[Zelandakh]

cherdano, on 2015-September-23, 08:15, said:

You are welcome to be more polite than me, and I respect you for that. But in this case, I do think it leads to an incomplete picture.

I agree with you in theory. Unfortunately in practice such subjects have a tendency to end up obfuscating more than they enlighten. But we'll see - as long as the topic stays within certain bounds it should work out ok...

[kenberg]

I guess it comes to this:

If Dems accept that the struggling middle class that votes Republican consists of a bunch of racists, then it has to write off their vote. I doubt that a campaign speech along the lines of "You are all a bunch of racists and don't forget to vote for me in the next election" will work well.

In my fantasy family I suggested that the FF might have the idea that the Dems consider them to be the enemy. If that is so, then by all means go call them a bunch of racists. It will clarify positions.

[y66]

I don't think it's a good idea to write off low income earners who vote Republican because they happen to be old white men (racists), evangelicals (homophobes and sexists) or morons (people who believe Republicans have their economic interests at heart). But I do think its smart to tailor your outreach efforts accordingly.

A friend of mine worked for a company in Alexandria, VA that pioneered the use of Census data for targeting mailings back in the 80s. They didn't have mailing lists that corresponded exactly to the 3 categories above but some were pretty close. No doubt, Republicans were way ahead of Democrats in using this info to their advantage too.

Edit: Not saying the psychologically confused people Winston refers to are morons. But they can probably go into that category for communication purposes.

[kenberg]

There is also the possibility, rare in politics, of treating the voters with respect..

Growing up I went to a church that carefully explained what good people though and that only sinners thought otherwise. An easy problem to solve, I stopped going to church.

[y66]

kenberg, on 2015-September-23, 11:55, said:

There is also the possibility, rare in politics, of treating the voters with respect..

Growing up I went to a church that carefully explained what good people though and that only sinners thought otherwise. An easy problem to solve, I stopped going to church.

Agree with the importance of treating voters with respect. I work on this. Your posts have been a positive influence. But I still have lapses.

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2015-September-23, 10:56, said:

I doubt that a campaign speech along the lines of "You are all a bunch of racists and don't forget to vote for me in the next election" will work well.

Yes, although I haven't seen such an example myself, candidates using that approach deserve to lose. Folks won't vote for a candidate unless they decide that the candidate will support their interests, and will do so to an extent that outweighs other considerations.

I've mentioned that I lived in Atlanta for 20 years, and I know that there are many, many southern whites who hate the fact that the strategy outlined by Lee Atwater was successful. Jimmy Carter's library was built not far from my home, and he spoke out against racism often, including in his church in Plains, Georgia.

Candidates can't get, and don't need, the votes of everyone, and quite a few voters will vote one way or the other no matter what a candidate says. The idea is to sway those who can be persuaded, and insulting them won't do it for sure. If that's ever been an actual strategy, no wonder it's failed.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2015-September-23, 12:25, said:

Agree with the importance of treating voters with respect. I work on this. Your posts have been a positive influence. But I still have lapses.

I have really gotten into the question of why people of the sort I grew up with now vote R. And I am coming to some (possible) answers.

Are they racists? Not really. We might all be some sort of racist. But to say that is to obliterate useful meanings of the word. Some folks are rabid, the people I knew were not. My father disapproved of the May Britt marriage to Sammy Davis Jr, but then the parents of a Jewish friend declared him dead when he married a shiksa. The first girl I dated was Jewish, or at least reflecting on it as an adult I think she probably was. As a 14 year old we didn't care. For reasons that I never understood, my mother decided that the next girl I dated was black. She never met her, she just decided that she was black. Maybe her name sounded black. By then I was 15, I had my car, I paid my own way, so nothing more was said.
Anyway, it depends on what the word "racist" means, but if my parents and their friends were racists, the word applies to a very large number of people.

Back to my friend John for a moment. He grew up in a small town in Minnesota, near an Indian Reservation. Late in his life (he died a few years back) someone whom he knew from the reservation contacted him to renew their friendship, to his delight. He was a racist? No, it seems his friend did not think so either. At his funeral, his best friend, a self-described "Jew from the tough streets of NY", described John as the best man he ever knew. No one will say that at my funeral.


Time out: Of course we are hearing old Yogi Berra things but this one was new to me: His wife once asked him where he would like to be buried when he died: "I don't know, surprise me."

