Just When I Began to Breath Easy Concerning the Future of Politics in America . .

Politics & Elections
1

A friend sent me this article this morning because he knows I like the writer. Just as I was growing comfortable with the far right wing of Trumpers and anti-vaxxers shrinking to about 30 to 33 percent of likely voters, this had me . . . well, short of breathing into a paper bag. (But maybe finding a string of pearls to clutch nervously.)

Some quotes from the article:
A good venue to catch up on the latest thinking inside the movement that wants to “take America back” to a place that never existed is this summer’s Road to Majority convention, an annual gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition . . .

. . . I came away from my listening experience in Kissimmee with a few surprises—or at least a few takeaways that may challenge some of the narratives that prevail in the center and on the Left about America’s Christian nationalist movement. The first is that any Democrats who take comfort from the thought that demography is destiny are probably deluding themselves. The received wisdom on the center-left is that America’s homegrown authoritarian faction is an affair largely concentrated on an older, whiter base that is just now exiting the stage of history with loud grievances in hand.

. . . Of the many religious-right strategy gatherings I’ve attended over the years, this was among the most ethnically and racially diverse. “I am pleased to be able to report that we have 200 African American pastors and community organizers who are here this week and over 500 Hispanic pastors and community organizers, and we are going to keep going until this movement embraces the full diversity of our country,” said Ralph Reed. By my count, over 30 of the roughly 70 speakers were Black or Latino.

The diversity on display at the conference reflects the fact that the religious right has been making a sizable effort to cultivate conservative-leaning Latino and Black voters of faith. Much of the action starts by attracting religious leaders from communities of color, who are often drawn into larger pastoral networks such as Watchmen on the Wall

The message goes on to summarize: progressives, don’t count your chickens before they hatch. The presumptive death of the far right due to old age and racism is not going to work-- they figured that out for themselves and are working to compensate for the demographics.

Any thoughts (besides staying vigilant against tricks of Republicans)?

2

I think there is some substance to the argument. Many Hispanics - such as Catholic Hispanics, for instance - are quite socially conservative. And there was a recent split in the United Methodist Church where it was the white people - Americans and Europeans - who were in favor of LGBT but it was the Asian and African members who were opposed to LGBT.

And, notably, in 2020, Trump actually increased his vote among Hispanics and blacks - after four years of nonstop epithets and insults that should logically have decreased it.

Theocracy has appeal for many believers of many stripes. All it would take would be a charismatic Republican candidate, without Trump’s baggage or boorish childishness, who strikes the right religious chord with many minority voters, to be a game changer. If some famous and well known pastor or religious speaker were to go into politics, he could be a Trump 2.0. The good news for Democrats is that no such candidate appears on the horizon yet.

3

Isn’t one of the hallmarks of Trumpism a comfort with expressing outright racism?

If Trumpism is indeed a big influence on the party in general, I can’t help but think that’ll be at least an obstacle to smooth sailing with the “n-words” and the “illegals with COVID.”

4

Sure it is, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. The next leader of the GOP is likely to be someone like Tom Cotton, who would embody all of Trump’s agenda but would be smart enough never to use the N-word.

And again, even despite all the racial insults, Trump increased his vote share among Hispanics and blacks last year. Clearly there is something about Trump that was/is appealing enough to get those voters to overlook his insults. I know some Asian-Americans who support Trump; not a single one of them seemed to have been dissuaded in the least by his “kung flu” insult.

5

And to be clear, if the right promoted a reasonable and sane candidate who was not racist, sexist, and opposed evil truly – I might consider supporting him or her.

I suppose I have fallen into the habit of seeing the Republican Party as nothing but trouble makers and obstructionists. If they decided to start once again support truth and justice and a noble American way, it is not impossible for me to support them on occasion.

If you have read the article, you know it demonstrates how the leadership is sort of courting the minority base in a very calculated way. Similar to the way they demonized “Critical Race Theory” so they could use it as a weapon to bludgeon the left. They knew what they were doing and took the most slimy steps to put their goal into action. They do not seem to be about governing – they are about winning.

What is perhaps just good tactics in war can also be inhumanity in politics.

6

I assume that if enough racial minorities move into the column of the religious right, that it would lead to less motivation on the part of white nationalists to remain in the same tent. Just a guess, and I could be deluding myself, but that is what I would take comfort from.

This.

7

But where would they go? If they think, “Too many black and Hispanic people jumping aboard the Trump Train, I’m getting uncomfortable here” - they could hardly join the Democrats. There isn’t really another party for them to go to.

And I’ve never known a single instance of a white nationalist complaining about minorities supporting their cause. If anything, they crowed over it, because it gave their cause even more legitimacy - “See, Trump is so undeniably great that even racial minorities are getting on board!”

