Democrats need to get real with themselves about the Hispanic vote in 2020 ... the TX Dem report is looking at huge 20+ point swings in RGV counties and then attributing it to a 4 percentage point turnout differential. https://t.co/ThbQoibczBpic.twitter.com/6qg4IHoe84
I don't think the Hispanic swing toward Trump in 2020 (or the smaller Black one) is the end of the world, but the extent to which the Democrats' Latino politics specialists can't seem to admit that it happened raises some bigger questions.
tbh I think some of the latin elected officials who say off the record that the tilt toward left identity politics hurt democrats with their constituents should say so on the record https://t.co/1iNGjr3z1G
Democrats have to stop w the woke stuff, that’s mostly it. Ik that seems like nothing, but its not
Latinx, no. Latino/Latina(s) yes. Openly speak out against late term abortion. Openly speak out against illegal immigration. Openly speak out against the defund/anti police stuff
so @davidshor has talked about the dem elite problem with being way way more left than their base on culture. @mattyglesias gets crank about this. what can be done?
do we remember that jim webb ran in 2016? at a time when a contender (o'malley) said "all lives matter"
and yes, biden won. it's possible with the *right* figure and mix of experience/establishment connections, to go to the center on culture. but i think it's going uphill. the younger democrats are culture warriors
they're coming for our families! what are you going to do?
and I would like to add that despite "yes, Biden won", many swings and Independents voted for GOP downticket, and Democratic seats were lost in the House (after which there was much angry argument from centrists in the party doing the "told ya so" thing,)
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY THIS HAPPENS when you lose seats in state races:
It's far more counterproductive than just losing current elections! Far more. To be able to change the trajectory of this country, absent Supreme Court changes to re-districting rules, you have only this: attract centrists in order to take back state houses in order to redistrict fairly.
If you have eyes on the end prize, it is of extreme importance to let go of a lot of those things that dis and turn off centrists UNTIL YOU HAVE POWER TO RE-DISTRICT. Or it's spinning your wheels forever, or worse.
Many liberal communicators still have not incorporated an observation that animated both the Biden and Sanders campaigns in their race to the 1-2 slots in the 2020 campaign (and to Biden’s general election victory) https://t.co/tEmEp7LSsUpic.twitter.com/eQw3Xtsbce
makes the point that culturally divisive demands are often not sincere:
Remembered today when people demanded that Working Families Party release the underlying vote tallies that resulted in them endorsing Warren, something they had done 4 years prior, and WFP put out a statement signed by random nonprofit ppl saying this was tantamount to Jim Crow.
The wild thing is that after the election is over, some of the people who made that demand now work fine with the same people accusing them of Jim Crow. We've reached a point in the dialectic where both accuser and accused know those kinds of moves are unserious. Very strange!
There is a whole crust of people in the nonprofit sector whose job is to defend indefensible positions by making incredibly unhinged accusations of identity-based oppression that nobody (including themselves) believes but also everyone accepts they have to pretend to believe
This is an intriguing point (and I think Noah Smith agrees it's intriguing because he retweeted it). Not the least of which because it reminded me how for a long time Wolraich had this thing about the Democratic party needing to "mean something," to have a message:
"People like to say "Democrats talk too much about issues and we don't talk enough about our values. And I think that's actually really bad, that's backward. Our values are weird and alien to swing voters. But people agree with us on a lot of different issues." https://t.co/ml3RlITLYh
It made me think of how Wolraich first wrote the little book on right wing culture wars coming out of his thoughts at TPM Cafe. And from getting buried in that world, one might naturally presume it's important to respond in kind. But what about just saying no to culture warring, isn't that an alternative too? After idiot Trump, who only did culture wars and flippy floppy ones yet, because they were for his own benefit as a narcissist, wonkery would certainly have a bigger market, at least for some time?
"Getting shit done" - maybe we don't care what people "believe", and instead just want them to make things work? I mean, post office/mail delivery, energy grids, pandemic response, election votes... - just do your jobs. Uh, the Attorney General firing tear gas at peaceful protesters, or the federal law enforcement and Guard abandoning the Capitol to a mob - why are these things even a debate these days? Why does nothing except a mean tweet rise to the level of "you're fired"?
I remember Wolraich debating the issue in the early days of Dag. I argued for a "platform" approach that built policy toward specific outcomes. I remember his argument as more about needing a unifying narrative that would connect the proposals than an attempt to fight culture fires with fire.
After all this time in the barrel going over Trump Falls, the mundane affairs of practical life suddenly have a cultural life of their own. The GOP is only offering another bump so you can get back to the nauseous delirium that lets one escape from all that.
Ironic after "crack mothers" the whole party getting off on these endorphin highs. I mean, there are good drugs out there. This one's like raw pineal gland that way in the fridge too long mixed with those gag me half cocktails you give to teens who aren't used to drinking (not that i knew any of those when I was growing up). Stuff guaranteed to give a bad hangover unless you choose to never come down, ironically the "blue pill" option.
Interesting in itself that you remember it, too! He's certainly got a knack for long term earworm effect or something? It was a sort of aggravation for me, as I'd love it if people voted like they were hiring someone to do a specific job. Was like: passion for party is the last thing I'd like to see...
But I’d say it’s not just Asians … the largest increase in crime victimization (by far!) has been among African-Americans, and if crime keeps rising you’ll see a tough on crime backlash among Black voters too.
