Hey, you’re welcome to join the Dem establishment in banging your head against a wall trying to convert old bigots. I’m putting my efforts elsewhere.
ETA: I’m done throwing good money after bad.
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As the civil rights movement showed us, we don’t have to get everyone on board to make positive change for oppressed people. Many white people fought that shit tooth and nail, yet we passed two important pieces of legislation despite Mass Resistance.
Democracy does not mean you get to oppress people who you deem “unAmerican” because of their skin color. Racism and other forms of bigotry are not a reasonable part of our public discourse. They are attempts to undo the work of the past century or so of gains made by people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, etc. Their “opinion” that white straight cisgendered men are superior to the rest of us is NOT a political position, it’s bigotry. Let’s call that shit out for what it is… 
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I once got into an online argument with Owen Benjamin (when he was mildly well known as an “edgy” comedian but not yet the full-on crazypants alt-right loon who was banned from most social media platforms for being too racist) back when we had a mutual friend.
The topic we were arguing about was the phrase “White Privilege.” He kept saying the phrase was meaningless and offensive because it implied all white people were better off than all nonwhite people, I kept trying to explain that wasn’t what the phrase actually means. His takeaway was “well then maybe people should use a different phrase for what you mean so people won’t misunderstand you.”
I thought this was bunk, because it was clear that it was his willful misunderstanding (or willful misrepresentation) that was at the center of the issue rather than the phrase itself. Considering the path he went down over the next few years I’d say my hunch was right.
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Indeed. People purposefully misunderstand these issues because they have no interest in improving the situation for others. In their mind, “they’ve got theirs” so why should they care about another “group” of people?
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That’s my point, they aren’t doing this at all. The party has long been a “big tent” that tries to satisfy everyone without addressing the big slice (20%? 30%?) of foaming at the mouth political losers.
The GOP decided to fold them into their party because right now Republicans are willing to win at any cost. The result is the destruction of democracy if they continue to hold a significant enough fraction of voters in a two party system. Ideal would be if people with extreme political views and conspiracy theorists were not organized enough to vote consistently. The Internet makes that impossible now.
The world is constantly changing. And the huge social changes that have occurred around new technology is not survivable for either of our parties. Wave bye-bye to your party. If it is around a decade from now it will be in name only, you will scarcely recognize it.
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How is appealing to racist bigots to come back to the Democratic party going to help this situation? And what “extremists” are part of the Democratic party right now that are tearing it apart?
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It’s a standard bad-faith argument used by white men in willful denial about racism still being a problem. “White privilege? Ha. Tell that to the homeless white guy I see on the street every day.” Such BS.
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Exactly. It wouldn’t really matter what words you used.
I read a nice piece about the concept of “arguing in good faith” recently and wish I could find it. I’m pretty sure it was in a novel I was reading, but the main takeaway was that it is relatively pointless to engage in arguments that are not approached in good faith. As in, if I am not open to hearing your opinions and considering your positions, even to taking the effort to understand them, then I shouldn’t bother engaging in the first place because that would be engaging in bad faith.
It goes both ways, and I think it’ll help me avoid engaging in pointless debate with people who are coming steadfastly from a position that I can summarily say I will never support. (ETA: See - Nazis, etc.)
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The Dems have politicians from the party of white supremacy on the dais at their convention this year. One of their own most prominent politicians appealed to “hard-working Americans, white Americans” in a primary fight against a Black opponent. Trying to bring more set-in-their-ways bigots and fantasists into the party is only going to make the Dems look more like the GOP of 1984 instead of the forward-looking progressive party it should be.
That the GOP has embraced the Know-Nothing 27% is nothing new. The party made that choice in 1968 and have stuck with them as they got loonier and loonier. The Dems shouldn’t be going after those voters at all.
And to be clear, while I acknowledge that we’re stuck with the current oligarch-friendly duopoly and have to deal with it as-is by choosing the lesser of two evils, I’ll also support any progressive effort that breaks its stranglehold on American liberal democracy.
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Standard fair in American politics. 200 years of pretending we don’t have a problem didn’t make it go away. surprise surprise.
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When was the last time the Dems gave featured spots to prominent Republicans at a convention? No, it’s not standard fare. The last time members of a white supremacist party had an honoured place at a Dem convention was when the Dixiecrats still had power in the party. But here we are.
And why? All because a lot of privileged white Boomers (aided by honorary ones they’ve invested in) want to ensure that they’ll be deferred to in the party above all others until they die.
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Not all of them, but the Democrats have a hard choice to make. They have to admit that it isn’t 1992 and the end of history anymore and that socialism has to have more than a token place in their party, or they can carry on losing to an ever more fascistic Republican party.
Some of those young people feeling voiceless and powerless have turned to the left, to democratic and libertarian socialism. If they keep being pushed out of the party and expected to be a silent vote then the Democrats risk losing them too.
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There was this T-Shirt once…
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Are you telling me you can’t afford twelve cents a day to Save the Bigots?
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That’s misrepresenting the original argument.
We all know the story of so-called Dixecrats. We know of the very old history of Lincoln v. General George B. McClellan. Please don’t pretend that ties to white supremacy are one-sided in American politics.
Maybe currently very heavily on one side, but historically, even in the era when Robert Byrd was still alive, in my lifetime (and I assume yours), the answer is a complicated “Yes, Democrats have history of racism, racist pasts, and ties to white supremacy”.
Don’t get defense though. Democrats are generally better than the GOP on this issue. Because at the very least they sometimes confront it. Pretending that there is no screwy racism in our politics is one of the worst things in politics today.
There could also be the issue that winning the electoral college is a near-impossibility. In an election that Hillary Clinton won by millions of votes, she lost the electoral college 304 to 227. Without moderate Republican voters, there’s absolutely no chance of Biden winning.
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How so? My point is just that the Dem establishment is, after more than half a century, once again giving places of honour on the convention rostrum to representatives of the duopoly party of white supremacy. I find it extraordinary (all the more so since that party is no longer the Dems themselves), but you’re claiming it’s “standard fare”.
I’m not, which is why I noted that the last time white supremacists were honoured speakers at a Dem convention, the Dems themselves were the duopoly party of white supremacy.
My point is not that there aren’t racist Dems, but that the party officially rejected the idea that they should appeal to racists. When Lyndon Johnson said “we have lost the South for a generation” after signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he was talking about Southern bigots (he was wrong only in that the loss has continued for multiple generations). A few years later, the GOP embraced the Southern Strategy and have been the duopoly party that welcomes white supremacists (including former Dixiecrat racists like Strom Thurmond).
That’s not defensiveness, that’s history. So pretending that the Dems giving representatives of the duopoly party of racism speaking time (or even giving members of the opposing party in general speaking time) at their convention is “standard fare in American politics” is incorrect.
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And yet the Dems managed to win it twice with a Black man running and the country sinking even further into racist extremism over both of Obama’s campaigns. Clinton lost the Electoral College due her campaign’s incompetence and complacency. If Biden wins the popular vote but loses the election, it’ll be due to the same issue (plus a lot of Republican cheating, of course).
In the end, what that map tells us is not that the Dems need to appeal to “moderate” conservatives to win but that they need to reform or abolish the broken-by-design electoral college.
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And misogyny. 
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