Never Trumpers Never Win
Being against something just isn't enough.
POLITICO (“Never Trumpers rally in D.C., trying to find hope and a plan amid despair“):
Donald Trump used his primetime stage at the CPAC conference this Saturday to taunt the Bush Republicans, globalists and neocons.
A dozen miles away, at a lower-profile gathering in downtown D.C. the remnants of that bygone GOP era gathered in a hotel ballroom, attempting once more to plot their way out of the obscurity into which the former president relegated them.
The two-day confab at the luxury Conrad Hotel, billed as the Principles First Summit, was implicitly constructed as a counterweight to the MAGA-fied Conservative Political Action Conference. But the programming also served to underscore the often-bleak, occasionally hopeless, existence that comes with being a modern day anti-Trump Republican.
The fact that this was the second annual version of a conference that should ostensibly appeal to people like me and i am just hearing about it for the first time would indicate something of a failure of marketing. Or that they’re not actually trying to appeal to people like me.
Indeed, that they held at at “the luxury Conrad Hotel” and last year’s at the National Press Club is telling. CPAC was historically held in run-down hotels in DC before shifting out to National Harbor for more space and, finally, down to Florida. Holding it in an expensive, boutique venue virtually guarantees that only rich, older folks are going to attend.
The former Bush speechwriter turned columnist David Frum compared their effort to reform the party to blazing a landing strip in the middle of the jungle and simply waiting for planes to land. Former congressional candidate Clint Smith, who switched his party affiliation from Republican to Independent to challenge Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), described his state’s GOP as a forest of trees killed by an invasive species of beetle that crawls under bark to poison from the inside. Panels for the event included “Looking to 2024: Hope and Despair — but Mostly Despair” and “Can the GOP survive?”
If it all felt a bit dark at times, it was a reflection of the mood of some headliners.
“Trump is a cancer that’s now metastasized,” said former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), shortly after wrapping the latter panel. “So it’s going to kill the party more.”
It’s been roughly six years since the dawn of the Never Trump movement. And, over that time period, it has not had much success — at least when it comes to reforming the party to which its members once belonged. But those within it feel as if a new political opportunity could be at hand with Trump’s vulnerable position in the party. The question they’re confronting is whether they can capitalize on it. By Sunday, they’d had some indications of how it would go. Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor long seen as a centrist alternative to Trump in 2024, announced he would be forgoing a run for the presidency.
Despair, once again.
So far, we have the guy who gave us Axis of Evil, a third-tier former Congresswoman, and some failed Congressional candidate of whom I’d never previously heard.
Organizers billed the gathering of 300 people from across the country as a strategy session for those who no longer feel welcome at the typical gathering of conservative activists. But it also provided a snapshot of how far the party has drifted in such a short period of time.
The summit itself is just three years old. A decade ago, many of the speakers at this year’s gathering were some of the party’s rising stars and top thinkers. Adam Kinzinger. Bill Kristol. John Kasich.
It’s plausible that Kinziger, first elected to Congress in 2011, was considered by someone to be a “rising star” in 2013. But Kristol was already a rather tired commentator by that point, having long run out of fresh ideas to push. Kasich ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2000 and had been in the political wilderness for a decade before successfully winning Ohio’s governorship in 2011. I voted for him in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and would probably have voted for him for President had he somehow won the nomination. But he was hardly a “rising” star or a top thinker at that point.
But those who held office have hit political dead ends (Comstock notably lost by 12 points in a 2018 Trump-charged suburban revolt) and the anti-Trump talking heads found their usual confines less inviting. Of the few current elected officials who spoke at the Principles First Summit, two of them were Democrats: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
The more immediate problem, however, may be that those in attendance don’t even agree on a way out of their conundrum. One example: Charlie Sykes, a Wisconsin political commentator, asked John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to address the criticism that he refused to testify in Trump’s first impeachment trial but then profited by writing a tell-all book.
Some in attendance wanted to reform the GOP from within. Others were resigned to boosting moderate Democrats over election-denying populists.
