Democratic (Party) Direction

largely due to the fact that she didn't energize the base of people who should have voted for her

Yes she did! Hispanics and other POC voted for her in record numbers.

I thought African-American turnout was down from...?

2012?

The high percentage of politically disengaged non-voters and infrequent voters in the US electorate means that angry and frightened voters make up a major bloc of the most likely voters. It is pretty easy to anger or frighten morons and racists and the GOP has been honing their chops since Nixon first ran for Congress. This is an intractable problem that we've had our noses rubbed in for decades now. It's damned hard to find a formula that overrides this basic electoral truth.

Obama's candidacy presented a fairly novel/unique solution - a candidate that energizes the youth and POC, w enough coattails for a governing coalition. Shame the whole financial meltdown absorbed so much of the resulting political capital.

I thought African-American turnout was down from...?

― Οὖτις, Friday, May 5, 2017 2:30 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2012?

― Οὖτις, Friday, May 5, 2017 2:30 PM

slightly

i mean she lost a lot of Obama votes in certain Michigan and Ohio counties. those i think happened in red counties, ones he lost previously. maybe it wouldn't have swung the election back to her if she had kept his numbers or improved on them, idk.

> the problem w/2016

oh stop

argely due to the fact that she didn't energize the base of people who should have voted for her

Yes she did! Hispanics and other POC voted for her in record numbers.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 5, 2017 2:28 PM (ten minutes ago)

alfred, are you just making stuff up now? hispanic and AA share of the vote was down compared to the last two elections

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/29/hillary-clinton-wins-latino-vote-but-falls-below-2012-support-for-obama/

How much of that was "failure to energize the base" and how much was active voter suppression measures? (Asking w/o clicking the link, am lazy, it's Friday.)

In the days before Election Day, there was evidence of a possible historic surge in Latino voter turnout nationwide. Reports from Florida, Nevada and elsewhere showed strong early-voter turnout among Latinos. And the national exit poll suggests that Latinos did make up a larger share of voters in 2016 than previously: 11% this year, up from 10% in 2012 and 9% in 2008. Preliminary estimates show that slightly more votes were cast nationwide compared with 2012, leaving it unclear how many Latinos actually voted in 2016. (This year’s Latino voter turnout, which has historically trailed other groups, won’t be known until sometime in 2017 when the U.S. Census Bureau publishes its report on U.S. voting.)

Turnout aside, a record 27.3 million of Latinos were eligible to vote in 2016, up 4 million from four years ago – the largest increase of any racial or ethnic group. And the Latino electorate grew in many states since 2012, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

tldr: we don't know what turnout was, but it was probably higher

whereas if you did vox pops of random poors who voted hillary it would all be extremely cogent and politically astute commentary? is american liberalism all about scoffing?

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Friday, May 5, 2017 1:04 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm sure they'd say that Hillary is their abuela.

oh god i had forgotten about that whole thing

> the problem w/2016

oh stop

― increasingly bonkers (rushomancy), Friday, May 5, 2017 7:37 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like many people i'm working through residual 2016 (sorry) feelings in my own rambling way.

i'm frustrated on behalf of my family too, my brother who's wife has been battling cancer for five years and is likely going to lose out big because of that election loss, moreso because they don't make money. idk skip over my post if you don't like it i guess.

i feel where you're coming from, but trying to _explain_ 2016 at this point is totally a lost cause. we're never going to all agree about what happened and why. man, don't try to make sense of it. just be fuckin' mad about it.

i'm mad! it's all the worse since it feels like nothing more than revenge politics. and of course these fuckers drink bud light.

Spuds McKen(a)zie

I agree w DJP that the direction of the party should not be dictated by the misconception that we need morons + racists' votes

What I do see on the left is some remnant of questioning how the racists get that way - and there's some value in questioning that if you want to combat it long term. Just wanting to ignore the problem or blasting anyone who brings it up is sort of like raging against Chomsky or someone who wanted to talk about our foreign policy history in the wake of 9/11.

Wow at that comparison...

not sure I get what exactly "the problem" is referring to there - racists in general? racist voters that change their minds about which party they want to vote for? Dems courting racist voters?

racists in general are certainly a problem in general.

dems courting racist voters can only align US politics more closely with the creating the sort of society that racists prefer, so it should also be considered a problem to the degree dems are doing this, which in my locality is not hardly at all.

