How dare you oppress black people by trying to take away their right to set themselves on fire? That’s just racist!
Black people (or another minority, or women) don’t have an obligation to vote for the Democrats as such. But if they vote for or enable the election of Republicans, who actively want to persecute and/or physically hurt them, we retain the right to call them “suicidally stupid”.
Yes, they are; they openly admire Hitler. And slavery, for that matter.
Republicans certainly want to push policies that will do harm to many Americans, with less wealthy and less white Americans taking the brunt of that harm. So I agree that it’s against a black person’s self interest to vote Republican, generally speaking.
Do you have any evidence for the claim that Republicans want to “physically hurt” black people? I’m not aware of any Republican running on a platform of causing physical harm to black people, but I could just be uninformed.
The fact that they do so on a regular basis?
Sure but “migrant crime wave” is the thing being pushed on conservative media (with graphic videos of specific crimes) and that was likely a strong influence here. “More efficient processing of asylum seekers” was not a concern that came up in any polling.
But that’s pretty much the opposite of what happened. Here on the Dope we repeatedly tried to explain about inflation being a worldwide issue, that had now been brought under control in the US, and that the average american was better off as salaries had beaten inflation.
Kamala, and most Democrats, focused on a “we feel your pain” message, and pledged to combat price-gouging and talked about how economists’ believe Trump’s plans will raise inflation more.
I think the average american believed the administration accepted the premise that inflation was all their fault. And yet still they get described as being condescending.
What do you think white nationalism is?
When the right insist we have to “Back the Blue” and “Blue Lives Matter” when police are murdering black people but not when a mob is storming the Capitol and assaulting dozens of officers, it’s clear they don’t actually support the police. They just like the “murdering black people” part.
The wave of illegal migrants is caused by our overwhelmed Asylum system. That’s how most “illegal immigrants” are currently entering the country: claim asylum, get your court date that’s 2 years from now, and hang out in the country until then (or disappear once your court date comes up).
70% of the asylum cases we do process are denied; and these people have been in the backlog long enough that when they came in, it wasn’t yet known that there’d be this massive weight. My guess is that the most recent migrants are even more overwhelmingly unqualified for Asylum because they’re part of the group that entered the country and applied for asylum once the current situation came into being and could be exploited.
So addressing illegal immigrants in 2024 would best be done by cleaning up the asylum backlog. This way when someone comes in we can rapidly process their claim and either let them in or send them on their way.
That’s the message we should have been hmering home. Instead, the message was “if you’re worried about this, you’re a racist” - even though our actual policy goals implicitly admit that it is a problem we need to fix.
Also hate crimes spiked under Trump’s last term, what’s going to happen now when we’re beginning with “They’re eating the dawgs” rhetoric?
I was talking to my cousin (who is definitely liberal) and lives in a semi-rural area and his take was simple.
Democrats simply HAVE NOT delivered for the middle class. Prices are up all around. Housing is near impossible to get for young people (most people). Education is really not better at all. Daycare is not available (inexpensively). Transportation sucks. Roads suck. Traffic sucks. No one sees their life getting better or even prospects for a better life on the horizon. Unions are being smashed all over save a very few. Taxes seem to keep rising.
The stock market is better and businesses are making money. So what? The average Joe is not seeing that. EVERY time Average Joe goes to the store they see the higher prices and shrinkflation and are reminded almost daily how things are worse for them.
Dems are as much in the pocket of big business as anyone else. Dems have not delivered in 30 years.
Dems always assume black people will vote for them because the alternative is worse. That’s it. It’s not enough.
Clinton clearly missed this in 2016. Harris missed it again in 2024 (although, to be fair, she had little control over policy and a very short campaign season). Dems seem incapable of learning this lesson because they like the wealthy donors.
Doesn’t make voting for Trump any less stupid, however.
As the saying goes: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”. Trump demonstrated that it applies to elections too.
Right, but so what? Conservative media wants to sell the idea of a migrant crime wave. Note that the Haitians in Springfield are 100% legal and what good does it do for them?
Democrats pledging to process asylum claims isn’t going to do jack; it would be spun as Dems trying to get more people into the country.
And, to the extent it would bring the number of illegal migrants down, remember that the border bill would have also done that, and Dems got no credit for it, and the GOP benefitted from blocking it.
I don’t recall anyone saying that, though I definitely recall this talking point being used a lot on the right.
I will concede though, that what the original migrant spike happened under Biden, that trying not to appear racist may have been part of it – Biden removed some of Trump’s most draconian policies and didn’t immediately replace them with anything substantial enough.
What portion of people who vote Republican do so because they think it is the party of White Nationalism?
