While we are talking about post-racial America, I want to add my voice to those urging the GOP to redouble their Southern White People strategy. I just wish that folks like Ruy and Alan would stop pointing out how stupid it is.
Go for it, guys! Really! I am sure there is no way that the strategy could backfire*.
(*) The mind cannot even fathom, for example, a dimmer-than-average tea party Rep running his mouth about the strategy in a way that sounds normal among the gomers in his poker club but horrifying to the country at large and which helps brand the party for a generation. Certainly nothing like that has happened in the realm of reproductive rights, gay rights, immigration or minority voting registration.
Redshirt
My open question: Would racially motivated riots help the GOP or hurt it?
Yatsuno
Came into work sick as a dog. Ugh. I really should have just covered up my head and ignored the world.
Enough of them need to mouth off for the marginal districts to flip. Then we just let them keep talking.
dmsilev
All tea party Reps are dimmer than average. It’s like a mirror-universe Lake Wobegon.
Redshirt
@dmsilev:
LOL. Perfect!
Poopyman
Edited because I landed on the wrong thread.
Poo.
Punchy
@Yatsuno: Tequila will do that to ya…..
GregB
What I find so grotesque is that the race debate has now been inverted to the point where many whites see themselves as a minority set upon by the(non-existent) Black majority where they perceive the power is held.
So the folks that have spent years telling Black people to ‘get over it’ and quit complaining are now the first ones to claim victim status in race matters.
Violet
Please proceed, wingnuts.
Comrade Jake
Another Moral Monday. Wife and daughter are headed to the protests. Daughter has made a sign. Wife has told me that she doesn’t “plan” to get arrested.
Baud
@Punchy:
So will hanging out with other Juicers.
schrodinger's cat
Since this is an open thread, a tribute to the might white one we all loved.
Baud
Under Cleek’s Law, doesn’t pointing out how stupid it is make it more likely that they’ll do it?
MomSense
minus women of childbearing age.
MomSense
@Comrade Jake:
Awesome!
phein39
I think you’re missing an important part of the strategy there, Tim: When only whites can vote, old white males will rule!
scav
@MomSense: Or those with memories / desires more involved than being a quiver.
MomSense
@scav:
Oh that quiver concept gives me shivers as does the submissive wife business.
Hell to the no.
Baud
@MomSense:
Is that also true in the south. Haven’t seen polling on women there.
eric
let’s just call it the way it is: The South Will Rise Again (Politically). and by South, i think you know that I mean exactly what is meant by those who so adore the sentiment….
mdblanche
If I could go on a rant, I would just like to say FUCK YOU to all so-called moderate conservatives. You’re surprised and disappointed by the Zimmerman verdict? You have no right to be at all. Just where on earth did you check out to for the last, to be way too generous, few years? Where were you when the barbarians crashed down the gates of the Republican party and laid it waste? You simper and whine how it’s your party too. Not anymore it isn’t after you didn’t fight for it. No, that’s letting you off too easy; you goddamn welcomed the barbarians in, invited them to stay awhile, make themselves at home. That mess of a party is your mess and don’t you fucking deny it. You don’t get to say how upset a murderer walking makes you in the morning and say you’re not claiming President Obama is gay, you’re just asking questions in the afternoon. And you sure as hell don’t get to say how proud you are of African Americans for not rioting.
Where the fuck do you think the environment that led to a murderer walking came from? You built that. It was your side that inflicted Bush the Lesser upon the country, and don’t give me any shit about how you eventually saw the light about him. Even if it is true, you burned through any indulgence that gave you and then some a long time ago. And when the voters punished you for the worst presidency since Buchanan, to again be too generous, by depriving you of any control of either elected branch of government, did you learn any real lesson? Did you even try? Fuck no. You decided to try and take a short cut back into power by calling forth any barely interred demon in this country you could think of. Not really a course change; you’ve been pulling that shit for decades of course. Gay bashing was just one of the specialties of Bush the Lesser. (If you’re wondering why you never see anybody under 30 on Sunday mornings anymore, well now you know). But you really have been outdoing yourselves since the election of the first black president with, among so many, many other things, the race-baiting and the poor-bashing. Those always were one in the same to you, except on the way out the door Mr. Worst President Ever left us an economic collapse. Most lousy presidents would consider that sufficient to get their coveted membership at the bottom of the historical rankings, but that was just Bush the Lesser’s going away present.