8

When I got to this part of the article, I thought of your statement above and how true it is, but how hard it might be for the GOP to put Trump behind them:

“You got to put on the full armor of God,” said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, alluding to a passage from Ephesians that’s often used to invoke a “spiritual war” against the devil. “You got to take a stand, take a stand against the Left’s schemes.”

The end-of-the-world vision at the heart of the new Republican orthodoxy may help explain a further observation: The people who attend these kinds of religious nationalist gatherings—the activist backbone of the Republican Party—are in no mood to back down from the January 6th attempt to subvert the presidential election through a brutal and disgraceful attack on our Capitol. Sometime around January 7, some parts of the mainstream wisdom coalesced around the idea that the Republican Party now had a chance to separate itself from the anti-democratic elements within. That moment has passed. There will be no reckoning within the Republican Party over Donald Trump’s attempted coup, and any Republican who tries will be excluded from gatherings like these.

In conversation with conference organizer Ralph Reed, Eric Metaxas let it be known that the real victims of the January 6th event were the good people who ransacked the Capitol. He fired “an arrow across their bow” (his words) to Republican leaders: “Any Republican that has not spoken in defense of the January 6th people to me is dead. They’re dead.”

The right-wing political commentator and activist Dinesh D’Souza, also in conversation with Ralph Reed, echoed the sentiment. “The people who are getting shafted right now are the January 6 protesters,” he said. “We won’t defend our guys even when they’re good guys.”

Reed nodded and replied, “I think Trump taught our movement a lot.”

Also, since I killed ThelmaLou’s thread with pedantic articles and it directly relates to this topic I am going to try to link to it. (If I fail- little help please?)
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-christians-are-coming-the-christians-are-coming/946304/128

9

Targeting the Seven Mountains of dominionism is one thing, winning control of them will remain increasingly out of reach. Yeah, yeah, demography isn’t necessarily destiny but I’m still gonna need to see a viable strategy to win young and secularizing hearts and minds before I start to seriously worry.

It’s also not chiseled in stone that black and Hispanic youths will remain culturally conservative. Justice and progress will continue to matter.

10

I agree, the future is not yet written (although I doubt the attendees of this conference would agree). Did anything in the article give you reason to pause and contemplate? The part about funding near the end was a bit alarming to me. She did not do a good job of linking the two groups, but I am sure they are linked without proof.

11

The right keeps telling the public that it welcomes minorities because it needs to counter the reality that their public policies are extremely discriminatory. Pity the suckers who believe them.

While it’s true that Trump did attract a somewhat higher percentage of blacks and Hispanics in 2020, people of color were 15% of the Republican vote and 39% of Democrats. Biden drew 61% of Hispanics and an overwhelming 92% of blacks.

The future is no better for Republicans. Biden won along all young voters – Gen Z and younger - now a majority of voters. Moreover, he won 59-33 among under 30s who had not voted before.

No matter what the right claims, Trump’s voters are almost exclusively blocks of voters who are dying off. Older white evangelicals without college degrees is not a growing coalition.

The proof of this lies in the extraordinary efforts being made by state Republicans to hinder voting access to minority groups. People of color have traditionally voted in lower proportions than their population would indicate. In places like Georgia and Arizona, intense grassroots activity brought out new minority voters that swung the state to the Democrats.

The right knows in its bones that their voters are dying off. They are doing nothing to bring in new voters who aren’t part of the Trump cult. Never believe anything the right says; look at what it does. Here’s a paragraph the OP didn’t quote.

Never mind the Republican Party’s efforts to promote McCarthyist laws that restrict discussions of the history of racism and other supposedly “divisive concepts” in America schools; or its leadership’s denigrating characterizations of political leaders of color with whom they disagree. And who here really cares that the Republican Party has championed voter suppression and gerrymandering that disproportionately affect voters of color and others in democratic-leaning districts, or that some Republican leaders tolerate or even court the support of white supremacists? The fact is, this message has presumably convinced some people—including those at the gathering in Kissimmee—that their party is the one on the side of equality and justice for all, while the other side is the one that insists on characterizing everybody by the color of their skin.

A huge amount of work lies ahead. All 50 states need to flood the streets with those getting out the Democratic voters and convincing them not to be cynical and stay at home. The right has been doing a much better job of reaching the people, from school boards on upward. That needs to change.

Even so, which side would you rather bet on - the one whose voters are dying off or the one which gets 60-90% of the vote from the rising demographics?

12

74 million people voted for Trump after he spent four years demonstrating his cruelty and ineptitude; that certainly gives me pause.

