Not knowing much about TX, is this a matter of all cites vs. rural?
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It’s a bit hard to judge, typically politics isn’t discussed much at my work place but there’s a good mix of blue and white collar jobs where i’m at. A lot of people that have been with the company in excess of 10-20 years. I’d say a good majority of the people here are likely to be die-hard Republican, but based off what i can sense not many are pro-Trump. I am curious if they’d be willing to vote the other way if it meant screwing Trump over, that much i don’t know.
Austin is quite liberal though and my feeling is most people here are willing to vote Democrat or any other non-Republican candidate.
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I’m a New Yorker, trust me, trump was NEVER articulate. I’st just that at his age with his horrible diet, his circulation is so clogged with fat that no oxygen is reaching his pathetic brain.
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All of his energy and blood is going to his asshole because he can’t stop shitting on the country.
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Who is saying that they are superheroes? But there appears to have been a larger than normal turnout for an off year special election in the African American community. Their vote stopped not only someone whose politics were anathema to their interests, but a deranged pedophile who would damage the entire United States. For that I give gratitude and much respect.
I hope black Alabama voters are feeling a little eager to flex their muscles again after seeing what their concerted power can do.
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For that I give all African-American women and men props from here to eternity. Doug Jones is a good, decent, white man, but he’s still yet another white man who is problematic in his own right by virtue of his own privilege – yet POC came out in droves to elect him. We should all take a moment to think about that.
I certainly have. I’m going to be as honest as I can be right now, and I may not articulate it well. Fuck it and castigate me for for it. Here goes. My initial reaction to the “black women saved the election” narrative irritated me. I was like, “Hey! Me and a bunch of other white women I know worked hard as hell!” Then. Then, I stepped back from my privileged bubble. Why did I have the time and allowance to work on the campaign? Because I have a job that has paid time-off in a non-profit organization with a liberal boss who encourages me to do so. Because I have a computer and Internet at home which allows me to engage on social media. Because by virtue of my privilege, I have the TIME to do so, and that is the most privileged asset of all.
I’m consistently infuriated with the #notallmen trope. When I have the opportunity, I teach classes about it. I say to young men in classes: “When we talk about privilege, we are not talking about you personally.” Yet, until this election, I’m not sure I had wholly internalized that message myself. I, too, am such a product of privilege. Any notion of #notallwhitewomen is bogus.
Yes, when we suss out the numbers, it was mostly white evangelical women who voted for Moore as opposed to secular white women voters. Whatever. I think this is a red herring that at once comforts and distracts us white women from our own privilege. We can say, “Oh, it was THEM. THOSE PEOPLE” without acknowledging the way in which we white women, too, benefit.
This ain’t the first time this train has arrived at the station – there’s much scholarship about the feminist/women’s movement’s paleness.
Anyway, I’m just a silly, privileged white girl, standing in front a strong, black woman, asking her to forgive me. I swear to god I want to know better.
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@Jilly I distinctly remember congratulating you and thanking you on this board Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I didn’t think it possible. I reiterate that. And I know there were a lot of hard-working people that have a claim on the credit.
But when you look at the hard numbers (and I’d like to see some final turnout numbers to back up some assertions I made), it’s hard to deny but for the intervention of African Americans a pedophile, a crazy fucking pedophile, would have gone to the U.S.Senate.
Having said that,thank you for grounding us again to remember, Doug Jones is problematic in his own right. And thank you for the work you did bringing forth this victory.
The thing is for this southerner at least, I’m still stunned that it happened. Sadly, I wouldn’t have been stunned in the 70s, and even the 80s. But that is how far our politics have regressed.
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@Heraclito With complete sincerity, this campaign has changed my entire world view, so whatever happens next, I’m grateful.
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@Jilly I’m hoping this is the turn we’ve been waiting for that you had a hand in leading.
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The reactionary movement that I’m referring to is the one that currently brought Trump to power - a fear not just of economic change (which has been around for a while), but a profound fear of the social change that has engulfed much of American society over the last 50 years.
