It’s a fact that it’s not a prerequisite for a Republican to eke out an Electoral College victory (combined with three million vote loss in the popular vote) against an unpopular Democratic opponent who was attempting to break the glass ceiling while getting investigated by the FBI and publicly collapsing. It is not a fact that it’s not a prerequisite for a Democrat. That is unproven.
Oh please. Clinton wasn’t popular, that’s all you need. You only have to look elsewhere in the world to see that the rest is complete rubbish. Look at Macron, Tymoshenko, and Caputova for examples.
And “a lot of this country” is going to vote R no matter what. The two overlap quite a bit. “A lot” weren’t ready for a Black president or a Catholic one either.
Are MI, PA, and WI part of that “a lot”?
I’ll admit I’m curious about how he’s going to appeal to voters who have some level of issue with his sexual orientation and/or marriage, not all of whom are right-wing troglodytes who would never vote for a Democrat regardless.
I’m also curious about his plans for mitigating his outsider status if elected. Obama had Biden as the well-connected insider; I wonder if Pete has someone similar in mind. (And wouldn’t it be weird if it was Biden again? I mean, I don’t see it happening but it certainly could.)
Well, those people will either enter the 21st Century, or they won’t. What’s Mayor Pete supposed to say to those “who have some level of issue with his sexual orientation and/or marriage,” anyway? “Please think of me as a human being”?
I know what I’D tell them: “Get your mind out of my bedroom!”
Yes, but that’s not a way to win votes. What he needs to do is to convince them that the thing they’re hung up about is not nearly as important as other things like the economy, international relations, social justice or not voting for a corrupt wannabe-dictator who abducts children.
Precisely. And when it happened, it turned out that ‘a lot’ was in fact a very small minority and that that issue was dwarfed by policy and character issues.
I expect that there are a very large number of people who are uncomfortable with homosexuality and would really prefer a straight candidate, but for whom it’s sufficiently far down on their list of priorities that they’d vote for a gay man anyway.
Likewise, there was a lot of handwringing about how X% of voters wouldn’t vote for a Mormon, and then there was a Mormon candidate, and while he lost, he did exactly as well any generic candidate of his party would have been predicted to do given the conditions of the economy, etc.
There’s not an easy comparison, but I don’t know that polling on homosexuality is even that far off of where racial issues stood in 2007. (And the trends are a lot more positive too.)
I’m pretty sure it would depress African-American and Latino turnout, especially among the more-reliable 35+ crowd. The evangelical whites (those who might have a problem with a gay man) aren’t voting for a Democrat anyway, but those Latino and AA voters who identify as either evangelical or very religious *are *Dem voters, but I don’t think they’d come out in very large numbers for a gay man. I think you’d lose a significant number of Latino and AA voters (who just wouldn’t show up) with Pete as the nominee.
I also don’t think a gay man on top of the ticket would do well in union halls Dems need in the industrial midwest.
I understand the importance of being able to look past a person’s gender/sex/color/etc, especially as Democrats, and in many ways we’re getting there, but I just don’t think 2020 is the year we want to test out if we’re woke enough as a nation to elect a gay man.
I think Mayor Pete is great, by the way, and could absolutely see him being president someday. I just don’t think he’s the right choice to win back the industrial midwest and fire up Latino and AA voters. I think a white man at the top of the Dem ticket needs to be able to really, really connect with minority voters, and the gay mayor of South Bend, IN, is probably gonna struggle with that.
I came to the opposite conclusion. I do agree that the amount of swing based on Obama’s societally-constructed race was less than the worst predictions, but the 2008 election seemed to mark an upsurge in blatantly racist rhetoric, organization, and memes, which hasn’t stopped yet. There’s so much blatant racism out there for everyone to see, and who know how much out there that we don’t see, that I would think it would refute the idea that the real problem with America is insufficiently-woke liberals, but the adherents of that idea seem to have doubled down instead.
I point out again that in Chicago Lightfoot being gay didn’t hurt her with Black or Latinx voters.
Chasing religiously conservative Hispanic voters is not the path to victory.
I would also point out the Mayor Pete is deeply religious, and while he might not be the type to grab the evangelicals, I think his attempt to reclaim the “Religious Left” is on point.
I would point out that Chicago is not representative of America as a whole. And also that I just don’t think we should test this out at the presidential level against Trump with a white gay man. People running for mayor of Chicago aren’t subject to right-wing smear campaigns like people running for president are. You know how easy it would be to target black and Latino voters with ads pointing out Pete’s homosexuality, hammering home the fact that he is married to a man, ultimately chipping away at their support for him in the general?
And it’s one thing to appeal to the religious left, of which I am a member, but they’re already ok with gay people. Religious blacks and latinos don’t neatly fit into that category of “religious left.” Socially they’re a lot more conservative, and fall a lot closer to the white evangelical view of homosexuality.
I’m not going to draw too many conclusions from the Lightfoot win. First, Chicago has a huge LGBT community, the Pride Parade draws a million people and forces the Chicago Cubs to not schedule a home game that day. When we the last time you ever heard of pro sports taking a back seat to anyone?
Second, the Lightfoot election was a bit of an oddity. She and Toni Preckwinkle got the most votes in a plurality in a massive field of candidates. If you read the mayoral thread, you’ll see most of us agreed that Preckwinkle only had the support of the unions and was despised because of an ill fated soda tax rammed through 2 days after the shock of the Trump win.
I really like Mayor Pete, so let’s see if he can continue his ascent. Quite frankly, it’s going to a rough road to win in 2020 as I think brain drain has made the upper Midwest less blue. At least there are unlikely to be many votes for 3rd party spoilers in 2020.
I do not disagree with that but I think their issue is with policies not the individuals or the identity pee se. A straight Hispanic who is strong for gay marriage trans rights and such will be no better to worse off than a fairly centrist white married gay man.
Yes Preckwinkle was a horrible candidate. But clearly gay was not disqualifying.
Fox News claimed that Buttigieg attacked Mike Pence “for no reason”.
The funny thing is–and I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself–that although I’ve made no secret of my opposition to Buttigieg, and even though I’m an atheist, I still really loved what he said about Pence for some reason:
Along with what Happy Lendervedder said, there are many Asian Christian voters in the US who also lean left on many issues but are quite stalwart when it comes to being pro-traditional marriage. I think the D’s are really underestimating how deep-rooted opposition to LGBT is across many voting demographics in the US, even if aforementioned voting blocs don’t dare say so out loud anymore.
Pertinent to the question at hand though it shouldn’t be. The question is if Black and Hispanic voters would decline to vote for someone who is gay on the basis of their disapproval of homosexuality. Specifically we care about those of those voters in the critical states of PA, MI, and WI.
Are Blacks and Hispanic voters very dissimilar to those who share their demographic label in those states? I don’t think so.
We do not care if a white Georgian will vote against a gay candidate due to their being gay. It’s not a change of their vote.
Velocity actually no there are not so many Asian Christian voters in the US who otherwise lean left except for “pro-traditional marriage” … not enough in any key state as to be a group worth thinking about pandering to.