So don’t you fucking dare give me any shit about how you’d like to see us do more to put Americans back to work and keep American children from going hungry and worry about the social fabric of the American nation. Not when you’ve been complicit in tearing it up. When you were at your lowest you had a President reach out to you when he had nothing to gain and a lot to lose by doing so. He did it because America had a lot to gain by doing so and a lot to lose by not doing so. And you spurned him. You sabotaged him. You spread misery throughout the land for your own benefit. You sowed division throughout the land for your own gain. And what did you reap? You hurt the President you set out to hurt but you hurt the country a hell of a lot more. He’s still President. He’s led the economy into a recovery better than most of the industrialized world, but that’s not saying much and it could have been so much more if not for your selfishness. Oh, but you got the House back and the lion’s share of state governments. You stacked them with some of those demons you raised but you got them back. Your guess is as good as mine about how to exorcize them. They’re howling for the blood of the poor and the black and the Latino and the gay and the young and the unbeliever and the un-submissive woman. And you sure as shit aren’t going to control them. All those people scare you for the same reason they scare the demons; they’re the people who elected Barack Obama and they’re the people who re-elected him. You don’t want to see them murdered or starving in the streets but your demons and your barbarians do. They aren’t part of the barbarians’ American nation so all your invocations of Burke ring hollow. The institutions that hold the nation together have been vandalized to try to keep those you fear out, the social fabric torn at to try cut those you fear out. Maybe you didn’t do it personally but you sat back in silent approval.
You say you want a more equal, more caring society. I say fuck you. I too hope we can be that society someday soon, but we are farther away from it now than we were before. You sought to profit from our divisions by hardening them and a divided society will not come together as it must to become more equal and caring. Until the fear of the other your side whips up is finally dispelled we can’t come together. And you no longer have a positive role you can play in that. You have mounted the tiger. You snivel that you can’t get off safely and you’ve lost control. And I am unmoved. Get off, you bastard, and be eaten. It’s what you deserve. And have the decency not to lie about how it was you who unleashed the beast as you die. It is up to those you fear to create what you say you want over your dead body.
jl
@Redshirt:
” My open question: Would racially motivated riots help the GOP or hurt it? ”
How do you define ‘racially motivated’? Looks like that in some states now, if you are not White, or even not the right kind of White, and if no one is around, some vicious dingbat can walk up and shoot you to death. And the shooter’s got nothing to prove, nothing to explain, in order to get off.
Is protesting that situation ‘racially motivated’ or just taking any prudent measure available to increase chances of an average lifespan?
And are you saying that the sporadic violence that accompanied some of the demonstrations were riots? Some elements of our horrible failed corporate media experiment, and many elelments of the rotten GOP, will surely try to portray them that way, but I don’t think that is an accurate representation.
Emerald
@GregB: Actually that’s always been their view. It’s whites who are the victims of racism. Whites suffer from racial discrimination, especially in affirmative action (oh, and white men, specifically, suffer from that, too).
The whole white supremacist view is that they’re the victims, and they have to fight back. See Birth of a Nation, with its depiction of the KKK as heroic defenders of white women, helpless in the face of black rapists, legions of whom roamed the Sacred South at will.
See the Christianists, rinse and repeat. It’s Christianity that’s under attack in this country, not any other religion.
That’s what we’re up against. These people actually believe this crap.
catclub
@Comrade Jake: Good Luck to them! Or whatever is the demonstration equivalent of ‘Break a leg’. Fair Winds and Following Seas does not seem apt.
May the road not rise up too hard to meet ye. ? Keep on the sunny side?
Comrade Dread
@GregB: I’ve had two folks in my FB feed tell me that in spite of there being a dead black kid who was stalked, chased, and shot, that it’s really ‘open season on white people’.
Yes, they were being serious.
Comrade Jake
@Comrade Dread: I think there’s only one “conservative” survivor in my FB network at this point.
BTW, open season on white people sure does look like open season on black kids in Florida.