The more fundamental problem here is that these people have no obvious purpose. Here’s the About section of the Summit website:
Principles First is excited to host a three-day grassroots summit at the Conrad Hotel in Washington, D.C. from Friday, March 3 through Sunday, March 5, 2023 to discuss and advance a more principled politics in the United States. We look forward to convening 2024 presidential hopefuls, current elected officials, conservative, liberal and independent speakers, thought leaders, and grassroots activists from around the country for three days of panels, speeches, networking, and substantive discussion about the meaning of conservatism today, the state of America’s core institutions, and how we can preserve and strengthen them in the years ahead.
So, I’m in favor of “a more principled politics in the United States.” But what principles, exactly? What, exactly, are “America’s core institutions”? Because if, say, the Electoral College is one of them, preserving and strengthening it actually serves to make our politics less principled. And, while listening to “conservative, liberal and independent speakers” might well be enlightening and help lead to “a more principled politics,” it’s rather at odds with “substantive discussion about the meaning of conservatism today.”
The Agenda is similarly confusing:
The 2023 Summit’s theme is Preserving American Institutions — Enduring institutions like the courts, capitalism, our education system, and free and fair elections are under attack from post-liberals. We are here to defend Madison’s vision and all of our sessions will be focused on the wisdom of classical liberalism. We are bringing together principled thinkers from the academy, elected members of Congress, and our sharpest thought leaders from across country over three days to discuss these current challenges facing the United States and the conservative movement and to articulate the principles that ought to shape both.
If one actually reads through the panels and speaker list, there are only two current professors (one of whom is a former Obama official) and zero sitting Members of Congress; Kinziger and Comstock are the only former ones. It’s mostly media types. And, despite the Never Trump branding, several former Trump officials, including Bolton, former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, and former Director of Strategic Communications (and current View co-host) Alyssa Farah Griffin. How in the hell do they qualify as “principled” anything?
The Event Partners consists of The Bulwark, several organizations of which I’ve never heard, and NO LABELS. The latter of which is decidedly not “conservative.”
This is just a bizarre hodgepodge of people, most of whom aren’t Democrats, who may or may not even oppose Trump or Trumpism.
Back to the POLITICO report:
“It turns out that once you let the toothpaste out of the tube, so to speak, demagoguery and bigotry and all that, some people like it. It’s hard to get it back.” Kristol said. “You can’t just give them a lecture.”
“We need to defeat the Trump Republicans. And if that means being with the Democrats for a while, that’s fine,” he added, suggesting a presidential ticket of Democrats Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. “That’s fine with me.”
But who the hell is “us”? Multiple people on the agenda were active members of the Trump administration in 2020. Two of them actively involved in spreading his lies via the press. Suddenly they’re willing to vote for a Whitmer-Spanberger ticket?! Color me skeptical. For that matter, who is it that’s going to nominate a Whitmer-Spanberger ticket? Surely not the Republicans. Or the Democrats. Indeed, I’d be shocked if Whitmer or Spanberger were willing to run against President Biden, particularly if it meant Trump or Ron DeSantis would win by default.
Fairly soon there will be a MAGA Party (or Trump Party), a Republican Party, and a Democratic Party, thus insuring that Democrats will win every presidential election.
Trump will have to die before any change takes place.
@CSK: Except that the Republicans in this scenario have very few constituents outside of politicians & media folks who want to get back to the “good old days” when they were in charge.
Eh, they’re invoking the mythical Appeal to the Center by being anti-Trump, not just being against something. He’s Bad and they’re Against Him but they’re also Against Liberals so that make them the Center, you see? Common sense and all that.
This is why suggestions that liberals run towards “the middle” and alienate progressives never works either. “The center” is a vague, ill-defined mess of mushy concepts on purpose – if it meant anything concrete, you’d have an opinion on it and it would sort you left or right-wise. It’s full of positive-sounding concepts that have no substance and thus all you can do is say what you aren’t, not what you are. Say what you want about him but Trump has never been shy about telling you what he thinks and where he stands. Away from Trump is not a place on the political spectrum, it’s the entire span of it. Add in the nasty little fact that he resembles and represents a very large part of the conservative base and Never Trumps now need to try and reclaim concepts he aptly exemplifies from their nebulous beginnings.
