I actually don’t know. Did these groups not endorse candidates in the past or are we just paying more attention now? real question.
I think you mistakenly think I’m defending Trump. I’m not. If I were actually forced to vote for one of the 2 I’m not sure who i’d vote for if they wouldn’t let me put a gun in my mouth.
I however disagree with the notion that one party is particularly better on the bigot/racist front. While one does get the majority of white supremacist endorsement (though not all) there are plenty of other supremacist groups with far closer ties with top level dems. So, should it give dems pause that the violent racist supremacist black panthers stood outside voting locations and intimidated whites into not voting in support of dem candidates? And that the black racist dem AG got them off the hook after they were convicted?
I will say this: Trump does seem to be the first real Republican candidate that not only approaches the level of espoused bigotry as a large number of Dems, but also appears to be able to get away with it like them, despite media efforts.
Difficult to say, of course. I for one haven’t heard anyone (I’m referring to professional journalists here) offer any evidence that this is a coverage effect, rather than a genuine phenomenon.
If there’s some sort of equivalency to the white supremacist-Trump endorsement phenomenon occurring on the Dem side, please make me aware of it.
There was no violence of which I’m aware in the Philadelphia voter-intimidation case. But legit questions were raised regarding the way the case was handled. That said, I don’t see an equivalence between the potential particulars of that case (ie, the presence of individual Justice Dept officials who balked at prosecuting black activists) and the current, much broader implications of the emboldened white-supremacist endorsements.
Well, there is obvious bias in the overall intensity of coverage for Trump. Go to any news outlet and look at the ratio of time given to the Republican candidates. It’s pretty reasonable to guess that this might go for racist endorsements. It’s also evident that most people here hadn’t heard of the KKK Hilary endorsement. You are claiming it wouldn’t have gotten more coverage had it been Trump?
Sure there is, lots of racist groups endorse the dems. I’ve noted some.
Lol. You are defending the Black Panthers committing battery outside of polling places? I’m including scaring the shit out of people with deadly weapons (battery) in my definition of violence. Regardless, I was calling the Black Panthers a violent group (they support and instigate violent acts and commit them) I wasn’t referring the specific event.
What exactly isn’t equivalent though? There is a hugely broad theme among democrats to view race first in those sort of events from the president on down. And that world view has translated to large amounts of violence, bigotry, and hatred committed by democrats. I mean, I can start listing all the events over the last few years if you want? This was miles away from an isolated incident. I mean I agree, Trump appears to be trying to catch up, but there is a lot of ground for him to make up.
I just don’t get you. An endorsement by a racist group for republicans means they need to check their party. Racist endorsements of dems don’t count because they are loons. Racist violence committed on behalf of dems is “just an isolated event” that doesn’t really count because you “don’t see a pattern” whatever that even means. You mean to tell me if, on election day, the KKK stands outside voting booths with bats scaring off blacks, then a white republican AG drops the charges, you’d feel the same way? and you wouldn’t point out that Republicans might want to think about what sort of supporters they are encouraging?
Come on man, take a step or 2 back and look at politics. Bigots, loons, racists, and idiots have no specific political party.
I think that’s because most news outlets rightly judged it to be a farce.
This is not speculation–it seems to be historical fact. That is, the same individual had previously endorsed Trump multiple times, with zero media coverage of which I am aware. It is only after he ‘endorsed’ Hillary that he got any coverage at all, and this coverage seems largely to have been by right-wing outlets willing to play a role in advancing the farce.
I disagree with the assertion there is an inappropriate or disproportionate fixation on race.
I asked earlier for you to provide evidence of an equivalent ‘coming out of the woodwork’ of crazies supporting HRC. So far, you have been unable or unwilling to do so.
What I told you was, the isolated response of a few admin members is not equivalent to what is happening in the extant GOP.
If you don’t think the GOP is currently veering wildly toward xenophobia and racism, I don’t know what to say.
Correct. Our gut instincts actually did take us quite far, in many cases without RESEARCH having to be done to feel comfortable in trusting such instincts!
