It gets old having to vote for a group just because they arent actively trying to disenfranchise you

[Afromania]

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2019, 07:31 PM - Edit history (3)

The people defending northam are doing exactly that and it will turn off some black voters. If you aren't a troll or a Russian operative you need to understand that your continued defense and excusing of Northam is distressing. Black folks as a group won't be so stupid as to entirely bow out or vote GOP because of this slight, but some won't vote or will vote 3rd party.

The rest of us will remember this and continue to do what's best for the country. It might be a little bit of a tougher go because you allowed a portion of slim margins in red areas slip away to defend a racist act that has been amplified by Northam's own follow up.

It would have been really nice if there was a unified front against this type of thing from our side but I've slowly become more disillusioned with this country since the election of Obama. I've come to the sad realization that I should no longer expect anything. Even from my ideological "allies".

[irisblue]

1. Yeah. To be polar vortex cold

The Democratic Party needs POC more then that one guy.

[brush]

2. Hmmmm? Let's see...Northam or millions of AA votes?

You're right, I'd go with the millions.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. I am afraid this episode confirms Malcolm X's opinion of the Democratic party. *

Everybody who supports Northam is confirming Malcolm's harsh opinion of the Democratic party. The saving grace is the Northam defense is coming from some in the rank and file and not the leadership




* I would post what he said about the party but I don't want a hide. For those who want to learn google "what did Malcolm X say about the Democratic party?"

[wasupaloopa]

14. This is a much bigger party than this incident. If you think this represents the whole party I

don't know what to say than have a nice ride over the cliff.

[wasupaloopa]

3. If people don't vote because Northrup doesn't resign there is no help for us.

The very definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I give voters more credit than that.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Yes, Ralph Northam is the only thing standing between the Democratic party and the abyss.

[EffieBlack]

7. This is good to remember the next time we get lectured about why we shouldn't offend white working

class or millennial voters if we want them to vote Democratic or God forbid nominate someone other than a white man if we want to win next year.

Funny how black folk are supposed to sit down and be quiet as our party goes around smooching everyone else's booties, but when we ask and expect to be treated with respect, we're told that we must put up with the indefensible or we're "cutting off our nose to spite our faces."

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. These episodes ...

These episodes only confirms Malcolm X's warning of the perils of nearly monolithic support of one party.

Thankfully most of us appreciate the support of the African American community.

[Demsrule86]

10. Really....well the other party supports white supremacists and has a sitting congressman

(Steve King) and President (Donald Trump) who are avowed racists... the GOP welcomes KKK types into the party but of course this is America and you can support whom you choose. When Joy Reid was the victim of a right wing plot, I defended her because I have evolved on LGBTQ issues and I know others who have too . This was 35 years ago..and in my opinion they want to get rid of Northam because he has been effective...now maybe that won't be still true because of this mess. But I am damned sick and tired of dancing to the Republicans tune.

[brush]

15. fuck the repugs. This is about us Dems and what we stand for.

Do we stand with a huge part of the Dem base of not? It's too bad he made a racist decision years ago, and tried to somehow lessen it by saying he hadn't done it then but did do it in another blackface incident.

You can't botch anything as badly as that explanation. It's worthy of SNL. He should've done the dignified thing and resign. It's not like the Lt. Gov. is a repug. He needed to show he was the bigger man and help the party heal and side step this repug hit job by turning it over to the AA Lt. Gov.

Which he will do eventually anyway. He lost so much grace it that ridiculous press conference.Where he said I didn't do it then but I did do there.

[EffieBlack]

16. I don't think they wanted to get rid of Northam

The last thing they want is to replace a fairly conservative formerly Republican Democrat with a young progressive black man. If there was a plan, I think the point wasn't to run Northam out but to compromise and weaken him, make him lose credibility and trust with the Virginia voters and use him as a foil and a shield against the Democrats. They'd love nothing more than to throw up that picture at every turn whenever a Democrat tried to criticize a racist Republican and say, "What are you talking about? You have the NERVE to talk about us when you still have COONMAN on your team?"

[emulatorloo]

18. Major Democrats calling for Northam's resignation, including Tom Perez

Northam has to go. I am so angry at him

The party isn’t supporting him. Very rightly they are denouncing him and telling him to resign,

I see some DU’ers supporting him , but they aren’t the party. And fortunately they aren’t the majority opinion here either.

