The Maelstrom of Violence

[Kinser79]

(08-19-2017, 08:37 AM)gabrielle Wrote:

(08-17-2017, 01:24 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-16-2017, 09:02 PM)gabrielle Wrote:

(08-16-2017, 01:53 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-16-2017, 08:14 AM)gabrielle Wrote: Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group

This is about a year old, but I don't believe there's been any major change in the direction of BLM since then.

Even if I agree in full, which I do with some reservations, they are still a net negative on the left.  Is it any wonder that the Democrats can't win anything anywhere when their allies spend 99% of the time, and nearly that much of the political oxygen, advocating for narrow interests that are, by definition, exclusionary.  At least Bernie Sanders understands that if none of the other politicos on the left do.  
When a group calls itself Black Lives Matter, the majority of Americans hear it as Only Black Lives Matter.  That's not fair, but it is reality.  The same applies to any of the other narrow interest groups with a limited agenda that focuses on a minority rather than the whole.  You can't win with 100% support of 25% of the people.  If you don't win, you can't do anything.

Bernie Sanders supports Black Lives Matter.  You know, it is possible to care about "narrow interests," like whether black people are being unfairly and violently targeted by law enforcement, and many other things as well.

If the majority of white Americans think that the goals of racial justice and equality are exclusionary, that only goes to show how badly they are needed.

You can preach or govern: Your choice.  There is a large contingent of very disgruntled people out there, and it's easy to make them hate those advocating for the better treatment of everyone but them.  The GOP Dog Whistle Brigade is based on keeping that anger stoked, and it's served them well.  If you wish to break that stranglehold, you can't do it by doing the same failed things over and over.

It's down to this: break the narrative. I argued with Playwrite about this when he was still active here and on the old forum.  The liberals of the 1970s let the old narrative die, and this is the result.  I don't see the GOP doing the same.  Even Trump seems to be too little to turn the tide, so the task will not be easy.  And no, I don't have a magic bullet plan either.

I'm not sure the Trump voters could have been won over even if the Democrats had concentrated solely on equality and environmental issues.  I live in a red state, and I know that many of them don't really care about environmental issues, and when asked if they would have voted for Sanders if he had been the Dem candidate, my Trump-voting family members said no, because he was a "socialist."

Remember, though, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.  If there was some way to make our election system more democratic I think progressive issues and candidates would win the day more often.

I would argue that abolition of the electoral college would make our elections less democratic than more democratic.  HRC may or may not have won the popular vote, but that doesn't matter, we have never elected the president on who wins the most votes, but who wins the most states.

I explained it to my son as follows:  The presidential election is like the World Series.  It doesn't matter how many runs in a game you score (for example HRC's 3 Million more votes all come from CA and NY) in a particular game, what matters is how many games you win.

In a situation where the electoral college is absent, presidential candidates would focus on NYC, Chicago, LA, the large TX cities, Miami and maybe Atlanta.  The rest of the country would be completely ignored.

I would also say that those who voted for Trump are not monolithic.  A great many would not vote for Sanders, but Sanders voters did in fact vote for him.  Some of them because they were disgusted with the DNC (my boyfriend for example), some of them because they would NEVER vote for HRC (myself for example).