Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

On the other hand, don't forget, without the racist redneck hick vote, George W Bush would have lost by a huge margin...

Republicans are strict constitutionalists who want voting rights returned to only white male property holders. They want the rest of us back on the plantation. Republicans are returning to their Know-nothing roots. They don't want students voting in their college towns either and do everything they can to lower voter registration.

I'll say the same thing here that I said to Marshall in an email: the proper response is, "How dependent are the Republicans on fundie voters?"

If there's a single significant bloc of American voters that should be regarded as more gullible, more manipulable, and therefore somehow less *real* than other voters, it's got to be those who buy into the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy - the belief in a six-day creation, a literal Adam and Eve, a Flood whose waters covered the entire earth, and so forth.

When one discusses "evangelical Christians", one is mostly talking about believers in Biblical inerrancy: you don't *have* to be an inerrantist to be an evangelical, but most evangelicals believe in Biblical inerrancy. (I base this on a third of a century as a born-again (but non-evangelical) Christian, five years of being a professor at an evangelical Christian college, and various other relevant life experience.)

The GOP would almost cease to be a major party without this bloc.

Certainly the Dems could win without black votes if the GOP was also deprived of fundie votes. Take away both groups, and the Dems keep both houses of Congress throughout the past 25 years; they win the 1988 and 2000 elections comfortably, and the GOP finds another nominee in 2004 to try to be remotely competitive.

So let's turn this question around and aim it right back at the GOP, where it belongs.

If you took away the bigoted redneck pickup truck shotgun rack vote, the GOP would not win any elections in the south.

I read all of Al Gore's recent speech for the first time last night, and I couldn't help thinking about those times in history when a majority of voters-- people who considered themselves to be decent, humane, patriotic and god-fearing-- supported the most blatant repression: segregation in the south, apartheid in South Africa, the Nazis. After the fall of said oppression, there was a period during which these people had to look back and wonder, "what the bloody **** were we thinking back then?

Now it's happening in reverse.

One could point out that without the trailer parks...

But that would be condescending and elitist.

Before we get too far into name-calling, I don't think that people who believe in the power of crystals, potheads, astrology-mongerers, or people who have never been to a state beginning with "I" should be able to vote either. No party has a monopoly, or even much market power, on stupidity; it's just that different kinds of oddballs flock to different parties. At least neither of them's the Natural Law Party.

Davis is just unclear on the concept. A Rapethepublican, he's naturally not too swift in the old beaneroonie, if you know what I mean. You don't take out the votes. You don't even take out the voters. You just take it to Fat Tony Supremo.

He'll take 'em out for you, and no one dare say "boo."

I don't know why the hell some would be so sour on losing one seat. Sure, whenever you lose, it sucks, but this second special election loss almost certainly doesn't signal any major trend. The Republicans will still have the House and probably keep the Senate, too.

"Presumably any political party would [be] put at something of a disadvantage if one of their major constituencies was suddenly struck from the rolls."

Ya mean like what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election? It disadvantaged Gore right out of the presidency.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=217&row=2

What's the problem. Self interest is served by belonging to a constituency. As Pres. Truman(?) remarked about a "subpar" politician: "He might be an SOB, but he's our SOB." Partisanship matters when it's connected with your interests.

Blood is thicker than water.

Birds of a feather ...

The point is perhaps that the black vote is critical to Democratic success and that if the republicans can appeal to a significant number that would have a huge impact. Democrats would do better to examine how well their party is serving its black constituency rather than demonizing their opponents.

What's neat about Josh's comment is that if you make this same remark to many Americans they will defend it, saying, yes, but you see, the Democrats are dependent on *special interest votes*. For some reason, there is this idea of the Dems as being chock-a-block with "special interests" while the Republicans somehow represent the poor, beleagered median voter.

This is the same reasoning that views welfare mothers as being a special interest because they are urban, but famers and suburbanites as being "real americans".

Feh.

"...Republicans are returning to their Know-nothing roots...."

And they don't believe me when I say "...the Bush administration amounts to a counter-revolution...", the "revolution" being the American revolution, of course, not just the "socialist victory of the market economy" won by the Clinton administration.

I won't be surprised if it is revealed that there are even royalists of some kind among the Republican ranks.

My family has been here, in various forms, for about 100 years (mostly Ashkenazim from Poland & Russia, with 1/4 Swedes). Slave importation was stopped in 1808, IIRC, so most black families have been here for 200+ years, yet somehow, our society regards me, ethnically at least, as being a more "organic" part of the U.S. than most blacks.

My mother talked about how, in Amos Elon's The Pity of it All, rights for Jews in pre-1930s Germany constantly fluctuated, with periods in which rights were extended to Jews in liberal periods, and when they were rolled back in more reactionary ones. One thing I wonder about is if we could, in the imaginable future have a "redemption" phase, like that after the reconstruction in the Civil War. We've had a period of liberation (1865-1880s), a period of redemption and reaction (1880s-1920s), and another period of liberation (1930s-present) on the black racial issue. Could we have another reactionary phase? What if the media made a big scare about some suspected rapists named Willie (say.)? Could politicians saying things like "We all support the freedom of all Americans, but with freedom comes responsibility" and return overt institutional racism to government institutions?

I don't worry that this will happen to people of Irish descent, or people of Eastern European descent (me!). They were discriminated against at first, but are no longer viewed as less than full Americans, but is it conceivable that it would happen blacks, or new "distinct" Latinos? (of course, one might mention overt institutional racism against American Indians, but I'd say we already have that)

As an Australian, I once again ponder how the political scene in this country would look if you had compulsory voting, as we do. I am a proponent of it - there are plenty of other laws one has to obey (traffic regulations, for example), and no one is telling you how to vote, you are quite free to destroy your ballot, write obscenities over it etc. It does mean, for example, that a lot of immigrants, particularly from countries which have not been democracies, are educated by their community leaders regarding their options, and become part of their new country.

They were not, of course, trying to exclude blacks from voting for the sake of excluding blacks. I mean they would not try to exclude blacks if they knew they would vote Republican.

Racism is basically a big lie any way. But most racists don't know that racism is a lie because of some sort of ** social / mass hypnosis** . Even folks who are really not racists are affected by this kind of mass hypnosis and because of it they themselves may have racist tendencies in their private lives, e.g., they may refrain from marrying some one from another race, or even from certain races - an American may want to marry Chinese, e.g., but not black...

It is a strange phenomenon and it probably points both to a weakness in human character and an element of survival instinct... it will probably dissapear as human civilization advances..

Chris, blacks and Indians are not "oddballs."

Now as for folks who believe in certain myths
and fantasies such as virgin births and bodies
levitating...

Bako has it about right...

"They don't want students voting in their college towns either and do everything they can to lower voter registration."

Plus, voter rolls are increasingly "cleansed" and those who survive the process, and then vote, can no longer be sure their vote will be counted.

We should work to make the voting process as direct and simple as possible, and do whatever is necessary to make certain all our votes cast have an equal chance of being counted.
____

You are missing the point on how hysterically funny that "if it weren't for the blacks" rif is. If it weren't for the blacks;
(a) There would be a lot less southern house seats because the number of house seats is based on the number of people in your state and the south has a lot of black people.
(b) The racists would vote their pocketbooks and elect liberals to give them money taken from rich people, like us.

Hmmmmm interesting

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