MomSense
@Baud:
Texas women seem pretty pissed off to me. I don’t know how it goes in the South but I have always thought that there must be Republican women who are in the closet about their support for reproductive rights. It used to be that the wives of Republican candidates would sort of quietly signal (leaked press report) that they disagreed with their anti choice husbands. I remember Barbara and Laura Bush (the daughters too) doing this.
I also think that for years there was this sort of bargain that Republican women were confident that the anti-choice candidate wouldn’t actually do much of anything to end abortion rights. I heard a lot of Northeast Republican women express this back in the day–but those days are definitely over.
Eric U.
white folk are just practicing for their days in the minority. Like Lewis C.K. says, I can get into a time machine and go anywhere I want — in the past
Shakezula
Oh dear me. Such a strategy would also Piss off the Liberals (TM) and time and again we’ve seen the one who pisses off the most liberal wins!
The honor of pissing off the most liberals, that is. Actual elections … Still working on that.
jl
The spectacle of the GOP going back and eating its own racist propaganda vomit is amazing. They are really seriously acting like addicts.
IF the Teixeira and Abramowitz analysis is correct, then it is not true that a larger proportion of Whites are becoming violent racist assholes. The ideological divide among Whites is staying about the same, but the population of relatively liberal racial and ethnic minorities is growing faster than that of all Whites.
So let the GOP go down their depraved and deluded way. I hope they scare away more Whites by sending them deranged hate propaganda.
As I’ve said before, all the moderate GOPers in my family are now either independents or Democrats. I hope the GOP sends the BS they have been shoveling out to their supposed missing White racist legions into overdrive and scare away even more sane white people from their miserable violent rebarbative racist rump of a previously great political party (much of which, long long ago, was progressive on many important issues).
Yatsuno
@mdblanche: Righteous.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
This fits in with a recent epiphany I had. Given that the new Texas voter ID law lists a concealed carry license as a valid form of ID, we should somehow get every adult African-American, Hispanic, and Arab-American in the state to get a CCL. Immediate benefit: eligible voters have at least one valid form of ID. Secondary benefit: two-thirds of the Lege (and the goobers who elected them) shit their pants at the prospect of those people legally carrying.
Shakezula
@Comrade Jake: Is anyone surprised by this? Anyone?
Even in Florida, you might want to check on that definition, Sparky.
RaflW
Since its an open thread:
Still thinking about gun deaths. I’m traveling to Sweden later this summer to visit some cousins. So I took a look-see:
Minnesota, where I live, with a population of 5.4 million, had 353 gun deaths in 2010 (most recent easily available data).
Sweden, with 9.5 million people, had 138 gun deaths. Gun homicides, 64 vs 18. Suicide by gun, 279 vs 113. And I tend to think we have a fairly moderate gun culture in Minnesota.
If Sweden had Minnesota’s gun death rate, roughly 621 Swedes would have died by gun, but in stead only 138 did. Yes, Swedes live under the horrible jack-boot of sochulism*, but many more Swedes are free to draw breath today thanks to their NRA-abhorrent gun culture.
*Sweden has moved noticeably towards center in the past decade or so, but still retains a decent bit of welfare, protection and sense of common good.
Also, if you’re adding, the total numbers include accidents in addition to suicide and homicide.
Ben Cisco
@dmsilev:
Garrison Keillor with a goatee. Discuss.
Comrade Dread
@Comrade Jake: Too many damn guns in the hands of too many damn fools and cowards just itching to use them to prove how manly they are.
Or to add to George Carlin: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” And then realize that they can buy guns and conceal carry them.
If God ever did opt to judge this nation as so many fundamentalists are convinced He will, I think they’ll be surprised that the shedding of innocent blood and our culture’s love of violence and exploitation will be much higher on His reasons why than their pet peeves.
Ben Cisco
@mdblanche: Holee shit, that was awesome. Please allow me to add:
Dear NeoConfederates,
2014 is coming – and SO ARE WE. Not in the way you claim to fear.
No marauding gangs, no riots, no Birth Of A Nation-induced fantasies.
Those two New Black Panthers (the SAME two, at that!) you guys drag out every time you want to make each other wet yourselves? Non-factor.
