***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[rexanglorum]

Yes. The one good thing Trump did was make the whole country pay attention to politics. Some more than others. I feel there's still a lot that act a lot like casual sports fans and peep 'highlights' or 'the score' and listen to soundbites but nothing more.

This favors liberals. Conservatives are basically maxed out. Everyone who has that white, male, christian fear is already engaged with politics with their daily AM radio listening and voting in every election no matter how small or seemingly minor it may be.

Big parts of the Democratic coalition have not yet begun to fight. If Democratic constituencies show the same level of urgency and concern as Republican constituencies do, the Republican Party is toast even with the Gerrymandering, the EC and the unfair allocation of Senate seats.

 

[ksteezy]

NH don't respect anyone's opinion on this board Meth...if there is one thing that defines him is a high level Troll...last I checked that was against the rules.....he uses your name as a safe word...you are to an extent enabling him.

 

[everysingletime]

Yes. The one good thing Trump did was make the whole country pay attention to politics. Some more than others. I feel there's still a lot that act a lot like casual sports fans and peep 'highlights' or 'the score' and listen to soundbites but nothing more.

This favors liberals. Conservatives are basically maxed out. Everyone who has that white, male, christian fear is already engaged with politics with their daily AM radio listening and voting in every election no matter how small or seemingly minor it may be.

Big parts of the Democratic coalition have not yet begun to fight. If Democratic constituencies show the same level of urgency and concern as Republican constituencies do, the Republican Party is toast even with the Gerrymandering, the EC and the unfair allocation of Senate seats.

Rex, I think I remember you saying a couple of days ago that cali can gerrymander their districts to favor Democrats and that it could be enough to take back the majority

Obviously, I don't want there to be gerrymandering period. But if the Republicans continue to do it..

 

[rexanglorum]

If you have time, I have two things to ask, Methodical Management .

One, you said that racism is not a valid political point of view. How do you deal with the more overt dog whistles? It seems like the genius of the modern conservative movement is to disguise racist statements as economic, criminologist and sociological commentary e.g. "lazy inner city people are unemployed by choice."

Two, on a more practical level. Are you able to ban alternate screen names and/or IP ban people? I am not particularly tech savvy so this is not a rhetorical question. Are most troll/alternate accounts hidden by proxies nowadays?

It seems like we have a few overtly racist trolls who get banned and the next day, we see a "new" member who not only has the same views but also the same rhetorical style. It seems like we are being bedeviled by only about a half dozen people who are trolling and being overtly racist.

 

[aepps20]

This favors liberals. Conservatives are basically maxed out. Everyone who has that white, male, christian fear is already engaged with politics with their daily AM radio listening and voting in every election no matter how small or seemingly minor it may be.

Big parts of the Democratic coalition have not yet begun to fight. If Democratic constituencies show the same level of urgency and concern as Republican constituencies do, the Republican Party is toast even with the Gerrymandering, the EC and the unfair allocation of Senate seats.

One can only hope but Dems have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory so many times under nonsense like enthusiasm and not liking the candidate. At least Republicans will not do the protest thing or stay at home like Dems do. But BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME.

 

[rexanglorum]

Rex, I think I remember you saying a couple of days ago that cali can gerrymander their districts to favor Democrats and that it could be enough to take back the majority

Obviously, I don't want there to be gerrymandering period. But if the Republicans continue to do it..

So on that score, a California hyper Partisan Gerrymander would give Democrats an extra 14 seats and take away 14 from Republicans resulting a 28 seat swing. Now that alone would not flip the House but it would mean that in the other 49 States, Democrats would have to pick off another 14 seats.

California, despite some of our ugly racial history, has emerged as the State that is most respectful of minorities, racial, gender and even ideological. We draw our Congressional Districts on sensible geographical lines and in so doing we create very liberal Districts like the 13th (Berekely-Oakland) but we also acknowledge that even in our very liberal States, there are noteworthy enclaves of conservatives in the Klamath Mountains, the San Joaquin Valley, the exoburbs of Los Angeles and San Diego, Orange County and the High Desert.

What the political elite of California is watching closely is how the Federal Courts are reacting lawsuits against Gerrymandering in other States (most infamous of being North Carolina). If the Supreme Court finds the actions of States like North Carolina to be unconstitutional, California will stay with its fair redistricting in the early 2020's.

If the Supreme Court ultimately deems Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania et al's serpentine districts to be lawful then California would likely use it own nuclear option. The State Law could be changed and the State Legislature and Governor can simply pull and stretch Liberal districts into conservative districts and hand the Democrats a 28 seat swing in their favor.

I'm with you, I don't want this to happen. I like being fair and I like good constituent services but if Republican law makers in other States, the federal government and the Federal courts all conspire to permanently legitimize partisan Gerrymandering, California and a few other blue States have some serious counter measures at the ready.

