Elections 2012: BFP Watch Party

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Aj, I understand your rationale well. I hope you are right. I hope I am wrong.

Take this in the spirit in which it is given Kobi, so do I. I would really strongly prefer that my grandson and granddaughter *not* have to continue fighting this. I don't want to give the impression that I'm being a Pollyanna because I'm constitutionally very poor at being that optimistic. Your analysis is spot on. The wild card is whether the GOP wants to be a national party or a regional party. One or two more elections like this and they could be the latter.

Consider: if the GOP had not embraced the Southern strategy my parents would have probably been Republicans by the mid-80s. They were liberal on civil rights, pro-union, nominally feminist and that was about the extent of their liberalism. On everything else they were fairly conservative (in the old sense not in this new crazy, clown-car sense). So honestly they *should* have been Republicans. Blacks *used* to vote Republican when we could vote, the GOP is right that MLK was a Republican as was Jackie Robinson. Then they embraced the race-baiting and blacks turned away from the GOP in droves. It will be a month of seven Sundays, particularly given their recent flat-out embrace of virulent racism, before blacks return to the GOP.

My own prediction, given the fact that Latinos stampeded toward Obama in a big way is that the GOP has one, perhaps two, Presidential electoral cycles to get their act together regarding race and if they don't, they're done. If they lose the Latino vote for two generations at the level they've lost the black vote for two generations, the GOP as it currently stands winds up a rump regional party that is strong in Deep Dixie, can hold on in some of the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states and is all but dead in Florida, the Southwest, West Coast and East Coast north of Virginia. They could lose Texas and Arizona soon if they keep going as they are.

Yes, the GOP needs to change strategies to draw in more minority and female voters. They need the numbers and they need them in areas they usually dont win. Only then will they have the opportunity to exert their true agenda. Does that mean they are going to abandon their sexist, racist bullshit? Not likely.

You couldn't pay me to be a GOP strategist right now because they have an *impossible* job. They have to simultaneously hold the sane part of the base, shed the theocratic and rabid John Birch Society parts of the party *and* expand their base beyond the South. That's a tall order. How they are going to do it, I don't know and I doubt that there are a dozen people in the GOP who have any ideas about how to pull it off.

The GOP is pragmatic and opportunistic tho in a fucked up way. I suspect they will go after the minority vote in a more concentrated way in areas they dont usually have success.

Specifically, they will target minority males. They will attempt to draw in these males by doing what they have been successfully doing for 4 years now......men need to regain their control, men need to assert their manhood and its control, men need to keep their women in line, men need to reassert their dominance. And, in their fucked up brains....as men go so do "their women".

I can see them doing this but it doesn't necessarily get them where they want to go. An 18 point gap with 50% of the population is not a tenable position to be in. Someone in GOP-land has to be looking at that number, considering the fates of Todd Akin and the rest of the "Rape-Thing Crew" and thinking "sweet and sour Jesus how do we send these people packing?"

<some really excellent historical analysis regretfully snipped>

History has a way of repeating itself over and over and over just in more creative ways as time goes on. It is a mistake to assume something is an ideological change when it may just be slanting the ideology in a potentially more lucrative and fruitful direction.

I hope I'm not making that mistake.

Same with gay rights. To say "the culture war is over and they lost" is to lose sight of history. The GOP already has a significant contingent of rich, white and non white queer males. They even have some rich queer females. The operative words here are rich and male....not queer. Just as the end of slavery hasnt abolished racism in this country, the passage of queer friendly legislation isnt going to abolish homophobia. It may, however, lull us into believing an ideological change has occured when it really hasnt.

I said what I did about the culture war for two reasons:

1) We went 4 for 4 last night in popular referendums on marriage equality. Now, I don't think it's a good thing for majorities to vote on the rights of minorities but given that we'd been 0 for 32 until last night I think something has genuinely shifted and marriage equality is about to become what interracial marriage was forty years ago. On the ascendancy toward acceptance.

2) Not a single one of the "Rape Thing Crew" won. Not one. It may not be winning but given what how that's gone on both issues for a while, it sure as hell doesn't look like we're losing.

I hope you are right. I hope I am wrong cuz I am fucking weary of fighting this fight. Yet, history continuously warns me to never underestimate the power, influence, and control of both internalized and externalized hatred in its many forms. It can be used to exploit, control and otherwise fuck with people in some pretty nefarious ways.

Oh I don't think it'll be easy but I think that the pendulum has swung. Now that it's all over, I'm going to share with you the nightmare scenario that has woken me up for most of the last four years. My greatest fear was that the GOP would pull out a sweep last night and empower the theocrats and the plutocrats and they would demand, and receive, their pounds of flesh. We would wind up in a theocratic America where freedom of religion exists on paper but not in either law or practice. This would, of course, break the nation in some pretty profound ways and that it would be from those ashes that America would swing back the other way. It appears--as we've both said, I may be very wrong about this--that the swing has happened without us having to have a *historical* event. By historical I mean Germany in the 30s historical which is what it looked like for a while back in 2011.

Great analysis from you, as always, Kobi.

Cheers
Aj