No, we’re coming brandishing the one thing that actually scares you – our VOTES.
You and ALEC can try all your tricks – we’re coming.
You can end early voting – we’re coming.
You can close polling places – we’re coming.
You can “accidentally” delete names from voting rolls – we’re coming.
You can gin up as much outrage as you wish – a Brooks Brothers riot won’t help you this time.
The FerengiMedia™ may be your allies, but they won’t be enough.
Are you willing to use fire hoses? Dogs? Guns?
Because that’s what you are going to have to do. And even that won’t be enough.
You see, we’ve had more than enough of your crap.
You’ve been on the longest temper tantrum in recent history. Running at full speed since November 4, 2008.
We are now fully aware that there is no common cause with you.
There can be no compromise because you do not wish it. You want us dead, gone, marginalized, or in servitude to you.
NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.
It didn’t have to be this way. YOU forced this.
Remember that when your electoral gains are dust, and you have gone the way of the Whigs.
Your hatred of us will be your undoing.
And you will only have yourselves to blame.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Just as a reminder that there are more atrocities going on than just the nitwittery of those celebrating Zimmerman’s acquittal….Marc Thiessen, in his usual position (No, I’m not linking it) insisting that the force feeding in Gitmo isn’t really torture, since it happens to kids all the time, and, you know..War On Terrah.
jl
” Yes, Swedes live under the horrible jack-boot of sochulism*, ”
Ha, talk to a typical Swede. Who will probably tell you that they are the real capitalists, who do it better than we do, and that they simply prefer to live like humans should. You might get some version of ‘We pity you’.
If there is enough vodka, they will brag about how the migthty capitalist Swedish Vikings found time between raiding and stealing to start up respectable civilization in Russia.
mdblanche
No need to worry. It’s not like they’ve listened to anybody warning them about such things ever before. Just remember that when a beast like that dies, there a lot of nasty side effects. These include but are not limited to assaults on minority rights, assaults on women’s rights, paralysis or regression on economic issues even if they’re urgent, children gunned down in the streets and their killers set free, and a lack of a mainstream conservative political party. It will be ugly as it goes down but hold fast. It gets better.
@Ben Cisco: Awesome addition. I had to do something productive to deal with the aggravation of talking with with a useless supposed moderate yesterday, but this is how you deal with the beast itself.
the Conster
After watching Gasland this weekend, it seems like Big Resource Extractor Inc. seems to be doing a pretty good job of turning Republicans into Independents, one exploited white male property owner at a time. I imagine gun nuts with class consciousness. And a pony.
jl
@mdblanche:
“…it will be ugly as it goes down but hold fast. It gets better.”
Maybe some group should start a ‘It will get better’ campaign for sane white people? Or sane people generally? Would be interesting to see how well that would go over.
Might get some old school progressive Okie to do some of the spots.
thoughtcrime
They’re off to a good start!
D58826
The thing that did not seem to get much discussion at the Zimmerman trial was how he was able to get the gun out of his holster when he wore it under three layers of clothing around in the small of his back. Now I wear my cell phone holster between the first and second belt loop and have to twist to get it out, yet Zimmerman was flat on his back with Martin sitting on his chest.
Has any one wondered if the reason he was able to pull off this Houdini trick was because he already had the gun in his hand? Heaven knows if I had a gun and was about to follow a dangerous thug in the dark of night, I would have it real handy. Of course for Zimmerman to admit that would have put him in jail for 20 years.
cmorenc
@TimF:
Their firmly-believed strategy is that they can successfully dam off the demographic tide of brownish people by disenfranchising or otherwise discouraging a sufficient number of them from participating in the electoral process that angry white reactionaries like themselves will be able to assert their proper dominant control of things, especially if they can encourage better turnout from the “missing white vote” (wherever that supposedly is). Of course, some brownish people sufficiently acculturated to the world and ways of angry white reactionaries to seem honorary whites with black skin (see: Thomas, Clarence or Cain, Herman) whom they’re willing to accept as proper members of the alleged “producer” segment of society that ought to be in control of things, totally unlike the dependent blacks and browns who are out there buying T-bone steaks with food stamps and bearing children on welfare.
