A lot of people are offering free advice to the Democratic Party these days. This is natural in the wake of a resounding defeat, especially a defeat that was snatched so clumsily from the jaws of victory.
I gave some advice a while back (see: Why Trump Won And How To Fix That For Future Elections). Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of those folks who appeared on the scene, often as members of Indivisible groups, after the election. I see a lot of frustration with the Democratic Party (and our local DFL, which is what we call the Democratic Party in Minnesota). Here are my new suggestions inspired by what I hear people saying out there in the libraries, public meeting rooms, and town halls, at least in suburban Minnesota.
Be A Party
Remember when a judge ruled on an issue regarding voter suppression during the 2016 election? Well, there were a few such rulings, but one had to do with a consent decree against the Republican Party, forcing them to not actively force African Americans and other non-whites away from the polls using intimidation, fear, and misinformation. The concern was that the Trump campaign was doing this, therefore the several years old consent decree should be continued.
The court ruled against extending the consent decree. Why? Because the Trump campaign wasn’t threatening voters? No. They were. Because threatening voters can’t actually change an election’s outcome? No. It can. Because we decided it is OK to exclude minorities from the democratic process officially, not just by default? No. That was not decided.
The consent decree was not extended because the Trump campaign and the Republican party are two different things. Extending the consent decree on the Republican Party because of what the Trump campaign was doing would be like the police arresting you because I rob a gas station.
Crazy, isn’t it? Both major parties have a national organization, plus an organization that helps fund but otherwise has nothing to do with Congressional races. Then, each state has a separate iteration of the party, not quite fully connected to the national party. And, a given candidate’s campaign may or may not have various legal connections with other party entities.
This is actually very complicated, and varies across the landscape.
The point is, regular normal people who are not party insiders can’t really relate to a political party without frequently getting burned or being confused because there is not a political party.
Now, I’m not saying that there should be one entity to serve all the needs of the party across geography and at every level of government. I have no idea if the multi-headed hydra approach is a good thing or a bad thing. I’ve not analyzed that. Perhaps an expert or two will weigh in below, in the comments section.
But I do know this: A sense of oneness, simplicity, and therefore, accessibility to the inside of it, could be engendered to the benefit of the party. The way it works now, individuals can sidle up to what they think is the Democratic Party, then an entity one might easily think is the same entity does some bone-headed thing, and that’s when the regular normal person finds out that their friend, the Democratic Party, has a built in way of making excuses instead of taking responsibility for its actions.
The party asks for unity among its supporters. Fine. But the party should also develop some unity and coherence within itself, so that people can understand it better, and know, that if they are involved at the Congressional District or County level somewhere, that their voices are being clearly heard by the national party as well as the presidential campaign and all of that.
Early Endorsements Stifle
This is an example of what I want to expand on a bit below, but I want to get this near the top of the post because it is a very current issue. I’ve written about this recently. See: A plethora of early endorsements does not endear the new Democrats to the DFL in MinnPost and Collin Peterson, RT Rybak, and David Wellstone Play Inside Baseball? at Minnesota Progressive Project.
Go read those posts to get the details, but essentially, this: We are experiencing endorsement creep, especially by individuals but also organizations. The creep is towards the early date. Insiders, like elected officials or former elected officials, and key organizations, are starting to give Democratic candidate endorsements before many people have even heard which candidates are running. That is a clear message to the voters and would be party participants: Don’t bother, we’ve got this. Please, please, please, Democratic party activists and operatives and sympathetic organizations. Stop this. You are damaging the party, and forcing people to make what suddenly seems a very justified decision to walk away from the party and consider themselves independent. Or worse.
Again, read those articles to get more details.
Try To Act Alive Even While You Are Resting
Meanwhile, as endorsements are too early, other activities are too late. Many of the Indivisible activists I so frequently encounter are wondering where the Democratic Party is. Well, the Democratic Party is there, and they are having various meetings and such, but they are not very visible and the meetings are generally over rather esoteric stuff. A political party has seasonality, because elections are periodic. So, this makes sense.
But right now, people are scared, angry, frustrated, and are trying to do something about the current horrendous situation in American government and politics. Seasonality be damned, get into action!
