HUMAN 0
Please, my fellow liberals, stop calling all Trump voters “morons.” Stop calling them “racists.” Stop saying they are “too dumb” to realize that they are “voting against their self interests.”Rural voters, particularly Midwesterners and Southerners who support Trump and his contingency, reside outside of wealthy coastal enclaves like Seattle, New York, Palo Alto, etc. and they know EXACTLY who is responsible for outsourcing their good-paying jobs and where these C-suite executives reside and thrive. They are not nearly as stupid as many of you seem to think. They ARE voting according to their economic self-interest because their regions are not receiving equitable redistribution of infrastructure investment and job opportunities from the wealthy coastal enclaves where the American oligarchic class lives.
Please, for all of our sakes, learn to make common cause with your fellow working-class Americans and do not allow blind partisanship to prevent you from reaching across the aisle. Or else our oligarchic class will one day be as powerful as Russia‘s and stolen elections will be a foregone conclusion here, just as they are there. “Citizens United” is a leap in that direction, and destruction of the public education system with the return of segregation through tiered “charter schools” is another leap.
Fight wisely, fight nobly, persevere, my people, fight back. Please don’t give up on American democracy so easily.
We completely disagree, at least on half.
Being willing to support someone who advances your core issues and concerns is clearly the exact opposite of moronic. The willingness to go out of your way to support the people least offensive to you is quite clearly the savvy thing to do, especially when it comes to voting and it’s the least you can do.
However, if you’re someone who doesn’t care about the suffering of other people because of their ethnic identity, then yes, you’re a racist.
You can’t honestly say, for example, that you’re against child abuse if you’re willing to support systemic, intentional child abuse because you don’t consider it as important an issue as the fear you’ll have to pay restaurant workers $15 minimum wage 10 years from now.
Likewise, by virtue of putting your definition of “economic self-interest” above the bodily autonomy, liberty, and dignity of whole groups of people based on their skin color, your choices are racist, and what lies in your heart is entirely unimportant at the point your motivations are externalized in that way.
As you well know, poor black women and other women of color are economically disadvantaged and certainly have not received an equitable re-distribution of wealth at any point in history, much less the past X-number of years where some sort of economic system favoring coastal elites has been more in effect than the past. Black women have somehow avoided needing to lash themselves to the mast to be able to resist the siren’s song of fascism.
It’s not partisanship to say that the Republican Party’s current appeal is to try to get white Americans to think of themselves as “white Americans” first and everything else second. People can have other or supposedly noble reasons for voting Republican, but a soybean farmer or renter in suburbs of Flint, Mich., or a trailer park owner in the Florida Panhandle aren’t sticking with the Republicans because it’s in their direct economic interest.
They’re sticking with the GOP because it’s against the economic interests and social interests and bodily autonomy and liberty of all the sorts of people more vulnerable than they are, that they know they’ll never have to be. And that’s a pretty consistent theme in American democracy across the centuries, too.
HUMAN 1
Then how is it minority people, including black women as you mention, do vote Republican?For some odd reason, white liberals in places like LA and Seattle assume all minority oppressed people by default vote Democrats. Instead, Democrats ought to go reach out to people they never see in party meetings and listen. Instead of tokenism and projections, they could win if they made minority issues a big priority on the platform.
I don’t understand the point you think you’re making.
The Republican Party does not reach out to or rely on black women voters because 1 in 20 is not a sufficient base to achieve electoral success.
I am from West Texas. I spent a quarter century there. If you think I’m projecting and have no idea what Republicans actually think, I would argue I have the valid credentials of life experience and relations to fairly call that mistaken.
The Democratic Party is absolutely insufficient at being inclusive of minority communities, and in terms of looking at historically-disadvantaged groups as those needing outreach for GOTV rather than having a seat at the table all the months in between. Latinx outreach means more than printing leaflets in Spanish. We have no disagreement there.