Emerald
@mdblanche: Tell it, sister!
catclub
@Ben Cisco: Black Garrison Keillor with a goatee.
Black woman Tammy Garrison Keillor.
Redshirt
@Ben Cisco: Fuckin A yeah!
That’s how we win this war against, I do not quibble anymore, evil.
eclare
@MomSense: My mom is a 75 yo or so Republican Southern woman who has voted Democrat for president ever since Kerry specifically over abortion rights and the Supreme Court. But we don’t tell the extended family…I think dad has finally figured it out.
p.a.
Demography is destiny. I’m pretty hopeful we are seeing the last desperate lashings of a dying snake, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still do damage. Our job is to put it out of its misery.
Redshirt
@jl: What I was asking is, would racially motivated riots – specifically, african-americans rioting in urban areas – help the GOP electorally?
Let me nuance that by saying there are other types of riots – sports riots for example – that I don’t wonder about. That’s just “boys being boys”.
Let me further nuance that by noting that the riots of the 60’s were influential (along with other big factors like the hippies, Vietnam, and Civil/Equal Rights) in tipping many former Democrats into the Repuke column, and we’ve all been suffering for that since.
I finish by observing that Repuke strategists are saying they need to get even more of the white vote, on par with the percentages 20-30 years ago. If they don’t, they’re toast.
So, to clarify my question: Is it in the GOP’s interest to gin up race riots? Because if it is, they will.
jl
@D58826:
” The thing that did not seem to get much discussion at the Zimmerman trial was how he was able to get the gun out of his holster when he wore it under three layers of clothing around in the small of his back. ”
IMO, that is the really sick and dangerous thing about the ‘stand your ground’ and judicial precedents on self defense killings if Florida. Zimmerman has absolutely no burden of proof in presenting that defense. No witnesses, and its his say-so.
The State has the burden of proof beyond some relative high level of doubt that.Zimmerman is lying,
I guess a white racist self appointed totally unofficial Neighborhood Watch vigilante, who ignored the police dispatcher’s instructions, and with a totally BS and unbelievable excuse never bothered to state he was just doing Neighborhood Watch to defuse the situation, could say he pulled the gun out of his ass, or his nose, or whatever, and that would be a ‘reasonable’ story that had to be respected in court. The state would bear the burden of proof to show his story was nonsense.
mdblanche
@Emerald: Um, brother.
@p.a.: This.
Matt McIrvin
@mdblanche: Are there any “moderate conservatives” surprised and disappointed by the Zimmermann verdict? My impression is that a substantial number of white liberals support Zimmermann and are upset with people being upset about the verdict. I would expect essentially all US conservatives to be in the same camp.
Emerald
@mdblanche: Brother!
mdblanche
@Matt McIrvin: Amazingly, yes. Maybe not that amazing when you remember the blogosphere is a self-selecting group that doesn’t match the country at large. Also, too the miracle of delusion can accomplish all sorts of things. I’ve also seen some of those white liberals you mention around. Oddly they are disproportionately members of the “disappointed” variety. Oh well, coincidence to be sure.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: I think you have to dig a little deeper into attitudes. I am a white liberal. I am disgusted by the verdict. From what I have read, and from what two criminal defense lawyers I have talked/argued with recently, under Florida’s asinine and murderous ‘stand your ground’ law and approach to burden of proof in self-defense cases, the verdict may well be defensible (Edit: under the hideous Florida laws)
So, do I qualify as not upset enough, or too upset with people who are upset (because I disagree with them about some things) that I will eagerly jump up and catch the next racist turd the GOP throws out it is missing White Legion with my mouth and swallow it whole?
I hope not. Seems unlikely, at least to me.
gelfling545
@Comrade Jake: I also have 1 conservative fb friend. She may have to go today, though. In spite of my practically begging her to check things out (usually about Xians being persecuted) for, you know, actually existing before she passes them on there is more bs today. Old friendship vs. my blood pressure, how to choose?
Shalimar
@Redshirt: Read Drudge and Breitbart. They are already ginning up race riots, even where they don’t exist. Clearly, they think it is in their interest. Whether Drudge is right, or just a racist asshole, is a question I don’t want to think about.
Ted & Hellen
Oligarchs stick together!
