Elections 2012: BFP Watch Party

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Serious as a heart attack Kobi. Now, I might be wrong that has happened more times than not but I don't think I'm wrong for a few reasons:

1) A number of true conservatives (as opposed to right-wing reactionaries who call themselves conservative) who have been talking about the GOP's demographics problem for a while now have already started the conversation about how to gain more minority voters. The percentage of the American electorate that is white keeps ticking downward. 74% in 2008, 72% in 2012 and on track for 70% in 2016. There's simply no mathematical way that the GOP can be nationally viable trying to court only the white vote and pealing off a few scattered black and Latino votes here and there. Mathematically impossible. Obama won 75% of the Latino vote (13% of the population) and 91% of the black vote (10%). That means that if the GOP continues going on as it has, it could lose substantial majorities of almost a *quarter* of the population. That's not total numbers, those are actual votes.

2) The GOP lost women voters by a full 19% on the national level. That's devastating. That can be tied to their stance on women's health issues, abortion, birth control and equal pay for equal work. They can't suffer that kind of thing again.

3) It's clear that the nation has moved on gay rights. We were 0 for 32 until last night and we were 4 for 4 in the cycle that finished yesterday. That's two of the pillars of the culture wars that the GOP can no longer rely on to push them over the top. Does that mean that America turns into queer nirvana tomorrow? No, it will be hard to be queer in Alabama for a long, long time to come. It does mean that the GOP is going to have to face the fact that the culture war is over and they lost.

The country is certainly as divided as you say it is and we will have contentious elections for some time to come but 2012 is the Republican's 1968. In that year, the Democrats lost badly an election that should have been winnable and five cycles later (1992) nominate Bill Clinton, a centrist Democrat. The GOP will win more elections and they will win more presidential elections but they have no choice but to change their tune. The consequences of the near total epistemic closure on the right is now coming home and from what I have read on conservative blogs that are sane (so not Drudge, Red State or WND) they are waking up to the fact that they did this to themselves.

Like I said, I might be wrong but I think we've seen a sea change in American politics.


Cheers
Aj

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

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.

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".

Put it in a historical context. When it came to abolition, blacks and women teamed up, they were both slaves/indentured servants in a white mans world. And yet, when the issue of giving the right to vote to former slaves arose, black male leaders abandoned the women who fought along side of them.

It was Frederick Douglass who turned down Anthony and Stantons request that he insist that women be allow the right to vote just as black men were about to be allowed to. According to Douglass, "their treatment as slaves entitled the now liberated African-American men, who lacked women's indirect empowerment, to voting rights before women were granted the franchise. African-American women, he believed, would have the same degree of empowerment as white women once African-American men had the vote; hence, general female suffrage was, according to Douglass, of less concern than black male suffrage."

Men bonded in solidarity with other men for their own benefit. A man is a man is a man....and a woman is not. And women had to fight another 50 years to get the right to vote. Even then, it required a lil bit of extortion.

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.

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 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.