by racist arguments.
2) Someone persuaded by racist arguments will always vote for the racist candidate.
3) This bloc of voters is enough to win elections.

If this was true... why didn't a racist candidate win in 2012? Or in 2008?

Your argument cannot explain this. Therefore, it is wrong. Just straight, point blank, wrong. Can't get around that.

The fact that a racist candidate didn't win in 2008 and 2012 means that instead of your 1), which is woefully reductive, we have this:

1a) There is a bloc of voters who are sometimes persuaded by racist arguments and sometimes not.

Now, we can explain why a racist candidate didn't win in 2008 and 2012, but did in 2016. 2008 and 2012 were the 'sometimes nots', 2016 was the 'sometimes'.

So now we have to figure out what causes an election to be a 'sometimes' and what causes it to be a 'sometimes not'. That is, what makes voters more or less likely to be motivated by racism than the norm.

Here's a good one: people who feel like their lives are worse off and their situation is less secure are more easily convinced to lash out at the Other than they are when their lives are improving and their situation is more secure.

Do we have any evidence of this? Why, yes!

The swing voter - the critical voter bloc - that swung the 2016 election was the white working class (earning less than $30,000). Yes, Trump's average voter was wealthier than Clinton's, but the average voter isn't the important one. Trump's average voter has been Republican for decades, the fact they were Republican again in 2016 doesn't change anything. The marginal voter is what's important, because their decision to switch parties (or not to vote) is what causes elected offices to change hands. And the marginal voter was more susceptible to racist arguments in 2016 than in 2012 or 2008 because their personal lives were and had been stagnant for a very long time.

So what's the conclusion? Trump's campaign was racist, but that wasn't the reason he won, in and of itself, because many racist candidates have run before without winning. He won because he persuaded people who were previously not racist (at least, actively so) to become racist, which previous racist candidates had not managed to do. Trump could do so because the underlying conditions were there for it to happen.

 

[Aaron Strife]

http://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2017/02/marco-rubio-town-halls-109889

Poor baby.

 

[whyamihere]

In other news, the French presidential election is getting interesting.

http://www.odoxa.fr/sondage/preside...on-reprend-lavantage-fillon-redevient-favori/

Fillon is collapsing, Macron is surging. Le Pen stable.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Les Republicains are probably kicking themselves right now for not nominating Juppe. Election would have been a walk for them.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

In other news, the French presidential election is getting interesting.

http://www.odoxa.fr/sondage/preside...on-reprend-lavantage-fillon-redevient-favori/

Fillon is collapsing, Macron is surging. Le Pen stable.

It's kind of a baller move to start a political party that's basically named after yourself, gotta respect Macron for that.

 

[Mgoblue201]

Then you communicate to people that they're already paying for Medicare (it's literally on every person's paycheck), and you would no longer pay premiums, and for the vast majority of people, they would more than likely come out ahead. And hammer on that. And organize grassroots folks to message it (oops). And use all that DNC consultant money to make constant ads about it, lol.

It wouldn't be easy of course. But passing and defending the ACA wasn't easy either! People freaked out about their premiums going up, and people still are forced into "can I afford these premiums every month...oh shit I can...but wait, can I afford this deductible?" conflicts. So it just seems weird to intentionally design a policy in a way that actually makes your job as a politician harder, as we've seen over the past few years.

And the middle class is already pissed because their plans changed, they resent the fact that they still have to deal with high deductibles, premiums, in-network/out of network shenanigans, suprise costs, etc. So it's not like the ACA actually solved those particular problems either.

So why are ACA worries simply a necessary evil that we just need to continue tweaking the policy and message on, but medicare for all worries are somehow permanently unsolvable problems that can never be addressed? Sure, if you create a poll question that only talks about the main bad thing and doesn't talk about any of the good things, people are less likely to support it. That applies to literally any policy, so I'm not sure why this is somehow seen as a specific medicare-for-all issue.

If we have to repeatedly cater to 1) corporate interests and 2) never talking about taxes at all, no matter how directly beneficial to people's lives it is, then as I mentioned in my previous post, we're fucked long-term anyway, lol.

The politics of passing the ACA are much easier and straightforward than the politics of passing a single payer bill. Part of that is psychological. People are typically more worried about immediate, tangible losses than hypothetical gains. It doesn't matter what the benefits are if people believe that they are losing something in the process. So any plan that completely upends the healthcare system and raises taxes on everyone would be met with opposition that would make the furor surrounding Obamacare seem tame. During the debate over the ACA, Obama could reasonably argue that the bill would do little to disrupt the healthcare market. That arguably limited the impact of the law, but it also nullified some of the opposition.