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: I don’t think the revelation that the gun was already out would have swayed the jury. They could still say that Zimmerman reasonably feared for his life because of how he was losing the fight, so he pulled the trigger to save himself. The common-sense notion of how self-defense works has been perverted by the gun lobby, and I’m not sure there’s any going back. It’s odd and it’s disgusting and I worry that it’s here to stay.
Redshirt
@Shalimar: I do, and worse. So if Drudge is egging on race riots, does it follow his Masters think it’s good, electorally? Or at least monetarily?
D58826
@jl: From what I understand the state’s burden is to prove that Zimmerman did not have a reasonable fear for his life. This of course is impossible since you have to be a mind reader to figure that out. All Zimmerman or anyone else has to do is say the magic words ‘ I was afraid’ and he is home free.
Seanly
Yeah, when an odious opponent, full of nothing but hatred and failed ideas, is doing you the favor of hanging themselves, you don’t talk them out of it.
schrodinger's cat
@Redshirt: Its the fear of the race riots than the actual riots or the lack thereof that keep GOP in business.
AxelFoley
@mdblanche:
I need a cigarette after this. And I don’t even smoke.
AxelFoley
@Ben Cisco:
Who’s the Kirk of that universe?
Tone in DC
@mdblanche:
Can I just say… HELL YES.
Yatsuno
@Ben Cisco: Well and generously spoken Emissary.
Tone in DC
@Ben Cisco:
Yes. You fired all the photon torpedoes there, Captain.
Too righteous.
The Other Chuck
@Redshirt:
Considering that riots hardly ever attack the proper target, but pretty much any innocent bystander in the general area, I can hardly see how they would do anything but undermine the cause for justice. The guy who’s just had his store burned down isn’t sympathetic no matter what race he is.
Mr. Pister
This is one southern white male who never has and never will vote for a Republican. Granted, the Democrats have veered much to closely with the Wall St. fetish, but what’s going on now, particularly in my state of North Carolina is not governing…it’s a full-blown rich-white-Protestant Reformation.
The neo-feudalism that has gathered moss and shyte the last 10 years is rolling downhill nicely. What astounds me (at least in the county I live in) is the knee-jerk impulse to vote Republican no matter how one’s own self interest is damaged by these neo-nazis.
A year ago I might have said that these idiots were as useless as henshit on a pump handle. But not now; they’re truly dangerous and in my late years I fear for the future. The situation that’s being presented to the young deeply offends me. But not them; the John Galt Utopia they’re creating is nothing but beautiful sunsets as far as they can foresee.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I think “moderate conservatives” just wish the Zimmerman thing would go away. They’re embarrassed by the yokels who made Zimmerman their hero and who’re now jumping up and down celebrating his release, but they’re even more pissed off at the bleeding hearts who just have to make such a big deal out of it every time something like this happens, blowing it out of all proportion and “politicizing” it and all that. Everybody should just stop obsessing on this non-event and get back to the really important issues, like cutting their taxes and reducing spending and, maybe, legalizing drugs.
Chris
@gelfling545:
I’ve got a sliding scale there. I’ve unfriended people for as little as seeing their birthday come up and wondering “wait, who was that again?” and on the other hand, there are people who’re close enough that I probably wouldn’t unfriend them even if they were convicted for ax murder (mostly family). So, I guess it depends just how good a friend it is, if you’re going by my rules at least.
Chris
@Mr. Pister:
Yeah, no shit. At least the original Nazis can claim that they got their country back on track after a big economic depression. Ours keep making things worse, but are loved anyway as long as they make things more worse for someone else.
Elizabelle
@mdblanche:
Well said.
pat
@D58826:
I’ve often wondered what the truth is, and obviously Zimmerman is lying about everything. I think perhaps Martin found himself accosted by a big guy and rather than trying to run away, he rushed him, not realizing there was already a gun in the other guy’s hand.
Of course we’ll never know for sure…..
cckids
@Ben Cisco:
Amen
“Choose the form of the destructor”
We’re headed your way, assholes.
Mr. Pister
@Chris: You’re right about the bizarre situation whereby the worse they make things, the better they believe they’re doing.