Put it in religious terms: Trump is a walking logos or an avatar of the concepts conservatives have been mouthing for decades, a tulpa created and now out of control. He *is* their point, down to the bitterness and cruelty behind a lot of the reasoning….. and Never Trumpers don’t like the mirror behind held up. They want to keep their beliefs and expunge the odious man not realizing he’s the symptom and not the disease. They cannot understand he is their ideals made flesh and the repulsiveness they feel is how the rest of us view all the time. You cannot separate out MAGA from conservatism as it exists today because they are one and the same, the logical endpoint of decades of work.
As an aside @James, I don’t believe it was intended for someone like yourself. It wasn’t meant for a conservative-leaning mindset but for milquetoast souls unwilling to understand their party has changed. You’ve examined your beliefs and challenged or changed them when needed – you’re a Give Me a Functioning Conservative Party, not a Never Trumper. This was for people who still want to pretend they can salvage what’s broken by merely kicking the MAGAts out and everything will be fine.
@BugManDan:
Do you mean the “sane” Republicans?
This article raises the same point as Professor Joyner:
http://www.thebulwark.com/is-cpac-our-future/
@CSK:
If Trump is the official 2024 GOP nominee, there will be only one of these. If not, there will be a Trump Party with Trump (small) and a Trump Party without Trump (bigger).
TFG has frontotemporal dementia, his sell-by date approaches. Dude will likely be under one (or more) indictment(s), that will increase the likelihood some other fascist is the official GOP nominee. Both (dementia, indictment) increase the likelihood TFG runs independent.
@KM:
Trump’s campaign modus operandi relies heavily on rallies because they are his test bed for slogans and talking points, that’s how “Build the Wall” and “Lock her up” came about. IOW, a probe to find out what conservative activists really want most. That is how Trump fashioned himself into the ideal Republican, touches all the bases.
@KM:
Yesterday we discussed Ruy Texeiras point one – of Democrats being more moderate on cultural issues. There is no middle, either you are into patriarchal misogyny/homophobia or you are not. (Bigotries correlate, people are either into most of them or not.)
An inside look at CPAC from Tim Miller at The Bulwark:
thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/cpac-taste-the-sadness
The Politico & Bulwark coverage have the same tone of a hollow shell cast up by the sea at some high tide line but now dry and decayed and empty. And that is the remnants of the self proclaimed conservative intellectual movement. I was a believer at the time. Sort of sad. More sad that I was deluded by their cleverness. But still… sort of sad. Of course, should be read with Charlie Syke’s interviews with Paul Ryan & John Bolton. They were happy to ride the tiger until…
But! Here we are today dealing with a resurgent fascism. Lots to do. Leave ’em in the dust.
They’re doing what all Republicans do. Grifting.
Apparently you can find conservative millionaires to fund almost anything.
@KM:
Very nice.
The GOP made a choice in the late 60’s. They could have joined Democrats and the Civil Rights movement. But they sold their souls for political advantage and MAGA was born right then. The missing ingredient with Never-Trumpers is self-awareness on the part of ‘conservatives’ whose moral and intellectual corruption delivered us to this moment.
@KM:
I agree with a lot of your post, but I actually think the Never-Trump movement reflects certain ideological fault-lines, though these are rarely stated outright. For example, I’d make the educated guess that most attendants at the rally (if not all) are highly supportive of Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
Over the years, the movement has been dominated by Bush-era neocons. It’s notable that two of the most prominent members are Bill Kristol and Mr. Axis-of-Evil himself. Neoconservatism was the dominant force in American conservativism from the 1970s to the early 2000s. It was a reflection of the fact that during the Cold War, anticommunism was a glue holding together the many strands of the right, and it worked because “the commies” provided a common enemy, even if different people defined that enemy in different ways. To the conspiratorial nutcases, “the commies” were the invisible boogeymen hiding in everyone’s closet, to others they were a foreign threat requiring an expansive and aggressive military, to others still they were those favoring a stronger social safety net, to yet others they were the godless infidels taking prayer out of public schools and promoting the sexual revolution, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, and so on.
