The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2018-07-17 07:24pm
So you acknowledge that they might very well lose votes by doing this, but then just repeat (without really elaborating as to why) that the votes of Centre Right whites are the only votes that matter?
I thought I've been quite clear on the reasons? It doesn't matter if safe Democrat states like California or New York has an increased turnout from minorities and others. What matters is the states that was lost to Trump in 2016 and trying to win those states back.
Again, the overall numbers of voters is less of an issue than where the voters are from. This is the US electoral system, and you have to play the game if you want to win.
More than that, they're trying to suppress the votes of the poor and minorities, so that middle and upper-class white peoples' votes are the only ones that matter.
I would contend that rather than accommodating that strategy, we work to a) challenge voter suppression and gerrymandering in court, and b) work on mobilizing enthusiastic turnout to help offset the suppression tactics.
Note also that which states are swing states is not necessarily fixed, and that winning a few swing states is only the be-all and end-all in Presidential elections- the Democrats' further alienating their base would potentially hurt them in down-ballot races all over the country.
All those stuff would require the Democrats and the progressives to recapture the various houses of the government. The fact that the Judicial branch (supreme court) is becoming more dominated by conservative judges is not helping you at the moment. Recapture the various branches of the US government, then we can talk about reforms and challenge voter suppression/gerrymandering.
Of course, but winning new states will do you no good if you lose states you currently hold in the process. There are swing states that went to Hillary that might not go Democrat if the party takes a dump on its base, as you propose.
You need both kinds of states to win an election. You cannot be concerned with protecting your remaining states. You need to be on the offensive as well.
Err, Virginia went Democrat, as I said.
Virginia alone is not enough to win the next election.
Were you aware that the key swing states that voted for Trump (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) and put him over the top all went to Obama? That alone calls into question the assumption that it was fear of the scary minorities that cost the Democrats those states.
Also, read these articles, which lay out a case for how it was not more voters turning out for Trump, but fewer voters turning out for Hillary (including black voters) that cost her those states:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/re ... -election/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... ction.html
In other words, a very strong argument can be made that it was not centrists or conservatives fleeing from identity politics and voting Trump, but disgruntled Leftists who simply stayed home or protest-voted, that cost Clinton the election. In which case, again, your proposed solution would in fact be pretty much guaranteed to make the problem worse.
If the fear of Trump is not enough to mobilise those base, there is no certainty your approach could mobilise them in the next election.
Don't try to be cute. You know perfectly well what the point of that analogy is: that sometimes there is a moral imperative to defend a position which overrides short-term security- that some battles have to be fought even if they are costly. And that trading fundamental principles for advantage isn't compromising- its surrendering.
An actual war is entirely different from an election campaign. With war, you already have nothing left to lose. You are already being killed left and right. In an election campaign, there is still hope of you recapturing power.
My mistake, though I would still question why you apparently feel that this one article is the definitive word on the subject.
I'm not. I'm saying we should allow our assumptions to be challenged, even if it makes us feel uncomfortable. We need to engage with the idea that the existing strategy might actually play into the far-right hands.
The question is are you interested in winning in a discussion against me or are you interested in discussing the points raised by the actual article?
So in short, humans are naturally Right-wing bigots, so we shouldn't bother ever trying to stand up for Left-wing principles because we're certain to lose?
That was not my argument nor the argument of the article. Standing up for left-wing principles is not the same as making it your central campaign strategy.
If that is the case (which I do not concede, but for the sake of argument), then again, why not just drop the pretense and vote Republican, if you've given up any hope of changing the world for the better?
You can bet a lot of voters will be asking that question if the Democratic Party abandons its base. I repeat that in 2016, perhaps the single most damaging argument against the Democrats was that they were "no different from the Republicans". Trump and Russia expertly capitalized on this cynicism to encourage angry Leftists and "anti-establishment" voters to protest vote or stay home, and that is likely one of the things that cost Hillary Clinton the election. This is all well-known and widely reported on.
It was largely a lie in 2016. What you advocate would be to give the lie credence.
Obama did not win the 2008 election on the basis of being a left-wing progressive. He won because he managed to play up the image of being a centrist. This was the guy that opposed homosexual marriages for crying out loud in his 2008 election campaign.
The most successful progressive campaigns have mostly been based on building a broad coalition that can bring in "centrists" voters. Once they've gained the sufficient political capital, they can make use of that political capital to pursue left-wing ideas. ( There's a good argument that Obama wasted his political capital, but that's another debate altogether).
Whatever I say, you just repeat your one talking point: an assumption, based on citing a single article, that the only voters who matter are bigoted voters on the Right, that the key cause of Trump's election was a backlash against identity politics, and that any attempt to defend progressive policies will cost votes while any abandonment of them will not (or at least, not votes that matter).
Point out that trying to pander the bigots won't work, because they're nearly all lifetime members of the Cult of Trump?