Once we find out exactly who to blame we'll know how to win the next one.

for now let's just trust the DNC tho!

No no let's put you in charge

Racism and bigotry. Unless you think it's innate, writing off as incorrigible demographics who exhibit more racism isn't going to do anything positive.

right but is the problem to make them less racist or just to get their votes cuz those are two different things

legalize grass. offer reparations to the descendants of slaves. medicare and social security for all. universalize health care. make public education through college tuition-free. pay for a better more christian society by taxing the fuck out of rich dicks going to hell anyways (according to jesus in the new testament). prosecute donald trump for colluding with vladimir putin to steal the 2016 US election for the seditious GOP

xp - I think I referred to that in the first sentence about who actually advocates for appealing to racists?

Weed is one of the more craven and depressing failures on the part of Democrats. Even knowing it's an enormously popular move to legalize and the right thing to do, the party machine as a whole won't get on board and some remain actively hostile (like Cuomo).

idk how you make people less racist tbh. feel like there's some "magic" in there that no one really understands.

xp

I saw somewhere societal shaming actually is a very useful way. Also, ensuring that racism doesn't pay by making sure anti-racism - or at least slightly-less-racism, sigh - wins as much power as possible.

making sure anti-racism - or at least slightly-less-racism, sigh - wins as much power as possible

the weird thing is this country seemed to get MORE racist after we put a black man in the white house

Seems like shaming worked on the surface, but may have made things worse long-term/underneath.

Although as fucked up as things seem to be these days, I guess it's hard to argue that it's truly WORSE than in the past.

making sure anti-racism - or at least slightly-less-racism, sigh - wins as much power as possible

the weird thing is this country seemed to get MORE racist after we put a black man in the white house

― Οὖτις, Friday, May 5, 2017 3:53 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seems to have accelerated/accentuated the split in the country. with white racial grievance being a bigger determinant in voting intention in the 2016 election than in the two obama elections.

I blame the internet

the weird thing is this country seemed to get MORE racist after we put a black man in the white house

theorizing here: by putting a black democrat in the WH at a time of ott partisanship, the torrent of vitriolic criticism that would have been aimed at any dem president was specifically aimed at a black man. this effectively mobilized the entire partisan machinery of the right in an effort that could barely be distinguished from overt racism, which legitimized it in ways it hadn't been legitimate in the immediately preceding period.

sounds plausible

It's not implausible. My family got more homophobic when I came out.

it's not that hard to see that nepotism compromises the DNC the way it does every other prestige organization in the US

we're doomed if even the lefties keep mistaking daddy/mommy applause / connections for true grit and natural raw intelligence

It's better in some ways, worse in others. The victories of feminism, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement have made this an infinitely more just society, even though there is still much work to be done. But the backdrop against which those victories were able to occur seems to be fracturing due to a range of factors including reactionary backlash and regular old anomie. Trump's election represented a catastrophic implosion of standards/norms which will have consequences down the line -- what these will be, idk.

xp DJI

As always, I'm not American, but I don't think the US has gotten more racist. Structural discrimination just always wants to seem as benign as possible, so it becomes much more ugly when it has to, when it's threatened. If slightly-less-racism takes some power, racism will try to take power back. It has to be beaten over and over until there's no hope of victory.

It's the typical 'look what you made me do!'. The violence was always implicitly there. In the long run, no sense in not provoking it, has to be confronted and beaten, over and over and over.

Also right wing media is deliberately capitalizing on people's fears/confusion and channeling these feelings into political anger via racial and gender-based scapegoating. These memes then take on a life of their own on the internet, in the " manosphere" and all these other toxic sinkholes, including overtly racist spaces. The kinds of sentiments trafficked there are, I think, the single greatest threat to our society. The first greatest is capitalism because it's "creative destruction" is creating all these lost people who are being recruited as if to a cult into ideologies of hate.

idk how you make people less racist tbh. feel like there's some "magic" in there that no one really understands.

From a socialist perspective (and the reason I think it gets raised by leftists which gets interpreted as "burn identity politics" or "appeal to racists"), the key to me would be avoiding competition for a scarce resource like... livable jobs.

That doesn't really work as an explanation of American history, though.

racists don't deserve livable jobs. they're too dumb to be making demands. they're the ones we should be prejudiced against, and sexists and classists. fuck accommodationism

But how do you determine who are the racists?

That doesn't really work as an explanation of American history, though.

racists don't deserve livable jobs.