The General US Politics Thread

I keep thinking back to those posts I saw during the election about how some republicans allegedly believed Trump would legitimately win in a vast majority of states, even those who have reliably voted blue for many years.

I don't necessarily think that represents the majority of republican opinion since these were mostly Q true believer types, but it does speak to how "assuming the silent majority is with you" is not only the left's problem. In fact, as things stand, democrats are the majority, they're just heavily clustered in a few specific states which lessens their overall electoral power in the US election system.

The Democrats ceded the red states to Republican dominion and voter suppression. Only by working to franchise as many voters as possible and make sure they can vote will a truly united America exist.

I agree with broader enfranchisement and facilitating voter participation as a virtue in and of itself, but I’m not convinced that the non-voting population is overwhelmingly Democratic. Voter turnout in Georgia increased substantially for both Democrats and Republicans; it just increased somewhat more for Democrats.

I haven’t seen any evidence, such as from polls, that Kentucky has a pile of non-voting pro-Democrat people, certainly not enough to flip the state. It’s still good to expand registration and participation and to make a genuine effort, but I wouldn’t have high hopes for flipping the state.

Edited by Galadriel on Nov 21st 2020 at 8:13:26 AM

The important thing to remember about Georgia is that the population is growing and it has a booming urban center (Atlanta), on top of Abrams working on this for almost a decade.

So it's not automatically evidence that the rest of the south is up for grabs, at least not anytime soon, since those conditions don't apply to all of them. There was an article about Mississipi earlier that mentioned this, that state has a very low population growth and a white population that reliably votes for the GOP en masse, making any headway in that state even with activism and voter registration will take a long time, possibly 2 decades or more. Of course it goes without saying that democrats should put in the work to flip those states anyway starting right now, but it will take a while to bear fruit.

Charles, the "red" states flipped themselves by being too racist to remain in the post-Civil Rights Democratic Party. I'm sorry, but that's just an historical truth. These trends were exacerbated by economic decline (thanks at least in part to their Republican governments) that led to brain drains to the more cosmopolitan states, which naturally got bluer as a result.

These are demographic and economic problems, not merely political ones. When the smart people leave, the stupid people stay and vote Republican out of ignorance and spite.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 21st 2020 at 8:25:26 AM

Kentucky had a Democratic Governor until Bevin and I grew up with them. Louisville elected Charles Booker and if he'd started his campaign more than a month before the primary, he would have been the caniddate against Mitch.

I think people prefer to write off these states versus thinking they are people who are being oppressed.

It's not writing off those states to suggest that flipping them to vote blue reliably at both a local and national level can be an uphill battle and will take time. Kentucky hasn't voted for a democrat for president since Bill Clinton in 1996, who was a centrist from a southern state.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 21st 2020 at 10:32:42 AM

In all honestly, I feel like Charles struggles to conciliate his obvious southern pride with the political alignment of those states. While it's evident there's disenfranchisement on a massive scale, it's unlikely at best it's down to just that. You have to grapple with the sins of your state at some point.

What'll take for them to get over the Civil War?

Kentucky actually has similar voter turnout rates to Georgia this year (and other years, too). To win Kentucky just by boosting turnout, Democrats would have to increase it from 68% to 85%, higher than any state currently in the nation. And this is under the assumption that every single extra voter would vote for a Democrat, with not a single additional voter voting for a Republican.

There are states where demographics and changing voter patterns suggest it would be prudent for Democrats to focus on turnout operations there. But it's not true for every state, and it's not "writing them off" to say that a strategy that worked in one state won't work in another in a different situation.

Even with higher voter participation, Kentucky would still be a red state on the federal level. To win there, Democrats need persuasion and would have to win over some margin of Republican voters. Governorships are not the same as federal elections, especially not off-year elections. Consider that Joe Biden in Kentucky got over 60,000 more votes than Gov. Andy Beshear did in 2019, and yet lost by >25%.

I am well aware there's a lot of assholes. I just get irritated with the general assumption that every state is a die-hard bunch of Trump followers or GOP because the reality is a great deal complex and the apathy of trying to reach these states is frustrating.