Lets say that there are a lot of people like me who oppose abortion in most instances, but have accepted it as now part of our constitution. I’m not out trying to repeal it, but I do find extremists on the left to be something I have to resist. The people who want partial-birth or late-term abortions up to the point of birth, who’s sense of caring is not triggered unless the baby is experiencing pain when terminated, even if it’s in the final stages of pregnancy. This is not just about Republicans getting aggressive and Dems taking the high road trying to defend the constitution. The extremes are constantly pushing the edges, often past the comfort zones of any one in the middle, regardless of party. My best friend is Dem and pro-choice in principle but in practice, we’re nearly identical in our views of where we would draw lines.
The issue is much the same the with 2nd Amendment. Sure, there are some people who won’t be happy until there’s not a single person shooting clay pigeons, or thinning over-populated deer. On the other side are extremists who will defend the constitution, including the opposition of ANY gun control measures what so ever.
Democrats are not unique in this sense of the righteous defense of the constitution, at least on issues that are passionate for them, nor are they uniquely devoid of extremists who push the limits of where most of us want to go. We have no hope if we are are unable to see this. We should be disturbed by the extremists in our own party, as well as the other side. It’s really scary when people get so entrenched in partisanship that they can’t do that because they’re too caught up in vilifying or dehumanizing the other side. I sometimes catch myself doing that, because my first reaction to something that pushes my moral boundaries is anger. I don’t think I’m unusual.
I guess we can judge our progress in how well we learn from our mistakes, even though they may have been well-intended. About my attempt to answer your question about what I meant by “worse off than in 1960’s on many parameters,” The test is IF you think your party is continuing down the same path that it’s been on for 50 years with regard to welfare policies that have been destructive to black families. To be fair, I think the war on drugs, and overly punitive sentencing also play a roll. I was happy to see Paul Ryan admit that recently and talk about reform so that drug-related sentences aren’t so destructive.
Personally, I feel like our current president has continued to take us down the same path, even though we know that these policies are punitive to intact Black families. “In 1963 the US secretary of agriculture assured lawmakers that federal food stamps ‘could be expanded over a period of years to about 4 million needy people.’ Fifty years later the country’s population had not even doubled, but the number of people on food stamps is now 47.6 million recipients - and in a time of economic recovery.” - From article by James L. Payne in today’s WSJ. Mostly I see current Dem party leaders refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem. Things had improved under Bill Clinton’s presidency, but now we’re taking huge strides backward. I hear much more blaming of Republicans, and accusations of Republican heartlessness, from this president as well.
Policies that have people stuck in cycles of dependence, often for generations, are not compassionate. When someone is dependent on me, I maintain my control over them.
Similarly, just ask a black police officer how they feel about Obama’s reaction to Ferguson, and the unbelievable spike in black homicides since. I hope that our next president, regardless of party, wants to head in a different direction.
You may not be trying to overturn Roe, but doing so is the official position of the GOP. From their 2012 POTUS platform:
“we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”
I doubt you will find anything about allowing abortion “up to the point of birth” in the Democratic platform, or in the proposed policies of either HRC or Sanders.
Hmm…On one side, we have a political party officially dedicated to overturning Roe, and on the other, a party that is in no way advocating the extreme positions you object to. Not a symmetric situation.
You and I disagree on the facts of the case. You believe that the Great Society policies are responsible for the disintegration of the black community and family; I do not. (Note that I’m not saying I’m right and you’re wrong; I’m just pointing out that we disagree.) Because we’re operating under two different sets of facts, it means we must either 1) haggle over the data until we agree on the facts, or 2) agree to disagree. I vote for the latter.
Oh absolutely. The new “Trump” side of the GOP now looks a lot like a big section of the Democrat base, but the trumpies are conducting race riots… yet.
Abortion is a hard one to compare extremes. Making extreme cases legal does not increase the number of abortions by a large amount but making them all illegal will drastically reduce it. This makes the conservative view seem even more extreme because the end result is actually an extreme change vs the liberal extreme nobody would really notice.