But the Republican Party as currently constituted, as metastisized from Southern conservatism, is built on the subjugation of non-white people, and non-white men in particular. I’ve read the Texas GOP platform before. It’s not subtle in its appeal.
It usually enough to know who hates you and reject the idea of them being in a position of authority over you, given the choice.
HUMAN 1
I will say again: go to them, and listen. What I hear is whitefolks saying they know it all, and then I see my black neighbor who voted GOP, and I listen and hear “Democrats still have not changed, they do not ask me anything.”Establishment Dems need to actually heed the survey they took here, where blacks flat out told them in clear words what they are fed up about, and take action.
Yes, Democrats need to listen to, incorporate, and ultimately follow and support the sort of folks targeted by reactionary policies, particularly black Americans.
But, and I want to make this clear: l absolutely could not give less of a shit about “your black friend” as anecdote when set against the actual universe of voters (and non-voters). I don’t care about your neighbor set against targeted voter suppression in places like North Carolina or Georgia.
“The Democrats need to change their message(???)/process(???) because they only get 90 percent of black American male voters” is a plainly intellectually dishonest claim to make.
If the GOP thought they had a compelling outreach for minority voters they’d be doing that instead of actively trying to prevent all those people from easily voting.
HUMAN 0
My mom (a brown immigrant from a poor country) and best friend (blue collar felon) are Trump supporters. Neither is a racist, yet neither feels that people like them get a fair chance at success under the “meritocratic” paradigm championed by the Democrats from the Ivy League crowd.Whenever I talk to brown and black acquaintances who vote GOP, a theme that consistently comes up is “condescending white liberals.“ That is how many of our leaders, like Cantwell, are perceived in marginalized communities. The “white savior” complex is quite real in our party. I don’t think that some white liberals realize how offensive it is to non-white non-voters and non-white conservatives whom we are trying to court. There is a reason why conservatives of color coined the phrase “running away from the Democratic plantation.”
Everyone wants to be treated with respect and dignity and formal educational level is a poor indicator of innate intelligence. Or understanding of politics. I meet a lot of Democrats from privileged backgrounds who don’t seem to understand that.
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 0: I am a Berniecrat, and I do listen. Your friend there is speaking in the very condescending arrogant manner that turns people off. He don’t care about my “one friend” except there is more than one black person, and they hate how Democrats in Clark County, WA, treat them.As the Deaf person who was 1st accepted into Leadership Clark County I observed many Democrats saying how they wished they knew who were the Republicans because they are this and that negative stereotype, then they complained that there was too much diversity training, and they were who were both PC to my face “Oh Hiiiiii Human 1, how are you?” And rolled eyes and deeply sighed when I spoke to political leaders how most Deaf cannot read due to hearing union teachers not trying to ensure they can at equal levels to hearing peers, etc. It got worse. Much scarier.
So I been talking face-to-face with black, Latino, and women of color—you cannot tell race by looks. And we all are experiencing here that same White Savior, latte liberal, SuperAlly, arrogant, condescending behavior from liberals as well as semi-subtle threats from both the racist GOP and Democrats who claim to be above that.
If I call out the bigotry, I get that snotty, rude, behavior above.
And that is why GOP also is winning so many races. Wake up!
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: You are on fire! Preach!As a Democrat with a mental disorder, I would love to talk with you more about how we can make our party more inclusive towards everyone, including those of us with ADA-listed disabilities. We have to improve liberal messaging so that people from our various communities want to call themselves “Democrats.”
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 0: We need to remove barriers, some of them are people with power, and elect people with various disabilities. Our minority issues must stop being tokenised, and be made top 5 issues.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: I completely agree. Two pro-charter school newcomers just rode a huge wave of outside money to take over my district, the 32nd. As a Democrat of color and with a disability—who wouldn’t have made anything of myself without free and easy access to well-funded public education—I’m scared for the future of “problem” kids like me who go through school with behavioral problems.
To HUMAN 0: Yes, Trump supporters are overwhelmingly but not universally white. I honestly don’t understand why, beyond anecdote, that’s meaningful.