Texas was almost flipped, so was Georgia. Maybe that kind of attitude is what we needed.

Obama also did a 50-state campaign.

Not sure there's anything that can be done for the current generation. However, if in school the children were taught, in no uncertain terms, that the confederacy were the bad guys, we might see some gradual progress.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 21st 2020 at 8:55:58 AM

When people stop viewing it as a Thing That Happened To Us, rather than A Thing That Happened In History. It is telling that the event was so painful and traumatizing, and in some ways still remains unresolved, that people still care about it to this day.

This happens all the time. I don't think the Spanish still agonize over losing the Netherlands, or the English over the Wars of the Roses.

How much of it is the civil war, and how much of it is 1) social conservatism and 2) perception of Democrats as high-education urban elites who despise them as backwards rednecks?

I’m not saying racism isn’t a factor - it most likely is - but that’s not the same as it being the sole factor.

Edited by Galadriel on Nov 21st 2020 at 8:57:35 AM

The Civil War is an excuse perpetrated through education and propaganda. Nobody alive today participated in it, and we aren't paying reparations for slavery even to this day so those fucking prima donnas can just get over it already.

No, the reasons all that is being kept alive in red state culture are two-fold: racism and political insularity.

In what sense? I don't know what happened at the local level this year, but as far as the presidential race goes, Trump's margin over Biden was 5% and numerically around 600k votes. It's not close.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 21st 2020 at 11:07:20 AM

Don't know if this has come up here today since it all got very metapolitical, but: Trump supporters threatening to boycott the GOP in the Georgia runoffs?

To undermine my own point, I was born in 1980 and was fully raised with the "Lost Cause" and "State's Rights" argument. I don't know if it's still taught today but the history I learned was that slaves weren't abused (they were too valuable), were extended parts of the family, and it was a largely harmonious society disrupted by outside violence.

It's why I state, "Don't underestimate the number of people believe the South did nothing wrong."

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 21st 2020 at 6:16:10 AM

As far as how much slavery and the Civil War affects things today goes, how prevalent slavery was in a county in the 1860s has been found to be directly correlated with how Republican the White Southerners living there today are.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 21st 2020 at 8:03:19 AM

It has, but that's okay, because it's still hilarious.

Yipes.

If conservatives split between "rational governance" Republicans and hardcore QAnon clowns, it could very well benefit the Democratic Party.

Although there seems to be a growing rift in the Democratic Party between the liberals (think AOC and Bernie supporters) and moderates like my mom, who thinks Bernie is too far out there.

If, somehow, we do end up with Democrats controlling the House, Senate and presidency all at once, that doesn't guarantee that, say, fiscal liberals will get what they want. There are YouTube channels like Secular Talk and Jimmy Dore that are on the left that repeatedly call the establishment Democrats "corporate Democrats" and are skeptical that Biden will try to deliver what they want.

And if we do get full Democratic control, will the "rational governance" Republicans and Trump loyalists agree to vote together to stop the Democrats and swing things back their way, especially if the Democrats deliver on their least popular instead of most popular policies? Or will there be major splits, where one type of Republican refuses to vote for the other kind (like Trump loyalists in Georgia are currently doing)? Hmm.

The problem is rationale Republicans don't exist. They may not believe Trump won all 50 states and that fascism is correct but they certainly aren't standing in the way of the people who do.

This arguably makes them worse.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 21st 2020 at 6:17:11 AM

The hardcore left of the democratic party is a much smaller population of voters than they seem to think they are. Progressive policies can be selectively popular, but actual progressive candidates so far have only managed to win hard blue districts. As long as "socialism" remains an effective bogieman in many states, it'll be hard to get a foothold unless the person in question is an obscenely good marketer who can somehow sell these policies to moderates.

Oh, and Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to get universal mail-in voting rendered unconstitutional. Wasn't it something the Republican state legislature passed?

Edited by RainehDaze on Nov 21st 2020 at 2:21:32 PM