Wow, the Republicans are overwhelmingly racist.
SD has really disappointed me this time.
Isn’t a disdain for illegal immigration—in a country that champions “the rule of law” sensible? My position is that regardless of how liberal an immigration policy one might like, the illegal activity should be frowned upon and shut down.
Because the perception is not wrong. The republican base is overwhelmingly male white old and christian, they simply are not going to change on absolutely anything at this point. They could just as easily stop being anti gay or anti woman and both would tremendously help their chances to win elections, latinos might be a growing demographic but women are always going to be 50% of the population.
The problem is you think shoving a few black or brown faces out there counts as “embracing blacks” or latinos. It doesn’t matter how many hispanic and black candidates you champion, what matters is the policies they support. And every single thing that comes out of a republicans mouth, no matter what color his face is, is telling latinos “we don’t want you here”.
Gonna happen again if the Democrats keep ignoring their progressive base on economic issues.
Argue away, this is the very place. 'Cause I’m not seeing it.
No, that’s exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. It’s an example of a black man being asked to work for the Republican Party. Sure the straight white Christian men who run the Republican Party want other people to vote Republican. But when all is said and done, they want straight white Christian men to still be in charge.
That might be a valid point. Except that there are also laws which make legal immigration impossible for the average person in Mexico or other Latin American countries.
So when you’ve stopped Hispanics from coming here legally and you’re doing everything you can to stop them from coming here illegally, you give the impression you just don’t want any Hispanics in this country. The whole “let’s make it illegal to speak Spanish” movement reinforces this.
The Tea Party has shown how you handle that problem: Take the party over en masse at a local level. If liberals did something similar they could steer the ship of the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has been running the GOP; the difefrence being that poll after poll finds that liberal positions are popular with the general public.
What makes you say this? In what we do we make it more difficult for people from Central or South America compared to Europe, Asia or Africa?
I am not aware of this movement. Are you talking about the English as the Official Language Movement? Assuming so, having a common tongue is helpful. It would also cut down on the expense of government documents having to be printed in XX different languages. When the President or a Senator speaks, why shouldn’t he speak in English? This is just common sense. Hell, even liberal SDMB sees the sense of having discourse occur in one language.
Why do you assume he was not working to further his own ideal, which coincide with those of the Rep party? That’s pretty insulting, to think that a black man that doesn’t ascribe to the Black liberal playbook is not thinking for himself. Really insulting. You seem to be hung on on White Christian Men. More so than you think WCM are fixated with WCM.
What is this shoving you speak of. Seems to me that the Blacks who stand up to be counted among Republicans are simply standing up for what they believe. Why do you assume that is not the case?
And why can’t a Black or Latino have a political philosophy that overlaps more with Republicans? Why can’t a Black man be opposed to abortion? Why can’t a Latino woman believe that a Flat or Fair Tax is better for the country than what we now have?
Ah, so GWB was a better choice that Gore, just because Gore wasn’t progressive enough on economic issues.:dubious:
A vote for the Green party is really a vote for the GOP candidate. And, i’ll bet the GOP isn;t ANYwhere near progressive enuf on economic issues.
“Flat” or “Fair” Tax schemes are lies perpetrated by the far right, where the lower middle class and middle class will pay much higher taxes while the rich pay even less.
And, sure, you can have a Black man opposed to abortion, but who doesn’t want to belong to a party that would have him back out in the fields in chains, a party that wants to keep his fellow black men in prison or the ghetto, that thinks he is a sub-human. So yeah, a black man could well have sympathy with 1 point of a GOP platform, but not many of the other 99.
The Democrats aren’t liberal. And it’s extremely stupid for a black person to vote for the Republicans, since the Republican party hates them passionately.
All liberals have is “spite voting”; voting for Obama is just as much a vote to spite the Right as a vote for the Green party. I’m a liberal, and I’ve never voted for anyone in my life; only against. Yes, it’s better to vote for the Democrats to keep the Republicans out, but that’s only because the Republicans are so awful, not because the Democrats are anything but slightly less awful right wingers.
