nevermind. Your clearly angry and I’m not interested in being your punching bag.
You came here to spew some “don’t worry, be happy” fantasy?
I would suggest reading this and the originating thread for comprehension.
But from what I’ve seen from you, that’s not going to really happen.
Umm… what are you talking about? Are you mistaking me for someone else? What was not comprehended? I’m on the side of the logical folks on this issue. If you’re not, ok… do your thing. But if you do enjoy rational discourse then… what in the world are you on about? Try adding details or quoting what it is you’re turning yourself inside-out about.
But there’s no need to take out your personal issues on me. Please answer what I asked you earlier:
JFC I guess you’re going to keep being dense.
@SenorBeef is the one who says the Democrats should eliminate candidates based solely on sex and race.
You haven’t yet grasped this but, @SenorBeef’s position was a bit more nuanced than that. But you hopped on the crazy train started by others.
This thread has pretty much put all that “look how woke I am” nonsense to bed. But keep preaching the kneejerk knuckle-dragging. Or, re-read this and the original thread and fetch a clue. Good luck!
What nuance did he miss? “Democrats can never again nominate a woman or a person of color,” was his exact position. “We need to do this so we don’t scare away all the racist and sexist voters,” was his exact justification. With the full recognition that he is not advocating this out of any sort of personal racist or sexist animus, and is only proposing it as realpolitik, how is that not “The Democrats need to adopt racist/sexist policies to appeal to racist/sexist voters,” to a T?
To me it sounded like Senor was suggesting strategies that could increase the chances of winning POTUS.
I think you would agree that winning an election is paramount to the Dems. IMO, he admitted it would be an ugly strategy, and it certainly would be, but this is where we are in the US today. It’s almost unimaginable that such horrible methods might have to be employed but… yes. It’s realpolitik in a nasty, vicious country such as ours.
The only part I would disagree with was Senor’s notion that the Dems should plan right now to not run a woman or POC for 10 or 20 years. Thats no bueno because the calculation of who could win needs to be made on an election-by-election basis… not right now for the next 4 or 5 elections.
But I think Senor already defended his (admittedly un-nice and no-fun) position well enough so I dont want to speak for him.
I am heartened that others here could agree with him that it may be necessary to adopt noxious strategies to win the White House. Dopers arent too good at putting logic over Progressive emotions. It sucks, but it’s sadly where we are.
Yeah but you’ll never let Black people back into power. You’ll always have an excuse why it’s not time yet.
Me? Why do you say that about me? I would love to see a black, or female, or gay president. More than I would another white bread dude. But it’s more important to win the presidency than to burnish one’s woke credentials.
It’s very much time for a POC president. Right now. But only if they can be elected.
You are only racist when it’s politically convenient or expedient for you. I guess you can be proud of that.
But go ahead and tell an entire generation or two of Black kids how they should trust that you’ll let their grandchildren maybe hold political power, maybe.
Then shut up.
Yes, that’s exactly what I just said. He suggested a strategy on how to win future elections, and that strategy was, “Never again nominate a woman or a person of color.”
And this sums up why this is such a spectacularly stupid strategy to pursue right now, especially in light of the unprecedented gains the Republicans made in Black and Latino voters in the last election. We need to demonstrate to these communities that we’ve got their back, and “Shut up and follow the White guy we picked to lead you,” is the absolute fucking opposite of that.
“I’m not racist, I’m only catering to my clientele. They’re racist. What am I supposed to do? Go out of business?”
And the answer is"Is this the business you really want to get into in the first place?"
I understand using fake quotes to paraphrase. It’s sort of bad form but I do it myself. But then doubling down by saying it’s my exact position is pretty dishonest. You must know this is false. Never? I said that 15 years from now or a hundred years from now or 500 years from now we still can’t nominate a woman or POC? In fact I think in the other thread I said something quite differently - like running on gay rights in 1996 vs 2016, we weren’t quite there yet but we would be in the nearish future. Meanwhile you’d have lost the 1996 elections trying to push it, which probably would’ve set back gay rights.