Several months from now, the seemingly asleep Democratic Party will lumber out of its cave, look around, and try to decide which Republicans to eat. But by that time the rest of the people will have already killed several awful bills, made a large number of elected representatives rethink their strategy of ignoring the voters in their districts, and generally changed the mode and tenor of politics at several levels across the country. Without help or involvement of the Democratic Party.
The party will turn to those activists and ask for their help. The activists will look back at the party, and say, “Who are you? Oh, right, you are the political party that lost all those races. Don’t worry, we’ve got this.” then turn back to their work. I don’t think the Democratic Party wants that.
Political parties change their modus operendus and culture about every 30 years, a major exception being Tammany Hall, which, as a tightly run organized crime organization, kept going for much longer. Sometimes that turnover is accompanied by the disappearance of one party or the emergence of a new one. Seriously, Democrats, you are facing an existential crisis, and you don’t even know it.
Put People Choosing Candidates Above Other Party Business
A detail, but an important one. Please, at conventions and caucuses, do this. If there is a point at which people are expected to vote on candidates, do that first. I have never been to a DFL convention at which the time given to candidates to speak and the time given to participants to vote or caucus isn’t crunched by party business, at least a little, sometimes a lot. Do the esoteric party business last, even if that means doing it at a different meeting later on. (Fact: All DFL conventions are held in rooms that are available only up to a certain hour, at which time everyone has to be out of the room.)
Make Primaries Easier, Caucuses More Engaging
There has been quite a bit of discussion about this, and I have previously offered a solution, not too different from one being considered. (see: How to fix the Minnesota Presidential Caucus). The bottom line: The caucus is what people really need, and the primary is what the people really want. There is a way to have both, we sort of already have both. We just need to adjust a few things to make everyone whine less, which is about as good as it is going to get.
Acknowledge The Waking Giant
I’ve already said this above, in a different way, but it is worth repeating. I was at an Indivisible Event a couple of months ago at which several thousand people spontaneously showed up to yell at a Republican. The Democrats have never managed that, by the way. I was speaking to a woman who had previously never been involved in politics but who suffered through a major traffic jam and was now standing outside in the breezy cold to make her point. She said to me, “They have woken a sleeping giant. And she is pissed.”
I have yet to see any member of the Democratic Party, in any form, acknowledge this phenomenon. WTF, man? Fail to do this at your peril.
Don’t be a brat, eat a brat
Have more events that get people together. The party tends to have certain events and they tend to do a lot of work at these events.
Indivisible has a lot of events and they do a lot of work at those events. When people walk away from the Democratic Party events, they feel like they’ve been involved in something that could be important. When people walk away from an Indivisible event, they feel like they’ve just left a gathering among friends at which they started to figure out a way to survive an uncertain future.
The Democratic Party should start hosting community meetings of its own, inviting everyone including Indivisible to show up, not to have a candidate listen to the people but to have the people listen to each other.
See you at the Tax March, which was not organized by and seems to have nothing to do with the Democratic Party even though it is an event necessitated by the Democratic Party losing bigly at the national level.
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Yep- and I would add: Go ahead and tilt at windmills. Just because your pollsters say a race is un-winnable does NOT mean you sit them out! Kansas got close and who knows what could have happened with just one more paid staffer on hand? And, more importantly, the DNCC could have sown seeds for a larger grass roots movement [ like the Bernie one they pooh poohed ] When you choose to sit out , the activists often see the DNCC as little more than a data driven entity – not much different than corporatists….
If you only fight when you think you can win, that’s cowardice.
If you assess what you fight on criteria about how much you care, you’ll do better overall.
Sure, rate those close together in “what you care about” to which ones you’ll win, but it should be the second-order sorting algorithm, else you’re not fighting for your values, you’re just fighting to win.
Which tells us nothing about your values, except you value winning over doing what you think is right.
Greg,
I think finding and recruiting good candidates is really important. The thing is, the party is qualified to do that and “grass-roots” organizations aren’t, except when they are actually astroturf, like the Tea Party.