One thing this alliance helped to hide was the isolationist roots of the far right. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the ruptures started to become visible, first with the insurgent candidacy of Pat Buchanan in the 1990s. But it was halted temporarily by 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror which brought back some of that old hawkishness for the GOP to rally around and to scare Democrats into compliance with. Once that fell apart–coinciding with the rise of Obama–it set the stage for the return of the paleocons (which has always been just another word for crypto-Nazi anyway).
For people like Bill Kristol or Jen Rubin, I almost get the impression that what really pissed them off about Trump wasn’t his racism or authoritarianism, it was that moment on the Republican debate stage in 2016 when he said Dubya couldn’t have been great on terror considering that 9/11 happened on his watch.
@Kylopod:
Oh, I think the Christianist/antisemitic turn the GOP has taken has been a revelation to a lot of Jewish ex-Republicans.
I would suggest that the Never-Trumpers represent true Republicanism; a version of conservatism that isn’t really all that conservative. Populism aimed at the wealthiest amongst us. What it stands for is whatever the GOP donor-class wants.
MAGA is really something altogether radical. Populism aimed at dumb people. What it stands for is whatever grievance they can muster the most anger about at any given moment.
Democrats are just the happy idiots over there, trying to help people in whatever way they can, be it mis-guided or not.
@CSK:
Since the Republicans know that their only hope for the presidency is to stay with the MAGAs, I expect the ongoing MAGAfication of the GOP.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Pro-MAGA or anti-MAGA, they’re outnumbered.
@CSK: I am not sure I follow. Do you mean in the general electorate?
This is true, but then that may not matter in the EC and does note matter in the Senate. And only kinda matters in the House.
But maybe I am missing your point?
@Steven L. Taylor:
I do mean in the general electorate. Trump won by the merest fluke in 2016; although Clinton ran a bad campaign, and many people dislike her, she still should have won. In 2020, Biden’s margin of victory was very comfortable in the electoral college and the popular vote. Trump, in contrast, has lost everything since 2018. He just doesn’t have the numbers.
If he runs as a Republican in the general, the Democrats win. If he runs third party, the Democrats win.
The donor class and its supporters are totally OK with all the MAGA stuff as long as they still get their tax policy goodies and deregulation. So – just one party.
They might change if the MAGA culture war stuff gets to be too much of a political liability, the way Dobbs alienated a lot of voters. A possibility, as the population trends to being increasingly secular.
@charon:
They are experiencing what Jackie Robinson and other Black ex-Republicans experienced in the 60’s. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/goldwater-jackie-robinson/474498/
@CSK: Generally agree, but I take exception to the conventional wisdom that Hillary ran a bad campaign. Some of the “fundamentals” models take into account that we change prez parties every two terms, Carter, HW as the third Reagan term, and Trump being the exceptions. Clinton beat those models by a couple points. She lost because of James Comey, FTFNYT, and the EC.
On the other hand, how the hell can these GOPs even be competitive? They have nothing to offer, in 2020 they officially had no platform. They survive at all only on a ball of FOX fired resentment and a stack of billionaire money. And as @Steven L. Taylor: says, the money will back the resentment unless and until it consistently loses.
@CSK:
Biden’s EC victory was decisive (in the sense that there’s no reasonable grounds to doubt its legitimacy), but pretty narrow, and comparable to Trump’s 2016 one (granted that Dems won the PV both times). Not only was the EC total itself the same as last time (306), it was based on margins of less than a percent in three states (WI, GA, and AZ); if Trump had won those states and the rest of the map had stayed the same, the EC would have been a 269-269 tie, and the election would then have been decided by the House delegations where Republicans were in the majority. In terms of raw votes, it was based on a margin of about 44,000 votes in those three states. That’s actually less than the 77,000-vote margin in three states by which Trump eked out his EC victory 2016.
