2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumPlease ask me what my "best interests" are.
I'm going to slightly modify a diary that I published over at DK ~ two hours ago to this board for discussion...here is a link to the diary as it stands at DK right now.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/28/1441631/-Please-ask-me-what-my-best-interests-are
Here is pretty much the same text retro-fitted to this board and things that have gone on over here at GDP.
There's a phrase that has explicitly and implicitly been making the rounds that irks the shit out of me.
It's the idea that if voter X votes for electoral candidate Y (at any level), that X is not voting "in their best interests."
This phrase is usually invoked when mention is made of poor and working-class whites that vote for Republican politicians and Republican policies.
Maybe voter X feels that the racist, homophobic, and women-hating policies of the GOP ARE in their best interests. You may not like that and I certainly don't like that but, for example, those 2008 Palin rallies and the highly charged rhetoric that GOP politicians and commentators spew on Fox News don't tell me anything different.
Maybe a prospective black voter's best interest is that the GOP nominee does not get elected President.
That doesn't mean that black voter Z thinks that the Clintons walk on water or even that Hillary Clinton will always enact policies that he or she likes or that Z has forgotten about the racism of Clinton's 2008 primary campaign.
It might mean that the most important factor for voter Z that the Democratic nominee is elected president in 2016.
Amid all the sturm und drang regarding Hillary Clinton's recent statements on the Defense of Marriage Act, the most odious implication of Secretary Clinton's statements is the idea that it was for the purpose of protecting the self-interests of LGBT's by saving the GOP (and lots of Democrats!) from writing discrimination into the Constitution.
With all due respect, Secretary Clinton, your husband's signing of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 may have been in your husband's best interests for reelection but I didn't feel then (or now) that it was in my best interests. Considering the lack of evidence that there was a movement to write LGB marriage discrimination into the federal constitution at that time, it seems a little deceitful to claim that your husband signed DOMA in the best interests of the LGBT community.
As a rule, we usually don't know what the "best interests" of another actually are. Maybe we should ask them instead of making assumptions.
While, yes, Secretary Clinton's comments w/r/t the Defense of Marriage Act was the latest irritant, some Bernie Sanders supporters (Senator Sanders himself...not so much) have used "low-information voters" in a pejorative manner that pretty seems to suggest the same thing (i.e. that "Stockholm Syndrome" thread or some comments directed at bravenak last night about how she wasn't acting in her own "best interests."
This isn't simply about Clinton's DOMA comments. it's about how we talk to one another and about one another.
bravenak
(34,648 posts)Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)I would welcome your viewpoint there but part that diary was a reaction to things going on here (and a comment made to you last night)....we need to talk about this here at DU as well.
bravenak
(34,648 posts)RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)It's because of Bernie supporters that the world is not full of fun and laughter. We so bad......
bravenak
(34,648 posts)aidbo
(2,328 posts)My only counter point (and it's not really a counter point, but something to consider) would be in reference to
As Bernie pointed out at the DNC meeting a couple months back, the republicans win when voter turnout is low. That's mostly what he's talking about when he speaks about the political revolution. Getting the apathetic citizen and the fed up citizen to become active and engaged and informed voting citizens.
If voter turnout increased significantly from its average, then we'd probably never have to worry about a republican presidency again. It would be nice if voting in one's own interests didn't have to be a defensive action to block the other party.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)from expansion of Medicaid but they claim they wouldn't. The human mind rejects any assertion it is wrong, even if true.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)was a higher priority to those voters...
(re: The New Deal)
mmonk
(52,589 posts)Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)leave the Democratic Party, then?
Race and not economics is a priority to them. Their "racial interests" (white supremacy) are a higher priority than their "economic interests".
In my opinion.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)A racist is a racist and cares about that more than he cares about equal justice in all spheres.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)although, I think that the Senator is up to speed on that since the time of his 2014 NPR interview..
