Someone Has To Do It: US Elections 2020

[Satchmo Distel]

The "black brown alliance" could only be real in places where the two groups share the same class and/or geographical location. Middle-class Cubans in Miami are not usually going to ally with blacks in more run-down and economically starved parts of Miami; it would be as absurd as expecting upwardly mobile suburbanized Italian Americans or Irish Americans in past decades to see their interests as allying with blacks stuck in inner cities. Many people in those groups want to make themselves white, not more non-white.

Harris is a classic case of code switching but in her case done in a very cynical careerist way so that when she acts black, it feels like she's faking it. She's even less black than Meghan Markle (who deliberately chooses "mixed race", not black, as her identity).

[ChrisJ]

Secondly, as i predicted, Harris will go back to being Indian after the election............
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/u...ala-india.html

Could you elaborate on how the piece you linked to supports that?

[Nefertiti2]

Could you elaborate on how the piece you linked to supports that?

This quote from the article points the change in emphasis

Although Ms. Harris has been more understated about her Indian heritage than her experience as a Black woman, her path to U.S. vice-presidential pick has also been guided by the values of her Indian-born mother and her wider Indian family.

[Tactical Genius]

Many people in those groups want to make themselves white, not more non-white.

With this sentence you made my argument for me.

I am considering bestowing an award on you, subject to passing the fried chicken test.....

[Satchmo Distel]

Interesting to note also that women in India who want to climb the ladder are pressured to make their skin appear lighter so there is colour racism within Indian culture as well which probably increases when it meets white supremacy in the US. I'd be surprised if many Indians would see themselves as having anything to do with blackness whereas lots would see their interests as tied to whiteness, or at least to lightening.

[jason voorhees]

Can someone explain to me how Stacy Abrams can turn Georgia for Biden but couldn't get Georgians to vote for her not too long ago?

She never conceded because of massive chicanery, and may have/probably won by the same amount that Biden did. The Republican courts didn't allow a recount, and purged hundreds of thousands of voters who would have voted.

Abrams sued the secretary of state she was running against because of late absentee ballots, shutting down voting precincts in black neighborhoods, while having faulty voting machines.

She went and got even more people registered, got absentee-by-mail ballots approved, and made it easier to cast a ballot.

Hopefully that lady can win the Senate in a few weeks.

[Hot Pepsi]

The "black brown alliance" could only be real in places where the two groups share the same class and/or geographical location. Middle-class Cubans in Miami are not usually going to ally with blacks in more run-down and economically starved parts of Miami; it would be as absurd as expecting upwardly mobile suburbanized Italian Americans or Irish Americans in past decades to see their interests as allying with blacks stuck in inner cities. Many people in those groups want to make themselves white, not more non-white.

This is what makes me sad.

As Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “We all want to know who we are better than.” (To be clear, she’s lamenting this terrible habit of humanity.)

When the Italians, Irish, East European Jews, and Germans, etc. first started coming here, they were treated as second class citizens by the mostly Anglo-American and Scots-Irish establishment. But once they had made a bit of money, they shat on the Blacks and the Chinese and the Mexicans. Remember what Zaluchi says about Black and Hispanic people in The Godfather. That line seems gratuitous, but it really summarizes what the drug trade was really all about, and it devastated a lot of communities.

And now we see Latinx and Asian people doing the same thing, not only to Blacks but sometimes other people of their own ethnicity. Hasan Minaj did that great rant about how Asian-Americans need to help BLM, because they haven’t been doing much so far, even though the civil rights movement paved the way for their success in the US.

I can’t recall who it was, but one Black commentator pointed out that a lot of white people are especially loyal to the police because, a century ago, becoming a cop was how many immigrants from less-fashionable European countries “became white.” Perhaps that same process is happening with brown and Black people now.

The military serves that function for a lot of families too, so they may look askance at anyone who is questioning why their son or nephew is in Afghanistan.

And the “prosperity Gospel” hucksters have sucked in a lot of recent immigrants because they promise upward mobility and financial security. Somebody like Trump may appeal to them. They also may be more likely to buy his lies about election fraud because election fraud is a real thing, or at least a real threat, in the countries where they are from.

[ChrisJ]

This quote from the article points the change in emphasis

Yeah, saw that. Wasn't sure how it equated with "going back to being Indian" when the next para says,

In several big speeches, Ms. Harris has gushed about her Indian grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, who inspired her with his stories about fighting for the rights of Indians to win independence from Britain.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah, but she went to Howard. I don’t think she’s going to chose one or the other part of her family story at the exclusion of the other. She wants “credit” for both.