 

[whyamihere]

Les Republicains are probably kicking themselves right now for not nominating Juppe. Election would have been a walk for them.

Fillon could go to jail. He could keep falling.

 

[shinra-bansho]

There hasn't been a campaign explicitly appealing to racial animus like this one in recent cycles. Similarly, despite Obama being a powerful symbolic figure and obviously caring about minority issues, there hasn't been a campaign that as explicitly put the minority big tent at the forefront.

I don't think people would call John McCain, W or Mittens the "racist candidate" even if they relatively are.

 

[dramatis]

If you're going to try and make references to British politics, at least do it right. The UK Liberals are lead by Tim Farron. As for Corbyn, I don't support him. Never have. So saying "yeah well Corbyn!" is like me saying "why should I listen to you? You just elected Trump!", simply because you happen to be American. But given I know you didn't actually support Trump, I wouldn't be so discourteous as to try and make that point.

Also, give me a break. If we're talking insensitivities, you were so insensitive to the Democrats of the Rust Belt you just lost to an orange fascist puppeted by Russia. I mean, have you seen Trump? You were so out of touch you lost to that. Go look in the mirror and get some perspective. It's just tedious to see you fall back on 'someone has called out my atrocious arguments, better imply they're racially insensitive'. Alternative hypothesis: you're just making a terrible argument.

I didn't use liberals with a capital L, now did I? I also don't understand the bizarre need for you (and some in the Sanders crew) to call him an "orange fascist Russian puppet", you end up filling in words that have no use in an argument.

In the order of needs, is economic sensitivity higher priority than sensitivity to life and security (criminal justice reform) and control of one's own physical body and health (abortion)? You have never, ever once even tried to stand in the shoes of a woman or a black person or a Muslim for any argument. What you argue in your post now is no different from the 'entrenched ideologue' accusation you made of kirblar and me, because you are entrenching yourself in your own worldview, your own ideas, without ever considering an alternative perspective.

Moreover, if you understand that Labour is a failure, and Corbyn is a failure, then you know better than to stick your nose into American politics and support what the "Bernie or Bust" segment is doing, and add fuel to the fire of your own.

It's not hard for me to understand the "Democrats of the Rust Belt", because my father died when I was 10 and my mother had no job. We lived on food stamps, we were on Medicaid, I know what it is like to be fucking poor. The Democrats in the Rust Belt? They had more job security than my family (my father was an independent construction worker with no real work licenses, he was an immigrant that came here with one bag of clothes; my mother worked in a (probably illegal) garment factory before she quit to take care of three kids). The "Democrats of the Rust Belt" were born in this country and spoke the language and could get support easily, they had access to higher level jobs and to education; my mother couldn't speak English, had no free time or resources while raising three children, and she didn't know where to get help. And that's how it was like, for years.

But I don't vote like the "Democrats of the Rust Belt" do, now do I? The downtrodden minorities of the US who are also struggling to make ends meet don't vote like the "Democrats of the Rust Belt" do, now do they?

What do you actually know about what it is like to be economically precarious? You don't actually know what it is like to be black and afraid for your life around police, to be a female and be told what to do with your vagina, to be poor and worried about the future constantly until poverty has etched scars into you, making you into a twisted person only capable of seeing other people through the lens of money.

Nobody likes being called a racist or a sexist, but they have to be called out all the same. You are not an exemption, and pointing those problems out is not a sign of a poor argument.

 

[Basileus777]

Single payer wouldn't have passed, hell the ACA as it is was gutted by Congress and the courts and not Obama. If Obama had pressed for more no bill would have passed and we would have gotten a Republican wave in 2010 anyway.

It's such a shame that Ted Kennedy's ego prevented health care reform in the 70s or else everything would be different.

 

[Poodlestrike]

You have it backwards. The Tea Party had a very defined set of views. Bernistas are a cult of personality.

Yeah, edited too slow.

In other news, the French presidential election is getting interesting.

http://www.odoxa.fr/sondage/preside...on-reprend-lavantage-fillon-redevient-favori/

Fillon is collapsing, Macron is surging. Le Pen stable.

The mere fact that Fillon collapsed gives me a lot more hope. French voters might not give a fuck about sex scandals, but at least they won't excuse full blown corruption.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

There hasn't been a campaign explicitly appealing to racial animus like this one in recent cycles. Similarly, despite Obama being a powerful symbolic figure and obviously caring about minority issues, there hasn't been a campaign that as explicitly put the minority big tent at the forefront.

I don't think people would call John McCain, W or Mittens the "racist candidate" even if they relatively are.

Buchanan and Gingrich?