 

[everysingletime]

When can we expect the SC to reach a decision regarding the gerrymandering? How do you predict them to rule on the issue?

Also, speaking of gerrymandering, I never fully understood the concept until this week. I know you understand, as well as a lot of the regulars, but for anyone else who frequents this thread that also has a hard time understanding gerrymandering:

Best explanation for gerrymandering for me. After seeing the picture, I had the

 

[jthagreat]

"The party" has been shooting himself in both feet so many times he's probably got prostheses by now.


..........

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/11/data-shows-a-downward-demographic-spiral-for-republicans/

This one has interesting numbers, and it should probably be read in conjunction with the article about the negative demographic effect that the wall will have on the religious population in this country.

Bruh

Republicans are about to get WASHED in midterms.

They did too much with Trump.

Now the entire country is paying attention to politics?

No amount of voter restriction is going to overcome the washing these cats are going to endure.

I'm hoping a candidate steps up and calls out everybody. I'd vote for that person in a heartbeat

We underestimated stupidity before.

 

[RustyShackleford]

There are so many moving parts to consider with 2018. Here are a couple scenarios

-The Dem base fails to activate itself like they should (they will to some degree), either because Trump settles down or apathy sets back in. In this case expect the Dems to pick up a few House seats and the GOP to maintain a majority in the Senate, but not a super majority.

-Trump is wildly unpopular come 2018, Dems show up somewhat but Trump lack of popularity makes the Dems get close to winning the House (but GOP remains in control), The GOP stays around the same level in the Senate. I would call this the most likely scenario

-The entire Dem base activates itself, but Trump is not that unpopular (low 40s approval). Dems take the House by the narrowest of margins, the GOP has a razor thin grip on the Senate. Pence might have to vote all the time.

-The Dem base activates itself (I'm talking black, Latino, young), swing voters turn on the GOP and Trump is unpopular so Republicans stay home. This would be a blood bath up and down the ticket.

The first and third scenarios and the next likely ones. I still think the Trump has to piss off a lot more people for the wave election to happen, and the Dems have to be more organized.

--------------------

If their is a liberal wave in 2018, and the SCOTUS strikes down gerrymandering, then 2020 gives the Dems a chance to really 'eat" in 2020.

But 2018 is sooooo important. If the Dems can't take back a ton state legislators and governor mansions, with or without Trump being unpopular, the GOP will have more political power come 2021.

Demographic shifts were gonna really hurt the GOP one day, but 16-20 years from now is too long to wait, and they have rig the system even more in their favor in that time.

It needs to be all hands on deck in 2018, or **** is gonna get bad.

 

[everysingletime]

It kinda sounds like Trump has to keep tweeting to fan the flames. Be his own worst enemy.

 

[rexanglorum]

E everysingletime

I've seen that graphic before and it is far and away the most concise and elegant way to explain gerrymandering. So repped for posting it.

As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, it will either be a an eight justice Court or a nine Justice Court with the conservative Gorsuch on it. I am pessimistic, I fear that the Supreme Court is becoming an arm of the Republican Party. However, there have been cases where Justice Kennedy pulls out a liberal 5-4 decisions and every once in a while, the conservative Chief Justice Roberts demonstrates a bit of independence and creates 6-3 decisions. I could imagine the SC siding with every appellate Court that has ruled on the matter and declare the Gerrymandering unconstitutional.

 

[cards93]

Spicey again.

 

[RustyShackleford]

They gonna fire Spicer because of this ****.

 

[brendasdeadbaby]

It doesn't look good for dems in 2018. We will lose a handful of senate seats unfortunately

 

[cards93]

They gonna fire Spicer because of this ****.

i thought the same thing when i saw the bracelet and heels

 

[RustyShackleford]

It doesn't look good for dems in 2018. We will lose a handful of senate seats unfortunately

It depends on turnout. I can see them losing around 3-4 seats, if Dems catch the wave they could flip Nevada and Zona and minimize their loses.

The state and local level is where they need to do most their damage.

 

[brendasdeadbaby]

It depends on turnout. I can see them losing around 3-4 seats, if Dems catch the wave they could flip Nevada and Zona and minimize their loses.

The state and local level is where they need to do most their damage.

I definitely see Nevada flipping but Arizona will be tight. Agreed we need more governors and reps in 2018 and focus on senators/white house in 2020

 

[Methodical Management]

If you have time, I have two things to ask, @Methodical Management.

One, you said that racism is not a valid political point of view. How do you deal with the more overt dog whistles? It seems like the genius of the modern conservative movement is to disguise racist statements as economic, criminologist and sociological commentary e.g. "lazy inner city people are unemployed by choice."

