Here’s one opinion, from a psychologist:
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They do only in very small numbers. All the focus on Trump’s gains among hispanic voters in 2020 might give the impression of something different, but the context was how low the floor was. It was relevant because it was the main factor that kept Texas and Florida in their court, but even even with a large relative gain, the result was still that the overwhelming majority of the non-white vote goes against them.
Also understand “white” is a very complex concept in this country. Especially among hispanic voters. It should not really be thought of as an issue of skin colour, but of belonging…are you part of the group and get to take the benefits from it. That creates a very zero sum perspective. Take Trump’s “kids in cages” issue. The common understanding was that it was so cruel that people who identified with those people would never vote for the GOP again. The issue is, a lot of hispanic voters didnt see themselves in those people. They identified more with the white voters concerned with illegals coming over to take their jobs and be a tax burden etc. These are people who maybe went through the process “the right way” (in their mind) and have spent a generation or more scratching out a foundation in this country they now see people trying to sneak in and take from them.
Essentially the demographics is destiny argument, the argument that the more non-white the US becomes the less room the GOP has, is fatally wrong. It fails to acknowledge that over the course of a generation many from these “non-white” populations start feeling more established and become “white” voters.
Same principle applies in the UK; just look at the likes of Patel, Braverman and Sunak pulling up the drawbridge after them.
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Ironically, the origins of the GOP are in 19C abolitionism. Lincoln was a Republican, the first to be President, the Democrats were the party aligned with maintaining slavery. Northern Democrats were not committed to it, but simply did not want to see the sort of conflict that became inevitable. Prior to 1854, the two dominant parties were the Whigs and the Democrats.
The shift in racial support really traces to the emergence of the New Deal coalition for the Democrats under Roosevelt, which ended a long period of Republican pre-eminence. Republican ideas really did not address the Depression effectively, and the resulting re-alignment left the GOP more or less in the right wing place it has been ever since. But even through the '60s, most of the resistance to civil rights measures came from Southern Democrats. The ‘backlash’ politics we now associate the Republicans with are really from the Goldwater-Nixon era - it was explicitly called the ‘Southern Strategy’.
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He dignifies his own career to misinterpret what he was. He was an early demagogue who was pushed aside by the demagoguery he helped to unleash. In the continuum toward Trump, he is well along the way.
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Does the broad support for the right, probably through most eras, across the globe suggest that all societies are fundamentally weak?
No; it shows that people are fundamentally fuckwits.
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Sure, one important demographic shift among the parties was the movement of blacks from the Republican to the Democratic party beginning mostly after WWII. To call The Civil Rights Act of 1964 a form of racial suppression is to engage in a bit of armchair quarterbacking. Can’t accept that, even if one can argue over the results of those programs.
For most of the post Civil War period, the Republican core was the country club set of business interests, primarily Protestants, one might add. The first demographic shift began with Roe v. Wade. That decision enlivened the social conservative movement, brought more Catholics into the party and ultimately brought Ronald Reagan to power. It’s been one of the driving forces within the party ever since, coexisting easily with the country club set because, in many cases, these were the same people.
The key change in the last fifteen years has been the thing to which Michael Moore pointed when predicting Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. This is the movement of working class whites to the Republican party purely from anxiety of white people losing their majority and social status within the republic. These were first the so-called Tea Party Republicans, complaining about the fiscal imbalance, but Trump and his ilk understood far better how to tap into their anxieties.
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There is a concept in politics called revealed preference that is based on what a voter actually votes for. It’s raised as a way to draw a distinction between what people say they support (policies) and what they actually vote for. It’s not an issue of voting against their best interests, but there being a fight within the person on what they think their best interests are, leading them to often vote at odds with their stated policy preference.
I think this piece points to it in drawing the distinction between a value (or in modern context, the vibe) and a policy platform. Essentially, policy is interpreted cognitively and values viscerally and in the battle between head and gut, gut typically wins. This explains the phenomenon of people responding to a false story by saying “ok, I know it isnt true, but it’s exactly what he/she would do isn’t it” and then responding to it as if it is real. This piece is primarily making the argument that RW parties have become better at campaigning as value first parties, which is a more powerful electoral strategy. I would take it further to say that the values RW parties espouse simply target the gut on a deeper level than left/liberal values do. therefore, even when liberal parties can tell a value story about their policy platform it tends to anchor itself less well.
The result is the right is better at producing a revealed preference divergence. Not only is interpreting that as “voting against their own interests” a misunderstanding of the dynamics, it’s insulting and only likely to make people double down on their revealed preference.
Was a great football player but looks like a pretty shitty hypocrisy-ridden person
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Who has said that? If you’re talking about the discussion here, I said its signing into law created a racism based realignment with objectors defecting from the party that signed and finding a welcoming home in the opposition. It was a natural consequence of the bill becoming law that LBJ conceded when signing it (losing the south for a generation), but was accentuated by Nixon and then Regan’s Southern Strategy.
You did, essentially.
That’s an awful misreading of what I said.
To be fair, your second rendition of it was a lot clearer. Consequence versus direct effect of the Civil Rights Act.
The use of the word committed was used to highlight that LBJ knew full well that his party would be punished, for a generation or more, for signing the bill into law. He knew what the consequences of it would be in terms of racism based sorting.
I understand without knowledge of LBJ’s attitudes that point might not be clear, which is why I clarified the point in my subsequent post.
Don’t like the sound of this
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He walked into Twitter head office yesterday carrying a bathroom sink and posted the video onto twitter with the caption “Let that sink in.” That’s a Q Anon phrase.
There is no positive explanation for that
Sorry, but this is simply nonsense. Black people were already the most sorted people in the history of Western Civilization. The programs emanating from LBJ era were designed to reverse this.
Look, I’ve clarified something, twice, I wouldnt have thought needed clarifying. If you want to keep misunderstanding it then go ahead.