In the UK, 72.2% is considered a lowish/typical turnout (Telegraph headlines notwithstanding).
In the USA, that would be considered a record high turnout for the 20th and 21st centuries.
For comparison with another major decision: during the Quebec referendums of 1980 and 1995, the turnouts were 85.6% and 93.52% respectively. The former was over a weak panty-waist question and the latter was for a ‘let us do what we want’ question.
I forget what the turnout was at the last general, where piggy diddler Dave carried the day, but it wasn’t that high. I shall Google it and see.
Huh. 66% Higher than I thought. Still not great though.
Interesting that the drop-off occurs right around the time that the last of the Revolutionary War generation died off. Collective amnesia: not just a contemporary phenomenon.
I don’t respect their racism. But when you START with “you’re a racist.” the conversation is over. They retreat into their bunker. And that fundamentally isn’t a way forward. [quote=“Wanderfound, post:83, topic:82021”]
When the conflict is the Klan vs innocent victims, you can’t make progress by trying to find a “reasonable” middle-ground compromise. “A little bit lynched” is not an acceptable solution.
[/quote]
This isn’t the 1920s. The Main point behind lynchings was the fact that they made it obvious by their BLATENT and public nature that the majority of the people thought that they were a good thing. I would argue that the full on neo-Nazi, white power, KKK people are not the problem. They are a minority. The problem these days is the quieter “those people” bigotry that permeates much of America. They think that they get along fine with the people of color that the work with and encounter on a daily basis. But prejudice isn’t about how you treat people you know, it’s about how you treat people that you don’t know. And these people don’t SEE themselves as racist. They find being called racist and linked to lynchings and the KKK just as offensive as the average Muslim finds being linked to suicide bombers. Getting people to UNDERSTAND when they are being racist and change their behavior does NOT begin with calling them racist. But perhaps it can END with them saying “Okay, I guess I was kind of being an asshole, I shouldn’t do that.”
I know a lot of sane Republicans who have been lamenting the Tea Party takeover for a decade now. Trump is not just the final straw, but adding insult to injury, and they’re pissed at the GOP for allowing it.
Meanwhile, Sanders is starting a similar movement among Democrats who have been lamenting the party moving too far right. The leftists have been being dismissed for years in favor of a more centrist approach, but if Sanders has done anything, it’s to show just how many real liberals there still are.
Never going to happen. The party is too entrenched for that “slow change by working within the system” thing to work, and quite frankly, we don’t have time. Look at what’s actually happening to our environment- Especially the ocean- If we spend the next decade reforming the party enough to get an agenda on the table to fight over for the next two, we will all be fucking extinct before we get around to fixing anything.
And of course like many things, this is something were the imperative of a short term solution tends to at odds with any long term answers. Winning THIS election by any method, even of those methods tend to drive the electorate even further into entrenched positions…
See, that’s the thing- I think there’s another possibility.
We have two candidates with record low favorability ratings, and a social media environment that allowed someone like Sanders to fill 50,000 seat venues without party support. I think that right now is the rare window of opportunity for a third party candidate to break the two party monopoly.
I don’t think they can win, but they don’t have to. All they need to do is get a small handful of electoral votes- Literally 2 or 3 in an otherwise close race. Just enough to prevent either of the other candidates from reaching 270. I honestly believe that Sanders could do this with Vermont, and it would be enough.
Because what happens then, is that congress appoints a president. That sure as hell isn’t going to be Trump, so you can relax a little. Hillary will still win, without actually winning.
And that right there will be the breaking point for most Americans- To have a president who was literally placed into office without winning the election, whom the majority of people actually voted against. It would be pulling back the curtain to show just who’s really in charge.
I don’t think it would so dramatic as to to trigger an actual armed insurrection, but I honestly believe that it would bolster a grassroots movement that could see independent and third party candidates capture a significant number of congressional and state level positions during the next midterm.
And THAT’S when we see real change- Because that right there would be enough to make people realize that a third party candidate could actually win the White House, but more importantly, would put independents into positions where they could actually do something.
This is the thing that needs to happen, and I think that is the one thing that could really and truly get the ball rolling.
This.
This is the problem with Clinton. Another win for centre-right corporate Democrats guarantees another decade of, at best, nothing but symbolic action on climate change.
We’re out of time. If we don’t shut down the global carbon industry immediately, we’re all irretrievably fucked.
[quote=“Mal_Tosevite, post:45, topic:82021”]
Here’s a reality check: even with post-Civil Rights Act gerrymandering to give black voters more of a voice, and even though the white population is on the decline, white people account for 63% of the U.S. population. Black people only account for 12% of the population. That statement leaves out a whopping 25% of the US population that is a non-white, non-black minority.
[/quote]You’re assuming, incorrectly, that everyone registers and votes at the same rate. But Black people have incredibly high registration and turnout rates, and they’ve been trending higher for almost 20 years now. Last election, Black turnout reached almost 70%, higher than white turnout of 65% (fairly average for them). Asian and Hispanic turnout by comparison was down in the mid-40s. Which was actually an improvement over their usual turnout. And Native American turnout is generally about the same as Hispanic and Asian, ie. the 40s at best.