Two, on a more practical level. Are you able to ban alternate screen names and/or IP ban people? I am not particularly tech savvy so this is not a rhetorical question. Are most troll/alternate accounts hidden by proxies nowadays?

It seems like we have a few overtly racist trolls who get banned and the next day, we see a "new" member who not only has the same views but also the same rhetorical style. It seems like we are being bedeviled by only about a half dozen people who are trolling and being overtly racist.

Dog whistle racism is the rhetorical equivalent of a fake beard.  It's not a particularly effective disguise.  

The "genius" of the modern conservative movement's rhetoric on race, to the extent that the "creative" reformulation ignorance can be considered a feat of ingenuity, is less the use of "dog whistles" than the deployment of collective amnesia to portray contemporary racism as somehow "race neutral."  (e.g. Roberts' maliciously naive opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.", or, more simply, "All Lives Matter.")

Dog whistles aren't particularly new or innovative.  Goldwater's appeal to "law and order" is Trump's appeal to "law and order" is Andrew Jackson's appeal to "law and order."  

The only person typically fooled by dog whistle racism is the person blowing the whistle.  The message is as easily decoded by all those it demeans as it is by fellow racists.  The only real "advantage" it confers on the self-deluded racist is in the implausible deniability it offers at its most literal level.  ("I didn't say anything about race and, besides, I said some of them might be good people!")

In the same way that we can easily decipher these messages, it's also generally possible to determine whether they come from a place of hatred or ignorance.  

There are those, for example, who believe so strongly in the myth of the egalitarian meritocracy as to believe that all those mired in poverty are members of the "deserving poor."  Given the history and demography of poverty in American society, that belief has racist connotations - though the person who holds such a belief may idolize Black athletes, own every Jay Z album, and have "Black friends."  They would adore someone like Ben Carson because he validates their worldview.  

Often times, they fancy themselves colorblind and reject the stigma (and responsibility) associated with race and racism.  

You can, if you are a paragon of patience, strip away the pretense from such beliefs and force those so "unenlightened" to make a pivotal choice:

They can either believe in racism as the driving force behind racial inequality, or they can cling to overtly racist beliefs.  Ultimately, anyone who feels that racial inequality is justified believes that people of color are culturally and/or biologically inferior.  If that's what they truly believe, however, they can no longer claim to be "colorblind" or "race neutral." 

We can have those sorts of conversations when "dog whistle" statements are prompted by ignorance.  When they're prompted by hate, nothing constructive will likely come of it and I don't feel it's incumbent upon us to endure hatred for the sake of educating the hateful.

Where enforcement is concerned, any overt hate speech is dealt with swiftly and severely.  There's no defense for it.  If an ostensibly race-neutral, "diet racist" comment is made out of ignorance, we'll look at the context and see if there's some opportunity for it to become constructive.

And I'm glad you're the one to raise the issue, because you've now been on both sides of this.  Ten years ago, you were posting "dog whistle" comments not unlike the example you gave.  You were warned and reprimanded, and I think you managed to test every ounce of patience I possessed at the time, but I'd like to think that the discussions you had with our fellow community members at the time ultimately helped you acknowledge various biases and your unearned privilege.

It's important to us that we try to make constructive use of our diversity, but, again, that does not mean we coddle racists or endure their hatred.   

From a reporting standpoint, it's both acceptable and encouraged to report even the "dog whistle" stuff, so we can keep track of it.  If there's someone who's trying to test the boundaries or poke and prod at people by going as far as they think they can get away with, reports can help us identify and remove that person.  (And we've seen examples of that recently.)

With respect to recurring trolls, and in continuing the theme of fake beards, anyone who's been banned from our forums is NOT entitled to a fresh set of chances under a new account.  Clone accounts are not permitted for any reason.  If Titanium Tea shows up tomorrow as Cobalt Coffee, he'll be banned - ideally before he's made a single inflammatory post.  

At the risk of sounding like a Donald Trump debate answer on national security, it's difficult to describe our security measures in too much detail without essentially teaching people how to circumvent them.  

What I can say is that we do indeed have the ability to ban by IP, but it's something that must be used selectively to avoid causing any collateral damage.  

With modern systems, however, we have the ability to collect more data points than just a user's IP address.  If someone has made a sufficient nuisance of themselves, they'll develop a profile.  Ours is a fairly large community, but the odds of two people from the same location, sharing other similar traits, posting similar things, seem pretty remote.  Sometimes, they'll get caught slipping and they'll make such posts from work or school.  We've had people post racist comments from government computers.  Using this information, we can often identify repeat offenders.

As you've noticed, you don't even need access to user data in order to recognize certain patterns.  