It’s truly incredible how much has been written about the attacks on Asian Americans and how many of those stories very carefully avoid the actual issue. Can’t really remember anything where you have to write about it but you can’t actually discuss it.
It’s almost as if one type of racial sensitivity compels you to cover it but another compels you to discuss it in such vague and lobotomized terms that you can actually read the strain on the page. Anyway sorry to all white ppl who have to write about this! Must be confusing!
The standard, institutional language of race in America is profoundly broken and assumes a binary that stopped making sense after the Hart Celler Act and certainly makes less sense now. This isn’t to say ‘you have to talk about immigrants bc it’s unfair if you don’t...’
Nobody should care about representation that much. The problem is that the language actually can’t discuss the lives of immigrants in any accurate or meaningful way. So everything festers; people get frustrated. That hesitancy to discuss feels like callousness, which it is.
Anyway if I were a Republican running for office in any city with a lot of Asians I would start a law and order, full capitalist, bring back testing campaign right now. The liberal elite Asian America which really only started in the mid to late nineties, is receding.
For the record: ‘the actual issue’ is the long history of racial violence between Black and Asian communities, the complete inability for anyone to process it, and the new variable, which is how these incidents, which involve Black assailants, play out over Asian social media.
At some point one of these foot patrols or the cops themselves will falsely accuse or attack a Black person and we will have a Central Park 5. It’s on us to prevent that from happening and to use this time to actually do the coalition building and organizing work.
And we have to absolutely reject these false binaries. The only way to actually care about the victims is to see the depth of the problem, reject ‘summit activism’ where some multicultural elites do panels, and reject carceral ‘solutions’ that will 100% lead to more violence https://t.co/dNHzGrqhqN
Comments
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 3:13pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 3:27pm
and I would like to add that despite "yes, Biden won", many swings and Independents voted for GOP downticket, and Democratic seats were lost in the House (after which there was much angry argument from centrists in the party doing the "told ya so" thing,)
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY THIS HAPPENS when you lose seats in state races:
It's far more counterproductive than just losing current elections! Far more. To be able to change the trajectory of this country, absent Supreme Court changes to re-districting rules, you have only this: attract centrists in order to take back state houses in order to redistrict fairly.
If you have eyes on the end prize, it is of extreme importance to let go of a lot of those things that dis and turn off centrists UNTIL YOU HAVE POWER TO RE-DISTRICT. Or it's spinning your wheels forever, or worse.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 3:37pm
You can gerrymander for the house or state legislature but you can't gerrymander for senator or governor. The problem is bigger than gerrymandering
by ocean-kat on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 7:21pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 4:23pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 4:26pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 4:27pm
makes the point that culturally divisive demands are often not sincere:
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/22/2021 - 4:32pm
by artappraiser on Wed, 02/24/2021 - 5:06pm
This is an intriguing point (and I think Noah Smith agrees it's intriguing because he retweeted it). Not the least of which because it reminded me how for a long time Wolraich had this thing about the Democratic party needing to "mean something," to have a message:
It made me think of how Wolraich first wrote the little book on right wing culture wars coming out of his thoughts at TPM Cafe. And from getting buried in that world, one might naturally presume it's important to respond in kind. But what about just saying no to culture warring, isn't that an alternative too? After idiot Trump, who only did culture wars and flippy floppy ones yet, because they were for his own benefit as a narcissist, wonkery would certainly have a bigger market, at least for some time?
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 2:36am
"Getting shit done" - maybe we don't care what people "believe", and instead just want them to make things work? I mean, post office/mail delivery, energy grids, pandemic response, election votes... - just do your jobs. Uh, the Attorney General firing tear gas at peaceful protesters, or the federal law enforcement and Guard abandoning the Capitol to a mob - why are these things even a debate these days? Why does nothing except a mean tweet rise to the level of "you're fired"?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 2:55am
I remember Wolraich debating the issue in the early days of Dag. I argued for a "platform" approach that built policy toward specific outcomes. I remember his argument as more about needing a unifying narrative that would connect the proposals than an attempt to fight culture fires with fire.
After all this time in the barrel going over Trump Falls, the mundane affairs of practical life suddenly have a cultural life of their own. The GOP is only offering another bump so you can get back to the nauseous delirium that lets one escape from all that.
by moat on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 1:44pm
Ironic after "crack mothers" the whole party getting off on these endorphin highs. I mean, there are good drugs out there. This one's like raw pineal gland that way in the fridge too long mixed with those gag me half cocktails you give to teens who aren't used to drinking (not that i knew any of those when I was growing up). Stuff guaranteed to give a bad hangover unless you choose to never come down, ironically the "blue pill" option.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 2:06pm
Mad Dog 20/20 is not just for breakfast anymore.
by moat on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 2:24pm
Feeling my "oats" with Biden in the house. Grrr, ruff, slurp.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 2:24am
Interesting in itself that you remember it, too! He's certainly got a knack for long term earworm effect or something? It was a sort of aggravation for me, as I'd love it if people voted like they were hiring someone to do a specific job. Was like: passion for party is the last thing I'd like to see...
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 1:21am
Democrats are losing Asian-American voters apace:
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 1:05pm
Kang's full thread on it:
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 1:12pm