💠Latino communities in California
💠Southern African American communities
💠Urban intellectuals
💠Big, diverse cities
💠Democratic socialists from Queens
💠Asian communities in California
💠LGBTQ
💠 Pro-union working-class Whites
Etc. Etc. Etc.
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When we say, “The GOP demographics are aging and shrinking, and the Democratic base is expanding” Democrats cheer. It means we can win elections.
It also means that we are a huge, diverse heterogeneous group.
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The Democratic Party includes minority communities that might lean somewhat conservative but are unwelcome in the Republican Party.
The GOP actively discourages diversity. When you have a homogenous group, it's easier to get along.
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Keep in mind that the GOP actively discourages diversity.
Here is Katie Hopkins, pictured with Ann Coulter, praising Russia as being “untouched by the myth of multiculturalism and deranged diversity“:
Autocracy discourages diversity. Fascism arises by declaring war on “others,” the “enemies” in our midsts (usually people of different religious or ethnic groups.)
The GOP challenge is that their party represents only a minority of Americans, and a minority of views.
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As the GOP becomes a full-on White nationalist reactionary party, I suspect that we're in for a party shift.
We may no longer divide into "liberal" and "conservative."
We may divide into people who want democracy and people who don't.
Lots of people don't.
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Democracy is hard work. It's messy. It requires compromise.
"My way or the highway" isn't democracy; it's autocracy.
Some people don't like democracy because they don't want to share power (and compromise) with people they don't like.
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Some people think they want democracy but they don't. They want things their way.
When my son was in preschool he came home one day and told me that in school that day, he learned to "take turns." He said, "I don't LIKE to take turns. I want all the turns."
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Highly functioning societies often go against human nature. (Did anyone else read Civilization and its Discontents in college?)
There are things that cannot be compromised. But for a functioning democracy, the list of things that cannot be compromised must be small.
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I meant to include this:
Here is Tucker Carlson explaining that diversity is NOT a strength:cnsnews.com/blog/michael-m…
What Tucker Carlson meant was that if you discourage diversity, your message can be simple. Your people will fall in line. Politics is easier.
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I'll also add that my son grew up to be a nice young man :)
If the GOP continues to become more autocratic, we will have to outnumber them.
This means accepting into our tent anyone who wants rule of law / democracy.
This means accepting into our tent people whose policy ideas we don't like. The alternative is for the non-authoritarians to splinter and lose to autocracy.
In other words, purity tests will not work.
I suspect the GOP will continue to become more autocratic.
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The Mitt Romneys will continue trying to thread the needle, appealing to the base while trying to be reasonable, but all those white supremacists and Breitbart readers are not going to close up shop and learn to love democracy.
Remember that trolls have gotten savvier.
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Trolls may pose as Democrats, call themselves Democrats, and then call other Democrats names to make trouble.
Some liberals may not like big tents.
Some people don't really like Democrats but they're stuck with us because the alternative is Trump-style autocracy.
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This used to be true for a brief period between about 1920 and whenever the GOP finished morphing from a conservative party into a reactionary / regressive party.
The courts aren't going to install a dictator (which is what ignoring the vote would do).
Lawsuits require evidence.
Moreover, federal judges with lifetime appointments have no motive to install a dictator and (effectively) give up all their own power to a vindictive person.
People are asking about the military. The military is not going to install Trump as a dictator. Soldiers and generals would have to obey illegal orders and circumvent the Constitution. Not. Going. To. Happen.
This country is too big.
That said, Trump is up to something.
He's figuring out how to line his own pockets and cover his tracks.
He's figuring out how to maneuver the levers of government for his personal enrichment while he controls them.
He's figuring out how to consolidate influence (collect favors, perhaps) to remain relevant.
The fear is also explained by Richard Hofstader, who wrote the classic work⤵️
Hofstadter reviewed American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism. He noticed a pattern among an impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.
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He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.
Those embracing the paranoid style of politics believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong.
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On his way out the door, Trump will still be insisting that the election was rigged and the Democrats stole it through massive fraud involving absentee ballots ⤵️
I’ll tell you one story from the GA Democrats boiler room. (Boiler room = room full of lawyers handling problems from polling places, this year on zoom.)
It was 6:59 pm EST. We got a call from the hotline. . .
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The polling places were closing at 7.
The voter showed up one minute before closing. The poll workers were locking the door. (Nobody was in line, so they closed up 2 minutes early. Heck, it had been a long day, they were unpaid volunteers, and they were tired.)
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The poll workers didn’t want to open up.
The voter wanted to vote.
The team went to work.
It took 35 minutes, but that voter voted.
You would have been impressed by how passionately a room of lawyers cared about that vote.
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