White nationalists are a huge problem. Per the FBI, they’re the single biggest threat when it comes to domestic terrorism. And the Republican party implicitly supports them and backs them.
But, it’s not like white nationalism is a major driver of people voting Republican. It’s an incredibly fringe position. Over 60% of Republicans and 54% of Trump voters agree that white nationalism and right wing extremism are serious issues in this country.
The fact is that the overwhelming majority of Trump supporters oppose White Nationalism (of the remaining 46% some are white nationalists certainly, but others are just blind - perhaps willfully so - to the issue, which still means they aren’t white nationalists), yet despite this, they still vote Republican.
Are there any Republican elected officials who openly run on a platform of white supremacy?
I don’t think that’s clear at all, especially because many black people have a negative view of “defund the police” policies. 61% of Black Americans feel that their local police treats them fairly. you might think they are wrong about that, that they’ve internalized systemic racism; but it clearly shows that not everyone who supports the police simply likes “murdering black people”.
I think that’s precisely the sort of framing that turned voters off from the Democratic Party this time.
The USA is in serious trouble when its citizens are calling each other traitors for voting. A trend Trump started, but still.
I understand the sentiment and I don’t want to shoot the messenger, but again, the economic growth of this last term hasn’t only benefitted big business. The average person’s pay has outpaced inflation, and millions of more people have a job. And many ordinary people have a stake in the stockmarket (I’ll also make a bet that if there are any stockmarket rises when Trump’s in, they will be pointed to as evidence that he’s “turned the economy around”. The stockmarket is only an elites thing when it a democrat in power and it’s going up).
That’s still based on the presumption that the concerns of Trump supporters had any rational basis at all, when what they believed was that illegal migrants were committing a crime spree, that Haitians were eating people’s pets, and that a Venezuelan gang had completely taken over a Colorado city. None of which - let’s be clear - was remotely happening.
Stop sanewashing their positions.
Because there was a GLOBAL post-pandemic inflationary surge, which under Biden was brought down lower and more quickly than most of the Western world.
Sadly, most people don’t understand what inflation is and think “reduced inflation means prices come down” which is not how it works at all. And while the effects of that surge definitely hurt many, it was not the Democrats’ fault.
And just wait until Trump’s tariffs hit and all those migrant agricultural workers and builders are forced to leave. Oh wait - they’ll probably blame the Democrats for that too.
Largely due to the deliberate efforts of Republicans who have been actively working to funnel money out of the public school systems and into their own pockets.
What - after all that “infrastructure work” Trump did?
Oh wait no - it was Biden and the Democrats who greenlit that. But now that Trump is in charge I’m sure he’ll make things even better - just like he promised to do last time.
Unemployment is at record lows and wages are growing faster than inflation, drug prices were coming down, student loans were gradually being forgiven, more people had affordable healthcare…who is this “no one” you refer to?
BY THE REPUBLICANS.
And this is entirely the problem. When your reasoning is so flawed that you think the best option is to vote for the party that is determined to make every problem you have worse, there’s no reasoning someone out of that position.
The problem is Dems have not made any of it better when they are in power. And they are supposedly the ones who will do that.
I literally gave several examples of ways in which the Biden administration made people’s lives better.
The real problem is that the Republicans excel in spreading lies about the Democrats - that they made the country worse, that they only care about trans kids, that Harris had no policy positions, that the border is wide open etc etc etc.
Tell that to Average Joe. See what he/she says. See if they go, “Oh! Yeah! I didn’t get it before but now I do! My life really is better and I just didn’t know it!” 
I find the title of this thread disgusting for any reason.
I never would have even come into it if it weren’t for this article from ABC News.
… and so it begins.
I’m sorry, but not everyone who voted for Trump is a crazy MAGA fanatic.
I share your disdain for Trump’s rhetoric and for his base.
But he won the popular vote. A lot more people than just his base voted for him, including many more Hispanic and Black voters than ever before.
You can’t paint every Trump voters with the MAGA fanatic brush. Yes, the people who think that hordes of migrants are eating the dogs and eating the cats - the sort of people who wrap themselves up in MAGA flags and tearfully walk up to Trump to thank him for everything he has done, the sorts who stormed the capitol for him on Jan 6 - those people are completely unreachable.
But there aren’t 74 million (and counting) MAGA fanatics. There are a shitload of politically disengaged “normies” who voted for Trump this time around. These are the people who we completely failed to reach.
The Republicans are great at doing that, and that’s a huge problem. But that’s the reality we live in, and at THIS point, when they have been doing this ever since Rush Limbaugh pioneered the practice, the REAL problem is that Democrats are completely paralyzed by this tactic.
It’s time to stop whining about it, roll up our sleeves, and start playing the game that’s in front of us.