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onto the next Trump bashing narrative... swing and a miss. dems are all about "emotion" control of their followers and it shows. Blacks are being given the credit they are due by Trump and his supporters. Dems only seek to divide.
Well at this point, the Democratic Party is about as helpful for Black Americans as the Republican Party. The GOP has done nothing for Blacks lately. The Democratic Party has grown less and less helpful for Black Americans. And then we have some conservatives complaining about Blacks support the Democrats and not the GOP. I think Black Americans need to come up with something, if nothing else, to help ourselves.
in your opinion, what does the government need to do to help black people/what issues and positions should a candidate have that would be supported by blacks?
Why I care? I wouldn't want to write-off ~1/5 of the population. I want to find a way to help that large portion of the population succeed.
Talking and taking advice from a majority of Trump voters is one thing black votes should avoid at all costs. We are definitely not interested in the Republican party under Trump GOP party.
I have a problem with that whole Twitter feed and it shows how hypocrital the American black really is. It is wrong for Trump to use blacks as props. But it is OK to vote Democrat party which still has racial and sexist views.
So I've got your attention with the title of the thread. Good. This is something to think about. This was the party we gravitated to towards the past, until the 1960s. Perhaps we could fix what was broken in this party which resulted in the massive flee.
This could also apply to registering for other mainstream parties.
If we got more of us flooding OTHER parties we could be of more influence at some point. I think the focus should be about way more than simply "having a seat at the table." I'd like to see more of us running for political positions in both parties. Specifically more CENTER left and CENTER right. I don't think that either extreme side is a good thing. The far left and far right are actually pretty similar if you think about it. They both play the race card, they both use identify politics, they both lack empathy for those who disagree at all with them. Both extremes lack any compassion for those who they deem not to be up to their standards.
Changing the climate of both of the mainstream parties would actually be of a great advantage to us in the sense that we could see that we are not at the bottom of the list. The influence could start at the local government and work it's way up to the federal level.
I'm not telling anyone to just go run and register with any particular party, however this is something to think about and would make for an interesting dialogue.
What do you think? Should we be focused on changing the climate of each party and ideology or focus on forming separate political parties that mimic the current ones? Should we just put all of our energy into a third party or register as Independents? Also, why do you think that moderation/centrism seems to be virtually non-existent today?
In the event that the action suggested above is taken, what issues do you think should be priority?
I think a prerequisite of any black political movement is a social or cultural movement towards black "unity". We have to become a block socially and culturally before we can become a block politically. The problem with that is that most black people are not trying to be a part of any such unity of movement. Few people are willing to give one up for the "team". In other words, black folks will participate in a movement up until it requires personal sacrifice. Say, hypothetically, that the movement required black folks to stop barbecuing in order to advance blacks collectively. Well....there goes the movement....lol.
That having been said, putting the cart before the horse, blacks have to be willing to lose some battles to win the war for political respect. Yes, that means that we will have to accept that Republicans will be assured of victory as the short term consequence of our play for recognition and respect.
It does not make sense to vote republican as a strategy to gain respect. The Republicans don't need the black vote. The democrats are dependent upon the black vote. Any strategy should be aimed at the Democratic party. The democrats need to know what they are losing and why. If blacks vote republican, how do you know whether it was a protest vote against the dems or whether more blacks were finding the republican ideology more appealing? If all of a sudden the green party gets 30% of the black vote, or some other obscure party, then you will know those are the votes that the democrats would have had, had the chose to represent "black issues" or causes with policy.
Looking further down the line, if the strategy did work and the Democrats started adding black issues to their platform (black issues meaning blacks being TARGETED specifically for some policy), what impact would that have on the white voters? Every action creates a reaction. The reaction to the democrats targeting blacks for help will most certainly drive or keep some whites from voting for the democrats. So whilst it might sound like a winning strategy to get the democratic party to do more for blacks, that might turn off a lot of whites, thus making it hard for democrats to win national elections. The party can't do anything more for blacks, even if they try to, if they can't win elections. There are still far more whites who vote democrat than blacks and the party can't risk losing white voters in an effort to keep black voters.
The reality is that as 13% of the population, and just as importantly, only like 5% of the nations money and wealth, we have little leverage to get things to our liking. We don't have the raw numbers to control national politics and we have even less dollars to lobby our interest. This is why neither party is really concerned with black interest. We don't have enough power. Our power is really the streets and social protest....and even that has played out.
The most viable option for blacks is to unify and look out for one and other......but that would require not barbecuing so that is a non starter....lol .
I have a problem with that whole Twitter feed and it shows how hypocrital the American black really is. It is wrong for Trump to use blacks as props. But it is OK to vote Democrat party which still has racial and sexist views.
What party does not have racial/sexist views? Are you advocating that “black” people refrain from voting due to the views within parties? What else do you advocate “blacks” refrain from in American society considering racist/sexist views permeate so many aspects of society?
Because black Americans are Americans. It's natural that a party running on an America first platform would value the votes of all Americans. Also if the GOP can break the stranglehold the DNC has had on the black vote it might signal the beginning of the end of identity politics. Whole races of people wouldn't be lumped together as monolithic chess pieces to be used as pawns against other groups of Americans. Politicians would have to start looking at people more as people instead of parts of a generalized demographic.
The reform movement that formed alongside the independent Perot campaign of 1992 gave us Bill Clinton who won with just 43% of the popular vote.