In the popular vote, I agree Biden’s victory was very comfortable. But it still shows how skewed the EC has become in the GOP’s favor. Biden’s 4.5-point margin is the second-best in the 21st century so far, and actually exceeded Obama’s 2012 margin of 3.9. Yet Obama had a much more comfortable EC victory than Biden: for Romney to have won, not only would he have had to flip FL, VA, and OH, but also at least one state Obama carried by over 5 points.
The 2020 election shouldn’t have been a squeaker, but it kind of was in terms of the EC. Trump was closer to winning a second term than a lot of people realize.
@charon:
There was an article up over the weekend that claimed that TFG has not had his large rallies do to health concerns and lack of money. The health concerns are evident as his speech is more rambling, but the lack of money, raises the question of what happened to the millions that he’s been squeezing out of the rubes? It has gone into his pockets and one wonders if there isn’t a prima facie case for fraud.
@Sleeping Dog:
I have not watched his speech at CPAC, but I have seen it described (in several places) as really wild, incoherent, and just crazy.
As per its name, frontotemporal dementia targets the frontal and temporal lobes from the start, these are where planning, strategizing and judgment happen.
so, what little he has in the way of behavioral filters are failing.
@Sleeping Dog:
If h can’t fill a room at CPAC, which he apparently couldn’t, he certainly can’t fill a stadium or auditorium at a rally.
After the revelations of the Dominion lawsuit re: Fox mendacity, and now Carlson’s propaganda schtick from last night, I would like to see the Nat’l Correspondents Association AND the White House take Fox News off of their rolls. Fox is clearly no longer even pretending to be a news outlet, and should be treated thusly.
The recognition of Fox as a news source by the highest institutions in our country gives them a legitimacy they do not deserve.
@charon:
That actually wasn’t what I had in mind when I wrote my post, but given that the neocons began as a movement largely comprised of Jewish intellectuals (including Bill Kristol’s dad), it’s more than relevant.
That’s why I’ve found the trajectory of Ben Shapiro over the years the most fascinating to watch. In 2016 he refused to endorse Trump, but he lacked the testicular fortitude (or more charitably, career considerations) to stay with the Never-Trumpers. Still, he became the #1 target of anti-Semitic posts by MAGAts on social media that year. He ended up writing a sort of mea culpa for National Review in which he reluctantly admitted there was more anti-Semitism on the right than he had previously acknowledged.
Since then, I’ve noticed that Shapiro’s name always seems to come up when the hardcore anti-Semites on the right have a point to make. He gets harassed by a mob of groypers whenever he goes to CPAC. Last year the head of Gab said Shapiro should be kicked out of the conservative movement until he accepts Jesus Christ as his personal savior. The fact the Gab guy went after Shapiro and not, say, Adam Schiff or Jon Stewart, is what I find interesting. The libs will be libs, but when those greedy Jews with their grasping hands try to infiltrate real America, that’s when you have to draw the line.
But the most pathetic spectacle is how Shapiro handled the Kanye debacle. First, after Kanye dropped his “death con 3 on Jewish people” tweet, Shapiro (who had previously praised Kanye as one of the clearest thinkers around) immediately condemned the tweet, but…. said it was just Kanye’s mental illness acting up. Then he made the ludicrous claim that Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism is far worse.
But it gets even better. On his own network the Daily Wire, Candace Owens was becoming good friends with Kanye (in an attempt–which ultimately fell through–to get him to buy her husband’s failing platform Parler), and she not only defended Kanye’s tweet, but claimed that you have to be insane to think it was in any way anti-Semitic. Shapiro then had to address that, and he was like um, er, he respects a diversity of opinion in his organization and Candace was simply getting a little muddle-headed due to personal friendship; now if she actually said what Kanye said, that would be too far, but…
I should note that I don’t think it’s just Shapiro’s Jewishness that makes him such a target on the right. He also definitely represents the old neocon Bush wing of the party. Yet he so struggles for relevance that I actually heard him say that “Trump is the first modern president not to get us into a war,” which has been a Trumpist talking point for a while, but it’s a highly un-neocon sort of thing to say.