But I believe even more strongly in the trends itemized by Exapno above: that the coming dominant generations of voters will want no part of this dominionist bullshit.

13

I can see myself, if wealthy, wanting to keep all my money and not spend it on the poor, or people who cannot afford health care. But I can’t see myself supporting the level of lies that Trump and his ilk use, So, if I may ask, how do you vote? If you don’t vote, it will be easier for Democratic policies to come into being. If you do vote, you support some strange policies. Voting for another small party has do effect. I apologize for asking a personal question.

14

The funny thing about a two party system is that each party, in order to survive, must evolve to near parity with its opposition. That means finding messages that resonate with a fair amount of people. The left in the US which views things through a lens of systemic oppression and a victim hierarchy isn’t universally attractive even for those it nominally speaks for. Not everyone in so-called diverse groups is comfortable being placed in a perpetual victim category. The other strategic flaw is that by considering an enemy of an enemy a friend the left has created a coalition of folks that don’t necessarily like each other.

15

It’s not just “tricks of Republicans”.

As immigrants, minorities and young people gain economic status and clout, there’s a natural trend toward preserving what they’ve attained and looking warily at sweeping plans for change.

It’s a sign of massive overconfidence and poor planning among progressives to assume that demographics are all that’s really needed for perpetual electoral victory.

16

For sure they are better at scaring people into voting booths. The Republican Party has swung very far to the right and it seems to be hanging there (possibly going even further right) and it might be decades before they swing back toward the middle and become a reasonable opposition party again, if they ever do. The one advantage of Trump was that he motivated those on the left at least as much as he did those on the right. (I would almost love to have him as the R nominee in 2024 except he is too dangerous to trust anywhere near power! But he would guarantee a huge voter turn out on the left again.)

Earlier today in a different thread, I read that Republicans are better at messaging than Democrats. That AOC, Biden, and (I think it was) Sinema need to have a more unified message (singing from the same sheet of music is how it was phrased). The problem with that is that while the unified Republican message fools dumb people – a broader more diverse collective of ideas is organic and real. Not every point appeals to every voter, but it is superior to the focus group pablum of uniformity the Republican machine spews out like Muzak in an elevator.

To address the rest of your point, I wanted to quote that paragraph as well but thought I was well beyond fair use which is (or used to be) the standard of how much to quote. Below I will quote the paragraph above and below your quote because it is an perfect example. You and I read that paragraph that you have already quoted and it stands out to us because we recognize the truth in it-- but when she quotes speakers of color from the event, you can see how they would appeal to those who want to believe they are not racists. In fact you lefties are the racist ones!

In Kissimmee, the speakers, and especially the speakers of color, had a unified message about race, and it was one that Democratic strategists might wish to note as they craft their own messaging and outreach in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. Speaker after speaker at the Road to Majority Conference asserted that they believe in an America where race doesn’t define you—where opportunity is there for all who strive for it.

[Paragraph you quoted.]

C.L. Bryant, a right-wing television and radio host, made the point with an anecdote about a long-ago confrontation with his grandfather over his “Afrocentric” style. “He said these words: ‘Sonny…I didn’t go through all that I went through so that you could be Black. I went through all that I went through so that you could be free.’”

It’s a message that has a strong appeal to some immigrants.

I bolded a couple of sentences there to demonstrate how calculated and manipulative their message is. The thing is, it works on some people. In fact it almost hits the perfect Republican message – it can fit on a tee shirt. Both of those bold statements would make a good GOP shirt (not quite short enough to fit on a bumper sticker though). They have something else in common with every Republican talking point: they are all imagery and very little substance.

And to answer your very last question, I don’t want to bet on either side. Right now we only have one party that cares at all about governing or people or anything except power and racism. I was a Republican for many, many years before they left me cold and I had to bail on them. I wish they would come to their senses and stop trying to con votes and start solving problems – Hell, start RECOGNIZING problems. They solve things by ignoring the true problem - instead working the system to retain power. I am particularly disgusted by them as a former member.

But since the Democrats have the only game in town that wants to govern, my focas has shifted to keeping the Republican shit eaters away from the seat of power until their fever breaks and they start living in the real world.

17

I know the conventional wisdom is that the evangelical movement is a “white” phenomenon. Even the press constantly harps on “white evangelicals” like they were the only ones.

I’ve been involved in evangelical churches my entire life and no matter where I happened to be, the minority representation was fairly high. At least 20% of any congregation I’ve been a part of was black/Hispanic/Asian. This should not be breaking news for anyone who is paying attention, although I realize it does not fit the “white power movement” narrative. The non-denominational evangelical church I attend is filled with plenty of non-white faces. This is not news.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I realize it’s only one data point, but my Asian wife, and ALL her friends, would fall in the Trump supporter evangelical demographic. One of the largest Korean churches on the entire east coast is 10 minutes from my house. I don’t presume to know the thoughts of the many thousands of congregants there, or how many of them are even eligible to vote, but I guarantee the amount of GOP support is more than the prevailing narrative is willing to contemplate.