Bush 41 also had an incredibly racially charged campaign when his major attack on Dukakis was "he'll let black people out of prison so they can rape and kill your wives." He also lost much of the Midwest in a landslide election.

 

[soul creator]

The Republican Party had a unified government for most of the Bush years (technically starting from January 2003, but I'd argue it started Sept. 12, 2001) and liberals haven't had a majority on the Supreme Court since Nixon was in office.



Saorise Ronan as DNC chair, now THAT is an outsider! :lol

I obviously can't speak to why Obama and Biden pushed for Perez to get in the race and can only assume it's because they believed, based on his background and track record, that Perez was a better fit for leading the party toward the rural working-class votes that the Dems have been bleeding over the last four years. My preference from the beginning was to just have Perez and Ellison be co-chairs -- which I guess isn't that different from the setup now -- but otherwise agree that, for the sake of optics at least, it would've been better to just give Ellison the job, as I figured his losing would cause more consternation than Perez losing.

That said, my girlfriend had dinner last night with a handful of Obama administration and Clinton campaign executives who sounded quite opposed to Ellison, so maybe Perez losing would've sent the party into quite the fit too, who knows.

Ellison losing - an activist, motivated base feeling deflated
Perez losing - campaign execs and former white house administrators feel deflated. Alan Dershowitz leaves the party (I know I keep mentioning him, but never has the wellbye.gif been more appropriate, lol)

Seems like the latter would be preferable, but apparently not.

It is kind of interesting though, generally speaking, in one breath you hear Perez is "just as progressive as Ellison, why are people complaining?", yet a bunch of quotes you hear from insiders is "we want Perez because we don't want to move too far to the left". And another set of quotes that says "ideology doesn't matter for this job anyway". Seems like a bit of a contradiction there somewhere...

I wonder if the majority of DNC chair voters thought like this guy, assuming that someone who's black and muslim can't be a "rust belt populist" or win rural working-class votes (even though our black kenyan muslim former president was able to do well with this! harhar). It certainly fits in with the prevailing narrative that populism and the working class is somehow exclusive to angry white people.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

It's kind of a baller move to start a political party that's basically named after yourself, gotta respect Macron for that.

Old hat in French politics. De Gaulle initially started RPF as a popular movement rather than an official party and lots of ballots at the time listed Gaullist candidates as, well, Un candidat pour de Gaulle rather than RPF.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Also, I'm not sure why it's so galling to think that racial sensitivities and awareness of racial issues would be increased after 8 years of a black Muslim President and all of these BLM people going around killing cops.

 

[ShironRedshift]

http://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2017/02/marco-rubio-town-halls-109889

Oh, poor baby. If you don't want to be screamed at instead of skipping town halls, you could, I dunno... not be a piece of garbage and be trying to take away people's health care and shit? Nah, that's too hard I guess, better whine over something you have complete control over instead.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

This is a really shitty take, especially coming from someone who just watched from the sidelines and didn't live through the election. If exposing and calling out the racist, Islamaphobic, sexist, homophobic and hateful rhetoric Trump and his surrogates were spewing on a daily here was insensitive to Rust Belt Democrats - and I don't think it was to the Democrats in the region that were the problem - instead of talking about muh bad trade deals, then so be it. I know a lot of people here of all races and sexualities who've been damaged from the election and their sensitivities are just as important.

.

 

[mo60]

In other news, the French presidential election is getting interesting.

http://www.odoxa.fr/sondage/preside...on-reprend-lavantage-fillon-redevient-favori/

Fillon is collapsing, Macron is surging. Le Pen stable.

I will laugh really hard if le pen ends up in second place in the first round.The difference between Macron and Le Pen is in the margin of error right now.

 

[Basileus777]

Crab is wealthy and virtually as privileged as they come. It's not at all an unexpected take from the ivory tower.

This is a really shitty direction to take this discussion. Why even post this?

 

[AntraxSuicide]

This is a really shitty direction to take this discussion. Why even post this?

Sources matter. Or are we literally taking the colorblind approach here?

Edit: Though if it's bannable, I can delete it. But I'm not going to entertain the notion that a wealthy dude from overseas is more in-the-know about life as a racial/religious/gendered minority than people in those groups.

 

[metalslimer]

What people seem to miss is the large contingent of people that are not calling people niggers but are extremel6 uncomfortable with admitting the inequalities that exist. Obama didn't campaign on race issues nearly as much as Clinton did. If Midwest dems couldn't handle people saying other people have it rougher even if you aren't doing that we'll that's their own problem

These people don't want help if it means they have to share it with minorities

 

[Basileus777]

Sources matter. Or are we literally taking the colorblind approach here?