The other problem for the Democrats is the lack of a message that works across different geography. While the redness of red States is often exaggerated, the reality is that a Democratic Senator from some of those places is going to vote against the party if he or she wants to keep the job.
So, it is important to get local people involved, but the transition from winning in the city and winning in the State is a difficult one.
“Seriously, Democrats, you are facing an existential crisis, and you don’t even know it.”
So So exasperatingly true!…From Salon, via OpenSecrets.org: “Trump’s campaign spent $398 million last year, while Clinton dolled out $768 million.” Which may again be part of ‘The Explanation’: Big money just might be the problem, not the solution.
>reality is that a Democratic Senator from some of those places is going to vote against the party if he or she wants to keep the job.
Except in many of those places, Democrats are more liberal, so they can’t win primaries. Nate Silver has been writing about this.
“Except in many of those places, Democrats are more liberal”
Than who?
“so they can’t win primaries. ”
Trump won on removing corruption, getting jobs for workers in, curbing wall street,increasing the welfare state and several other extremely (for the merkins) liberal planks.
Not forgetting a massive reduction in military actions.
Trumpalina won on those platforms. Very VERY liberal platforms.
Seems that liberal is a winning strategy. Even the most disliked president in the history of the USA, who had negative rep THE DAY AFTER WINNING can win on liberal platoforms.
seems like you are, as usual, wrong again “Mike”.
“Nate Silver has been writing about this”
Who? Don’t care, actually, if all you have is “he writes about this”, then there’s nothing worth reading said.
MikeN 5,
That doesn’t make sense– Democratic primaries are for Democrats. Who do you think is winning them?
Zebra, Nate Silver documents how the Democrats are more liberal in some of these ‘red’ states, putting the elected ones in a tough spot in the primary if they don’t resist Trump enough, and in a tough spot in the general if they do. My guess is attempts to primary would end up being shot down like Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, but it’s the Western states that tend to have a more liberal primary base.
“Nate Silver documents how the Democrats are more liberal in some of these ‘red’ states”
But if they’re democratic senators in red states, then their more liberal stance (and this is begging the question as to whether this latest guru of yours is not in fact talking out of his hat) is overriding the red state “default group stance” where the corporatist “centrist” democrats with their rightwing political planks have not managed to get in.
And, as you ignored before, Trump WON on many MANY progressive liberal planks. Despite being the most widely despised president ever.
That’s not what begs the question means.
But you do not know what it does mean, nor what “common usage” means.
Ain’t never done nuffin right.
PS I never said it was begging the question, I said it begged the question of… a question begging to be answered).
Hence the common pseudo-intellectual complaints (like grammar nazi-ing) about invalid use of some specific term of art ™, when the context is not of the art that term is specific for.
“begging the question fallacy” is not “begging the question of…”, so your complaint is about a thing never said. I never rebutted your idiotic post with a claim it was a fallacy.
You did say ‘begging the question’ while claiming you didn’t.
Further research suggests that the correct usage has been ignored so much that the dictionaries have given up, so I will withdraw my statement.
Nope, try again.
Getting back to the topic:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/17/racism-motivated-trump-voters-more-than-authoritarianism-or-income-inequality/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-politics%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.0463a5ccadf8
What should Democrats do?
Sorry, but you are still on the same topic. That article is begging the question. It assumes that a certain position represents racial bias to conclude that the Trump voters were racially biased. Perhaps it is declaring that society is keeping blacks down is the racist position. Indeed, it is the Democrats position that has changed to be ‘less racist’.
“That article is begging the question.”
How would you know?
” It assumes that a certain position represents racial bias to conclude that the Trump voters were racially biased.”
No, it asks questions that indicate racism. If you ask some asshat “Are you an asshat?” they’ll say “No”. Duh.
But you ask them a question only an asshat would say “yes” to, and if they say “Yes”, then asshat is assigned.
Tell me, when you assign the label “alarmist” to those who accept the evidence for AGW, do you ask the question “are you an alarmist?” and only call them alarmist if they say “Yes”, or do you assume from their words that they fit your particular meaning of “alarmist”?
“Perhaps it is declaring that society is keeping blacks down is the racist position. ”
Almost certainly isn’t, though.