It’s the sort of movement that can (and has) turned violent and overthrown governments. It’s also the sort of movement that’s ripe to be taken over by an opportunist, and, of course, has been (although fortunately, not one with enough brains or organization to start imprisoning the opposition).
Obviously conservative movements will have some overlap with reactionary movements. However, the Republican party’s choice to try and exploit the rising reactionary impulses set it up to be taken over by them. For those who wanted power, this has been a boon (at least for now). For those who cared about traditional Republican policy, this has been a disaster.
As for single-payer healthcare and subsidized student loans, when the reactionary movement finally collapses, the Republicans are likely to be significantly damaged because they’ve chosen (and then compelled) to hitch their fate to the movement. I expect a small honeymoon in which the Democrats may be able to get slightly more left-ish policy through. Whether that includes single-payer, who knows.
But given American political tradition, I have my doubts.
(And fear not, mindless fear of the kind I am talking about wouldn’t elect a Sanders or pass single-payer health-care, for fear doesn’t build things - it destroys. Think more like a Hugo Chavez. Think seizure of assets and imprisonment of all those “banksters”, and then anyone “protecting” those banksters, like those who believe in due process.
Certainly supporters for that exist right now. But you’ll be waiting a long time for that movement to win an election…)
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My heartfelt congratulations and thanks to the people that voted to stop Roy Moore from becoming a US senator, especially to the people that campaigned against him, and even to the people that stayed home or that wrote-in a different name to avoid voting for him.
But I think that we like here to frame the choice in our own terms, a crazy pedophile against a non-pedophile, and that’s not how the choice was framed for a lot of people who voted for Moore. I have to confess that I base this just on a five-minute segment that I heard on NPR in my drive to work, and that I have not heard or seen the political advertisements played locally during the Alabama campaign. I am repeating myself from what I said in another thread, but what I heard from a Moore supporter is that she preferred to vote for a possible pedophile than for somebody that supported the killing of millions of yet-to-be-born babies. We should not ignore those arguments. We should have an elevator speech at the ready to counter them every time that somebody brings them up.
This is my try: We are also against abortions. That is why we support sex education and free access to contraceptives. Abortion can be hard on the women that have it performed, and they most probably would prefer not to have to do it. But if women need to do it, they should be able to do it in the safest possible way. We all support life, that’s why we need also to support the children that have already been born and other disadvantaged individuals in our society.
Thoughts?
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Your try seems quite reasonable. Trouble is, few people who vote for the likes of Moore would listen for more than three or four seconds to something that sounds that “liberal.”
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This is true.
Unfortunately, the problem with the focus on the heroic effort of Black voters in the face of this…
…is this:
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/940789802860920832
But that doesn’t negate the credit due to the ~27% of White Alabamanian voters who aren’t fascists. It isn’t a comfortable position to be in.
And that reckoning is for all White people, not just the ones in Alabama.
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Yes, indeedy! It’s become far too easy to compartmentalize: rural, evangelical, redneck, racist, whatever label we want to apply. These labels for the “other” – that’s how we got into this Gordian knot as white folks who thought the world had changed when it had not: Dismissing our own complicity and privilege.
See also: Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock SNL skit after Trump was elected for a much more nuanced and funny analysis of this issue.
After the Alabama election this week, the question I still want answered, and answered with more than anecdote or pure opinion: Why did all those white women evangelicals vote for Moore? It’s reductionist to say it’s because Jesus and/or their husbands told them to do so. I would love to read true scholarship about why people vote against their own interests. So, as soon as I finish figuring out where to sign-up for Momma-and-me yoga classes in semi-rural Alabama, I’ll be all over Science Direct looking it up. (Why did the universe gift me with this daughter? She seriously asked for yoga classes for Christmas. Cheerleading would be soooo much easier down here. Kidding! I’m beyond grateful for who she is.)
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I think the main props for black voters is not because they voted for the Democratic candidate, but because they voted at all despite the attempts to discourage them from voting at all.
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