That said, I would caution everyone to avoid chasing away everyone with similar views out of paranoia.  Just because blco02 loved to use the phrase "Saul Alinsky playbook" doesn't mean a new user who's posted the same phrase must be the second coming of blco02.  They could simply be parroting the same sources.  As Malcolm X noted, it's not by coincidence that members of an orchestra all play the same tune.

We try to be as vigilant as we can in identifying clone accounts.  If you have a suspicion, you're free bring it to the staff's attention and we'll ban any clone accounts.  However, I think the attitudes you're observing are more widespread than you might want to admit and similarities in language aren't necessarily evidence of anything more than similarities in beliefs, experiences, or influences.  

We can defend against trolls without engaging in a witch hunt.  Often, the "playbook" for handling a troll is the same whether they're recurring or not.  Lavishing them with attention rewards the behavior.  

Let's say a racist forum troll does come back.  Everyone obsessing over identifying their former account name is allowing them to become the center of attention again.  

There is, undeniably, a bully culture out there.  If it is someone's goal to upset or offend, attempting to "fight fire with fire" plays right into their hands.  A troll is often someone who feels disaffected.  The ability to antagonize you or provoke a strong response allows them to feel that they have power.  

They want to feel like they're lobbing dynamite into a crowded room.  If, instead, their best effort to generate outrage has all of the force and power of mouse flatulence, they're unlikely to feel sufficiently empowered by the experience.  

 

[bluebuffbraves]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/...-field-workers.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers

[emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji] Repped

 

[everysingletime]

I think a lot of ppl who are racist don't even realize that they're racist. And when they're called out on their dog whistle comments, they're legitly offended because their racism is news to them. They'll say, 'Hey I'm not racist!' and really mean it. Hard to tell who's self aware or not unless you get to know the person more. The self aware racist is the scariest of them all. The ones in the dark of their own racism still have a chance to change their ways.

 

[RustyShackleford]

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[rexanglorum]

Methodical Management

Thank you for your very thoughtful and through reply.

Just to clarify a few things:


- I consider Goldwater and 1964 to be the starting point of the "modern conservative movement." I, personally, see a a sudden decline of explicit racial epithets from the 1960's up to present day. Even Donald Trump doesn't dare say the "n word" in public. I know that Andrew Jackson called himself a man of the law but, for the most part, politicians in 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century had no compunctions about using racial slurs and they explicitly positioned themselves as defenders of the white race.

In short, I take Lee Atwater at his unguarded word on language and conservative politics. However, you have done a lot more scholarship on race and politics so feel free to correct me.


- Obviously, I use "genius" in a value neutral way. It reminds me of the chant "Two, Four, Six, Eight, Homer's crime was very great."

I find dog whistles to be terrifying. Obviously the weaker dog whistles are ineffective because they are easier to recognize. It seems like the powerful dog whistles are, by definition, the ones that we cannot easily recognize, the ones that worm their way into our subconscious mind.

The writs against the "inner city" are obvious but when Barack Obama is lecturing young black men, who are graduating from prep school, about the importance of personal responsibility, I feel like indirect racist language and racist assumptions have wrought a great deal of damage. When black comedians have black audiences laughing at jokes, whose whole premise is that gaudy hub caps account for racial wealth gaps, it just seems like, damn, the white supremacists spammed us all with coded language and a few of them managed to infect us down to our collective marrow.

I've been stung by it before and it is like surviving a highly venomous bite, the fervid hallucinations at the time all seem so real. The great meritocracy seemed so real once.

I, personally and distinctly, remember something to the effective of "if we are meritocracy way are black people much poorer than white people." I never had an answer to that, which I found satisfactory. Formal education may have done most of the bulldozing but you put some of those first cracks in that wall that stood between me and the rest of the World.

Like someone who survived an actual venomous bite, I am pretty paranoid now about that sort of thing happening to others. At the same time, I totally appreciate your perspective on the matter and I know that obviously it would be hypocritical of me to call for actual bans for people who traffic in dog whistles.

You're right, patience and persistence win. Or maybe it ultimately will not win out and It's all a Sisyphean task but I suppose I am glad that I am at least now on the side pushing that rock up the hill.

 

[kdawg]

Uhmazing. Even better with the NT only joke that it's a Dominican paper!

 

[AZwildcats]

 

This is why I try to avoid lumping all Trump supporters as racist.

I am tired of this ****. Trump has racist policies and has said racist ****, if you voted for him and claim to not  be racist you are either 1. An idiot or 2. A closeted racist or 3. An open racist who just doesn't like the label or 4. An open white supremacist. 

If you voted for him you are clearly ok to some degree with all the bigotry he spews. We need to stop minimizing that. I'm sick of these casual Trump supporters and casual racists and altright imps.

I'm gonna take option 3 for $1,000 Alex.