The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville with people marching while saying “Jews will not replace us” was not universally white men. Proud Boys and “Patriot Prayer” and other Western Chauvinist fascist groups aren’t universally white men. A lot of folks who work for ICE have Hispanic surnames.
But Stephen Miller’s Jewish ancestry is not dispositive from his anti-immigration and de-naturalization policies being explicitly, unequivocally racist.
And when you make common cause with folk whose stated ultimate goal is the forcible creation of the white ethno-state like Richard Spencer or Neo-Confederatism like David Duke, that becomes your cause, too.
We have lots of examples of this, and I’m saying private motivation for marching is not important when you’re marching with those folk. You’re not just out for a walk and got confused.
For political parties, New Deal Democrats prior to 1965 were complicit with the terrorism of the South because unions and progressives and immigrant groups in the North and West liked having Democratic majorities for Congress. “I’m not a racist, but I think rural electrification is more important than stopping lynching” may be genuine but also not something people could say after the open casket of Emmett Till.
Democrats of 50 years ago could no longer be complicit by diminishing or ignoring the human suffering of a whole region of people based on their skin color. However, Republicans of the present can and do.
So in the present, affluent documented Chinese American immigrants may think of themselves more as affluent taxpayers first and immigrants second, and they may resent poor Central American asylum seekers for noble, principled reasons like “not waiting in line”. They may want lower taxes and to repeal the 14th Amendment, and say they’re “reasonable Republicans”. But they’re still happily going along with kidnapping refugee children to be given away to strangers.
If those reasonable Republicans don’t realize the end goal of the people they’re sharing the party with are like Steve Bannon or Steve King, I mean, that’s a willful and self-interested ignorance. “I don’t think the leopards will eat my face, therefore I continue to support the leopards in ripping up business regulations to my immediate benefit” still makes you OK with leopards eating faces so long as it’s other people’s.
Every aspect of American society could stand to do better representing people of color in leadership and ownership positions, particularly women of color. We have no disagreement.
But that self-evident truth is practically a non sequitur. The reason why “women of color” is not totally synonymous with black women and the reason, as a group, that black women organize and activate and vote the way they do is they are the group in society with the least self-deception about whether far-right forces will come for them and what that looks like when those forces do.
I don’t take issue with criticizing Democrats. What I take issue with in particular is pointing at Diamond and Silk or Stacey Dash or Candace Owens or Omarosa to say, “See? Democrats need to do a better job reaching out to Republican voters”. We have a lot of things we need to do better as Democrats, but chasing Omarosas to find out what could make them change their votes is not one of them.
HUMAN 2
The majority of my family are Republicans. My husband’s side…Tea Party Republicans.I’m a Conservative, can’t stand Trump but respect the Republican platform.
I really wish people would listen to understand, rather than listen to convert.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 2: Exactly. What most white people don’t understand about my community is that politicians like Sawant and Jayapal are actually really fringe and most Indian-Americans are quite conservative. Due to cultural reasons. That is the truth with many insular ethnic minority groups that originate from poor countries. We believe in taking care of ourselves and are proud people. The taxpayer-funded nanny state is a really foreign concept for a lot of us.Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Ajit Pai, and other conservative Indian political figures are not the exception for our community, they are far more the norm.
HUMAN 2
To HUMAN 0: Exactly. I’ve been called everything from a racist to a Trumpster because of my cultural beliefs. It’s truly been all or nothing with the white people I have dealt with since running for office last year in the Democratic Party.Sad to say the hive mentality is not cute, especially in nanny states. I would rather be back on my little corner of the ghetto in St. Louis.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 2: We have to start calling out stuck-up, Ivy League bullshit in the Democratic Party. They have no idea why Trump’s people keep winning and a lot of these egghead academics and their kooky policy prescriptions keep losing. It’s about respect.I personally don’t want to live in “Denmark.” I am proud to be an American.
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 0: AMEN.