Yeah, if only we had some direct evidence of that, like the things they said about President Obama and his family for 8 years, or their statements about immigrants and other minorities.
Oh wait, we do have more than enough evidence on that. Only a moron would try to say we don’t.
Dean, according to the article, the Republicans have become slightly ‘less racist’ in four years. The main difference is a change in the Democrats number. Somehow all these racists had no problems voting for Obama. Maybe they listened to David Alan Grier and voted for the white half.
“have become slightly ‘less racist’ in four years.”
So 98% as racist?
“The main difference is a change in the Democrats number.”
How does that make the (R) LESS racist???? It doesn’t.
“Somehow all these racists had no problems voting for Obama.”
Uh, those were Democrats, not Republicans.
Somehow all those racists who didn’t vote for him spent 8 years stalling and complaining and insisting he was muslim or some other mad shit.
Because they were still racists.
“Maybe they listened to David Alan Grier and voted for the white half.”
No, what happened is you are batshit insane.
So on the four questions dealing with level of agreement on racial statements:
for Republicans:
Q1: no change ’12 to ’16
Q2: 4.2 to 4
Q3: 3.9 to 3.7
Q4: 4 to 3.8
(Without other information it can’t be said whether any of these are significant changes.)
On every question the Republican score measuring agreement with a racist statement was higher than it was for Democratic respondents. You did realize that higher scores were indications of a more racist stance, right? It is clearly stated in the article:
“The biggest movement was among those who voted for the Democrat, who were far less likely to agree with attitudes coded as more racially biased.”
From the “Which of these had the biggest influence?” section.
Finally, the statistical tool of regression can tease apart which had more influence on the 2016 vote: authoritarianism or symbolic racism, after controlling for education, race, ideology, and age. Moving from the 50th to the 75th percentile in the authoritarian scale made someone about 3 percent more likely to vote for Trump. The same jump on the SRS scale made someone 20 percent more likely to vote for Trump.
Racial attitudes made a bigger difference in electing Trump than authoritarianism.
I will agree that the data was not presented very well, but not so much that saying they indicated that Republicans were less racist than Democratic folks takes some willful misreading.
“Maybe they listened to David Alan Grier and voted for the white half.”
If you worked as hard on understanding science and reality as you do in developing asinine comments like that you would have a chance of earning some respect.
You repeated the point I was making, the chart has Republicans less racist in 2016 than in 2012.
“the chart has Republicans less racist”
Than when they were more racist than currently.
Big whoop.
Your posts are more full of shit than ever before, “mike”.
“You repeated the point I was making, the chart has Republicans less racist in 2016 than in 2012.”
No, I did not. I stated there is no way to know that, since we don’t know anything about the margin of error in those studies.
You’ve never had any statistics experience have you?
Your making a big song and dance about how there’s a tiny drop in how racist republicans are, when the annual variation is large compared to the difference you want to talk about.
So happy to say “We’re not as racist as we have been!” you really don’t care it’s also “We’re more racist than we have been before!”. But also “We’re more racist than Democrats!”.
OK, fair enough on margin of error. You have a big movement on the Democratic side, being used to label Republican motivation as ‘racism’, when there has been no change to maybe a slight drop for Republicans in the measurement.
I have no idea whether the movements for the Democratic group are significant either – for the same reason.
The observation was simply that the Republican party member values were consistently above those for the Democratic party member values.
Are the Democrat changes as statistically meaningless as the Republican ones?
The headline is racism motivated Trump voters more than authoritarianism. It is begging the question by declaring certain positions as racism. The evidence suggests Democrats are the ones motivated by race, with a bigger change from 2012 than the Republicans. Plus working class whites who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trump.
Repeated from #28:
Did you read the (admittedly brief) mention of the regression analysis, and the contribution to voting habit the authoritarian vs racism stances had?
Begging the question? No, not at all.
“The evidence suggests Democrats are the ones motivated by race, with a bigger change from 2012 than the Republicans. Plus working class whites who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trump.”
Conflation of two issues: the individual graphs are attempts to display opinions on issues related to beliefs on race as they break down by party.
