Texas turning blue.... (Austin: train, budget, office)

[Andtheblack]

Watch these backers of the blue in action:

https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/s...-b1881510.html

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by ParaguaneroSwag

I have never seen any of those groups he posted show any kind of democratic favoritism. There’s something odd about Americans who say “he doesn’t support my agenda so it must be a Biden supporter”. The amount of ignorance that extreme political attachments cause is mind numbing.

I know.

"Defund the police" was a Green Party and urban activist policy, not a Democratic idea, since the Democrats are historically friendly with public service unions such as police, arguing for MORE public service funding, not less.

I recall that Jill Stein had a policy in her 2016 platform that was similar to "Defund the Police," but didn't use that precise term. But those fringe leftists is where the idea came from. There were 22 Democratic candidates and NONE of them had platform with anything like that in it.

A lot of those protestors are young. Young people even in high turnout years only turn out at maybe 50% rates. 2020 it was 57% turnout for 18-29s which was an enormous record. It's less for young people of color. So if you see a big collection of young people, at best 1 out of 2 of them are even voters. So calling them "Democrats" is kind of silly.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by redguard57

I know.

"Defund the police" was a Green Party and urban activist policy, not a Democratic idea, since the Democrats are historically friendly with public service unions such as police, arguing for MORE public service funding, not less.

I recall that Jill Stein had a policy in her 2016 platform that was similar to "Defund the Police," but didn't use that precise term. But those fringe leftists is where the idea came from. There were 22 Democratic candidates and NONE of them had platform with anything like that in it.

A lot of those protestors are young. Young people even in high turnout years only turn out at maybe 50% rates. 2020 it was 57% turnout for 18-29s which was an enormous record. It's less for young people of color. So if you see a big collection of young people, at best 1 out of 2 of them are even voters. So calling them "Democrats" is kind of silly.

Yeah. It literally makes no sense. Those are just random Republicans that Group anything that’s different from them as liberals despite the fact that there is nothing similar between either of those agendas. They are making themselves look bad in the process

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Both sides have their fair share of issues.
Team Blue taxes out the middle class and allows criminals to run free
Team Red glorifies business prosperity at the cost of the middle class leaving them at the mercy of greedy corporate propaganda while we eat the bill for their prosperity, ERCOT being a prime example.
Both sides put their political prosperity over the general well being of the public.
In the end of the day, they’re politicians, they want only two things… money and power… how they go about getting that is what determines what color hat they decide to wear.
I’m centrist for a reason.

While I understand the value of centrism from a practicality standpoint, there's no inherent moral value to it. I happen to have positions that could be classified as extreme right, extreme left, and centrist (which is probably not uncommon for many who ascribe to a lot of libertarian philosophies).

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by redguard57

If you look at the link, Corpus has a considerably lower % of its population without a HS diploma than the RGV cities. Like less than half as bad. Corpus is also one of the "movin on up" places people with some ambition would get out of the Valley and go to. Although I'd say San Antonio was the most popular "movin on up" place.

Nueces county has been shifting left somewhat. Beto won it in 2018.

My point is, that if the new dividing lines are based on having more or less education, and being rural, suburban, or urban, it makes some sense why the RGV is shifting a bit. It's been growing but is still has a lot of rural character and values, and it's less educated. Both the kind of characteristics that define places that liked Trump.

I mean, the Valley doesn't even have what I would call proper suburbs. Maybe Mission is a suburb of McAllen. It has the urban areas, and then it has exurban and rural areas. It doesn't have the kind of white collar jobs that characterize who the new Democrats are.

I agree with your education premise to a great extent, though African Americans don't fit that paradigm (Democratic party supporters regardless of education).

Regarding the oil industry, part of the point I was making was that a major appeal of that sector for many folks - probably especially Hispanic people in some parts of TX - was that it provides good-paying jobs for folks who didn't go to college and may not have more than a HS diploma.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by LocalPlanner

I agree with your education premise to a great extent, though African Americans don't fit that paradigm (Democratic party supporters regardless of education).

Regarding the oil industry, part of the point I was making was that a major appeal of that sector for many folks - probably especially Hispanic people in some parts of TX - was that it provides good-paying jobs for folks who didn't go to college and may not have more than a HS diploma.