[WOM]

there is colour racism within Indian culture as well .

There's colour racism in virtually every culture. Old Chinese and Japanese women in Toronto still carry parasols lest they be thought a tanned field worker. My wife's black and Tamil students (almost always girls) bust each others' chops all day about who has lighter skin and who has nappy hair. It's everywhere.

[MsD]

My wife's black

Read that as some surprising new information for a second.

[ChrisJ]

Interesting to note also that women in India who want to climb the ladder are pressured to make their skin appear lighter so there is colour racism within Indian culture as well which probably increases when it meets white supremacy in the US. I'd be surprised if many Indians would see themselves as having anything to do with blackness whereas lots would see their interests as tied to whiteness, or at least to lightening.

There is massive colour racism in India. Ads everywhere for skin lightening potions, preponderance of lighter models and actors on TV and in films. Some of it is connected with varna, something promoted and exploited under British rule. It would be surprising to say the least if some of those attitudes weren't held by members of the diaspora.

[Nocturnal Submission]

This is quite interesting. A limited analysis of one of the voting irregularity claims: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-54874120

[Eggchaser]

There is massive colour racism in India. Ads everywhere for skin lightening potions, preponderance of lighter models and actors on TV and in films. Some of it is connected with varna, something promoted and exploited under British rule. It would be surprising to say the least if some of those attitudes weren't held by members of the diaspora.

Goans get marked as heavy drinkers who are lazy (susegad), as a lot of them were Catholics, so they had no religious issues with booze, and so obviously they lay about on the beach getting smashed. They are essentially the "lazy Irish drunkards" stereotype of 19th century infamy.

In my experience of my wife's family, they do enjoy a drink but no more than anyone else. I would say that even now I am a much harder drinker than any of them, whether of my wife's generation or their parents, and I am in no way the total piss artist I was back in my 20s.

[Nefertiti2]

This piece from Mike Davis is pertinent here.

https://twitter.com/metropolitanbks/status/1327333186611916801?s=21

if the Democrats aren’t prepared to do the ground work or to offer concrete proposals to make people’s lives better then they will lose votes to the other side’s empty rhetoric.

In the end it was the economy that sunk hopes of a Democratic landslide. It was a gigantic mistake to make the election a plebiscite on Trump’s bungling of the pandemic without making an all-out effort to convince voters that a Biden administration would sustain family incomes and small businesses until Covid was defeated. The 2.2 trillion dollar relief bill passed by the House should have been the basis for an aggressive campaign, but the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, allowed the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to take it hostage and Biden, mumbling through the two presidential debates, never really crusaded to free it.

[anton pulisov]

Well, the people know the insurance industry bankrolls both parties. They aren't dumb.

Meanwhile, McClownstick has exposed more of the secret service to Corona, this time in a drive by of the "Million MAGA march"

[San Bernardhinault]

So, there are totally conflicting narratives doing the rounds right now about why the Democrats did so badly in this election.

First up, I think we really need to address the big elephant in the room: Did the Democrats actually do badly in this election. I think by any reasonable metric they actually did pretty well.

The beat an incumbent president. This last happened with G HW Bush, who was really a third term President. Before that it was Carter and Ford who were both in the chaos of the post-Watergate madness. Before that it was Herbert Hoover who was also really a third term President. It's exceptionally rare to beat a sitting first term President.

It's even more impressive on a high turnout election.

Meanwhile, they retained a majority in the House despite the heavily gerrymandered environment, where the presence of the sitting President massively boosted turnout on the Republican side in a way that didn't happen in 2018.

The maybe slight disappointment could be in the Senate, but before the summer most people expected the Senate to finish 51R-49D. Everyone's disappointed because there was some weird expectation setting from the Nates who had a lot of 10% chances in Republican seats adding up to show a mean outcome that was skewed D from what you might call the modal outcome.

Basically, Democrats did pretty well, really, and it only looks iffy compared to the massively inflated expectations driven partly by polling and partly by living in a bubble where nobody can imagine Trump getting any support.

-

Anyway, back to those conflicting narratives.

The first one is that there seems to be a lot of reports, backed by what seems to be sketchy data and a lot of vox-popping, that messages like "Defund The Police" were really, really damaging and turning people against Democrat candidates. The weird thing is that if you actually asked people about the content of "defund the police" - as they did in LA - then people back the ideas in it pretty strongly. They just baulk at the phrase itself, particularly as it has got mangled by the idiot right into "abolish all policing". The Conor Lambs of this world are totally convinced that Defund The Police, Green New Deal and Black Lives Matter really hurt D candidates in purpleish areas.

