1686

I continue to be surprised that people can parse “You’re a Mexican, therefore you shouldn’t be allowed to judge my case” and take the position that it isn’t racist.

I mean, Trump’s complaint was based entirely on the judge’s ethnicity. To me that’s the very definition of being a racist.

1687

Hasn’t the left been calling republicans racist for decades now? How has that worked out?

1688

You’re in agreement almost word-for-word with Paul Ryan on that point. Not that it affected Ryan’s endorsement of Trump in any way, of course…

1689

I mostly agree. I think it is foolhardy to dismiss all or even most Trump voters as racist, and even more foolish to call them that. As Glen Beck points out in his video, his attacks on Obama and liberal were counter productive. When you starting calling somebody deplorable they simply tune you out.

It seems that all the emphasis on the thread is on recapturing the WWC. I’ll point out that there is another group that was disenfranchised by the vote the #nevertrump and the far larger #HillaryisWorse . This is largely white college educated, married, many of them live in suburbs and/or cities in blue states. I think they will be increasingly unhappy being in a Trump-led party. In many ways they are part of the elite but they don’t like to be associated with it.

I think the Democrat party can capture this part, by being a little more centerist on social policy (but still far to the left of evangalist), considerably less bashing of business (I think private Hillary was about perfect), and most importantly the Democrat needs to be pro-equality (racial, sex, religion etc.) without resorting to the highly offputting language of identity politics (interesectionality, privilege).

It seems me that there are several problems with going after the WWC. First you have to reach them, which is hard because they don’t trust the media, second you have to persuade them which is challenging cause it to be primarily an emotional argument. Finally, and most importantly in order to keep them you have to actual figure out solutions to their problems and frankly I haven’t heard anyone propose a solution which is likely to bring back “good jobs” to rural areas.

It seems me that Democrats might be better off and embracing the label of the elite party, and go after the elites in the Republican party.

1690

Because, quite frankly, I’m not sure there is one. Automation and increases in productivity mean that those ‘good blue collar jobs’, i.e. manufacturing jobs, have disappeared into the ether. It’s not even that they’ve gone overseas, though that is the emotional argument of Trump, it is that these jobs do not exist anymore. The same or more manufacturing output is being done with less input (labor). In that environment you can’t really ‘bring jobs back’, because those jobs aren’t there to be taken back.

So finding tangential solutions is key, because the only way to get more people working in manufacturing and those ‘good blue collar’ jobs is through a massive expansion of government. I’m talking USSR style command economy stuff. So that isn’t a solution.

1691

Complete agree. So my point is let the Republican have these people. They may never vote Democrat again if they ignore and treat them with disdain, but I think they’ll stop voting period once it become obvious that Trump can’t/won’t help them either. Make the Democrats the party of the elites, and those aspire to be elite, but also the party that takes care of those who have been truly victimized, crack babies, families trapped in inner cities for generations, discriminated minorities.

1692

You can be pardoned without having been convicted. For example, Carter pardoned all draft resisters, and Ford pardoned Nixon. That’s why Obama has been asked to pardon Snowden.

1693

Interesting twitter thread regarding the margin of victory/defeat and what it might mean:

…





1694

That’s exactly what he said. He said that, due to his mexican heritage, Curiel was unfit to preside over the case.

Now, of course, this argument was never made by his lawyers, because they would have been sanctioned by the court for making such an argument, as the argument has been repeatedly argued and defeated in court.

How can this statement by Trump be interpreted as something other than racism? What is it, to say that a judge is incapable of performing his duty, specifically due to his ethnicity?

But this is a strawman argument, because white police officers, and even all-white juries, are not at all prohibited in the US. This fairly long piece is built upon this foundation, but the foundation itself is false.

What is prohibited, is to discriminate in jury selection, based on race. In Batson v. Kentucky, the supreme court established that removing a potential juror based on race is a violation of a person’s equal protection, but that no one was guaranteed to have a jury composed of any particular racial makeup.

1695

Ya, I understand the idea of trying to win them over, but I fear that by not rejecting their racism for what it is, and letting them know that such beliefs have negative repercussions, that you risk normalizing such behavior.

Indeed, that’s what we’re seeing in the immediate aftermath of the election, right? We’re seeing a jump in overt racial prejudice, even against some members of this very forum. And it’s due to this idea that such beliefs are “OK”. That everyone thinks such things. That telling brown people they aren’t welcome here is just “saying what everyone is thinking.”

I say fuck that noise. It is not ok. And again, passive acceptance of others saying such things directly implies that the person accepting it does not care about the person on the receiving end of the bigotry. While this is a lesser, more timid version of bigotry, it is bigotry nonetheless.

Now, I am not saying these people are irredeemable. Indeed, the reason for shaming them for such beliefs, is because I believe that most of them are in fact good people, who can abandon those bigoted views. But they must first recognize that those views are wrong. That going along with a bigot is wrong.

This is a key point though. They are not irredeemably bad people. They can get better, as virtually all of us can. But the first step is introspection, and pretending like they are fine, or normal, for supporting a bigot, just because they didn’t support “the racist parts” is a barrier that must be broken down to allow that introspection. You have to accept that you’ve done something wrong before you can figure out why you did it.

