The demographic trends are clear that the percentage of white Americans is slowly declining. After the presidential 2012 election, Republicans blamed their defeat on the wide margins they lost among Hispanics and African-Americans and vowed to improve relations with those communities.
That plan went awry very rapidly this year in one of the most divisive campaigns for the Republican nomination. Not only were those two groups dissed, so were women and pretty much all immigrant groups. The thinking seems to be that if you can stimulate enough fearful white Americans to vote for you, you can compensate for losses elsewhere. As a result, we have seen a remarkable visibility of white nationalists in the campaign, people who in the past were kept at arms length, at least publicly.
Seth Meyers takes a closer look at this phenomenon.
Interestingly, these groups seem to always identify as Christians. Are there any who don’t?
Well, the Asatru folks identify as Norse pagans but are still into white power.
I’d vote for Trump over Hillary if the penny comes up heads. If that’s the choice we have, fuck it.
Have you seen the latest statements from Trump’s butler, Anthony Sececal? Basically a KKK Grand Wizard would say “Whoah, tone it down a notch, dude!”
Marcus Ranum@3,
Well yeah. I mean, you’re not a woman, or black, or Mexican, or Muslim, so why should you care?
Nick Gotts to Marcus:
Indecorous — indeed, tawdry. So very holier-than-thou!
Tsk.
(I know you aren’t any of those, yet you apparently care; also, how exactly do you know Marcus doesn’t care?)
No, I’m with Nick Gotts on this one. The gist of the article is about how Trump has taken bigotry and racism and made them into the core values of the Republican party.
If Marcus wants to do a drive-by “Well, Clinton is just as bad” comment, then he must believe one of two things:
1) Maybe what he really means is “Clinton is just as bad on the issues I care about. A case can be made that, on certain issues — warmongering, campaign financing and banking regulations — Clinton may or may not be just as bad as Trump. (I say “may or may not” because I don’t think anyone knows where Trump actually stands on any issue, least of all the candidate himself.) But I fail to see how any reasonable person could argue that, on the issues mentioned in the OP (immigration, womens’ rights, minorities, Muslims), Clinton would be better. So in that case, Marcus would be willing to throw all these groups under the bus if his hypothetical coin flip came up heads, because other issues are more important than they are. Alternatively,
2) Maybe he does believe that Clinton would be just as bad for all those groups as Trump. Since polls consistently show that Hispanics, Blacks, Muslims, and women all break heavily for Clinton, that would mean that he’d need to mentally add the phrase “and they’re all just too stupid to realize it” to that statement.
Either way, I think Nick can fairly state that, at this point, ANYONE who thinks it’s a coin flip between Clinton and Trump must really not give a FF about women or minorities.
brucegee1962,
Were that the case, your conditional would apply.
(It wasn’t, therefore it doesn’t)
At least you’ve expressed it as your opinion.
Kudos.
Brucegee and Nick Gotts:
Nick -- it must be hard to breathe up there on your high horse. Can you see my house from there?
Brucegee (and implicitly Gotts) -- way to set up a false dichotomy. That’s exactly what the 2 party system likes to do, of course, so its victims can hardly be blamed for falling into the trap. Your false dichotomy presupposes that either Clinton or Trump will do anything remotely resembling what they say they will do. In the case of Trump, it ought to be obvious that that’s hardly the case. In the case of Clinton, the relationship between what she says she will do and what she will do is not as obviously ridiculous but it doesn’t hold up to more than casual examination, either. So while you are making the usual tired argument between “the devil you know, and the devil you don’t” I submit to you that there is no “devil you know” at all and that you’re just dupes. I don’t mind dupes but sanctimonious dupes are kind of irritating.
With respect to the risible “Clinton is in favor of minorities and women” bullshit -- yeah -- tell that to the women in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, I hear that punchline is all the rage over there. And do you count all the people streaming out of Libya and Syria into Europe as “minorities”? Note that -- unlike you -- I am not saying “Clinton sucks therefore Trump is a better choice” I think we are all so ignorant about both of those motherfuckers that, yes, it may as well be a coin-flip. And, besides, it’s not as if the popular vote means much; it’ll be overthrown if the wrong people win, have you noticed that? (Oh: and in case you’re going to leap to the conclusion I’m a disaffected “Bernie Bro” or Cruz supporter, you should recall that I’ve never had a nice thing to say about either of those phoney political hacks either)
brucegee:
I think Nick can fairly state that, at this point, ANYONE who thinks it’s a coin flip between Clinton and Trump must really not give a FF about women or minorities.
So you’re a liar who likes to attempt to manipulate people using intro-level well poisoning and presupposition. OK. Glad we cleared that up.
PS -- if you look at something like the Gilens and Page study which says in the abstract: “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
What Clinton and Trump say they are going to do is irrelevant. What you think they should do is even more irrelevant. So, yeah -- heads or tails?
Well I think Trump with whip up America into a fascist, white supremacist frenzy, so I’m going with Clinton. He’s already started doing that and he hasn’t even gotten public office yet.
As bad as I think Clinton is, Trump is far more dangerous and could actually make the country implode.