As a moderate Democrat in some ways I agree that the movement is away from moderation, however, I don’t think it is quite there yet. But speaking with someone who agrees with some but not all of the extreme progressives’ viewpoints, there are many flavors of radicalism which not every progressive takes, and so any one of those viewpoints is going to be a minority even within the Democratic party.
The Republican party has essentially embraced fascism, so most likely is that they will try for fascist solutions. Suppression of dissent, eliminating voting, muzzling the press, ‘cleansing’ of opponent groups.
I have to wonder if the coming devastation of some of their major voting bloc – old males in areas with poor medical access run by pretend-the-virus-away republican leaders – is going to shift any minds, or just remove them from the voting rolls.
The imaginary Democratic move away from ‘moderate’ is in fact just a readjustment toward values the Democratic party always stood for but had drifted to the right of, in the general lurch in that direction. If you compare Democratic platforms over the last forty years or so you will see this.
Well, I think it’s obvious that Trump is making some feeble attempts to reach out to the black community. Any small percentage counts. He certainly doesn’t rail against them as much as some other minorities.
I think, after Trump’s gone, you could begin to see Latino outreach again. Bush was not hostile to latinos at all.
Even minor bumps to either could keep Republicans competitive.
Well, at least during campaign mode, and on election day.
Now, back before the third-way traingulation politics era, that’s a different story.
They could disband the armed forces but keep writing checks to the executives of defense contractors. They’d actually increase their profits if they didn’t have to spend a portion of the money they receive on delivering goods, so they’d go for it.
The conservative platform since the late forties has been built around defying enemies. And if an enemy didn’t exist that seemed threatening enough, they built one up.
Their current problem is they’ve backed themselves into a corner. They’ve defined themselves as the party that defends old white men from everyone who isn’t an old white man. Their “us” has gotten so small that “them” is now a majority.
To break out of this dilemma, they need to invent a new scenario. They need to start talking about how they’re defending all Americans from some foreign enemy. Maybe the Chinese.
We found out the answer to the OP’s title question yesterday: Get the GOP majority of a state supreme court to bar the governor from postponing the election in the face of a contagious pandemic, then get the GOP majority of the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an extension of absentee balloting in the same election. Combine the well-known advanced age of most election volunteers with greater population density in Democratic cities. Et voila: Mostly-white GOP-leaning rural voters more willing to vote because they won’t be lined up by the hundreds, while Dem-leaning more diverse Milwaukee city residents face the dilemma of massive lines at five polling sites (versus about 180 usually!) or not voting. Served cold, serves to stave off [del]electoral loss[/del] hunger for about four years. :eek:
As was said to another Republican from Wisconsin: At long last, have you left no sense of decency? In this case, to make your neighbors, your fellow Americans, your fellow Wisconsinites, have to choose between voting and risking their health? This time, we’re getting an answer to the rhetorical question: no. :eek:
Wisconsin happens to be one of the whiter states in the US, but generally this is absolutely correct. Besides taking advantage of the health crisis to try and steal a WI state supreme court seat, what the GOP just did in Wisconsin, whether intended or not, is definitely a trial balloon for their 2020 strategy. In the likely event that they can keep conservative courts aligned behind their voter suppression tactics and their own base doesn’t turn against them for it this will be the strategy in November, and especially in the many swing or slightly leaning states where demographic shifts have endangered their elecotoral chances.
Hopefully coronavirus has died down by this fall and we don’t have to find out what actually happens, but in all likelihood the federal government is not going to do what it needs to do which is put in legislation to require a mail-in federal election in 2020 now, and we’ll get a patchwork of incomplete state measures with possibly a too-little-too late attempt at the last second from the federal government. In states like Florida that could easily swing and have GOP state governments, there is going to be an intentional effort to prevent necessary steps to having a fair election.
Hopefully this a unique case, but the GOP learning how far they can go, and that they can keep their base of support in line even when blatantly admitting that they have to prevent fair elections to win.
The flaw in your thinking is that it is the STATES that run and regulate elections, not the Federal government. We have always had, and barring a constitutional amendment, will continue to have a “patchwork” of state measures because that’s how the system is set up.
This is actually not true. What the constitution says is that the states can run their own federal elections with autonomy except in cases where the federal government chooses to regulate how they run them:
A practical example of what this would look like in this case would be Ron Widen’s Vote By Mail bill.
If I may junior mod a bit…
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Discussion of election law and procedure is not what this thread is about. Also,
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I am asking about what ***ethical ***measures the Republican Party could use to solve its demographic problems. Saying things like, “Disenfranchise minorities, steal votes, voter suppression, etc.” are not good-faith answers to the question. That would be like me asking, “The Cleveland Browns are always losing, what can they do to become a winning team?” and then people jump in with answers like, “Cheat! Bribe refs! Use illegal equipment! Take performance drugs!”
Ok, you make a good point.
The answer is then-* none.* Because:
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In reality, they’d need to abandon two of their core groups, and they are unwilling to do that. Bigots and the Evangelicals are two important core groups. What would be left are the Plutocrats, and there arent enough of them.
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The GOP has no ethics.