1696

Here in North Carolina, that behavior is normal and always has been. You can try to call people out as much as you want, but it won’t stick. Racism is a part of the social fabric here, sadly, and is the fuel that runs the good old boy network in the state.

I’m not saying it’s ok, but the “call it out” strategy won’t work. I’m not sure what would work.

1697

With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about if you are going to call those oppo researchers inept. I know their work and I know oppo research.

1698

Interesting argument here:

1699

But the problem is that they do think the masses are stupid; else, of course, why would the masses constantly be voting against their own interests? They told the masses what would be best for them (job retraining!, free insurance for the lowest income brackets, big insurance rate increases for everyone else!) and the stupid masses didn’t listen. Of course, only now, at the end, and even after the warning signs in Europe and Brexit, are they willing at least to allow on the floor consideration worries of globalization such as unrestricted free trade and large scale immigration, but they hate these arguments because for one, they want and believe in unrestricted fee trade and large scale immigration in principle and in practice (it’s just market forces! it’s inevitable and no one can stop it!) and so don’t really want to concede an inch unless their hand is forced by some outside party, and two, the rubes make it so, so easy to hate them, what with their racism, sexism, stupidity and ignorance, inability to tell a fact from a fib, their endless Facebook propaganda memes, their birther fantasies, their willingness to throw everything away for stupid issues like abortion and guns, that there really isn’t much of a moral reason to compromise even if there may be some economic rationales.

It doesn’t really help at all that liberals have endured two decades of Republican witch hunts, illegal invasions, intransigence and political deadlock, gerrymandering and an ever increase decline in the quality and tenor of public discourse. Why, the Progressives may ask, do they have always have to be the better people, why do they always have to turn the other cheek?

I’d argue the long arc worry is the trend that as white voters become a smaller share of the public they are voting more as a block. The thing is, everyone accepts that other groups can happily vote for themselves; only the white voter is expected to vote against their own naked self interest. Democrats took for granted that certain educated portions of the white voters would vote for them; what happens to the Democrats if 60-70%+ of white voters regardless of education level vote Republican? They were happy to write off white/male as a category and in their policy discussions because that demo had already turned against them and they assumed wasn’t large enough to prevent victory (see all the pre-election voting map of US by white male only that predicted Trump across most states to see that psychology). Should things go that way it breaks the equation that Democrats use to calculate their chances and it turns politics in America into an increasingly fractious zero-sum game divided on ethnic lines. I think to prevent that from happening is the reason Democrats need to reach across the blue wall.

1700

What does that have to do with anything? All-white juries may not be prohibited, but it does not mean they might not be biased, and it certainly does not make it “racist” to claim they might be. Indeed there is research indicating exactly that, for example:

Is Dr. Bayer from the article being a racist for claiming all-white juries are biased against black defendants? How is that different from saying a judge or jury of any race might be biased against a different race?

1701

Bayer has evidence.

1702

And? Takes seconds to find a meta analysis finding racial bias for both black and white jurors. More from black jurors in fact.

From the text:

Results also indicated that several moderator variables significantly influenced
the size of the racial bias effect. The moderator analysis demonstrated that racial
bias in juror verdict decisions was more prominent in Black participants than in
White participants, when a continuous measure of guilt was employed (as opposed
to a dichotomous “guilty” v. “not guilty” measure), when jury instructions were not
provided to jurors prior to a verdict decision, and in studies conducted or published
in the 1970s. Consistent with verdict decisions, racial bias in sentencing decisions
were also influenced by the race of the participant, such that Black participants
showed larger effects than White participants.

So, is noting such things racist or not?

1703

Trump leveled a specific accusation against Judge Curiel. So, does Trump have evidence that Judge Curiel, specifically, is biased? If not, then Trump is characterizing Judge Curiel according to preconceptions about his race. Which is racist.

1704

He’s merely conducting a scientific study, and reporting a statistical correlation.

This isn’t what trump did. Trump was the literal definition of racism.

Why are arguing this? I’m just having a hard time understanding why you would defend this kind of behavior, because i would have expected that you would easily reject such an obviously racist act.

Assuming you are white, what if i said that you couldn’t do your job because you are white? I mean, i realize that this is perhaps hard to get your head around, because if you are like me, a white male, you have literally never had anyone tell you this about any job, ever. But if they did, especially calling you a Mexican desire you being born in Indiana, don’t you see that as obviously wrong?

I just don’t get why you are taking up this cause. Is it just for the sake of argument?

1705

I’m really curious why you say this. I did it a little bit of opp research on a volunteer basis for one campaign, but I’ll be the first admit I’m not an expert.

It just seems that most of the stuff that came out about Trump from the Hillary campaign should have come out during the primary. Billy Bush, is Jeb cousin surely he could have alerted Jeb’s campaign,if he had been asked, on where to start looking. For the rest of the campaigns. Most of Howard’s Stern’s shows are the internet. For couple thousand you could have hired a college intern to just listen to all the shows with Trump on them.

So it seems the either Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Christie, Bush etc op research teams missed finding this stuff, or they found it and the candidates decide not to release it.