You might want to tell that to some of the nice white progressives who think that if the Dems talk just enough about economic justice (at the expense of racial and other forms of justice, a lot of times) that "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" will fall in love with the Dems all over again and will vote Democratic in droves.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)I do not see him speaking about economic justice at the expense of racial justice. I do not see the "qualifiers" interjected into this campaign by political operatives. The threats to our well being through economic injustice are real. There is no reasonable reason to keep that under wraps. It hits minority communities even harder. I will fight for my children, even against well meaning persons that think their financial well being is a ruse to cover racism. I do this because the premise is false. Besides, the economics of when this country was founded included slavery (the cheapest of labor). The reason the south pretends today that slavery wasn't the problem but is was a problem of economics is false. The stain of that is why we are stuck presently where economic justice is given a 2nd tier priority. To keep minorities from rising up the ladder (in the minds of racists from the south). That is why they vote against their interests and the interests of us all on the whole. I don't believe in comprising either one on a false premise.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)Convince a prospective Trump/Carson voter of that...chances are, that very same thing would apply.
Maybe such a voter is not voting against what they would define as their "best interest"; maybe such a voter has other (and "higher" interests and priorities that the Republican candidates are addressing.
I am, in part, reacting to this comment and bravenak's response.
Bravenak was speaking of what is in her best interests.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)I don't recall a lick of it. Even Carter was pushing deregulation, "free trade" and W.I.N.
What is the story? Have some of you guys joined the Bircher crowd on the New Deal and the Great Society and still mad 60 and 8p years later at that? Seems to me the civil rights movement made more headway under those conditions than under decades of the only game in town (if any, seems for a while it's was no talk of any justice of any sort).
This complaint is because some of us aren't hearing or tolerating socially liberal (usually not really just not bigots) and fiscally conservative anymore and that is it because as much as this is complained about the record of actual reality completely fails to support any such concept, at least in many years. Generations even, the assertion is misinformation designed to protect and expand the grip of the toxic economic status quo.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)The civil rights movement (even under FDR) made more headway when labor unions were a more active and accepted part of American life and political conversation...you get no argument out of me there...and that's a pretty rational assessment of the history, as I know it.
So I do think that the choice of one or the other is a false dilemma...
That certainly didn't stop quite a few Dems from scapegoating LGBT's for losing the WH in 2004.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)The same fuckers that scream about "SOCIAL JUSTICE" now we're talking ponies and blaming gas AND all the while cheering the looting of the American people as "pragmatic".
They are the same folks that are quick to want to jump on bombing some brown folks or defend "regime change".
They are the same ones pooh pooing protecting the environment.
They loves them some fracking and drill, baby, drill they just call it "all of the above".
Who was tripping over themselves to defend the Blue Gang until the flood of videos became to much to deny?
Who just can't manage to find a way to stop supporting the stupid and failed drug war.
They are the ones sneering at and spitting hatred about liberals and the "far left".
Whatever it is to be conservative about, it almost always the same "pragmatic" folks doing it no matter how much they try to lead from behind once change does manage to happen despite them.
Democrats and liberals aren't the same thing at all. Most liberals might be Democrats but all and maybe not even most Democrats aren't liberal.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)or its' relevance to the topic at hand.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)in favor of economics and I don't see any such thing.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)You seem to be implying, though, that social issues are a distraction.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)There is only one justice though it has many aspects.
What you may be detecting is the feeling some use social issues as a smoke screen to cover ans excuse their overall conservative positions around the spectrum including on many social and closely related legal issues.
Further, I'm not even grasping the assessment of socially liberal from our supposed friends who like to claim to be socially liberal but fiscally conservative.
Scratch the surface and we find drug warriors and worriers, we see support for the death penalty, we see fans of fracking and drilling, we find ardent education deformers, we see opposition to polyamorous relationships, we can recall many of the same folks calling gay rights stupid shit like "ponies" just a short while ago, among them the fiercest defenders of the murderous blue gang, same folks were tripping over themselves to cut and run on ACORN and essentially scoff at right wing owned and operated voting machines and who's answer to disenfranchisement is "mob the polls", who yawns at the idea of environmental stewardship, who is able to get behind bullshit wars and will even stretch themselves to the point of snapping to defend past ones. Same folks can always get behind regime change. Who mocks civil liberties?
Socially liberal my fucking ass. You get past controlling women's bodies and not being fire breathing bigots and even that little cover slips away.
Who is socially conservative? The same motherfuckers who are conservative about everything else for the most part along with many of our more churchy folks.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)that cover the political spectrum, that can seem contradictory...and they have those values and interests for all sorts of reasons and (I assume) they (among other things) vote based on those things.