I love you started this thread, and that one hearing white guy who will not truly listen is not able to squelch you or your truth. If these types of Democrats would listen they would learn, but first they need to humble themselves and stop talking.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: All of us have to be regarded and respected as equals. None of us have all of the answers. I am so grateful that HUMAN 2 and you jumped in to engage in a civil debate with A David Johnson. This is what democracy looks like.
HUMAN 2
I’m always game for civil debate. Especially when white folk especially men try to tell POC, geared toward women how to think and whats right. I hate people telling me how and when to think.
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 2: Nobody likes being told how they need to think, believe, or vote.How it bothers me as a white man is to watch repeatedly other white men refuting every study, survey, and my own personal stories of genuine people I know who are from many minority communities. My black friend’s voices are not important cuz he saw a token black person in his party office in his county? That just makes me angry. And then I think to myself how that is why we do not have a mass wave, that is why we do not win…we do not give a care about them, the issues that matter to them, we only want to call ourselves the caring big tent party in ads. It is bullshit.
I appear like everybody else. But I got my own story. Two things most never know is I have a partial leg amputation and am mildly hard if hearing and part of the local Deaf Community. I have experienced lots of microaggressions in Vancouver. Hearing white Democrats do it as much as Republicans. I cannot know the issues blacks, Vietnamese, Russian etc have unless they tell me and I listen. But I know why there are no Vietnamese, Cambodians, Japanese, or Chinese in their debates and holding signs at rallies but lots ride the bus and are shopping in stores with me, same reason Deaf never show up….we are never approached to be made important, to come to us first. When I have tried and tried to have not just access such as interpreters, but us included in planning, in leadership, in developing questions for the diversity panel debates, it never happens. We do not trust the hearing folks, because when we have they try to colonize us, take over what little power we have, do things for us not empower us.
I can see a lot needs to improve in both parties to be equitable to all of us, but how to educate so many leaders when so many have big heads, big lungs, and no ears?
HUMAN 2
“I can see a lot needs to improve in both parties to be equitable to all of us, but how to educate so many leaders when so many have big heads, big lungs, and no ears?”^^^I love this right here!^^^
HUMAN 0
“We do not trust the hearing folks, because when we have they try to colonize us, take over what little power we have, do things for us not empower us.““Colonize” is exactly the word for it, HUMAN 1. They try to colonize us and use us as their little token pets. And the Republicans actually respect people who join their party, no matter what their color, creed, or disability, etc. Democrats have a lot to learn about respect.
HUMAN 2
Republicans are so awesome. Plus with the meetings I have been to I’ve never assaulted or demeaned at a Republican meeting.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 2: Again, although I disagree with a lot of their policies, we can learn a lot from our friends across the aisle.
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 2: I told the Republicans who asked me why I was a Republican that actually I am not I am a Berniecrat. They welcomed me and said they had hope that younger generations would be more willing to civilly debate than their own.My city has KKK and Proud Boys here. But I saw no sign of the hate groups in that GOP meeting.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: Wow, can we go to a KKK or Proud Boys meeting together? Would they tolerate our presence? I’d really like to talk those guys and see what’s really got them worked up. I bet it’s economic anxiety, a large part of it.My friend HUMAN 3 would probably insist on coming as my “bodyguard.”
HUMAN 2
To HUMAN 0: OMG! I would love to go to one of their meetings. I have interviewed several KKK members on the phone.I think they like to do stuff just to get folks riled up, lol.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 2: Me, too. Maybe HUMAN 1, you, and I going to their meeting and actually listening to their concerns would convince them that we don’t all view them as subhuman freaks and hate them as a matter of principle. It might actually dissuade some of them from doing something drastic for attention. We could just go as private citizens.
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 0: I would never go to a KKK meeting! Hell no!A man I met on the bus said he got out of white supremacy due to his wife abusing him and his son and him escaping to a domestic violence center, for his sake.