The comment about views on race playing a larger factor in the election than authoritarianism makes no distinction about how views on race, broken down by political party, influenced voting habits: the analysis simply measured overall effects. That’s reflected in the title’s lack of reference to party, only trump voters. Since he specifically pointed that out I have to assume that that difference was significant when the analysis was done.
Without more information about the data (as I said earlier) we can’t make many other conclusive statements about it.
“Are the Democrat changes as statistically meaningless as the Republican ones?”
That too is a meaningless query. It wouldn’t matter one way or the other: you republican despicables are much more racist, and trump supporters are more likely to be racist and more driven to vote orange (the new black) the more racist they are, with a higher tendency than if they’re just sheeple following the beta-carotene cucklord.
“You have a big movement on the Democratic side”
Is there? Begging more questions…
“being used to label Republican motivation as ‘racism”
Nope, racism motivates them to vote trump. It’s in the paper. And it’s not the democrats writing the paper, either, dumbass.
” It is begging the question by declaring certain positions as racism.”
Ah, so you “think” that begging the question is what definitions of terms means. Certainly a dumbass stance. No. And not even you limit yourself to what you want to petulantly demand that report does when you want to assert alarmism to the IPCC.
“The evidence suggests Democrats are the ones motivated by race”
No, the evidence is that the Republicans are the ones motivated by race. They score higher in racism than Democrats. That’s the evidence.
“with a bigger change from 2012 than the Republicans. ”
With Republicans remaining much more racist even at that insignificant (and, yes, it’s insignificant if the lower bound of the 2012 figure is the same as the upper bound of Q4’s figure), hence your assertion about Democrats evidentially disproved.
“Plus working class whites who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trump.”
Really? ALL working class whites who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trumpalina? I believe you’re talking out of your arse, “mike”.
All the Trump voters were ex-Obama voters who were working-class white? Really? Sure about that? I believe you’re talking out of your arse, “mike”.
While the redness of red States is often exaggerated, the reality is that a Democratic Senator from some of those places is going to vote against the party if he or she wants to keep the job.
Indeed, and that is a good thing.
The Democratic Party tries to be a big tent party Democrats have a very wide range of preferences on issues. Until recently, we managed that quite well. I’m afraid that the influx of a lot of people who assumed the party would look like themselves, and not vary much beyond that, has made for a lot of internal fighting.
Having a majority that often acts like a minority is better than having a minority that is in lock step. This has to do with the caucus.
MikeN,
You clearly have the concept of “begging the question fallacy” all wrong. Go back and read the description.
The other thing you have wrong, and it isn’t only you, is this overgeneralizing language, just like when you said “men are more aggressive” in the other thread. This implies a property distributed over the entire population, which is a type of fallacy as well.
The data says what the data says. If this is a science blog, it would be nice if people could use language the way scientists do. (Not that scientists don’t slip into colloquial language and cause confusion themselves, but they are more careful writing papers and giving presentations.)
So, there is a correlation between “white” voting for Republican presidential candidates and being a racist. Also true for being Authoritarian, as I read it.
This is the problem for Democrats that I pointed out. What do you do? Run on a racist platform?
There was also an opinion piece in the NYT the same day suggesting that working on turnout was very important and had been/was being neglected. This means paying canvassers, for example, rather than spending on ads designed for the very few “swing voters”.
So, Greg, are you responding to that cut-and-paste quote from me #33 because there’s a girly picture? But not when I said it?
I’m hurt, Greg, I’m tellin’ ya. How do you know I don’t look like that?
How do you know he doesn’t imagine you look like that?!?!?!?
‘course we don’t know, but we also don’t know that it makes any difference.
>So, there is a correlation between “white” voting for Republican presidential candidates and being a racist.
If you think Obama is more ‘racist’ than Hillary. Or at least Obama voters were more ‘racist’ than Hillary voters, according to the chart. The movement is on the Democratic side from 2012 to 2016.
Democrats are still less racist. From the charts.
MikeN, I could not have explained those charts in any more simple language. Do you just not understand or are you just misrepresenting on purpose?
