dagblog - Comments for "Why Millennials Fell Out of Love With Obama"

Think of pendulums and

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 05:31:58 +0000

In reply to Three presidential election

Think of pendulums and rocking a car back out of a ditch. Sometimes a humiliating loss is a greater propellant than a weak win. No Nixon to kick around again? Napoleon will just stay retired on Elba? Ah well, I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know - guess "voting always good" and "support the team" will be the legs of our PR.

Three presidential election

Peter Schwartz — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 22:23:03 +0000

In reply to Somehow the Republicans

Three presidential election cycles is 24 years.

Four cycles is 32 years.

Moreover, it's easy to look back at the rise of movement conservatism and view it as a clever or smart plan that led ineluctably to Reagan's election, and so forth.

Some of what they did was smart and did work, but didn't a lot of other things also have to fall into place? Like Jimmy Carter flaming out as just one example? LBJ and Chicago being two others?

I have to wonder how much Goldwater's principled loss propelled the movement forward. His ideas did, but did his loss? And didn't they get a lot of help from LBJ and Vietnam by crippling their opponent?

I think MW's book is about how LaFollette's nose cutting eventually led to great progressive legislation (if I read him correctly)--we'll have to see how convincing his argument is, but I have my doubts.

I'll be happy if someone

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 19:48:14 +0000

In reply to I read it, and your summary

I'll be happy if someone addresses the real needs of a neglected constituency. But it didn't happen in 2012, and this time Obama's not running, and somehow he seems to drive the national agenda. Again, will be quite happy if someone steps up and puts forward a liberal agenda that addresses some of these issues.

I read it, and your summary

Verified Atheist — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 18:17:13 +0000

In reply to Read your last comment:

I read it, and your summary is apt, but tell me how "indifference => GOP winning => cutting off your nose/losing" equals being in favor of scolding anyone, and I absolutely believe that Democratic government should listen to its followers. I see it as stating the obvious. Let me be absolutely clear: when I said that we have 11 months to make sure that's not true, an obvious method is to address the issues that are important to them (and not just the issues that you think should be important to them), although that only works for certain definitions of "we".

Just to be clear... And

Peter Schwartz — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 14:09:31 +0000

In reply to Maybe I'm dense--wouldn't be

Just to be clear...

And because I know this thought is lurking...

I'm NOT suggesting that nothing more could be done to help blacks advance economically. The truth is, I don't know what those things are.

Nor am I suggesting that Obama has been "secretly" trying to help his black brethren, but we're too obtuse to see it.

Maybe I'm dense--wouldn't be

Peter Schwartz — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 14:06:36 +0000

In reply to Blacks have rallied around

Maybe I'm dense--wouldn't be the first time--but I'm unclear about what, specifically, Obama or "we" could be doing that would help blacks specifically.

Maybe I haven't read widely enough or am just uninformed on this point, but it would make this conversation clearer if there were a list of specific things, policies, that we had good reason to believe would work, that might have some chance of passing, that we could work for.

Failing that and correct me if I'm wrong, but...

• Unemployment benefits...

• Saving GM and much of the auto industry*...

• Educational initiatives...

• ACA

• Higher minimum wage

And other policies Obama has championed benefit poor(er) people disproportionately, and among the poor we find a disproportionate number of black people. Of course, these policies help poor whites and latinos and others, too, but so what?

* Here's a snippet from a Rainbow/Push study on the impact of the automotive industry on urban/black communities: "At the height of the industry, when 17.8 million vehicles were sold domestically in 2000, blacks were as much a part of the resulting economic boom as any other racial group. And similarly, as the industry nosedived, so too did blacks' grip on their middle-class-America status."

Elsewhere, though I can't find it now, I read that the automotive industry was one of the most welcoming to blacks coming north and where they experienced lower level of job discrimination.

I can't vouch for the veracity of this, but...

From the beginning he said he

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 00:09:09 +0000

In reply to Since I thought you were

From the beginning he said he won't, so I guess that's that - no use arguing about whether he could if he would.

Read your last comment:

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 23:54:13 +0000

In reply to I'm not in favor of scolding

Read your last comment: indifference => GOP winning => cutting off your nose/losing.

Maybe if blacks stayed at home 4 years, people would come crawling to win their 15% of the vote. Maybe not. But more than 1 way to skin a cat. McKayla is unimpressed with results of current strategy.

They should be disillusioned

Aaron Carine — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 22:33:56 +0000

In reply to Why Millennials Fell Out of Love With Obama

They should be disillusioned with Obama, but I hope they don't decide to vote Republican. It may be that young people have to learn the hard lesson that heads of state don't tend to be that virtuous. But if you're looking for heroes to idolize, there have been plenty of them, they just tend to be people outside the system--Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, and so forth. Mandela was a head of state, of course, but his becoming president was part of a destruction of the existing system.

I'm not in favor of scolding

Verified Atheist — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 21:02:10 +0000

In reply to Somehow the Republicans

I'm not in favor of scolding anyone, and I absolutely believe that Democratic government should listen to its followers. I'm not sure what I've said that's evidently lead you to believe otherwise.