Moreover, Black people vote almost exclusively for the Democratic party. And have done so in every election since the civil rights movement/acts. Until recently, Hispanic and Asian people have split their votes relatively evenly between parties.
Yeah, we’re 12% of the population, but between all the things I mentioned above, we end up being something like 1/3 of the party’s votes in a presidential year. (And nearly 1/3 of delegates/superdelegates, something to maybe keep in mind this week as the Bernie’s last holdouts rail against the “establishment” and the party machine.)
After the 64 Civil Rights Act, when most of the white people abandoned the Democratic party due to their racism, people once joked that there wasn’t much more to the party than Black people and college professors. So yeah, Shirky’s right about us “saving liberalism”. For the last half century we’ve been impossibly loyal and turned out at rates that are basically unheard of. We’ve dragged this party forward , and done it even as millions of us were disenfranchised.
And not only that, but as far as the lunatic right is concerned, we just elected the only human being who could possibly be worse than Obama. They’ll be out in force the next time around.
Meanwhile, the socioeconomic conditions that led to Trump will get worse- Increasing poverty, decreasing education, more polarization.
Yeah, Trump II will be a lot worse, and a lot harder to deal with- Just like the environment, just like the wealth gap, just like the debt bubble, just like every other problem we keep ignoring.
Hillary isn’t a ticking time bomb- She’s not even all that bad- But she’s the loud TV show you can’t hear the ticking time bomb over.
[quote=“MikeTheBard, post:93, topic:82021”]
Meanwhile, the socioeconomic conditions that led to Trump will get worse- Increasing poverty, decreasing education, more polarization.
[/quote]Trump’s rise has nothing to do with the economy. It’s part of the continuing backlash against the growing minority population of America, as symbolized by Obama’s election. Trump’s supporters are generally quite affluent, much more affluent than the Dems, and were the least affected by the recession.
Everyone is the star of their own story, and everyone thinks of themselves as the good guy.
Republicans. Trump supporters. Jihadist suicide bombers. They are all trying to do what they believe is the right thing.
It is a very sobering realization to come to- Especially when things like politics and hell, living, require a certain amount of detaching from this in order to function.
NO. And this is a very dangerous line of thought. It’s what has liberals underestimating just how much support Trump actually has. It has everything to do with the economy.
Talk to them. Not just until they say something racist, keep going until you dig down to the root problem. When they say they want to make America great again, when they say they want to take it back, they mean to when they could support their family.
And yes, there’s a huge element of racism- but to pretend that that’s the only thing at the heart of this is disastrously ignorant and strategically reckless.
You’re implying that Blacks are unlikely to be part of the establishment and thus that it is inaccurate to suggest that the DNC has rammed a bad candidate through?
[quote=“MikeTheBard, post:96, topic:82021”]
It has everything to do with the economy.
[/quote]Uh, nope. As I said, Trump’s supporters aren’t poor. Aren’t becoming poor. Weren’t particularly affected by the recession. Pretending his support is all “hillbillies from WV” is bullshit. Also, WV hillbillies have been poor forever.
You know who actually is poor? Who were really hard hit by the recession? Whose unemployment rates are still in the double digits? Whose wealth still hasn’t recovered? Black and Hispanic people. And they’re voting overwhelmingly against Trump.
And let me just remind you that the last time we saw a candidate like Trump (he’s definately not the first), the American economy was booming. But you know what had just happened? A huge shift in political and cultural power as segregation ended. There’s a similar huge shift going on now, and white people are freaked out by it. Again.
Citation please.
[quote=“blaeceorcanstan, post:97, topic:82021”]
You’re implying that Blacks are unlikely to be part of the establishment and thus that it is inaccurate to suggest that the DNC has rammed a bad candidate through?
[/quote]I’m saying that Black people are the most oppressed racial or ethnic group in this country. That the only power we have in this racist hellhole comes from voting in absurd numbers, consistently, and as a block. And that it’s super shitty for a bunch of affluent white college dudes to rage against us as “the establishment” just because Black people have our shit together and mostly voted against their candidate.
Found this on The Guardian. The author, Drew Philp, acknowledges that his sample isn’t necessarily a microcosm of Trump’s voter base but it’s definitely a critical segment of it:
The most prominent issue for voters of all persuasions was, expectantly, jobs. I heard, more than anything else, “bring blue-collar jobs back to America”. What was unexpected, however, was how many Obama voters are now voting for Trump.
[…]
There were no jokes, from either side, when I spoke with people about his candidacy. Midwesterners, at least, are hurting, and hurting bad.
I understand at least some of the reasons that Blacks voted for Clinton over Sanders, and, in retrospect, these are not unsensible nor unforeseeable reasons. (One of those being that it seems safer to support the establishment Democratic candidate if your main concern is simply not having a Republican president.) But I don’t think that counts as having their shit together - she won’t be a good President for anyone who’s not part of the Whiggish banker class.
Just like Trump won’t be a good President for poor whites - but I get the reasons they vote for him. But that doesn’t mean that they have their shit together.
I’m not equating poor Whites and Blacks in any other way though. I agree that Blacks are by far the most oppressed and illdoneby group in the US.
Not in the least… one wonders if these platforms were purposefully created to cause tension between people with differing political views.