While I am sympathetic to the Green Party (and similar progressive outfits such as the Justice Party), I have two large problems with them:
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Their lack of tactical insight. Most of the Tea Party has been content to work within the Republican party structure rather than create their own dissident parties. When they did not do this (such as in the 2010 Colorado Gubernatorial Election), Democrats won. Progressives simlarly ought to work to get their own nominated in primaries and by doing so pressure more centrist Democrats to shift leftward.
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While the Greens have many good ideas, some of their ideas are utterly objectionable that I could not in good conscience vote for them. For example their foreign policy is basically a pre-Pearl Harbour and 1960s New Left idealism. Also their stances on nuclear power and federal funding for alternative “medicine” are anti-science (furthermore the former position would be disastrous for a serious effort to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels).
I want the liberalism of Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey not of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.
As to Asian-American, I would say that their sense of social solidarity makes them more Democratic than the Religious Right. Hence the reason why Asian conservative parties (such as the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan) are far more open to economic intervention than their American or European counterparts). Even in my church, there is fairly good divide between Democrats and Republicans while at a white version of my church (with the same theological orientation) it’d be overwhelmingly GOP.
The difference between us I’m living in the real world and you’re living in your own fantasy world.
Keep in mind most black voters and Hispanic voters don’t vote for Republicans. I’m telling you why this reality exists. The denial by people like you that the problem exists is the reason why it exists.
Correct. They have used Clinton’s infamous “triangulation” strategy which has led them so far to the right that the majority of them now, including Obama, can reasonably be described as Reagan Republicans, in terms of policy, most especially economic policy. Liberals and progressives now have two Republican parties to chose from, real Republicans and Republican Lite, which is what the Democratic Party would be calling itself right now if it were honest. Which it ain’t.
Spite voting is a losing strategy. As long as Democrats are sure that liberals and progressives will vote for them in order to keep those horrible, awful Republican bogeymen out of office, they’ll happily ignore liberals and progressives and implement few or no of their policies. Wall Street hates progressive monetary policies, and Wall Street is where all the fat cat donors that fund national campaigns live, so they have a positive incentive to implement Republican economic policies. They’ve got absolutely no incentive to implement the policies of one who votes only for spite.
You should vote to win, to get your policies implemented. The Democrats will only respond to a credible threat that they will lose elections if they continue to ignore their progressive/liberal base, in the face of all that money Wall Street keeps throwing at them. As painful as it might be in the short term, in the long term, voting third party is the only hope progressives and liberals have. Yeah, the Bush Presidency was a disaster to the nation, leaving us embroiled in two wars and dead broke. But the Obama Presidency, while better, has also been a total pain in the ass, watching Obama give Republicans 95% of what they want at the outset of negotiations. You and I know why he did that … it was what HE wanted, too. So vote for someone who’s not a Republican Lite, already. In the long term, it will make for policies you will like a lot better than what we have now.
Yes, the Bush presidency was a disaster, I hated it. Illegal wars, war crimes committed in our name by Bush and Cheney, a crash that broke our economy due to unregulated Wall Street shenanigans.
And the Nader candidacy was a big part of Bush’s electoral success, wasn’t it? Boy that sure pissed off a lot of Democrats. Me included, I voted for Gore.
Thing is, voting for Gore didn’t do any good, economically speaking (because he lost). Hell, voting for Clinton didn’t do any good, he’s the one who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall into law, clearing the way for our current roulette-wheel version of Wall Street. And voting for Obama hasn’t done any good, because he’s Republican Lite. I try to vote as a winning strategy where possible, voting Democrat sure doesn’t look like one.
The success of the Nader candidacy should have been a clarion call to the Democratic Party that they need to get in there and shore up their liberal/progressive base by aggressively pursuing policies that would appeal to them. The Democrats have ignored that call, preferring to believe that Nader’s success was due to a bunch of wacky college students that just didn’t understand things the way the “politically sophisticated” Democrats did. Not learning from failure is apparently not solely a Republican trait – I guess it’s another instance where Democrats are Republican Lite.
In fact, this whole situation makes me feel like Police Chief Wiggums in an old episode of The Simpson. He’s making his bed-wetting son Ralphie wear rubber pants to bed. Ralphie complains, “These pants are too hot and tight, how long am I gonna have to wear 'em?”
“Until you learn, son. Until you learn.”