Dean, the headline is racism motivated Trump supporters, not racism vs authoritarianism. I get that they found a larger correlation.
The change in attitudes about race was on the Democratic side, with maybe a slight drop in the Republican one.
If the numbers were high enough, this is consistent with ‘racists’ who voted for Obama shifting their votes to Trump. Which again makes the racism charge harder, since they voted for Obama to begin with and voted against Hillary. Maybe they thought Trump is black?
“Dean, the headline is racism motivated Trump supporters, not racism vs authoritarianism.”
So you want a headline that is the body of the paper, and without that you’re going to misrepresent it willfully? In what universe did this seem like a good idea to tell everyone?
“The change in attitudes about race was on the Democratic side,”
The stats changed for both sides, and over time.
“If the numbers were high enough…”
If they were, it doesn’t show what you claim. If they weren’t, then no.
“Which again makes the racism charge harder”
No, it doesn’t, because your claim is wrong.
Here’s one possibility, moron, that you missed.
What if fewer nonracist people voted?
Therefore more trump votes, fewer democrat votes.
Because that would explain the data too.
That should have been fewer trump votes and a lot less hilary votes.
Subtract some non racist and the proportions rise but the numbers still decreased.
MikeN 38,
You illustrate my point.
I stated a scientific fact, based on the data. Look at the data. There is no “if you think”.
This is why “denier” and “Denialist” are appropriate terms.
There is a difference between disagreeing about a conclusion or inference that is based on some scientific fact (or established Scientific Theory) and just outright denying the fact itself.
If you want to challenge the fact, you have to do a valid experiment or study the produces a different result. In all the usual areas of science denial, the Denialists fail to do that.
Wow. After reading mikeN’s totally incorrect take on the article and complete disregard for the explanations he asked for, it is clear that if the facts don’t match what he wants them to say he ignores them. Just like rickA.
zebra #45:
What was your fact again?
The poll says what the poll says.
However, any interpretation of the poll data is merely an opinion.
I think you and MikeN are reading the same poll data two different ways – and that is ok and even normal.
How you interpret a poll is not a “fact” (in my opinion).
“The poll says what the poll says.”
And you say it says something different. That’s not opinion, that’s fact.
“I think you and MikeN are reading the same poll data two different ways”
“mike” is making shit up, not reading the same data. There’s no “two ways” to read reality.
“How you interpret a poll is not a “fact” ”
Which is what zebra said. But what you claim about the contents of a poll IS a fact (or a lie), and this is NOT opinion. It’s reality. Something you fail to comprehend because it doesn’t concede to your wishes.
Dick, why do you claim that you have told us all you have a tiny micropenis in post #47? Nobody wanted to know that.
Wow, if fewer ‘nonracists’ voted, then the Democratic number wouldn’t drop. If anything it would go up.
“If fewer ‘nonracists’ voted, then the Democratic number wouldn’t drop”
Yes.
“it would go up.”
Indeed.
That was my point, and what you refuse to read from dean on the subject too, and this disproves your assertion that democrats are getting more racist.
“However, any interpretation of the poll data is merely an opinion.”
No, you ignorant lying piece of shit, that is not true at all.
RickA,
I said: “There is a correlation between (white) voting for Republican presidential candidates and being a racist.”
That’s a fact, RickA, not an interpretation. It is a consistent, observable, fact, in the period from 1988 to the present. The R candidate voters score higher on the racism index than the D candidate voters. It’s right there on the chart.
Maybe RickA didn’t actually bother to look at the reference he is commenting on?
“Maybe RickA didn’t actually bother to look at the reference he is commenting on?”
It comes from his (and mikeN’s) complete desire to attempt an understanding of anything that involves statistics, and their asinine assertion (fall back position, really) that their uninformed and uneducated opinions are as valid as the explanations from scientists and statisticians.
Don’t both looking for a shred of integrity or honest questioning from either of them.
zebra #53:
I did look at the poll – but I didn’t see the “being a racist” question.
“but I didn’t see the “being a racist” question”
So?
Zebra, begging the question comes from assuming that the side that the Republicans scored higher is the racist one.