[mcar]

19. Double standard, for sure

I'm bookmarking this for what we know will happen...Again.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

21. Ralph Northam or near monolithic African American support

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11769510

[brush]

11. You need to reverse that. Northam and his supporters are the ones...

cutting off their nose. One man is not worth the party's reputation of standing for diversity and not being hypocrits like the repugs about racism. This is a test and Northam and his supporters are failing it.

We've been railing against trump and King and the other repug racists, now we need to stand for who we say we are.

It's too bad Northram made that decision years ago. It has come back to haunt him and now he has a chance to redeem himself somewhat by sacrificing his governorship for the party and make an example to people like the Covington Catholic blackface youth that bad decisions on race will come back to bite you.

He needs to step down now and let the party show that it stands for what it says it does. It's unbelievable how badly he has botched this—first saying it was him then walking it back but revealing another blackface incident while refusing to resign.

And of course he will as no one will work with him.

[wasupaloopa]

13. I don't need to reverse anything. See people can disagree in the U.S. just not on DU.

[brush]

17. Oh we can on DU, and I disagree with you.

And he will resign as he should.

[pnwmom]

27. If Democrats don't understand that we shouldn't take the votes of minority people and women

for granted, then there is no help for us.

[SKKY]

5. Do you seriously think people will remember Northam in 6 months?

Once the Mueller memo comes out, and the fallout ensues, people won't remember this incident. It's unfortunate, but such is the state of our nation's attention span.

[EffieBlack]

9. Not if he resigns

If he's still in office, he'll have the unique distinction of being both a GOP foil and fig leaf.

[brush]

12. You're obviously not black so don't try to speak for us.

We remember stuff like this.

[SKKY]

23. No, I'm not black, and I'm certainly not speaking for anyone other than myself...

...But who knew of this guy, outside of Virginia? Not many. I asked 6 people where I work (The VA), all persons of color, what they thought about the Governor of Virginia. All but one said, "Huh? Who?". His political career is finished, this will blow over, and it will all be forgotten. You wanna know why I'm so sure? How many times in the past two weeks have you heard the name Steve King? See my point?

[brush]

24. Your small orbit is yours, not everyone else's.

Woke people I know know, and Dems in Virginia know. And that's a statehouse we want to keep in the Dem column.

[irisblue]

20. Oh yeah.

He was in Med School when those photos were taken. There is an long long ugly history of the white medical establishment mistreating POC. 2 fast examples 1-Henrietta Lacks 2- Tuskegee Experiments.
Oh yeah, POC will remember..

[SKKY]

22. People of Color in Virginia will remember...

...and if Northam could run for re-election he obviously wouldn't. However, on a national level, I doubt this has longevity. That's all I'm saying. No offense intended.

[tulipsandroses]

32. We don't even have to go as far as Henrietta Lacks and Tuskegee- It is still happening today

POC still face huge disparities in healthcare due to racism.

I have been troubled by this fiasco, not only as woman of color but also as a healthcare provider.. If he was that cavalier regarding the dignity and humanity of black people, Am I to suspend belief that it did not carry over to his practice as a physician? He has lost credibility. These are lingering questions people will have.

From an article re: Serena Williams'

Black women are nearly four times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than white women, and are also more likely to experience a severe maternal morbidity such as a heart attack, hemorrhage, sepsis, or blood clots like Williams did, regardless of their level of education or income. In fact, data from the New York City Department of Health show that black college-educated women were more likely than white women who hadn’t completed high school to experience adverse maternal-health outcomes.

Knowledge and money aren’t enough to save black women, because racism trumps all.
[link:https://www.thenation.com/article/serena-williams-could-insist-that-doctors-listen-to-her-most-black-women-cant/|

Black men are still more likely to be diagnosed/misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia which can lead to devastating consequences.