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The GOP thinks (or claims) that Disenfranchising minorities, voter suppression, and Jim Crow laws ARE ethical things to do, since clearly, preventing 100000 minority citizens from voting to prevent one illegal from voting is a Good Thing. :rolleyes:This proving my point 2.
Sorry for the tangent/hijack. That discussion does probably deserve its own thread.
The one thing I’ll say to this before actually trying to answer the question, is that it’s more like asking what the Houston Astros can do to win. The point is not just that the GOP is looking at a future where with the current political landscape they will have a tougher and tougher time winning elections; it’s that we already know they cheat to win elections, especially in states where changes either in ethnic demographics or urban/rural divides have swung the voter-base more towards the Democrats.
As for what to do ethically, the choices are either to look for a middle ground where they keep the majority of their current base of support, and find inroads into traditionally democratic leaning demographics, or to abandon their traditional base and try to find a sizeable chunk of voters across demographics that are looking for a new coalition to represent them.
I think if the GOP could reform their image and really prove that they mean it they would have some inroads into socially conservative minorities. I think in order to do this they would need to commit to that for several years because at the moment they not only have a problem of current policies targeting minorities, they’ve had these policies for long enough that they have a trust/credibility issues with large numbers of minorities.
A bigger problem for them is that while I don’t think it’s anywhere near a majority, there is a sizeable portion of out-and-out racists in the GOP base and you can’t pick up minority voters while keeping the racists, at least in large enough numbers to matter. Possibly more problematically is that the GOP has been extremely effective at targeting a larger group of white voters who aren’t overtly racist but can be susceptible to dogwhistles that hit them at an instinctive or emotional level. I think most of these voters just have anger and dissatisfaction that needs to be vented somewhere and there are other ways to pick them up, but the GOP doesn’t want to go from dominating this group to having to find new inroads and compete more with the Democrats for them.
In the extreme long-term, as long as heavily-white states remain that way and the demographic changes continue to be regional, the GOP will at least have a shot at being a majority party in the Senate and many state governments. Obviously they don’t want to be permanently just hanging on without a real possibility of controlling Congress and the White House, so the best thing for them long-term would be to either somehow find a middle-ground where they can slightly adjust their base to include more minorities, or reach a point where they hit rock bottom with their current trajectory and are forced to completely realign similar to what they did after FDR - and find a swathe of minority voters who don’t feel adequately represented by the Democrats and white voters who they hadn’t been reaching before.
Yes. Of course. Haven’t we been saying that from the very beginning?
Velocity, what is our reality could make you think there is another answer?
Thread: > What are realistic solutions for the GOP to address its demographics problem?
First you wanted realistic. Now you want ethical. It’s like the kid saying, “Mom, I want to grow up and be a rock musician.” Her response: “Now dear, you can’t have both.”
The GOP have demonstrated their complete lack of ethics for decades. Their “ethical” solution would be mass suicide, but I don’t see that as realistic. As I said, the “realistic” solution is mass murder to break the demographic wave, and I hope that’s unlikely. But I recall seeing KILL LIBERALS truck mud flaps. That’s the GOP core (young edition).
But wait! There’s another solution! Chemtrails of bleach, turning everyone old and white! Should include enough opioids, crack, and waffle syrup to change mental attitudes, too. That might make up for all the rednecks and faithful who’ll succumb soon. (cite)
One thing Republicans can do without sacrificing their “values” is to embrace a reasonable, science-based approach to climate change, an issue where even their own younger voters are at odds with the party. There’s nothing really “conservative” about denying the reality of it, whatever the belief in its cause. They also need to drop their hysterical positions against LGBTQ persons – where else are their voters going to turn if they do? – and devise a 21st century policy on health and reproductive issues or they’re going to lose another huge demographic permanently: women.
If Republicans are counting on today’s Millennials to turn more conservative as they enter late middle age, simply as a matter of human nature, well, that ship has sailed with that generation.
The problem, as I noted in a previous post, is that the Republican party has become a party of people who feel they are superior. They’re white people who think they’re better than non-white people, men who think they’re better than women, old people who think they’re better than young people, Evangelical Christians who think they’re better than people who aren’t Evangelical Christians, straight people who think they’re better than gay people, English speakers who think they’re better than people who speak other languages, rich people who think they’re better than poor people, people from rural communities who think they’re better than people from cities, People whose ancestors came from Western Europe who think they’re better than people whose ancestors came from anywhere else - and all of these groups want a party that recognizes their superiority and agrees that they are entitled to special treatment.
For the Republican party to reach beyond its base, it either has to say that some of the demographic groups outside of its base are just as good as the groups inside its base - which would alienate the people in its base - or it has to try to appeal to those outside demographic groups by offering them second-class status to what it offers its favored groups - and that’s not an offer that’s likely to draw many people from those outside groups. Because the Democrats are offering the people in these groups equal status.
That will never fly because reality has a liberal bias. Insightful intestines trump science.
How is that not a 180-degree turn from their present policies?
That’s not turning themselves into a carbon (heh) copy of the Democrats in every way. You can agree with them on some issues while differentiating yourself on others. For instance, on trade/internationalist issues both here and in the UK, some people are against some globalization initiatives because they are right-wing isolationists, while some are against them because they feel they hurt domestic workers, but that doesn’t mean that pro-labor and pro-nativist politicians are exactly like each other in every way.