This is a democracy (or, rather, a democratic republic). They are entitled to have fucked-up beliefs.
You are entitled to think that their beliefs are fucked up. But I don't think that out-and-out saying that their beliefs are fucked up or telling them directly that their beliefs are fucked-up is a winning strategy....or rather, it's simply not very persuasive.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)To render them inert and ineffective. To deny fertile ground and safe haven to operate from. To oppose tooth and nail. To resist.
Sometimes you have hard cases and no amount of convincing or even experience can teach, often it takes a 2x4 between the eyes a few times to get any traction.
No, playing nice has only lead to bad going worse with these folks and for my part it is time to take the keys from the drunks by any and all means necessary.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)and this s what I'm hearing from you...
if they have one interest or one value that's more on the conservative end of things that you disagree with then that renders ALL of their political beliefs suspect.
That's not my experience at all.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)Sometimes though even one thing can be a huge stumbling block that prevents much cooperation other than on an individual issue basis for just one instance if you think of me as a "thug" or a subhuman ape then we aren't going to make it as strong allies despite a lot of crossover.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)If you're talking about "Whip Inflation Now", that was the brainchild of the Ford administration (1974) and it had pretty much faded away before Carter took office.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)While the marketing scheme faded the concept took root and effectively has been running ever since and by inflation they mean labor costs and wages.
Wages have been strangled regardless of party for decades on end now and yes Carter was all up in that along with deregulation he had a near mutiny in the party going for some real and valid reasons.
People want to pretend away and forget that Carter was a pretty damned conservative Democrat and you provably could find more liberal Republicans back then.
It wasn't all sweaters and solar panels for our greatest living post President.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)My family's income wasn't anywhere near keeping up with inflation.
TheKentuckian
(25,020 posts)Rent, food, child care, health care, and utilities aka the shit that eats a great many of us damn near all up keep rocketing up and wages are flat or falling for decades.
Add that to hoping to get back to the real dollar income of 12 and 15 years ago and the math gets pretty ugly for keeping g up with inflation now.
If one's "basket" of purchasing or percentage of income is different then years things like durable goods and new vehicles are very stable but most everything is the stuff of home fires for me.
jfern
(5,204 posts)One was Democrats becoming less racist, the other was Democrats moving to 3rd way economics. What Democrats need to do is stand for something on economic principles while retaining their anti-racism. Obviously a majority of Southern whites will continue to vote Republican, but we can win back some people.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)weren't advocating anything like what we call "Third Way" economics.
What Democrats need to do is stand for something on economic principles while retaining their anti-racism
I don't disagree with that, per se, but don't act as if the GOP (or some other party) won't do anything about that by cobbling together some other type of winning electoral coalition.
sadoldgirl
(3,431 posts)of voters don't vote against their own interests?
Take the case of Dr. Carson: He wants to get rid
of medicare and medicaid. At this point he is leading
the pack. How do you explain that?
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)and they vote based on those other priorities that are of higher importance to them?
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)ANYTHING that a person does, makes sense to them ... whether it makes sense to me/us, or not.
That said, a racist's interest in promoting/maintaining white supremacy has very real economic ramifications/benefits to that racist ... and he/she can easily (and will openly) argue that the white liberal's focus on economic injustice, is acting in their own interest as a white person.
Response to 1StrongBlackMan (Reply #15)
Chitown Kev This message was self-deleted by its author.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Last edited Thu Oct 29, 2015, 11:03 AM - Edit history (1)
"Is NOT acting in their own interest as a white person. "
Response to 1StrongBlackMan (Reply #19)
Chitown Kev This message was self-deleted by its author.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)They view what "their interests" are much differently than we do.
JI7
(89,240 posts)anti choice issues.
so they ARE voting their interests by voting for him.
Number23
(24,544 posts)and worked equally as hard to deny themselves their own rights as well aka voting against their own interests.
As a gay, black man, I think it is pretty clear that you don't belong to any group that has done either. K&R
sahel
(87 posts)and unknowable from the perspective of any third party person. Its an argument that also fits in neatly with the contemporary, neoliberal rhetorical tactic of advancing subjective experience as fact, and then demanding that it be uncritically accepted as such, because after all, who are you to lecture me on my own experiences?