I suggest talking to ex haters. They can provide the same data, and no need to socialize with haters.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: I respect that. I actually want to meet the active members in their own group setting. I don’t know if the leaders would allow their members to freely interact with us.
HUMAN 1
To HUMAN 0: They might indoctrinate you, the 3%ers or Proud Boys, the fact is if you look to be a POC in my city the haters will find you.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: Can I come visit you in your city sometime? I’d love to get the lay of the land. No one is going to indoctrinate me. I’m super annoying and questioning about all orthodoxies. I’d just love to debate them face-to-face.
HUMAN 1
TO HUMAN 0: You honestly sound naive.
HUMAN 0
To HUMAN 1: I’m originally from rural Louisiana. I have met white supremacists before in Minnesota and they don’t scare me. It’s always fascinating how they react when they realize a POC wants to talk to them. The ones I chatted with were honestly flustered.Oh well, I can always ask HUMAN 3 to introduce me to some of the guys he knows in the motorcycle gangs when we visit Spokane.
“Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Ajit Pai, and other conservative Indian political figures are not the exception for our community, they are far more the norm.”
While I understand that South Asian Americans are a diverse group of diverse political opinions, this statement is in every quantifiable way not true:
That is, while I’m sure you personally know many conservative Asian Indian Americans and there are prominent Asian Indian and other South Asian American figures among the Republican Party—while that is true, as a whole it is demonstrably not the case that conservativism in other social areas translates over to support for the Republican Party.
If you’re aware of some other polling or studies, or some state where that’s not the case, I’d be interested in it, but individual examples are not especially illuminating when they are so much against the trend.
It has been a long time since a majority of Asian Americans or any Asian American group supported the GOP. In some cases, such as Asian Indian Americans, the support is actually especially small even though, like black and Latinx Americans, other cultural aspects would suggest greater conservativism. I would argue that the increasingly overt hostility of Republicans to these groups explains most of this.
More generally, if we had a reversal of historical voting rights and whites were the only group not able to vote, Democrats would win every election:
Again: if there is some study you see arguing the opposite, please share it. But otherwise, Democrats are doing more than enough to win the majority of voters of color who vote, just like they’re doing more than enough to win young people of any race who vote.
I would argue that any focus on listening to the voters who are engaged enough to participate but who choose to vote Republican is misplaced energy.
In a similar way, absolutely there are gay Republicans. But there’s a reason LGBTQ+ people who do vote choose overwhelmingly to support Democrats and do not actively support Republicans in any way. There’s no point spending time listening to Peter Thiel or the Log Cabin Republicans about what it would take to get them to change their mind; if they were persuadable they’d have been persuaded by now. Caitlyn Jenner and Blaire White are free to share what makes them support a party literally hostile to their existence and identity, but it’s not a good use of energy or strategy to listen to or persuade them. If you’ve read the Texas GOP platform and as a queer person still say they’re worth listening and respecting, no argument exists for you.
As long as such people are signed on to that—and they are when they support empowering their fellow Republicans who signed on to that—I also do not see any possible way to fairly call them pro-LGBTQ+ or even pro-gay rights.
So while I said this somewhat rudely, and I apologize for reacting to it as another in a series of “my black friend thinks it’s OK” comments, I absolutely do not care what 1 in 20 or 1 in 50 black women who voted for Roy Moore think in terms of their motivation or what could cause them to change their mind:
With all due respect to HUMAN 2 in particular, the Republican platform is what it is and has been for some time, and if you like it, that’s your right. You don’t have to think any differently or behave any differently than you do. But there is a reason the North Carolina GOP looked at ways black residents of the state were most likely to vote and specifically targeted those methods. Decreasing the black Republican turnout is not a concern Republican strategists worry about too much:
It is my position that whatever reasons a person has for sticking with the North Carolina GOP after they intentionally, actively worked to steal voting rights from black Americans again, then whatever a person’s own race, ethnicity, or important issues, that person either is a racist or considers racism so unimportant in their hierarchy of issues that the distinction is irrelevant as a practical matter. Given the undisputed facts, I don’t understand how my assertion following from those facts can be taken as anything but the mildest formulation of a logical conclusion.
