Who else hates the "let's not ignore the blacks/hispanics" type statements

[noahmijo]

I mean in terms of courting the latino or black vote.

Things like poverty, equality, struggle, those aren't black or latino or even white issues those are issues ALL Americans face those are EVERYBODY issues.

I just get frusterated when I hear some fellow latino or ANYONE for that matter start with the whole "you can't ignore or take latinos/blacks for granted"

Oh what? we're all special now? what should people trying to court us do? try to speak Spanish or show that they understand the novels of Alice Walker?

Worse yet I am deeply ashamed of latinos as it is for the high number of them that voted for this piece of shit because of their ass backwards religious beliefs...yea ASS BACKWARDS RELIGIOUS BELIEFS I will say it like that because voting for a serial murderer psychopath cause you think that's what Dios would want is fucking ass backwards.

So as far as the minority vote goes and this whole don't take us for granted anyone I don't care if it's a local civil rights leader who spouts that bullshit needs to either get with the program that there is no such thing as a black or latino issue it's an AMERICAN issue, poverty, lack of healthcare I'll name you people I know from various nationalities and races including WASPS even who face these issues.

We don't need color coded targets or issues we need some freakin reality talk, I want to for once just hear someone else say "The Repukes have fucked ALL of us over, hell even you wealthy businessmen who thought * would make you richer has shown that his policies have helped your stock take a nosedive.

Overall you're not entitled you're not special I understand fully well enough that because of social inequalities minorities have it tougher ultimately but this whole "you better court me or I won't vote for you " bullshit has to be replaced with a clear message of reality that can trump old age religious and conservative thought that quite frankly is far too prevelant in the latino community as far as I can tell.

[William769]

1. United we stand, divided we fall.

IMHO, Yes it's as simple as that.

[blm]

2. ME. I think those comments are demonstrably untrue for the reasons you

stated, plus the political undertone is "Only I can make this happen."

It also promotes a fallacy that helps GOP push their lies, too. Most welfare recipients are WHITE. Most people in poverty are WHITE. But the GOP wants social programs to be perceived by voters as ONLY benefitting blacks and Hispanics with the burden to pay for it being heaped unfairly on the overburdened white guys.

[noahmijo]

3. I know this to be true which is why my comments stand

Because when people push the whole "it's a latino issue it's a black issue" they are ignoring facts like the one you just mentioned that it is an everybody issue even if one group is the prime source everyone else is still paying for it.

[Lexingtonian]

4. well

I've looked at it a while and...in a sense the 2002 and 2004 elections were all about stupid people getting to act up. (The 2000 election was more deeply insane and bizarre stuff, even, but not as organized.) Black, white, Latino. It was people getting crap in their heads out, dogmatism and stereotyping and ego and 'religion' and vanity beyond belief everywhere.

The election results were IMHO, in a sense, that the net impoverishment and idiocy and other pain of the Bush years were not as hard and scary for the people on the Republican side as the way the world has been changing from what it has been. Defective as that past has been.

Every election now the ground slips and the big uniformly voting blocs of voters that are the conventional 'wisdom', the castes and classes of a Sixties/Seventies/EIghties U.S., seem to be less in evidence. Instead, voters split ever more along generational and 'religious'/cultural lines. Elections- despite what the Parties pretend they are 'about'- are in voters' eyes collectively very simply about voting for the Past/Stasis versus for the Future/beginning to accept Change. I guess 2005 will go down as when the the scale between the two things finally tipped from resistance to adaption.

As for Latino voters specifically, the latest halfdecent polling of them (Zogby's, 2-3 days ago) has Latino Bush approval at 21%. A year ago the Latino vote for Bush was a little under 40%. As a white guy and onetime Southern Californian who spent all kinds of time exploring everyplace between Houston and L.A. it doesn't surprise me, intellectually, that both facts can be true in the span of a year. Emotionally it's harder, though. I'm trying to rationalize it as the Spanish colonial legacy/'tradition'- the authority assumed by the Catholic Church, the deference given certain kinds of powerful white people and not others, the extremified gender roles, the rigid feudal/agrarian mores, the crude mercenary elements of economic life- fanned up in a major way one more time. If so, hopefully it has burned out a lot of fuel.

Your last paragraph is essentially why Kerry decided to gamble his run at the Presidency on Ohio and Florida, dreary and corrupt and mismanaged stuff that they are politically, rather than the Southwest. Splitting off the relatively educated and not terribly religious moderate Republicans, who happen to be very largely whites, that's where the national mandate for change (also fatal damage to the GOP and the choice to live in the past it represents) really happens to be. Which makes for that wierd politics that Kerry and Hillary Clinton are engaged in that a lot of DU tries to give them grief about. It's unfortunately made for a vacuum in national Democratic efforts in the Southwest for the time being.