"How progressives can turn the deep South blue"

[applegrove]

How progressives can turn the deep South blue

By Benjamin Jealous at MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/blue-future-georgia?cid=sm_facebook

"SNIP................................


Sitting at the intersection of these crossing currents is the state of Georgia. In the past few years, every demographic trend in Georgia has favored progressives. Ruy Teixeira at the Center for American Progress sums it up nicely:


In the last decade, Georgia had a rapid rate of increase in its minority population, going from 37% to 44% minority over the time period. The increase in the minority population accounted for 81% of Georgia’s growth over the decade.

How has this played out in elections? In 2000, whites made up 75% of voters in the Georgia presidential race. Twelve years later, they made up 61%. Mitt Romney won the state, but only by 304,000 votes – despite the fact that Obama hardly invested any time or energy there.

The question of whether Georgia will become blue is actually a question of when. The answer to that question depends on voter registration. There are more than 600,000 unregistered black Americans in Georgia, plus thousands of unregistered Latinos, Asian-Americans, women and millennials. At an average cost of $12 per registration, it would cost less than $8 million to register virtually all of Georgia’s unregistered black voters. If even half of them had voted for President Obama in 2012, we would be having a very different conversation today.


.................................SNIP"

[Cleita]

1. My opinion is that if you want to turn anyplace blue you have to quash the

bigotry of all kinds and especially the racism and the south doesn't have the corner on that. I was listening unwillingly to some right wing radio last week because there isn't any other kind here and this is what I heard. The reason the ACA act is going to free up people from working is so that they can go home and sing La Cucaracha to their children.

If radio stations can blithely air shit like this and no one storms them for it, it's because this type of rhetoric is acceptable to the masses and those people vote for the racist, bigots on the republican ticket.

[applegrove]

2. That is so awful.

[Thinkingabout]

3. It will be very important to get Democratis leaning people registered and then GOTV.

I worked in a voting precinct for the last 3 elections. The last one was mostly propositions and school board trustees but I observed a large proportion being young black females and I thought this is a good thing, I hoped they would be back in the 2014 election and hoped they were voting democratic.

In Harris county (Houston) because of the larger population is not white the county has gone Democratic. Proof of what you are saying. Get them registered and voting, this will turn states back to blue and sane.

[blkmusclmachine]

4. DINOS don't care about the South. Having a Red South ensures neverending bi-partisanship/"Centrism"

to do the 1%'s bidding.

[blkmusclmachine]

5. And THAT'S 11-dimensional "bi-partisanship" you can beLIEve in, bay-bee!

[BillZBubb]

6. The republicans are riding a fading demographic.

The old, white republican base isn't going to last much longer. The country's most dishonorable generation, boomers who support republicans but should know better, is starting to shrink. The republicans will keep using legislative and quasi-legal tricks to hold on to power, but their demise is on the horizon--and can't come soon enough.