The Gallant Pig Man wrote:
The Oracle of Reality wrote:
Guys, you’re being a bit verbose in your whining/coping lately. And of course, you miss the core reason Trump was able to even exist as a candidate:
The Left - years ago - decided they were going to emphasize minority identity politics at the national level. It was a sound strategy at first, as demographic trends seemed to be working in their favor if they embraced this strategy. In doing so however, it snowballed out of control and became THE ONLY strategy (see 2016 election). Everything else takes a backseat. The opposition is racist (this goes back to at least 2000), so you must vote with us to defeat the evil club of white men.
As 2015 rolled around and you were still patting yourself on the back for getting an interracial man into the White House, it was worse than ever before. You had a woman lined up that had been carefully brought along for two decades. Her token Senate seat was amusing. Wow- such experience! “What a policy wonk she was!” The arrogance was unbelievable. “She would hardly have to campaign” (and she didn’t). “Women aren’t going to abandon their own.” “She looks like me, so I must vote for her”, they assumed women would think.
But you guys over played your hand. The resentment resulting from roughly half the country from being called racist (and sexist, at opportune times) all the time was at astonishingly high levels. The accusers have been so brainwashed and self-righteous, that they don’t realize how ridiculous their actions seem to most of the country. (And I’m not saying this is enough for a lot of Dems to abandon the party; there are other reasons that particular groups - teachers, artists, etc - won’t ever leave the Dem party). Left wing identity politics is their religion. And they’ve become religious fanatics.
Bottom line- The country never united under Obama. It’s not all his fault. The Republicans were in DEFCON mode in 2010 like the Dems are now, and refused to cooperate on much. But if the country had come together, Trump wouldn’t have been able to win. He came along at the right time, with a few basic themes, and shoved all the identity politics and PC culture down the Left’s (including much of the MSM) throats. Everything else is secondary.
And as we know from post-election data, he didn’t do too shabby in parts of the country that surprised even the smartest of Liberals. He won the suburbs and upper middle class. He wasn’t supposed to win that. He won white women! WHAT?! How could that have happened?! He won white college graduates. Mind. Blown. He even got 30% if the Hispanic vote! That’s right, 30% of the group that the Left/MSM first painted as the absolute target of candidate Trump, voted for him. I recall “polls” showing him in the 10% range in 2015-2016. Black men went for him at 13%, the highest in at least three decades to vote Republican. WHAT is going on here?!
You guys need to look in the mirror and admit you’ve been swept up in the strategy of one party in a two party system. You’re pawns. You’re often fighting boogeymen that don’t deserve to be the core of your faith.
See, I have direct quotes and articles I can easily pull up to support my version of the Republican Party's trajectory. You don't have that for for your claims about the Democratic Party's use of "identity politics", because it's incorrect. "Identity politics" is, for the most part, actually just civil rights.
Let's play this out. What were the big "identity politics" issues in 2000 when you claim this trend began? Gay rights was a big one. As the Democratic Party decided that gay people deserved equal protection under the law there was a huge backlash on the Conservative side. Focus on the Family and other evangelical outfits were wingeing on and on about family values and the evil of homosexuality ("IT WILL BE THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT!!!"), even blaming gays for... natural disasters. California passed prop 22. There were a series of attempts to create constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Republicans were on the wrong side of history and they damn sure haven't gotten over it. "Identity politics" wasn't to blame for that rift, theocratic beliefs and bigotry were.
What else happened around 2000? 9/11 is a good one. Everything became "Americanized". Freedom Fries, Freedom Toast. All of the liberals were labeled traitors and cowards for opposing George Bush's patriotic Middle Eastern adventure. And if they opposed things like racially profiling Arabs or monitoring mosques in the name of national security or being mean to Muslims who lived here, well then they were secret Muslim sympathizers. (The Republican Party sure got a lot of mileage out of that one didn't they?) I mean, DiscoGary has been adamant that Muslims are literally incapable of co-existing with democracy. Are you not listening to the things conservatives say they believe? Again, this isn't "identity politics", it's civil rights.
How about abortion? W. Shrub was bigly opposed to abortion, which had been an established constitutional right for about 30 years. He targeted abortion funds domestically (Planned Parenthood, boogety boogety! Conservatives sure got a lot of mileage out of that one, didn't they?) and restricted US aid from going to any international health organization that provided abortion services (take THAT global poverty), he restricted available procedures, and he had his nice church friends on the TV calling liberals and women who received abortions baby killers. The subsequent feminist backlash had nothing to do with "identity politics", it was pushing back, yet again, against conservative theocracy.
I could go on. In any case, I thought Clinton was an absolutely terrible candidate because I knew, fair or not, that she had too much baggage. But she got one thing absolutely right: you can toss about half of Trump's supporters into a basket of deplorables. I'm sorry it hurts their feelings to be called out on their rasci.. sorry, *culturalist*, theocratic beliefs. I'm sorry it makes moderates sad to think that their nice, smiling neighbors might be kind of bad people. But after a year of Trump, there's really no denying it anymore. Trump is mean, and a bigot, and willful ignoramus, and that's what people LIKE about him. When his supporters say "he says what I'm thinking" they mean that they think Mexicans are violent rapists and that black immigrants should go back to their "huts" in Africa. I'm not worried about alienating them. The primary reason Democrats lost in 2016 was because their voters were complacent, not because racists got their feelings hurt. Everyone just assumed that Clinton would win. (Btw, the secondary reason Democrats lost is that the "liberal" media played down the legitimate Trump-Russia story and played up the non-scandal EMAILZ story leading up to the election). They won't be complacent in the 2018 elections, assuming Republicans allow us to have them...