We need to take it easy on this name calling. People are complicated and they live out their cultural imperatives in various ways.
Mostly I am fairly oblivious to race, religion, sexual orientation etc. Some years back I was ordering coffee in a hotel lobby and started chatting with the guy. Becky came and got me and explained the guy was hitting on me. I thought it was just a friendly chat, but upon reflection she may have been right. The conversation did have some weird features. Becky notices such things, I don't. It's not a difference in attitude toward gays, it's a difference in obliviousness.
But I am still pretty certain that that second girlfriend I mentioned was white. Pretty sure.

[Winstonm]

I believe the question is why do people continually endorse policies that are detrimental to their welfare. I think the answer is quite simple - they do not believe the policies to be detrimental. These, for the most part, are not sophisticates or folks with a high degree of curiosity about economics. What they hear is that Democrats will raise their taxes, and the Republicans will support business owners as job creators.

The fault lies primarily with an uncoordinated Democratic response to a well-orchestrated Republican propaganda campaign.

[awm]

I suspect there are quite a lot of people who look at their tax form and say "that's a lot of money" and vote for the party that wants to lower their taxes. There are also people who feel government is annoying -- think about waiting in line at the DMV, or filling out tax forms, or getting parking tickets. So they vote for the party that wants smaller government. There's also some resentment -- the idea that government is "giving stuff" to "other people" -- this could be racist, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.

Of course many of these people benefit from government significantly as well, but those benefits are often hidden better than the costs. In some cases you see the signs like "keep government out of my medicare." There are also legitimate gripes that government is often run by the wealthiest and most connected, and this might make reducing the role of government seem appealing (never mind that the people who claim they will do this tend to be even more in the pocket of the wealthy and well-connected).

It's also hard for a lot of people to really imagine the degree of wealth inequality in the country; they think the rich make perhaps 10 times what they make, that those people probably earned it, and that they might reach that level of income and be "rich" one day too... not imagining that the CEO of the company they work for probably makes more like 400 times what they make and may well pay a lower tax rate than they do as well!

[Bbradley62]

PassedOut, on 2015-September-23, 13:33, said:

I've mentioned that I lived in Atlanta for 20 years, and I know that there are many, many southern whites who hate the fact that the strategy outlined by Lee Atwater was successful.

Having lived in Atlanta for 24 years (ending 2.5 years ago), I think there are very few southern whites who routinely vote for Democratshate the fact that the strategy outlined by Lee Atwater was successful, and most of them are gay.

[mike777]

in usa election of 2016 think of it this way:


1) roughly 40 out of 100 do not vote
2) roughly 24 will vote rep no matter what
3) roughly 24 will vote dem no mstter what
4) remaining 12 will claim to be ind but their votes over decades say no
%) a few will be true ind but most have zero idea and could not find ny state on a map or tell you who fought in rev. war or when.


so think to win you need 7 out of 12 out of 100 who claim to be ind but really are not and are low information voters

keep in mind roughly 40 out of 100 will not bother to vote

[Trinidad]

kenberg, on 2015-September-23, 11:55, said:

There is also the possibility, rare in politics, of treating the voters with respect..

Growing up I went to a church that carefully explained what good people though and that only sinners thought otherwise. An easy problem to solve, I stopped going to church.

You are beyond salvation...

Your solution is interestingly simple. I currently live in a very catholic region where the population typically find another, more complicated solution: They keep going to church (or at least some of the time), believe everything that is said there for the time that they are in the church and simply stop believing it as soon as they get out of there...

Rik

[Zelandakh]

Of those true swing voters, the vast majority are probably in states that are always red or always blue so their votes are irrelevant. FPTP Elections are actually decided by an unbelievably small set of super-voters and it is the combination of targeting these and persuading your natural supporters to get out and vote that makes the difference. Obama's success appears to hinge almost exclusively on the latter.

[gwnn]

Could we talk about this instead?

http://elections.huf...ocratic-primary

I wonder what Biden's "supporters" will do when he drops out. Somehow I think they are more anti-Clinton than pro-Biden so their votes might be predominantly going to Bernie.

And Bernie is perhaps leading in the first two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) already.

