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More the later than the former. My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and th

More the later than the former. My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and the Democrats do what they need to do. I don't see the democrats as some white light in a world of evil, I see a political organization that is willing to do whatever it needs to do for self preservation. To use your words, I think there is bureaucratic incompetency on both sides, yet people spent time and money to take a really good idea and use it to smear one side. I say this as someone who has not ever and probably never will vote republican. I'm not sure if you played the game but it associated long lines, reduced polling locations and clueless polling employees with GOP tactics when those same exact issues cropped up in the democratic primary. My point is why say GOP and just say these things happen in all polls? The game didn't even touch on the North Carolina law. It's the Republicans doing it now but let's not forget the role Democrats had in overseeing Jim Crow laws.

travmatt 10y ago
Honestly, I can't see how your response is anything but preaching a false equivalency. >My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and the Democrats do what they need to do. I don't see the democrats as some white light in a world of evil, I see a political organization that is willing to do whatever it needs to do for self preservation. To use your words, I think there is bureaucratic incompetency on both sides, yet people spent time and money to take a really good idea and use it to smear one side. Expect the issue at hand is one group is being proven to engineer voter suppression, which is a specific claim that rises above mere bureaucratic incompetence. The fact that these actions can be shown to be more than bureaucratic incompetence is the entire crux of the discussion. This is comparable to a zero tolerance policy saying that someone bringing a pocketknife to school is exactly as guilty as someone who brought a ka-bar into school with the intent of killing his teacher. >It's the Republicans doing it now but let's not forget the role Democrats had in overseeing Jim Crow laws. I'm pretty sure this is the definition of false equivalency. FWIW, Jim Crow laws were perpetuated by a coalition of Southern Conservative Democrats and Mid-western Repbulicans. The Democrats on their own didn't have enough numbers to survive the attacks by Northern Liberal Democrats.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It's also specious to assign credit or culpability for things that happened 50 years ago to the organizations that exist today. I mean, there are famous examples of those southern Democrats leaving the Democratic party and becoming Republicans. Like Strom Thurmond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond
  - travmatt 10y ago
    The democrats who opposed civil rights hated big government, hated government deficits, and advocated de-regulation of industry. If one were trying to categorize them according to today's ideologies, they'd be republican. They were more conservatives than they were democrats, and the only reason they were democrats was lingering bitterness over the civil war.

travmatt 10y ago

Honestly, I can't see how your response is anything but preaching a false equivalency. >My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and the Democrats do what they need to do. I don't see the democrats as some white light in a world of evil, I see a political organization that is willing to do whatever it needs to do for self preservation. To use your words, I think there is bureaucratic incompetency on both sides, yet people spent time and money to take a really good idea and use it to smear one side. Expect the issue at hand is one group is being proven to engineer voter suppression, which is a specific claim that rises above mere bureaucratic incompetence. The fact that these actions can be shown to be more than bureaucratic incompetence is the entire crux of the discussion. This is comparable to a zero tolerance policy saying that someone bringing a pocketknife to school is exactly as guilty as someone who brought a ka-bar into school with the intent of killing his teacher. >It's the Republicans doing it now but let's not forget the role Democrats had in overseeing Jim Crow laws. I'm pretty sure this is the definition of false equivalency. FWIW, Jim Crow laws were perpetuated by a coalition of Southern Conservative Democrats and Mid-western Repbulicans. The Democrats on their own didn't have enough numbers to survive the attacks by Northern Liberal Democrats.

maxerickson 10y ago
It's also specious to assign credit or culpability for things that happened 50 years ago to the organizations that exist today. I mean, there are famous examples of those southern Democrats leaving the Democratic party and becoming Republicans. Like Strom Thurmond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond
- travmatt 10y ago
  The democrats who opposed civil rights hated big government, hated government deficits, and advocated de-regulation of industry. If one were trying to categorize them according to today's ideologies, they'd be republican. They were more conservatives than they were democrats, and the only reason they were democrats was lingering bitterness over the civil war.