Now, I suppose one or two Jewish people might have voted for Hitler on the grounds that they were sincerely more concerned in having a strong Germany than anything else. Nevertheless, there comes a time (probably about when you are being transported in a cattle car for the crema) when even a disinterested, third party person might legitimately question whether you had made a rational assessment of your own self-interest.
Do they? Plenty of people in Kentucky hate Obama, but they were more than happy to sign up for Obamacare as long as their state government renamed it to "Kynect". Mitch McConnell was re-elected in Kentucky on a platform of repealing Obamacare but keeping Kynect, which is basically like promising to rip the plumbing out of your house but letting you keep the tap.
Frankly, even a faintly rational person could have seen that was entirely fatuous, but a majority of Kentuckians accepted it anyway, probably because they never bothered to make a reasonable assessment of their own self-interests. After all, if they did, it would be entirely futile and unnecessary for the political class to spend billions of dollars on self-serving political advertising to try and persuade the hoi polloi to vote in a prescribed way.
Is it? A majority of African Americans supported Jesse Jackson for president in the eighties, even though his chances of ever being elected were exceedingly modest. And somewhere near forty percent of African Americans would vote for Ben Carson were he to receive the GOP nomination.
My guess is that the African Americans who would vote for Carson, much like the white working classes that vote Republican, have probably not made a rational assessment of their own self-interests.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)I agree with your rejection of the subjectivist presuppositions of the OP. People act against their own self-interest and, more broadly, their own interests, all the time. I have done it countless times (and often regretted it).
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)but why did you do that? What other priorities and decisions did you make that overrode the rational ones?
This conversation may be getting somewhere after all...
Vattel
(9,289 posts)what would best further my interests. Sometimes it is giving in to temptation (e.g., over-eating). Sometimes it is forgetting what really has value. There are lots of kinds of cases.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)and not Kantian cyborgs.
I would posit, however, that in the case of the stereotypical "Dixiecrat" voter their racism/sexism/homophobia is simply of greater interest and value to them.
To me, it does not seem to be a rational value to have at all.
Yet that seems to be a primary value of a lot of Republicans and Reagan Dem-types (see Kim Davis, a new Republican convert in Kentucky).
If only the Great Texas Wall were built and all the Negroes were kicked off of welfare, all would be well...I know that's not TRUE but that is what they seem to value the most.
I'm not saying that it's right. I'm saying that it is.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)of many Kentuckians was, right?
A majority of them like their new healthcare and they don't like Obama.
Yes, it's a contradiction. Non-rational, even
Many (and I might go so far as to say most) people (people who vote) aren't necessarily rational about their primary interests or values (perhaps the ability to attain and maintain pleasure or to attain instant gratification outweighs the more rational and painstaking value in those instances) but they have those interests and values all the same and they damn sure don't want people like you talking down to them.
Please give me a link to the Ben Carson stat, please.
sahel
(87 posts)I must confess I googled "Ben Carson black support" and clicked on the first link that came up (https://www.isidewith.com/poll/631968041/290416960) which quoted his black support at 37%. In fact his campaign today claims black support at somewhere between 17 and 18 percent. I am happy to walk that claim back.
So then we do know what the primary self-interest of many Kentuckians was, right?
Do we? LBJ had the same problem with Kentuckians after he launched his fabled "war on poverty" whilst standing on a sagging Appalachian front porch. While his civil rights and desegregation progress resulted in an almost immediate hike in black support, his great society legislation did nothing to shore things up with poor whites. Even after delivering benefits to them, he got barely a vote in the whole paddock. Its a phenomenon that public choice theorists have called the "ungrateful electorate dilemma".
perhaps the ability to attain and maintain pleasure or to attain instant gratification outweighs the more rational and painstaking value in those instances
Definitely. Racial/national/sectarian issues always trump economics in the minds of voters, pound for pound. Lenin once theorised that World War II could never happen because the French and German soldiers would refuse to fight each other in a show of working class solidarity. We all know how that turned out. There is something primal and atavistic about national/racial/tribal/sectarian solidarity, once that takes over bread-and-butter issues can go hang.