RickA,
Your “looked at” isn’t the same as reading, apparently. The author explains:
So, the question was “asked” indirectly, which is standard for this kind of research. In a case like this where a comparison is being made between the two voting groups, it is as valid as any direct measurement of anything.
Of course, now you will say “in my opinion, racist should be defined differently”, but that is the famous 8th grade children’s debate approach, not science.
“Zebra, begging the question comes from assuming that the side that the Republicans scored higher is the racist one.”
Well then it is a damn good thing that is not what was done isn’t it.
The only other comment I made was that the article doesn’t provide enough information for us to decide whether the changes from 12 to 16 were “statistically significant”.
Zebra, you beat me – apologies for duplicating your point.
Initially I though the confusion over the points made in that article were due to what I think is an inadequate explanation — but I’ve decided the two people who are misrepresenting it are doing so intentionally.
MikeN #57,
Sigh. You just did exactly what I predicted RickA would do. You want to argue “no, the definition of racist should be….” like an 8th grade child.
Read #58. The author explains it.
This has nothing to do with Begging The Question.
re 57, no that’s not the definition of begging the question, “mike”, For someone whose opening gambit was about what it meant, you really have fucked it up, haven’t you?
Goodness. Did anyone else read dick there saying that he dresses up in adult diapers and screams for his teddy bear on Thursday evenings?
Quite why he wants to tell the internet this is anyone’s guess.
The article(the study it describes) presupposed that it is racism to say
Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
and racist to disagree with
Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.
Racist to agree with:
It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough. If blacks would only try harder they would be just as well off as whites.
and racist to disagree with:
Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
I concede I misread the headline, which says racism more than authoritarianism, and not just racism.
>Run on a racist platform?
The other problem. Nowhere does the article establish motivation, only correlation. So running on such a platform might produce the exact same results.
Clueless, thy name is mikeN.
re 64, if you want to ask dick for pics of him in his infant outfit, just PM him, don’t ask in public. Sheesh.
I wonder if “mike”, along with his penchant for MAMIDs (Middle Aged Men In Diapers) was previously on the OJ Simpson trial?
MikeN,
“the study presupposes”
But the study isn’t trying to decide “what’s the definition of racism?”
The study is trying to decide if D voters and R voters in the presidential election have different views on what is called “race”.
So, “presuppose” makes no sense as you are using it.
You are doing exactly what I said: 8th grade definition argument. Racism is “bad”, so you want to redefine what it means so it doesn’t apply to your identity group. That’s what 8th graders do; it isn’t science.
Science is the numbers that were produced; it doesn’t matter if you call one set of answers “racism” or “kacism”.
If you can’t get this simple fact, you have no business discussing science. (Or logical fallacies.)
Zebra, you are the one who asked if Democrats should go for a more racist platform. The article could just as easily have said Democratic voters more motivated by racism than authoritarianism. Yet the article assumed racism for certain positions.
“mike”, your reveal that you’re a racist bigot is certainly unsurprising to anyone here..
(you know it became easier since both mike and dick showed me how it wasn’t necessary to read anything before talking about it. if ever they complain, it’s just a matter of opinion of what they wrote!).
MikeN #70,
How is it possible that after I point out that you are trying to change the definition of racism like an 8th grade child, your response is to try to change the definition of racism?
That’s more like a 3rd grade child, I guess.
Look, I tried to discuss this somewhat politely to make all the science aspects clear (and see if people really did have suggestions about what the Dems could do).
But I will leave you to the tender ministrations of Wow and others less polite since they seem to have you pegged.
“How is it possible that after I point out that you are trying to change the definition of racism like an 8th grade child, your response is to try to change the definition of racism?”
The same way it was possible for him to ignore my explanation of the survey results, and a previous explanation (different thread) of why another thing he claimed was not supported by the analysis.
When he (and rickA) decide they don’t like the results of some study, but they don’t have any evidence with which they can refute it, they fall back on “the interpretation is all subject to opinion and mine is as good as yours”.
Greg, write all you want, but Chelsea is the future of your party.
Ah, good song. Not Elvis Costello’s best, but got a good beat line.
Ghost Town is your party’s future.