They’ll never give up the name “Republicans” because that’s the party their parents belonged to. Today’s Republicans are no more the party of their parents than they are the “Party of Lincoln” - but these disgruntled “Republicans” refuse to acknowledge that.
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Exactly what I keep returning to. Once the Tea Party infection spread, the GOP lost its marbles entirely.
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Beau of the fifth column over on you tube has several videos about getting people stuck in that information mire to rethink their positions.
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“A party led by a rapist that believes it can fix its problem with women by attacking Taylor Swift, with weird little creeps like Mike Johnson as a public face in Congress, that has no serious policy, that has decided to abandon decades of support for freedom in Europe to back a genocidal dictator, a party that is 85% white in a 59% white country, a party that has decided higher education is a gateway drug to Socialism, that believes public health policy should be set by random freaks on the internet and not doctors, a party that is still fighting cultural wars of gender politics the rest of America ended a decade ago, a party that has replaced American optimism with anger and fear of the future….”
Wonderful prose. Can we quote him on that?
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I’ve been living where I live (suburban ATL) for about 25 years. it’s gotten more diverse since I’ve moved here. The line for my polling place has gotten much longer, even when we go vote early (which we’ve been doing for several election cycles now. Show up on a random Tuesday, and it’s a line in our Black majority polling place… And it’s nothing compared to say, Black majority areas in town… In some places it can be up to 8 or 9 hours long.
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Only since the very fucking beginning, and nowhere near enough progress to change that has been made.
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It’s not a super straightforward answer because i avoid talking politics with them, so what i know i’ve gotten bits and pieces based on off hand comments they make before i change the subject. They don’t watch FOX news but they do read news from various places, and i know some of the issues they focus on immigration (ironic considering they are immigrants themselves, and while they immigrated legally we have family members that were desperate enough to make it to the US illegally), taxes, to some extent they are pro gun but i haven’t had a deeper conversation to prod them on gun control. And generally they are conservative old school Hispanics so they don’t have favorable views on sexuality and sexual identity, and i’m sure there’s more i’m missing.
That said my younger brother lives with them and he is definitely very left leaning and he’s been challenging them on their views. Between him and some comments i’ve made, plus Trump making wild statements i think they’re begrudgingly leaning left, which to me is progress.
As far as how to nudge them, what i had been doing is i will often point out how certain left leaning things benefit the community, us as minorities, etc. and how the republican talking points aren’t painting an accurate picture of the issues, and just leave it at that. Same with pointing out some BS things republicans are doing without putting judgement on voters, but on what the politicians are doing in a hypocritical way. They often do things that benefit them and not the voters. And lastly i will point out the crazy shit Trump will say and compare it to what Chavez did in Venezuela, but like i mentioned i try to keep these comments short and sweet, i don’t imply that my parents were wrong by voting republican or anything like that… more like “check out this crazy thing right?” and often they don’t have a way to defend said crazy thing.
I think i’m lousy for giving good advice in this field because i’m so non-confrontational, but i think avoiding placing blame or judgement has helped for me.
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Thanks. It’s helpful just to hear how others are experiencing similar family interactions, even if they’re not all exactly the same in all details. Every family is unique after all.
A full time life coach that interacts with them and isn’t me definitely sounds attractive and effective. Extra support to your brother for taking on that role in your family.
I like to think they’re old school Romney or maybe Cheney GOP (which has it’s own issues but can at least be discussed), but some days they feel all the way down the “FOX News” hole. I haven’t seen any red hats yet, so there’s that at least.
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Sounds a lot like you’re in Georgia. If you have time and the inclination, check out RideShare2Vote. They provide free rides to the polls. I’ve been a driver for them for the last several election cycles. This one coming up is going to be a pretty big deal and drivers (dispatchers, and outreach folks) are needed. If you’re not in GA, check them out anyway because they operate in a growing number of critical states trying to push things toward the blue.
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Not GA, I’m in VA. But not as different as you might think.
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Sadly, that’s where I am with my mother. Of all her siblings and in-laws, she’s the most reactionary of the lot, and the rest of us are at the SMH stage; her current gripe is ‘illegal immigrants’ and I’m at a loss as to what is causing her hard slew to the right. Aside from figuring out how to jam her access to FOX news (Can she at least get it from PBS or the BBC?), I don’t see any help either 
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And it is a whole different experience in other countries (though they have their issues too). In London, I voted in a few different areas over the years including in London East End, and never had to wait more than a few minutes to vote.
The big caveat here though is I was overseas for the last voting cycle and I believe the voterID laws that the Tories brought in did have an impact on turnout.
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I had Fox blocked on our earlier TV. (It was a simple button-click then—I’m not sure how to do it now.) When my parents visited my father sat down and started going through channels. When he asked, “Why can’t I find Fox News?” I just said “We don’t have it here.”
He just said, “Huh” and accepted it.
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Holy shit.
As I’ve said a few times around here - elections in Australia are held on a Saturday, employers are legally required to give staff time off to vote, and the longest waits I’ve heard of were an hour-ish. Usually the wait time is a few minutes. You don’t need identification. There’s typically a barbecue (nothing fancy, just a sausage, bread, fried onions, and your choice of tomato or barbecue sauce, but it’s something we can mostly agree on, and Australians are quite proud of their “democracy sausages”).
I can’t wrap my head around how hard certain politicians are making things in your region.
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Here in GA (the state, not the country - and if you’re not aware, in the US states have some leeway in how they conduct elections), early voting (a few weeks from election day, held on tuesdays) has been great, in that it gives people more flexibility on voting, so that did likely increase people’s ability to participate. But the GOP keeps trying to throw up roadblocks… It’s depressing.
Yeah, it really is a legacy of white supremacy and the idea that not everyone should get a say in how the country is run. It’s really depressing.
Oh, and my sister lives in the metro area, too, but in a different part of the metro, in a whiter area… she tends to not get long lines… 
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Another Brit here. To echo my countrypersons’ sentiments, I’ve never lived more than a 15 minute walk from my local polling station, and I’ve never had to queue to vote. In most elections I’ve been able to get up a few minutes early and vote on my way to work. Sometimes I was the first person to the polls, which open at 7 a.m.
That’s not because I’m upper middle class. The longest walks were when I lived in a working class London suburb, and now, when I live in a posh Cotswolds town.
Voter ID came in after the most recent set of elections I was eligible to participate in, so I was not required to present the driving licence in my wallet. My father is 95 and has no photographic identity documents at al, not even a bus pass. He is a keen Brexitory voter.
Perhaps that helps explain the apparent evidence is that Tory attempts at disenfranchising poor people had a perverse effect of disenfranchising the elderly, despite their bus passes, and probably harmed the extreme right wing. Or maybe that’s just Jacob Rees-Mogg’s clever propaganda.
UK elections and referendums used to be overseen by the independent Electoral Commission. Which recently has been gutted of its powers by the current so-called “government”, the same one which brought in the completely unnecessary Voter ID. The EC’s criticism of the democratic failures of the Brexit referendum are completely co-incidental, of course.
I am not cynical.
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Low voter turnout in 2016 is why Trump won. Higher (but still pretty low) voter turnout in 2020 is why he lost, despite getting more votes than he did four years before. And as others have said, this is WHY the GOP propagates myths of massive voter fraud in an attempt to make voting more difficult, especially by brown people. They would rather “cheat” than have promote policies that would appeal to 51% of the potential electorate.
Of course the descent into crazy didn’t “just happen.” The right wing media outrage machine pushed them in that direction as hard as they could. They’ve been riling up the lions for years, and now they’ve had a Roy Horn moment.
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