Meanwhile, there's the narrative being pushed by the D left that the centrists have totally failed because they didn't win those purpleish seats, and that the only way to win is to be bolder and to push ideas like the Green New Deal much more strongly.

It appears to me that, firstly, we should hammer home that it really wasn't a disaster; and secondly, that having two wings of the party blaming each other in a destructive frenzy is incredibly unhelpful. Nobody seems to actually be taking Beto's comments to heart, at least as I read them. Which was that candidates really need to connect in their districts, and work their districts, and tailor their policies to their districts. Some districts really do need centrist Democrats. Much though we all love to hate Joe Manchin, his brand of Democrat is literally the only kind that could win in West Virginia, and it's better to have Joe Manchin than Don Blankenship as the Senator for West Virginia. Conor Lamb may be the only kind of Democrat who can win in rural Pennsylvania - the party should embrace that lack of orthodoxy. I really don't want Joe Manchin in Massachusetts, or Conor Lamb in Brooklyn, which are areas that want candidates that are much more progressive. But it's surely better to have a heterodox party that can win in many places. I genuinely don't see how adopting a full progressive platform is going to win in many districts and states. Sherrod Brown is a good example. I think he's wrong on many things - but his brand is that he's a protectionist who is very strong on union rights. It's a message that works in Ohio that probably wouldn't work in Arizona. Tailor your message. America is a big diverse place and you really can't have a universal message for every district.

[Amor de Cosmos]

First up, I think we really need to address the big elephant in the room: Did the Democrats actually do badly in this election. I think by any reasonable metric they actually did pretty well.

I think that's very possible. Over the last couple of decades we've become so used to bad news or, more accurately, bad spin on the news, that we wouldn't recognise a good result if was delivered by Glinda the Good Witch of the North and a thousand Munchkins.

[Satchmo Distel]

I'd argue they did quite badly given how poorly Red states have managed COVID. Trump retained FL and increased his vote there despite the unemployment system purposely breaking down and the Governor being a fuckwit. FL should have at least been able to match GA's performance had the Dems been as well run there but they are a fucking shambles. They also failed in Ohio despite having Kasich supporting Biden.

However if you take the view that the only priority here was to secure PA, Michigan and Wisconsin, and maybe flip one southern state, they exceeded that.

I'd have taken this result if offered it on November 2nd but it would have been much sweeter with the Senate, which was probably more achievable this year than it will be in 2022 unless Biden gets a huge bounce from the vaccine and economic recovery.

[Nefertiti2]

They won crucial states by tiny minorities in the presidential election, failed to breakthrough in the Senate, do better in the House or in State legislatures

How is that „ pretty well“?

[ursus arctos]

I don't dispute that they are a shambles in Florida, but it is also the case that people in places like Florida somehow put loyalty to Trump ahead of the neighbours dying. There still isn't a significant rebellion among Republican voters against a public health disaster.

[San Bernardhinault]

They won crucial states by tiny minorities in the presidential election, failed to breakthrough in the Senate, do better in the House or in State legislatures

How is that „ pretty well“?

Because they won a Presidential election against an incumbent who could turn out 73 million voters on his side. Defeating a regularly elected first (rather than third) term President has happened only once in over a century.

Because they won the House. "Doing better" is an incredibly tough metric given that they're coming off a massive wave election with depressed R turnout in a mid-term, and against a heavily gerrymandered map.

Because breaking through in the Senate is really fucking difficult - until about 4 months ago nobody was seriously thinking that the Democrats were going to win the Senate. They didn't do well in the Senate, but they didn't do particularly badly.

[Nefertiti2]

So they didn’t do as badly as they might have done.

you would rather recategorise that as “doing pretty well” because actually doing “ pretty well” would involve doing things which would be uncomfortable

[Nefertiti2]

The corrupt gerontocracy of the Democrats doesn’t actually want to win that much.

For the last four years we’ve been hearing how exceptional Trump is -suddenly he is completely normal “ regularly elected” “incumbent “

The likes of Nancy Pelosi policies are entirely” carry on corruption”

Feinstein actually made it easier for the Republicans to have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court

“ pretty well”...

[San Bernardhinault]

So they didn’t do as badly as they might have done.

you would rather recategorise that as “doing pretty well” because actually doing “ pretty well” would involve doing things which would be uncomfortable

I think they did pretty well. The didn't do incredibly well in a massive blue wave, but given the Republican turnout that may have been impossible and they may have done as well as could have been done in this environment.

I think treating this as a disaster that needs to be forensically examined and needing a massive bloodletting with centrists and progressives at each other's throats is not the right thing to do.