While they wait for their misdiagnoses to be corrected, patients who actually have a different illness may be getting sicker, increasing the risk that they will attempt suicide and decreasing the odds that they'll eventually get better. (The more untreated episodes of mania and depression experienced by bipolar patients, for example, the tougher they are to treat when they do get appropriate care.) No less of a concern is the stigma attached to schizophrenia, a severe and probably partly inherited disorder of the brain that bears heavy social baggage. People diagnosed with schizophrenia are frequently feared or shunned by others, and have difficulty finding employment and housing. Studies suggest that schizophrenics often receive substandard medical care for illnesses like diabetes or high blood pressure because their physical complaints are dismissed as a product of their craziness.

But why would black people be more likely to be tagged as schizophrenics? Experts have some ideas; the first is simple racism. While clinicians are hesitant to burden middle- or upper-class whites with a devastating diagnosis like schizophrenia, Rosemary Farmer, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, observes, such considerations don't always apply to minorities. "With an African-American, especially a lower socioeconomic-status African-American, people don't care as much, somehow," she says. "It's like, 'Oh well, what difference does it make, we'll label them anything


[link:https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc589.html|

This was written by a white doctor, alarmed at what he sees in medicine today

Failure to confront racism within the medical profession has implications for the patients we serve: infants of color continue to die at higher rates, children of color get less needed care, and adults of color receive poorer quality care than their white counterparts, and the trends are not improving.5–7


][link:http://www.annfammed.org/content/16/3/261.full|

[Mister Ed]

36. A reply worthy of its own original post. n/t

[Afromania]

25. The black voters the Democratic party counts on will.

[ismnotwasm]

26. I am embarrassed and I should be

White people have to outgrow this naval gazing and face ourselves.

[Hortensis]

28. "HERE'S WHO has called for Northam's resignation."

This is from 10 o'clock last night:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/politics/ralph-northam-virginia-resignation/index.html

Btw, Afromania, here's a reminder that you don't really only vote as a Democrat because "they aren't actively trying to disenfranchise you." Trump's government now says it may not be able to reunite thousands of the children they kidnapped because they don't know where they are? Not can't find the parents they deported, the children they kidnapped and "took into custody."

This 18-month-old is one of the fortunate ones, reunited with her mother on Friday after an extremely traumatic 2-month "separation."

Yes, Republicans are STILL using extreme, vicious cruelty as a tool of government.

?w=700

[Afromania]

29. This is my point exactly, Republicans are scum.

I vote Democratic because there is no real choice for the sane black voter. When it suits them Dem politicians and voters will ignore slights against black people in this country. We continue our unwavering support for the party anyway and the moment we don't. That's when the long knives come out.

How quickly did the narrative about low black voter turn out in 2016 playing a big hand in the loss take to root? At the same time we got the narrative that the white voters that voted for the administration doing what you posted had the right to do so because they were afraid. They voted against their interests and that was ok. Black folk voting at normal levels was a treated as dierlection of duty

[Hortensis]

30. I'm sorry you don't have positive reasons for

being a Democrat. We are America's only liberal-dominated party, though, which means we are the party of the equality our nation was founded on. Belief in equality is the largest, most defining difference between liberals and conservatives. We do, they don't.

Government of, by and for the people is also an intrinsically liberal, humanist idea, which conservatives have opposed consistently and passionately from the very beginning.

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. ~ Molly Ivins

Of course, not all Democrats are liberal, a minority are at least socially conservative. But one guess WHO's been on which side of this struggle.

Damn straight you have no other choice if those are your principles also.

[Afromania]

31. Which is why we will file this away and continue to vote Democratic anyway. It doesn't change facts

We're basically handcuffed to a Democratic vote and our concerns are brushed aside whenever it's convenient. There is no fear of alienating us while they court fickle white voters utilizing the same sort of coded language the republicans use.

[Hortensis]

33. Does it occur to you that you might share the faults you

accuse your fellow Democrats of? Where is caring for the rights and wellbeing, and myriad problems, of others regardless of color? Most of us believe that doing what is right for all people benefits all of us, and without the massive forces on the right doing their best to derail our efforts our record would be far more successful.

Yes, conservatives who seek the protection of the Democratic Party are typically, as conservatives everywhere, far more concerned about what they want than what's right for "others," but they're a minority and those who do vote to stop Republicans from hurting them are of course an important asset.

Btw, you must realize what would happen to POC first and overall worse, but hardly only, if we all lost our power to control our lives through the vote to a right-wing authoritarian government?