Slinging bile around contributes nothing to this thread. There's already more than enough of it going around.

 

[kirblar]

He won because he persuaded people who were previously not racist (at least, actively so) to become racist

You have it backwards.

They were always racist.

In good economic times, they are comfortable to indulge said racism.

In bad, they run to the Dems.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

You have it backwards.

They were always racist.

In good economic times, they are comfortable to indulge said racism.

In bad, they run to the Dems.

I'm usually with you kirb but I think it's incorrect to say that these rural and rust belt voters are experiencing good economic times right now. Those small towns are actually rotting, that's not something Trump had to make up.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

Slinging bile around contributes nothing to this thread. There's already more than enough of it going around.

I deleted it. But I'm seriously getting tired of this AllLivesMatter bullshit.

 

[metalslimer]

I'm usually with you kirb but I think it's incorrect to say that these rural and rust belt voters are experiencing good economic times right now. Those small towns are actually rotting, that's not something Trump had to make up.

Yeah ill agree they were already racist but someone giving them a scapegoat to blame the tough times on made them able to be more explicit about it. And let's not forget he only just squeaked by in these states.

Anyway, I'm fine with lying to these people if they're dumb enough to think their factory jobs are coming back because they certainly don't seem to want anything besides that

 

[Aaron Strife]

You have it backwards.

They were always racist.

In good economic times, they are comfortable to indulge said racism.

In bad, they run to the Dems.

Someone said once (maybe on here) that the Republicans are sort of like America's default party, and I somewhat agree. When times are bad, we elect a Democrat to clean up the mess. When times are good (as a direct result of that Democrat's policies, usually) we elect a Republican for those sweet tax cuts.

Of course, this dynamic only exists because of the Electoral College - Gore and Clinton would have been president in a popular vote and the nature of their campaigns probably would have made it even easier as they would have focused more on goosing up big city turnout (and very arguably this is what Clinton did including in some red states such as AZ and TX, but those weren't the rules).

 

[Basileus777]

I deleted it. But I'm seriously getting tired of this AllLivesMatter bullshit.

I don't think that's a fair characterization of Crab's posts. I don't always agree with him, but I don't stand with the interpretation of his comments about the white working class being an outright dismissal of the concerns of minorities. It's understandably a heated issue, but personal attacks on him aren't really warranted, you can disagree without that.

 

[whyamihere]

I will laugh really hard if le pen ends up in second place in the first round.The difference between Macron and Le Pen is in the margin of error right now.

It would be really amazing. I mean obviously I don't want Le Pen of the FN anywhere near power but if she's going to make it to the second round I'd rather her come in second.

It'll also be interesting to see the shape of their legislative races if Macron wins.

 

[Baron von Loathsome]

Poor baby.

Entire party is babies!

 

[kirblar]

I'm usually with you kirb but I think it's incorrect to say that these rural and rust belt voters are experiencing good economic times right now. Those small towns are actually rotting, that's not something Trump had to make up.

That's true in the rust belt but not in rural areas as a whole, where many of them had real income growth. I'm looking for the map now, but the issue is that the pattern is consistent nationwide in these areas. Even the rural areas that are doing well went for Trump the same as the ones that aren't. Economics doesn't explain it.

 

[royalan]

If this was true... why didn't a racist candidate win in 2012? Or in 2008?

What?

A racist candidate wasn't run in 2008 or 2012.

Now, I'm black and thus not gullible enough to believe that the Republican party was ever not racist. But you're being intentionally dishonest if you frame McCain and Romney as running campaigns that were even remotely, remotely, on the level of the Trump campaign in regards to race.

Like, your entire point falls apart if it's based on that.

 

[metalslimer]

Where a lot of the issues flare is when you tell a lot of minorities they weren't sensitive enough to white people because when we really need to clarify that it's white people we are talking about

This where a lot of anger from minorities comes up when the whole identity politics conversation starts.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

You have it backwards.

They were always racist.

In good economic times, they are comfortable to indulge said racism.

In bad, they run to the Dems.

Okay, sure, fine. You can frame it that way if it makes you happy.

However, we're agreed on the key point: their extent to which their racism manifests itself politically, the extent to which they're willing to vote on it, is dependent on factors like their current economic situation.

If you can't explain to them why you can make their economic situation better, you run the risk of a fascist explaining he can make it better by hurting The Other - in this case, black minorities. And it's not good enough to say "fuck it, we can't improve their situation, let's ignore them", because all the while you're saying that, black Americans are becoming poorer, being shot in the streets, being excluded from the basic services of the state that all persons should be entitled to; because you're too ignorant and stubborn and entitled to win back office.