I’m not saying we can’t run a woman or POC. I’m saying we should stop trying to force that, because while it would be nice to elect the first woman to the presidency, that “would be nice” is absolutely trivial in comparison to the prospect of losing to fascism. We have to look at candidates holistically, what votes they get, what votes they lose, and that has to be part of the calculation of choosing a candidate. If you get a figure that’s so inspiring and so well-liked that they can overcome the fact that they run afoul of the racist American electorate, like Obama, it can be a reasonable decision to run them. But no one feels about Kamala Harris the way people felt about Obama. The reason Harris was VP because Biden started from the position of wanting a woman as VP to meet what he perceived to be demographic requirements. This ultimately backfired when he was unable to run, unwilling to pull out in time, and she ascended to the main candidate by default. And I also suspect that America was more comfortable with a black man than any woman.
There’s a huge socially progressive push to put people who have never been in positions of power and representation there. Some people want REALLY HARD for a woman to be president, enough that they consider nominating a woman to be a huge deal in and of itself. I’m fighting against that urge by saying that we should correctly recognize that this is a disadvantage, and not an advantage. Yes, it SHOULDN’T be, but it is, and trying to force it to happen has cost us massively.
You DID run a woman, and you DID run a POC in the last election, and yet you lost those black and latino voters. So how do you think that supports your conclusion? Is your conclusion “we must’ve not run a POC/Woman candidate ENOUGH” from that data point? Maybe we needed a black woman Muslim crippled lesbian as VP too? These black and latino voters were willing to show up for Biden but not Harris and your conclusion is that obviously they need someone who is also a minority to vote for.It is entirely possible that latino and black voters aren’t ready for a woman president and you lost those votes because she was a woman.
You said thirty years. Considering the demographics of this board, that’s after almost everyone involved in the conversation is dead, which is close enough to “never” to justify my paraphrase.
Well, you were saying that, but if you’re softening your position, that’s cool. But you’re railing at phantoms, here. No one is advocating for nominating anyone because “it would be nice,” and neither Harris nor Clinton were nominated for that reason. Harris certainly was in the VP slot originally because of ticket balancing concerns, but its hard to criticize that decision, given that it worked. She was on the ticket because people looked at her candidacy “holistically, what votes they get, what votes they lose,” and correctly determined that she’d get the votes we needed to win in 2020.
She was the candidate in 2024 due to a nearly unprecedented situation where the main candidate dropped out halfway through the race. The “holistic determination” made there was mostly, “If we run anyone else, we lose Biden’s enormous re-election war chest,” and its hard to argue that was the wrong call, even in retrospect.
Harris lost for three reasons:
- A shortened campaign
- A perception of a weak economy
- She was running against an Obama-level charismatic opponent.
Any one of those factors could have sunk a campaign, and they all applied to any possible replacement we could have found for Harris. She weathered all three, and still only lost by a hair. Was her loss within the margin of votes she might have lost due to the general bigotry of the country? Who knows? If this were a simulation, and you could re-run it but Kamala Harris is a White dude, does Trump lose? Sure, maybe. But that wasn’t an option in real life. In real life, Tim Kaine running a campaign funded on change he scrounged from his couch cushions is going to lose harder.
Whoever runs in 2028 isn’t going to be facing any of those issues. There will be new ones, obviously, most dangerously four years of Republican sabotage of institutions that protect our elections, but, “She lost because she was a woman,” is a terrible analysis. It’s a factor, but it’s one of the smallest, and most difficult to measure. We don’t know if it was even decisive, and either way, it’s dwarfed by these larger, mostly unique circumstances.
Arguing against a policy of pre-emptively disqualifying non-White candidates is not the same as advocating only non-White candidates. The Democrats are losing support with these key demographics. Obviously, simply running a candidate who is non-White isn’t sufficient to stop the bleeding. But a policy of only running White candidates would increase the bleeding.
I didn’t click the link to Mr. Beef’s alleged misogyny, but based on skimming this thread I’ll guess I’d take his side.
I do NOT understand this attitude. What would have been the better outcome on November 5th:
- Having Trump win against a “perfect” candidate (whatever that means).
- Having Trump lose to a less “perfect” Democrat.
- (I’ll end the post now since this magnificent editor insisted on putting me into ordered list made as soon as it saw the “1.”!)
What a fucking bullshit argument. Just apologize for over-reaching your augment and move on to your next bit of dishonest blather.
Did we somehow skip the Democrat that, while not perfect, was a damnsight better than Trump?