@CSK:
White people should have voted for her. But most white people are bad voters, hence why she lost. Her campaign was just fine to just about everyone else. Only a majority white voters — and near-supermajority of white male voters — couldn’t figure out to not give a majority of their votes to a narcisstic bigot, pathological liar, incompetent buffoon, and crotchgrabbing wannabe-fascist.
@Kylopod:
Does Ben not know Owens is already as squishy on Hitler as her bipolar buddy Ye?
@DK: After Obama’s 2012 win, it was noted that he got about the same share of the white vote as Michael Dukakis (slightly less, in fact), and the only reason this came out to an electoral victory was because the share of the minority vote in the electorate has greatly increased since 1988.
@DK: Shapiro makes a perennial habit of ignoring or minimizing anti-Semitism as long as it’s on his own “team.” After Disney canned Gina Carano for her “conservatives are being treated like the Jews in Kristallnacht” tweet, he immediately hired her. Now she’s doing pathetic right-wing action movies produced by Daily Wire.
@DK:
Ah, but they saw that narcissistic bigot, etc. as a strong, decisive, authoritative leader, or pretended to do so.
I don’t understand the rabid dislike of Hillary Clinton. Yes, she’s not particularly warm or personable, but so what? I’m voting for a president, not a spouse.
By the way, that photo of Trump accompanying this post is one of the two ugliest of him I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something.
@CSK: Do you mean the “sane” Republicans?
You must mean the “sane” Republican. Probably extinct, but if they exist, I can’t imagine that there is more than one of them.
@CSK:
A) Many years of sustained vilification by political enemies of a prominent Democrat.
B) FTFNYT
C) Association with the policies/triangulation of the Clinton Administration while not considering that a First Lady is pretty much obligated to support husband’s agenda – which was pragmatic, settle for what you can get.
D) AUMF, big mistake in hindsight.
@charon:
What do FTFNYT and AUMF mean?
@CSK:
FTFNYT = “Regard” the “Fine” New York Times
AUMF: Armed Use of Military Force. As in, ‘her Iraq vote’.
I had the same read on FTFNYT. Ha.
Oops: Authorization for Use of Military Force. Armed, in Iraq, goes without saying.
@Stormy Dragon: @Long Time Listener:
Thank you. How does FTFNYT become “Regard the Fine NYTimes”?
@CSK:
Oh, c’mon! You can think of a 4-letter word associated with”f bombs.”
The NYT seems invested in attacking the Clintons ever since they were suckered in to taking the Whitewater nothing burger seriously.
Hillary either believed or pretended to believe Dubya assurances that the AUMF was merely a bargaining chip, he was not really going to invade Iraq. I can’t mind read, but my guess is she knew Dubya was shitting her, just thought the vote was the safe, politically expedient thing to do.
Bit her in the ass, cost her the 2008 nomination, a lot of Dems really angry about that back then.
@charon: How do you miss woman in your list?
So much of the anti Hillary Clinton sentiment was sprinkled with misogyny in its presentation, and then the misogyny was swirled in. Misogyny runs deep in America, and the right was very happy to keep poking it and activating it.
(Also, her husband makes many people’s skin crawl — not just because of years of propaganda, but because he projects a fake veneer of concern for others and you can’t tell what it is hiding. I hated him the moment I heard him speak way back when he was first running for president. If you’re faking caring about people, what hell are you?)
@charon:
Well, I thought it was “fuck the fucking NY Times,” but the “regard” kind of threw me.
@Gustopher:
Bill Clinton always seem patently insincere and smarmy to me, too.
As for misogyny…Sarah Palin was adored by the same troglodytes who mocked Hillary Clinton.