#feelthebern

[PassedOut]

Bbradley62, on 2015-September-24, 00:06, said:

Having lived in Atlanta for 24 years (ending 2.5 years ago), I think there are very few southern whites who routinely vote for Democratshate the fact that the strategy outlined by Lee Atwater was successful, and most of them are gay.

LOL


I left at the end of 1998, so your experience is more recent than mine, but I still keep in touch with friends there and visit often. I was there in 1980 when Carter carried Georgia against Reagan, and even today a quarter of the 6 million whites in Georgia routinely vote Democratic, and the percentage is higher inside of I-285. If most of them are gay, that would be quite the anomaly.

One doesn't have to vote democratic routinely to abhor the Lee Atwater strategy either: As an independent, I generally vote in the republican primary here in Michigan. In national elections, of course, I haven't been able to vote republican for decades, but that is because the national republicans are completely irresponsible, both fiscally and militarily.

[barmar]

PassedOut, on 2015-September-23, 13:33, said:

Yes, although I haven't seen such an example myself, candidates using that approach deserve to lose.

I don't think I've ever heard of a candidate actively insulting voters who disagree with them, but it can seem that way to the voters. If a candidate insults an opponent because of his views (e.g. ridiculing someone because he doesn't believe in evolution or climate change), and the voter shares those views, he'll feel personally insulted because it obviously applies to the entire class.

[PassedOut]

barmar, on 2015-September-24, 09:09, said:

I don't think I've ever heard of a candidate actively insulting voters who disagree with them, but it can seem that way to the voters. If a candidate insults an opponent because of his views (e.g. ridiculing someone because he doesn't believe in evolution or climate change), and the voter shares those views, he'll feel personally insulted because it obviously applies to the entire class.

Of course. But my experience is that politicians in competitive races tend to avoid saying anything that might alienate a potential voter, staying as far away as possible from insulting any of them. And the voters know this, which is why voters don't believe them and outsiders often gain a lot of traction.

[kenberg]

Zelandakh, on 2015-September-24, 02:54, said:

Of those true swing voters, the vast majority are probably in states that are always red or always blue so their votes are irrelevant. FPTP Elections are actually decided by an unbelievably small set of super-voters and it is the combination of targeting these and persuading your natural supporters to get out and vote that makes the difference. Obama's success appears to hinge almost exclusively on the latter.

I looked up MAryland at http://www.elections...esidential.html
I think of Maryland as predictably Dem Carter in 1980, for example. But it went for Bush in 1988. I had forgotten this.
In close elections (by national vote) it went for Gore in 2000, for Dewey in 1948. Of course 48 is ancient history bur 2000 is not so far back.

So maybe neither party should think of Maryland as a foregone conclusion. Not that Bush much needed Maryland in 1988 to beat Dukakis.

[billw55]

Zelandakh, on 2015-September-24, 02:54, said:

Of those true swing voters, the vast majority are probably in states that are always red or always blue so their votes are irrelevant. FPTP Elections are actually decided by an unbelievably small set of super-voters and it is the combination of targeting these and persuading your natural supporters to get out and vote that makes the difference.

Agree, and this is one thing I really hate about our election system. Like many, I live in a landslide state. My vote is irrelevant either way and this annoys me.

IMO the electoral college should be abolished and the presidency decided by straight popular vote.

[kenberg]

gwnn, on 2015-September-24, 04:05, said:

Could we talk about this instead?

http://elections.huf...ocratic-primary

I wonder what Biden's "supporters" will do when he drops out. Somehow I think they are more anti-Clinton than pro-Biden so their votes might be predominantly going to Bernie.

And Bernie is perhaps leading in the first two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) already.

#feelthebern

I am very uncertain as to what will happen. To say that Hillary Clinton lacks the easy emotional connection to voters that Bill Clinton had is to engage in massive understatement. This has to concern the party biggies. Biden and Sanders are both better at emotional connection, always of great importance in an election, but I am skeptical of their ability to win a general election.

1968 comes to mind. It was inevitable that Johnson would be re-nominated for another term. No one would challenge him. Until Eugen McCarthy did challenge him. Then re-nomination was not at all inevitable, and didn't happen. Once again we have the inevitable nomination of Clinton, inevitable until it is not inevitable. The challengers probably cannot win a general election, as indeed McCarthy could not have. It was my opinion that he didn't even want to win, he simply wanted Johnson out.

I have no clear guess as to how this will turn out.