And I certainly don't recommend "talking down to anyone". Poor whites from Kentucky, West Virginia, etc, are extremely sensitive about being dissed. There are parallels with Black people, I think. Michele Wallace once said that the Black man clings to his swagger, his cult of machismo, because the White man has left him with precious little else. The hillbillies fix their own cars, brew their own liquor and shoot their own game with their own guns because all they have left is their self-image of rugged independence. Obama said something to that effect, that they cling to their "guns and their religion" because it is the only semblance of their collective manhood that they have left. Is it any great surprise that they choose to identify in that way, rather than as beneficiaries of a certain welfare policy or another?
Of course, no one likes to get a free personality assessment from someone of another race. The hillbillies didn't like getting it from Obama and neither do Black people like it coming from white people. It is what it is.
JI7
(89,240 posts)kind of like keep the govt away from medicare.
aikoaiko
(34,162 posts)I guess what puzzles me is that HRC will likely govern slightly to the right of Obama (certainly not more left) and, therefore, maintain the status quo.
But the status quo is a massively disproportionate number of black Americans being shot by police (stable numbers since mid 1980s) and in prison (proportionately level since late 80s, overall up), 45% of black babies under 6 living in poverty, and 50% of young black adults are unemployed.
The status quo is what I'm hearing black folks say is unacceptable and demanding change, but supporting the status quo candidate.
I suppose your OP is making the case that black folk would rather have the status quo rather than something worse with a republican president, but I'm just not seeing numbers to support that more blacks were shot by police, in prison, in poverty, or unemployed in substantially different numbers under Bush1, Clinton1, Bush2, Obama1 (maybe), or would be expected to be different under Clinton2.
Good OP.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)at least at first...and they withheld their support...until after Iowa, at least according to the polling.
So...the electability of Democrat _________________ in the GE is probably the MOST important thing for blacks at this point in time (it's not 1984 or 1988 anymore).
Republican presidencies are twice as hard on POC as they are on white people...and given political conditions right now?
That may or may not be a rational belief on the part of those African Americans who support Clinton over Sanders (it would be a damn good question for pollsters to ask more regularly).
Mind you, I'm not simply making an "African American" argument here.
sahel
(87 posts)A century ago, Irish Catholics were the keystone of the Democratic party base. They voted 85%-90% Democratic, year in year out, at a time when AAs were still voting for the Republicans.
Of course you don't get that level of support in a vacuum. An Irish Catholic going to church would listen to the priest telling him to vote the straight ticket (ie, for the establishment Democratic candidate). There would be vague allusions to the Republicans being a nest of nativists and anti-Catholic Freemasons, and equally warnings against supporting the godless Communists on the left.
He would work in a city job, or at least a union job. The union rep would visit the boys from time to time and tell them to vote the straight ticket, amongst other things. Even when he knocked off work for the day, the saloon or speakeasy that he frequented for a beer or two would have posters extolling the establishment Dem candidate, since a lot of the saloons were actually owned by city bosses.
Of course you had Democratic party operatives on the ground as well. Then you had fraternal Irish organisations, city machines like Tammany Hall, friends and family who worked for these various entities, all instilling in you the importance of voting the straight ticket. If you were illiterate, the newspapers helpfully printed out a ballot sheet showing you just how to vote the straight ticket, and you could take that to the polling booth.
Was it any great surprise, then, that Irish Catholics went to the polls and voted the straight ticket in the numbers that they did?
Hypothetically, the only way to get them to peel off would have been to run a popular insurgent Catholic against an establishment Protestant. I can't recall that ever having been done, though.
ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)They make decisions with their animal brains and then try to rationalize it. Republicans have capitalized on this for years. We still try to throw logical arguments at people. We have to get to the root of the animal brain appeals and find counter arguments that appeal at the same level.
Chitown Kev
(2,197 posts)For all that "Sahel's" first comment tried to chastise me, I never claimed that American voters (or voters anywhere else, for that matter) vote based on the purest sense of rational thinking possible.
I'm not saying whether that's bad or good (and I can make arguments either way); I'm saying that it simply is.
After all, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia...all those -isms...actually had a lot of support from scientific communities and philosophers and otherwise "rational" people at one time (Thomas Jefferson, for example)...in fact, -isms still do have some basis for support with some of the "rational" set.