@Gustopher:
Can’t think of everything.
@CSK:
I have examined crosstabs on 2016 exit polling that show obviously that misogyny was a significant factor.
@charon:
Oh, I’m not disagreeing with you about Hillary Clinton being damaged by misogyny. I’m just observing that the same men (and women) who hated Hillary worshiped Sarah. What was it about Palin that they loved?
@DK:
White, particularly white male, has been the default in America for as long as America has been America. From economic opportunities to media, it’s a never ending stream of whiteness and maleness. White folks, and men in particular, aren’t just used to representation, but to super-representation in the media.
One thing I noticed about the Clinton campaign was that they were incredibly good about inclusion in every campaign commercial. If there is a potential demographic division of Americans, they will be found within three campaign commercials, represented by someone talking about progress or jobs or cows or whatever.
White men went from the default to just another grouping, and it was jarring.
I’m a white, mostly-liberal man, as crunchy as can be, happy to espouse the benefits of equality and representation, and I noticed and felt excluded. I still voted for her, because the alternative was a bunch of white supremacist shitheads, but I wasn’t thrilled out it. I wasn’t excited to vote for her.
Other, less mostly-liberal, crunchy, etc…? They stayed home or voted the other way.
It’s stupid. But people are stupid. And if you need a majority or supermajority (thanks, electoral college) of people, you have to speak to people where they are, rather than where you think they ought to be.
Alternately, it shows that representation matters, even for white men.
This also brings me to my dislike to things like how we teach the civil rights era as “black history.” If we want it to be “American history,” and get the majority invested in it, we need to have a focus not just on the major black leaders, but also on the white people who saw injustice and were willing to risk their privilege to help fight it. (This might be the best way to teach white people about privilege as well, which they sorely need to learn)
Maybe in the future, when things are better, we won’t need to coddle white folks so much, but we are not in that better future.
You’re a queer Black dude, right? You don’t understand privilege and losing privilege anymore than I understand immediately being judged by the color of my skin. (Being queer, but having a very straight demeanor*, I seldom get the random anti-queer shit either)
Losing privilege, or even not having privilege acknowledged, stings — even though that privilege is unearned, unfair and wrong. Even if you agree with the notions of equality, it’s jarring. It requires baby steps and coddling.
It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s what we are up against.
It’s also what those white people are up against — a cultural character flaw that can be exploited to override their own interests. A flaw that they did not choose to have, but that they were raised with. A flaw that is incredibly hard to recognize, let alone change.
And when I say “those white people” I half include myself. I’m more aware of it than a lot of them, and don’t let that flaw control me (I hope), but it’s there.
Yup. But that inability to figure it out is as much a problem of the campaign as them. You need to reach people where they are, and Democrats often don’t.
——
*: I would love a little bit more swish, but at 6’6”, all clothes I can find that fit me are basically very conservative.
@CSK:
Think of misogyny as a weapon that needs to be used against the men to override their thinking.
Who is most willing to use that weapon? Republicans, but only against Democrats.
There was a lot less misogyny against Palin from the voters because there were a lot fewer misogynistic attacks against Palin.
@CSK:
Palin never challenged their patriarchal outlook the way that women like Hillary do. Indeed, she reinforced it. It’s a playbook that goes back at least to Phyllis Schlaffly, seemingly a strong, independent woman herself, but one who used that power to push back against women’s rights and to argue for the maintenance of traditional gender roles.
@CSK:
I couldn’t think of a suitably euphemistic F word for the first F.
@Kylopod:
Palin is recorded as having said, when she was Wasilla’s mayor, that all she had to do was don a push-up bra before city council meetings and she got what she wanted.
@Stormy Dragon: I assumed both Fs stood in for two declensions of the same word.
@Gustopher: A year or two ago (circa BLM) I started noticing quietly and hearing snide comments from other white men (like me) about how many commercials featured or included not white men/people. I can’t say I noticed so much when they were full of white people. I have started not to notice again. It just takes a minute.