Oh, I know for a fact from my more conservative friends in the RGV, that many of them, especially the non-college men, saw the border wall & increased border patrol as a kind of stimulus. I suspect they see oil & gas as similar - those are all fairly decent jobs you can get without a degree. There's SpaceX and stuff like that down there... but educated people parachute in from elsewhere for those jobs.

AAs are different. I was just listening to a podcast talking about AA politics, and the political scientist said it their relative unity has more do with their shared experiences and a sense of "what's good for some black people is good for all black people" and vice versa - what's bad for some of them is considered bad for all blacks.

Most immigrant groups, ie: the various European ethnics from the late 19th and early 20th century, have that sense too in the beginning but start to lose that after the 3rd & 4th generations. It's possible Hispanics are going through that transition now. The Hispanic immigration waves occurred through the late 1960s to 2000s. Despite all the rhetoric about illegal immigration, we're legitimately getting fewer new Hispanics in the country than we used to, by a pretty big factor. And then the ones we are getting are increasingly from central America. Mexicans =/= Hondurans, Guatemalans, etc... so they don't necessarily see common cause with these new folks.

In fact I suspect we're seeing kind of a similar pattern among Hispanics as we saw among Italians - they started out as a strong Democratic constiuency in the beginning, e.g.: FDR catered to them like crazy. By the end of the century, it matters less if you're of Italian immigrant heritage and instead they generally vote like the mainstream white people wherever they live. More Democratic if you're in New Jersey or whatever and more Republican if you're in Missouri.

We saw this play out in Texas - San Antonio has more Hispanic voters than the entire RGV and they voted more for Biden than they did for Hillary... but they are big city people.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by redguard57

I know.

"Defund the police" was a Green Party and urban activist policy, not a Democratic idea, since the Democrats are historically friendly with public service unions such as police, arguing for MORE public service funding, not less.

I recall that Jill Stein had a policy in her 2016 platform that was similar to "Defund the Police," but didn't use that precise term. But those fringe leftists is where the idea came from. There were 22 Democratic candidates and NONE of them had platform with anything like that in it.

So are you claiming that a good number of democrats across the country have not advocated for and voted to defund police departments across the country the last year or so?

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by EDS_

So are you claiming that a good number of democrats across the country have not advocated for and voted to defund police departments across the country the last year or so?

Only aboout 5% of police budgets in the 60 largest cities were reduced 2020-21. They weren"t really reductions in most cases, they were reallocations. It was about $840 million of reductions in a country that spends $100-150 Billion on police departments. That's not really "defunding." It's barely a haircut. Most of the cuts were to equipment purchasing and overtime.

Finally the the police know how it feels to not get everything they ask for. In education we get this message from local and state leadersbip all the time. Police budgets have SKYROCKETED in the last 40 years. Adjusted for inflation we spend 200% more on police than we spent in 1980.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnb...00percent.html

Austin has done some of the most dramatic "defunding." It's not really defunding though, it's reallocation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...oney-community

And now many cities are restoring or increasing police funding.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj...me-11622066307

I was never for defunding police. Always thought that was a ridiculous idea. I want MORE funding to go to police, but I would prefer they reimagine how they train and operate. Ie: I would like our police system to be more like the UK, where they have responders more appropriate to the types of calls and only bring out the armed officers when warranted. If anything I want the armed ones to be more well trained, more elite, and more well paid.

If anything liberals should probably focus more on police unions. That's where a lot of the problems they have with police come from. The unions are not invested in changing the culture. Rather, they protect it and resist reform.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by EDS_

So are you claiming that a good number of democrats across the country have not advocated for and voted to defund police departments across the country the last year or so?

“A good number”? Lmao. Bias at its finest. If I were to show you some extremely embarrassing republicans and grouped every republicans voter in the world to be along their lines, that wouldn’t change your opinion. Nor should it. So don’t give me this “a good number of democratic voters” bs when you wouldn’t change for the numerous embarrassing republicans out there.

Were Joe Biden to be part of the defund the police movement, then there would be some seriousness to what you’re saying because then that’s who they voted in. Except that isn’t who they voted in nor are the majority of the police defunders pro democrat. Neither political party resembles their agenda. Generally speaking, democrats are high taxes, high local official spending

[Andtheblack]

Originally Posted by EDS_

So are you claiming that a good number of democrats across the country have not advocated for and voted to defund police departments across the country the last year or so?

I will claim that.