18

I concur. Did you have any observations on the article itself?

Do not believe I agree with you about what the Democratic message is but I can guarantee for the time being, no Democratic message could reach parity Republican messaging simply because Republicans make up ridicules strawmen then destroy them. (In the article she mentions how a Republican operative brags that they made a boogie man out of Critical Race Theory so they could use the meme to damage Democratic sympathies even though they know that is not what Critical Race Theory is.) Although diverse, Democratic policies and messages are about governing the whole peoples of the United States. Republican messages are about creating fear of Democrats and their policies. Said Republicans often resort to lies and trickery to accomplish that goal. If the Democratic Party follows suit-- I will abandon them as well.

Not sure if I am following you here? My positions and voting preferences are well known on these boards (although I don’t believe everyone follows my posts with bated breath). I don’t mind answering questions but it seems you have made some incorrect assumptions.

[SNIP]

Over the last six years or so I have been moving ever so slightly toward the left. During that same time, the Republican Party moved way the EFF to the right! Okay, I finally get your point- never mind!

What I was saying was- IF The Republican Party became a reasonable, moderate, and less hate filled party (as I believe it was before – but way more than six years ago), I could once again vote for one of their candidates. I would vote for Adam Kinzinger in a minute, not for Cheney unless she changes some hawkish views. My point was that it seems like I am always bashing to the GOP – and I am, but that is because they deserve it. If they stop being the worst people on the planet and start to care about fairness and what is right ---- I might just give them a chance again in certain races. Anyone who says they are proud to still be a Republican is a firm NO vote from me. But that does not mean they can’t come to their senses. They could not get back there overnight, but someday they will die off or return to mean. Either will be a welcome change

I liked the Richard Nixon speech about the felt coat and being reasonable and humble and moderate. I passionately hate the Trump hatred and all of his supporters seem like - - - something I could be banned for saying what I think.

I was actually wondering if you had read the article (it is after all long and detailed) and if you had any thoughts on it. Relying upon excerpts from me or Exapno does not do it justice.

But to respond to your comment, I believe that seventy-four million would be cut down to fifty million or fewer voters after January 6th and recent revelations about DOJ involvement and General Miley’s concern over Trump’s plan to use the military. I would like to think it would be an even smaller number- but some people seem immune to sense and reason.

19

Wanted to address your stuff separately- last post was running on and on.
I know of the phenomenon from books and articles which I have mentioned in many different threads. I had left Evangelical churches some time ago but still managed to attend some more orthodox churches with liturgical elements; found them very White and quite conservative. In the last year I have been associating with a rather large (but according to them- not quite mega) church and they are the whitest people I have ever met. About half are naturally blonde and as an olive skinned descendant of the Mediterranean – I am one of the darkest people there. They are a very wealthy church and very white politics gets discussed from the pulpit in a very Johnson Amendment has been studied manner.

I am curious about this for a different reason. I grew up on the East side of Phoenix in the 1960’s, I never met a black until I was in sixth grade. But I had dozens of Hispanic friends who were the most assimilated Americans I have ever met. They were ‘whiter’ and spoke the best English; I found out later in life that back east (well, Pennsylvania) a generation before that my parents were the swarthy Italians who worked very diligently to fit in and speak proper English. So I just wonder if the diversity in your churches represented different cultures - - - or just different backgrounds coming from the same culture? (Serious question.)

I worked in an architecture firm in Pasadena, CA for a couple of years and that place was very diverse, more than half of the staff had English as a second language and while many had studied in the U.S., most had been born overseas. Their cultures were very evident and quite fascinating. Most were apolitical as I recall, some came from places where a say in the government was non-existent or a show with no democratic substance. But my two most constant lunch companions over my first year were a Korean woman with a very strong Christian background, and a gentleman from the Philippines. By the time I had been promoted up, I mostly ate with a project manager from Iran (like my professor at school, she described herself as Persian) and an off the boat Italian named Giancarlo. They all were pretty close to the vest about their politics and open about their faith systems. Except for my Korean friend (who lived in Korea Town with her parents who spoke no English at all) they all seemed progressive but amused by American politics.

Thank you for reminding me how conservative my friend was, I had honestly forgotten.

20

I did indeed read the article. It’s very concerning to me that some of the most visible religious leaders in the country are trying to hasten the divorce between Christianity and democracy. In trying to be concise in my observations, perhaps I’ve glossed over too many important points.