"But then progressive policies might continue to lose support."
Here's a fun fact from CNN last night: according to recent polling, Trump has, among Republicans,
the highest approval rating of any Republican President in history. Higher than George W. Bush's approval rating the week after 9/11. This is post-locking children in cages, remember.
Here's the question for you. How many of those that voted for Trump are moderates and how many of those are hardcore supporters that jumped deep into the rabbit hole? At the end of the day, we must acknowledge there were a number of self-called "moderates" that voted for Trump in 2016.
If you want to talk about winning over moderates who might stay home, alright. I still think you're wrong, but at least that's within the realm of reason. But you can forget about winning over Trump supporters. The Republican Party is a neo-fascist party built on a cult of the leader. Full stop. We are not winning over these people in any remotely significant numbers.
And how are you going to win over the moderates who might have stayed at home in 2016? How is the approach you are advocating going to get those moderates to vote for you instead of staying at home once again?
The Bernie-or-Bust crowd are not reliable Democratic voters, obviously, but the Bernie-or-Bust crowd is not synonymous with the Democratic base. There are a lot of voters on the Left, a lot of Democratic voters(largely women and minority voters) who were not part of the Bernie-or-Bust crowd but are absolutely essential to the Democrats being a viable political party at the national level, who would be alienated by what you propose.
Are they alone enough to flip back the states? They might play a decisive role, but their votes alone will not be enough if you don't have the support of the "moderates".
As to Clinton's defeat, as I previously noted, a compelling case can be made that it occurred due to lower turnout from traditionally Democratic voters and the base- likely due partly to Hillary herself, but also due partly to the perception that the Democrats are just Republican-lite. A perception which you are essentially arguing that the party should double-down on.
In short, the course you are proposing is so tailor-made to benefit Trumpism, not the Democrats, that if I did not know better I would think that was your intent.
And how common was this perception in the crucial swing states? I don't deny there is this perception, but if this perception is largely based in the urban and safe Democrat areas, then it's not as important as you think. You need to acknowledge the rules of the game in US election system. A strategy for mobilising more support in safe Democrats states is not the same as a strategy in the swing states.
The slow-motion blue wave in special elections over the last year and half would suggest so, though this November is the real test.
As you pointed out, some of them were won by centre-right Democrats. This does not suggest your approach will work on a nation-wide level. And if the Democrats failed to retake the Senate and the house this November? That would mean the strategy you are adovcating allowed the Republicans to further entrench themselves in the government.
There are some Democrats who are "moderates" on many issues, but as women and minorities would be potentially alienated by this strategy. There are others who might indeed be alienated by a strong progressive/social justice platform- but I would contend that "moderates" are probably less likely to act on their disgruntlement than the base. Perhaps a strong Left-wing platform could cost moderate Democratic votes if there were a moderate alternative on the Right- but there isn't. No one who is actually "moderate" is going to jump ship now because the Democrats support social justice. Not considering who and what the alternative is.
Again, this is what the article is trying to discuss. She is suggesting your assumption that the "moderates are less likely to act on their disgruntlement" might not be true. That's the thing you need to engage with if you hope to win the re-elections. What if the moderates ended up being more likely to act on their disgruntlement than the women and minorities who were alienated?
That doesn't really tally with what you yourself have been arguing with me, which is that the Democrats likely lost because they advocated "social justice" positions.
I think you need to define, clearly, what you mean by "identity politics" before we go any further.
It would help if you read the article? Identity politics used by the left-wing (as described by the author of the article) is essentially this:
Relatedly, research suggests that calling people racist when they do not see themselves that way is counterproductive. As noted above, while there surely are true bigots, studies show that not all those who exhibit intolerant behavior harbor extreme racial animus. Moreover, as Stanford psychologist Alana Conner notes, if the goal is to diminish intolerance “telling people they’re racist, sexist and xenophobic is going to get you exactly nowhere. It’s such a threatening message. One of the things we know from social psychology is when people feel threatened, they can’t change, they can’t listen.”
This has obvious implications for recent debates about civility. Incivility is central to Trump’s strategy – it helps him galvanize his supporters by reminding them how “bad” and “threatening” the other side is. Since this has become such a hot-button topic on the left, it is worth being clear what incivility is. There is no definition of democracy that does not accept peaceful protest and other forms of vociferous political engagement. Incivility is about form – not substance; it is consistently defined by scholars as including invective, ridicule, emotionality, histrionics and other forms of personal attacks or norm-defying behavior. By engaging in even superficially similar tactics, Democrats abet Trump’s ability to do this – as one Trump supporter put it, every time Democrats attack him “it makes me angry, which causes me to want to defend him more” – potentially alienate wavering Republican-leaning independents, and help divert debate from policies, corruption and other substantive issues.
In other words, there's a limit to how useful it is to call out someone for being a racist.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