Perot pulled enough votes (18%) from Bush Sr. in 1992 to deny him a second term.
The lesson we learned from that experience is that protest votes can have the opposite effect of what is hoped for.
I wasn't part of the Reform Party movement, but I did participate in the later Tea Party incarnation.
Resolved that we wouldn't make the mistake of 1992 again, the strategy of the Tea Party movement, once organized, was nothing less than the complete takeover of the non-responsive Republican Party.
It took a number of years, but we eventually primaried enough corporate ***** Republicans to establish ourselves as a driving force within the party.
What was open opposition to to our movement by establishment Republicans, eerily similar to the anti-Trump sentiments expressed during the 2016 election season, became the quickest way to end a political career for all Republicans, save those in the purplest of state/districts.
We made progress.
By 2016, three of the most prominent contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, were Tea Party aligned.
Today, we have a president that works for the benefit of blue-collar workers and a Republican Party that dare not oppose him.
I think that's about the best we can hope for on this side.
As for a separate party for black people, I can't imagine your experience would be any different than that of the Perot Reform Party in 1992-1996.
Better to run your own movement-backed candidates in the primaries where non-responsive Democrats (maybe even Republicans) hold seats.
You won't always prevail in the primary and your candidates may still lose in the general, but our experience is that the party will learn to respect you over time, and they will do this because they have no other choice.
Understand that you are taking on billionaires that already own the all the candidates.
If the Republican they back doesn't win, they'll be happy do business with the Democrat that defeated him/her, and vice versa.
It's only when that can no longer limit the final choice to two candidates of their own choosing that they will be forced to see things your way.
Good luck!
Quote:
Originally Posted by pandorafan5687
A thread started by a black person (myself) that isn’t so much about voting as it is gaining INFLUENCE in the political world.
Momonkey made good suggestions, but the question still remains as to whether the movement-backed candidates should try and make inroads in the Democrat or Republican parties, or form their own. My personal opinion is that we're (Americans) too far away from a viable third party for black people to form their own party. Even with the Tea Party example above, there were barely enough Tea Partiers to start making a change, and whites are a much larger portion of the population than blacks.
In 2016, the choice seemed a lot clearer - Democrats. There are far more black politicians who have been elected in the Dem party, from local levels all the way up to the House. We're seeing a bit of a shift now, though, because the Hispanic population is growing faster than any other demographic. Seems to me like the Democrat Party, in general, has pushed the black vote aside in an attempt to curry favor with Hispanics.
Throwing support behind the Republicans could be risky, but this could also be a good time for a shift to happen. The R party is pretty split right now. A bunch are your hard-core evangelicals. A few are certainly racists. A whole lot are traditional Republicans, but I think these days just as many support a lot of the socially liberal ideas - like same-sex marriage and being pro-choice - as don't. A bunch of us just want a more limited government and less intervention into other countries' business.
Is there a place in the Republican party for the black politician? For the right candidate, I think there is. A movement focused on what the black population needs/wants, and where that aligns with what average American needs/wants, has the potential to be very successful. Like Trump or not, a big part of what pushed his win in middle-America was that he spoke to concerns over jobs, outsourcing, the economy, etc. Those are the things that most of us think about every day.
That could obviously be done in the Democrat party as well, but it seems that a very large portion of D's right now are all about pushing identity politics and trying to find the minority vote. By minority vote, I don't mean race, but the student vote, the LGBT vote, the 'everyone deserves to come to America' vote... and that isn't going to go well for anyone.
Well....you cannot say that "identity politics is a no good", but globally, you are practicing identity politics by considering yourself and your interest as an AMERICAN, above others, as apposed to seeing all humans on this planet and considering their needs equally. Right? So you want to get rid of the identity politics of race, but keep the identity politics of being an "American". You see, we all see ourselves as part of some "tribe" or multiple tribes, some overlapping like a venn diagram.
You cannot say tribalism is bad.....because of the sub tribes....then advocate all the sub tribes coalesce into a super tribe, American, which is also a sub tribe to the human super tribe. The truth is, the right does not like identity politics because its a game that they lose at. If you are a boxer and you get into a fight with a wrestler, you will be against wrestling. Wrestling does not work for you so you just want to box.
I've thought about something else. I've wondered the value of telling both parties to take a hike. If Blacks pulled their votes from both parties and put their vote to an independent party or their own party, I wonder if this would get both parties to wake up. I would like to talk abotu D vs R later. However, I figured if neither party got the Black vote, if both parties would have to strategize elsewhere. Or perhaps other people would follow behind that party?
Heh, that's what I'm doing. I'm not voting in either party. I want both parties to stop treating us like pawns. Only showing up around election time, then once they're in office, it's back to the same ol same ol. There's never a black agenda at all. It's just more "we'll give you some food stamps and we'll sing in church with you for a day if you vote for us!"
What I find picular about the African American is that they are culturally conservative, but still vote Democrat. Many African Americans are just as conservative as white Americans who vote Republican. During the 2020 national election. I expect about 1/4 - 1/3 African American American to vote for Trump at most. While the remainder of black men and 99 percent of African American women will vote Dem.
Whether they are culturally conservative or not they will still vote for the Democrats because of their advocacy for socialism and their beliefs that the GOP are racists fed to them by the Democrats.
I wonder if they'd ever even support a black, Republican nominee for the presidency?
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