I compare what’s going on more with the John C. Calhoun/Lost Cause BS that anyone who can read a history book was brutally proven (and great cost of life) will see what an impractical joke the confederacy was. Jefferson Davis himself once said that if the confederacy should ever fail, on its tombstone should be written “died of a theory.”
The same will be said of these chickenhawks falling out of their clown cars.
jl
It occurred to me that blog comments are good platforms for various sorts of Turing tests. Anyone or anything having trouble with theirs today?
Davis X. Machina
@cckids: Just as soon as someone finds the Slor.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
They’re wrong. They’re already getting a fraction of the white vote that’s on par with what they were getting 20-30 years ago; it’s just that whites are an ever smaller fraction of the electorate. If the Republicans want to win, they can try to win an even bigger fraction of the white vote, lose a smaller faction of the minority vote, or try to cheat by suppressing minority voters or gaming the electoral college.
dmbeaster
Just start calling them the White Men’s Club Party. All the time.
mai naem
Smerconish had Pat Buchanan on last week and Smerc tried telling Buchanan about the decreasing white vote as a percentage of the total vote and Buchanan truly didn’t seem to get the math. Think whatever you want of Buchanan but he’s never come across as strategically stupid to me. He just kept on about how he helped putting together Nixon and Reagan’s Republican majority – whites, southern whites, catholics….He just kept on about as long as the GOP maintained x percent of the white vote, they didn’t need anything else. He also made a comment about how the hispanics come here and are more dependent on the govt so they’ll never vote for the GOP anyway.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: I think I agree with you.
I see a lot of people out there who have trouble distinguishing between the statement that the verdict was defensible under Florida law, and the statement that justice was served. I was interested to hear from Ta-Nehisi Coates that the Stand Your Ground law was explicitly mentioned in the jury instructions (though it wasn’t brought up as a defense).
Matt McIrvin
…I’ve also seen many, many people arguing with great anger that “race has nothing to do with the case”. Even if race was by some miracle not a factor in the actual killing or the jury deliberation, considering the entire system of the law, the media coverage, the commentary on the testimony, the larger social patterns that this incident fits into, etc., I don’t see how anyone can possibly believe that race has nothing to do with the case. Let alone regard this as so obvious as to get irritated at people for bringing it up.
NickT
@Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey:
I move to create the Marching Minorities Militia. Lock and load and watch the old white racists holler for gun control.
contract3d
The whole phrase ‘post racial’ makes me a bit queasy – I mean what would that have to look like? Some brave new world of global eugenics ensuring a future generation that would consist only of those possessing racially balanced genomes?
Um. Ick!
I do however hold out some hope that I, or perhaps my son, might live to see a post racist society here, in this nation we might, then, all be justly proud to admire.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Black woman shoots in the direction of her abusive husband and doesn’t hit anything, pleads Stand Your Ground, gets 20 years in jail.
White guy shoots black kid, pleads Stand Your Ground, wins his case, walks free and gets his gun back.
Oh yeah. Race has NOTHING to do with the case.
Matt McIrvin
@NickT: That’s exactly what happened the last time. They were called the Panthers.
Fluke bucket
“Among the Gomers”…LOL! That is gold Tim. Pure, solid GOLD!
Mayken
@Comrade Jake: Your wife and daughter rock!
cokane
Laugh if you want but this strategy will be effective in the 2014 elections, because the Democrats are heavily reliant on constituencies that do not turn out heavily in mid-terms.
This strategy could also work for some 2016 races, and may be viable in 2018 mid terms as well.
It obviously comes with serious long-term consequences. But don’t be shocked if the GOP grows their majority in the House and takes over the Senate after 2014 elections. :[
Plantsmantx
@contract3d:
No, anti-black racists dream that it would be a world in which anti-black racists could operate with complete impunity because officially, “black” would no longer exist. When many people say “post-racial”, what they really mean is “post-black”. It’s never going to happen.
JGabriel
Tim F.:
As long as Ruy and Alan are publishing it in The Democratic Strategist, I think we’ll be okay.
“After all,” the Southern White Conservative Republicans will reason, “if Democrats are telling us not to do it, it must be because they’re scared and know we will win with the White People Only strategy.”
Seriously, how many racist assholes do they really think are out there?