Both those POC who feel "shackled" to the Democratic Party and those who belong because they believe in liberal ideals would be as free as the rest of us to leave because there'd be nothing to be gained from pretend voting as Democrats, assuming that was allowed.

To put it mildly, not focusing on the enemy who is focused on taking you out is a bad mistake and could be a fatal one.

[irisblue]

34. Hortensis, I'm saying this in a very neutral voice,

Your comment "Where is caring for the rights and wellbeing, and myriad problems, of others regardless of color? "
It reads/sounds as if you are stating that POC need to 'get over' this and move on. That is a major breach of trust on many levels, it is going to be a long time before the justified rage is not white hot. It may/may not ever burn out.

[Afromania]

41. Nowhere did I say I didn't care about the fate of others in my post.

What I did say is that we will remember this and continue to do whats best for the country, but it gets old when your vote is taken for granted and prominent vibe is "who else are you going to vote for".



Btw, you must realize what would happen to POC first and overall worse, but hardly only, if we all lost our power to control our lives through the vote to a right-wing authoritarian governmen

I'm going to parse this as "if you don't vote Democratic bad things will happen to you, so vote Democratic". Thank you for proving my exact point again.

[Hortensis]

43. Whereas I see the immediate denunciation of Northam's

behavior and calls to resign by the VA Democratic Party and Democratic politicians around the nation as obvious, definitive proof that the black vote is NOT at all taken for granted. In fact, very much the opposite.

Turning to the positive from this miserable Northam moment, let's remember something that will benefit all Americans in all parties of all races that all Democrats can be proud of.

House Hearings Begin for Historic Anti-Corruption Bill

The movement for reforming democracy entered a new phase Tuesday when the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on H.R. 1, the For the People Act. House Democratic lawmakers introduced the voting, campaign finance, and gerrymandering reform bill on January 3, the first day of the 116th Congress.

“Taken together, the measures the Committee is considering today, coupled with other provisions of the Act, have the potential to transform American democracy,” Brennan Center experts wrote.

In testimony provided to the House Judiciary Committee’s chairman and ranking member, the Brennan Center provided insight on the specific provisions discussed in the hearing, urging Congress to prioritize:

* Restoring and updating the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which ensures every citizen the equal right to vote regardless of race
* Combating deceptive practices such as voting misinformation and intimidation
* Voting rights restoration for citizens with past criminal convictions
* Redistricting reform to counter the rise of extreme partisan gerrymandering
* Combating Citizens United, a Supreme Court ruling that permitted corporations to spend unlimited money on elections
* Strengthening government ethics, including applying a code of conduct to Supreme Court justices

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/31/house-hearings-begin-historic-anti-corruption-bill

Although much will require control of the senate, of course, some observers say we may be able to get enough Republican support to pass a few items, such as universal automatic voter registration. After all, there's great support for it among the electorate, 2020's coming up fast for Repubs also, and they need something decent to run on -- something deceptive that belies the truth that they must and are already working furiously to defeat this huge anti-corruption bill.

[Squinch]

35. Yes, this issue has been a shit show of revealed racism here at DU,

but please do note that most of the Democratic party power quickly called for his resignation.

[Whiskeytide]

39. I think it's mostly ...

... blind tribalism and a few Russians. I think that whataboutism makes it easy for some to forget who we are - or at least who we’re supposed to be. The Franken debacle also colors people’s judgment.

But as soon as we start taking the position that we can do it if they can do it, we begin to lose our way. We have standards and expectations that the republicans tend to ignore. I’m kind of proud of that fact.

We will survive this test, and perhaps even grow a little in the process.

[LexVegas]

37. After that press conference, there are still people defending Northam?

[Gothmog]

44. I was wondering about this also

I do not see how one can defend Northam

[Whiskeytide]

38. I think the Democratic Party and it's ...

... leadership have been pretty consistent in calls for resignation. I’m sure there are some who haven’t, but most I’ve seen have been pretty consistent on the issue.

What you may be seeing are people defending him on message boards. That doesn’t mean a lot because (1) it can get pretty tribal around here at times, and (2) Boris and Natasha are hard at work.

I hate it for the “team”, and the republicans are certainly being opportunistic and ramping it up as much as they can, but it is really not a hard decision for democrats. He should step down.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

40. Question

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211770427