I voted for Reagan twice. I did not vote for Bush. I voted for Trump. I may disagree with Trump, but I won't say I didn't vote for him.
I'm not interested in your "feelings".
POLL: Next President
- Thread starter Jen
- Start date
I'm not interested in your "feelings".
EatTheRich
President
An eye for an eye, as it were?
EatTheRich
President
Nothing wrong with that, is there?
My qualifications do not swirl around sexual practices or a crude mouth. I would have had to disqualify both Hillary and Trump were that the case. And you would have had to disqualify Bill Clinton.
Presidential qualifications for me include having respect for the Office of the President and for the USA. And that would include protecting State secrets. Trump does that.
EatTheRich
President
Like when he publicly invited the Russians to hack State Department servers? Or perhaps when he purported to make public the results of confidential intelligence briefings? Or when he made illegal negotiations (negotiating with a foreign power on behalf of the U.S. before becoming president) on an unsecured personal phone line? I mean, I'm not the fan of American state secrecy you are, but I'd say Trump if anyone is disqualified for that.
Fake News doesn't decide who I vote for
EatTheRich
President
In other words, you don't base your vote on corroborated reports in mainstream media, or on a statement Trump publicly made on video, just on "qualifications" like the respect for the office of the presidency shown by a man who spent years touting the baseless birther conspiracy theory.
Arkady
President
What you see is a huge difference, within the GOP, between those appointed and those elected. In recent times, there have been quite a few really major appointees among Republicans -- Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Michael Steele, etc. But those don't indicate a willingness by Republican voters, generally, to support black people. Instead they indicate a willingness by the Republican elite to do so (or, more cynically, you could say they indicate a recognition by the Republican elite that they need some token diverse appointees to combat the appearance of racism).
This was really driven home a few years back (maybe 2008) at the Republican convention. Up on stage, there were a huge number of black people that year. Yet, when the camera swung around to show the crowd, it was a sea composed of almost entirely pale faces. And those blacks who did make it up on stage were nearly always appointees instead of elected officials.
I invite you to try something out. Name a black Republican who has won a state-wide election against a white opponent in the last thirty years. Just one. It can be a governorship or a Senate position, or a state-level vote for the presidency, or a primary for one of those three.
Every four years there are fifty primaries/caucuses and 50 general elections, just for the presidency, as well as 50 gubernatorial races, and there are 100 Senate races every six years. Counting primaries and generals, that's around 3000 separate state-wide races since 1980. How many of those 3000 have black Republicans won?
One or two, maybe? How many against white opponents, where the racist voters in the Republican base actually had an option to vote racial identity? Any? On the Democratic side, Jesse Jackson won more state-wide elections in a single primary season than all the black Republican candidates in all the state-wide elections in all the years since then, and Jackson wasn't even particularly successful (much less so than Obama, for example). Democrats certainly show a profound preference for white candidates, but not to the near-total exclusion of all others, the way Republicans do.
Arkady
President
It's amazing how quickly the phrase 'fake news' has taken off among the unthinking conservative masses as an all-purpose dismissal of any facts that make them uncomfortable. I guess that the echo-chamber nature of their isolated little media world makes it so a meme like that can come to dominate their thinking very quickly.
reason10
Governor
There has never been a problem electing a black president. But the American people will be a little more careful in the future so that a [Unwelcome language removed] INCOMPETENT IDIOT like Obama won't get past the primary process.
Herman Cain would have been a better president than the KENYAN SHOESHINE BOY. Same with Allen West.
And Obama NEVER would have been elected to ANYTHING if it weren't for his color. Someone THAT STUPID AND WHITE couldn't have gotten elected dog catcher.
EatTheRich
President
Tim Scott was elected Senator twice, from South Carolina. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley aren't Black, but they aren't white either, and they both beat white opponents in statewide general elections. That said, your argument has a lot of strength.
I don't think the American people will elect a Black Democrat in our lifetimes; but I don't believe a Black Conservative will be hindered in the slightest from being elected. I don't think we'll see another Democrat President for at least 16 years unless the Democrat Party gets its soul back from the devil.
C
Capitalist
Guest
Arkady
President
As I recall ,Tim Scott beat black Democrats -- in other words, the white racists lacked a white identity candidate in the race. As for Asian candidates, I think they face a much lower hurdle among Republicans. Reagan stamped them the "model minority," and I think Republicans are eventually going to treat them as whites, to allow that category to expand enough not to be a minority -- the same way Irish and Italians were rolled in, in earlier generations.
marvin martian
Emperor
Democrats will never elect a Jew. Look what you did to Joe Lieberman.
EatTheRich
President
Is this the Lieberman who was elected to the Senate 3 times as a Democrat, and who received a majority of the popular vote for vice president as a Democrat?
EatTheRich
President
I missed part of your qualification above. Scott did indeed run against Black opponents. I still think the Republican Party is moving toward race-neutral consideration of candidates due to the success of the desegregation fight, the imperative of winning Black votes (unless they can be effectively suppressed on a much greater scale than at present, a tall order), and the very visibility of Black Democrats. To what extent this trend is undercut by the racist appeals of much of the anti-Obama right, and Trump's coarse racist demagogy, remains to be seen.
You're right, though, it's nearly impossible to find specific examples of my supposition in terms of Black Republicans elected against white opponents in the modern era.
Arkady
President
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I tumbled to this realization a couple years ago. It really is remarkable that, in the last few decades, there quite possibly hasn't been a single black Republican who has won a state-wide election against a white opponent -- considering there are hundreds of state-wide races per year, once you factor in primaries. The only one I can think of from the post-Reconstruction period was Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who last ran successfully in 1972, which was so long ago that the realignment of the GOP and racial issues was still fairly early in the process.
Anyway, I'd like to see the GOP move away from the racial demagoguery, but it's hard to be hopeful about that when Trump just doubled down on it. We hadn't seen that openly racist a campaign for the presidency in many decades. Perhaps if Trump fails badly enough as a president, he'll discredit that approach. But I don't expect that would do it. The fact is, he won. What's needed is for a racial demagogue to be beaten badly at the polls. Only then will the GOP come to see that tactic as self-defeating and move away from it. I think that with demographic realities being what they are, it would probably just take a single convincing defeat of a racist presidential candidate to get the GOP to make a big change, since they know that, long term, appeals to white supremacy are doomed by population shifts, so once it flips into being a failed tactic, it's only going to get worse in future cycles. So, perhaps the change could come as early as 2020.