That said, I care about listening to black Democratic voters for feedback on policy and listening to black Democratic officials because we’ve gotten them into positions of authority.
I really care about the 40 percent of black voters in the United States who didn’t—or just as likely, couldn’t—vote:
I want to listen to what it will take to persuade them to take part in politics, even if, statistically, one out of 10 end up voting Republican instead of Democrat for whatever reason. I want to listen to the majority of Latinx voters who don’t take part even if three out of 10 would vote Republican.
Joey Gibson is not a persuadable person or good faith actor, and he doesn’t represent Asian Americans as a voting bloc, and he shouldn’t be treated as such. But the 50 percent of people we aren’t reaching at all? Those do.
If you don’t like the taxpayer-funded nanny state, and that’s the framing you choose to see public transit or guaranteed medical coverage or universal education as, and that, for you, outweighs making sure we keep lead out of drinking water, I think the wise thing is to nod and say, “OK, thank you for your time” just like you do with a door canvass.
I do not take this to be patronizing. I just don’t think the odds are in your favor versus moving on and getting more of your people activated and engaged.
I want to be clear: My entire family is Southern Baptist Republicans from Texas. My uncle was the Republican Party’s county chair for years in a place where the economy has revolved around oil and natural gas extraction for close to 80 years. I lived there for 25 years. I absolutely am I white cis man lacking disability and possessing privilege. But I am not an ivory tower coastal liberal who has no idea what it’s like in conservative places.
Conservatives who said they needed to support a person of sincere Christian religiosity or were deeply against deficits or hated out of touch elites have proved none of those values actually mattered all too much.
I am not saying it is impossible to love people who continue to support the Republican Party.
I am saying that—with the possible exception of protecting your own family’s life—your immediate reasons for supporting causes married to white supremacy can only be explanatory, never exculpatory. I can understand why they support what they do without respecting or forgiving or behaving that it’s legitimate or a principle of equal value.
I don’t think it’s Manichean to say any nobler reasons for those supporting the American slaver rebellion, the German anti-Jewish fascist movement, or the South African forced subjugation of non-whites are irrelevant when that is the cause you have chosen align with. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to place the contemporary Republican Party in that category when looking at the way avowed white supremacists have been welcomed into the heart of the Republican Party and across the United States and within the executive branch and its judicial nominees just because the level of harm has not reached that level yet.
No elected Republican has ever demanded Steve King leave the party, and the leader of the neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa went to the White House this week.
This is the Republican Party. This is its goal: the forcible recreation of a white ethnostate is on the table as a legitimate idea worthy of discussion. The mainstream GOP is repeating talking points consigned to Idahoan white nationalist fax chains 30 years ago because they think they’re getting one over on the rubes while they get deregulation and tax breaks for donors.
So I’m sure there are many civil and pleasant members of NAMBLA. I’m sure someone could argue sincerely on free speech grounds that members of NAMBLA deserve to speak publicly in regards to why ageist, homophobic prohibitions of romantic relationships are a form of discrimination that ought to be abolished.
I am equally sure that there is no common ground worth finding with NAMBLA, and there are not two legitimate sides separated by misunderstanding when it comes to whether adults should be able to have sexual relationships with children. I am sure that by identifying that as a subject worthy of free debate or consideration, or treating people who openly endorse sexual relationships with children as just otherwise good but misguided folk with a valid opinion, you have committed a grave sin in that alone.
But Tucker Carlson regularly has a white power hour on Fox News, recognized as such by its intended audience.
I do not accept that this—the coercive expulsion of Muslims or non-white immigrants or re-segregation of nonwhite citizens—is a valid area of disagreement, and I will not be convinced that Fox News in its presentation of these ideas as if they were valid is anything but mainstream Republicanism in its purest, most distilled form.
ADJ 