5 ms·

Yes, and he goes on by saying "So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner." It's an argument that, by the 1980s the main parties were no lon

Yes, and he goes on by saying "So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner." It's an argument that, by the 1980s the main parties were no longer focusing on race in their campaigns, and that all that was left from that POV was a matter of voters still holding on to those issues and trying to figure out who was on their "side", more or less sub-consciously. He's responding to your implied argument (it was around back then, too!) by saying that some voters will always be trying to hear "dog-whistles" out of something, and that there isn't much you can do about it other than leading that attitude change in a proactive way and patiently waiting for the voters to follow. Of course, most people who bring up that selective Atwater quote won't tell you that. Sadly, you've been misled by a piece of political propaganda. Here's a blogpost discussing that Atwater quote rather extensively: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/what-did-lee-atwater-really-say.php https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/what-did-lee-...

inflatableDodo 7y ago
So what was it exactly that got hoary old racists to move to the party of Lincoln while not stopping waving the Confederate flags around, if it wasn't the politics of the Republican Party changing? The influx of crystal meth perhaps?
- 0815test 7y ago
  Did you miss the part where the party of Lincoln managed to rebuild the Southern economy and society from the ground up? Of course, it wasn't the first "Reconstruction" that they attempted in the South, either - but hey, second time's the charm! And no, even waving the Confederate flag isn't exactly a contradiction with celebrating that either, or at least it wouldn't be until quite recently indeed (yes, it's a fact that race relations are going sour once again, unfortunately). But explaining why that was the case would be taking us quite far from the original topic, so I'm not sure that it's worth even trying to address this point.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    >But explaining why that's the case would be taking us quite far from the original topic, so I'm not sure that it's worth even trying to address this point. Well, in for a penny and all that. From the outside it looks pretty simple. A sizable cross section of the USA completely and utterly lost their minds after a dark skinned guy became president, so they got behind the candidate who was most openly and consistently bigoted. It probably helped that he also had a TV show with a simple catchphrase and hats emblazoned with a jingoistic but ultimately meaningless campaign slogan. However without the relentless bigotry to push his campaign forward, he would have been just a tacky loudmouth grifter from New York with a gold toilet and stupid hair. Given that these last qualities would, on their own, be far more likely to lose him votes than gain him any with the majority of people who ultimately ended up supporting him, it seems a fairly safe assumption that most of his supporters just really liked the hatefulness he directed towards an amorphous enemy that had been conjured seemingly out of whole cloth, with the aid of a heady mix of fear, gullibility and delusional levels of paranoia. Of course it didn't really help the other party very much, when they chose to parachute in a Washington insider as their candidate, who possessed almost no charisma, an obviously corrupt ex-president as a husband and a roughly equal level of hubris to Trump. edit - To be fair, this is not the whole picture. There is also what might be the largest unacknowledged contemporary political group, those voters who are best described by the song 'Asshole', by Denis Leary. For them, Trump was never someone they ever remotely respected or agreed with. They know he is a fool who will wreck the place. And they voted for him for exactly that reason, as they find fucking up shit for the hell of it to be highly amusing.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      > A sizable cross section of the USA completely and utterly lost their minds after a dark skinned guy became president Except for the part where, you know, that didn't really happen. Obama was a great president for many, many reasons, but one of those was precisely how he managed to turn race relations into as near to a non-issue as could practically happen, given that he could and did appeal to an exceptionally broad and diverse cross-section of American voters. Even by the time Hillary became the Democrat candidate, the attitude had become quite different on all sides, in a way that's hard to underestimate. Trump wasn't always seen as bigoted or even foolish, either. I do agree that political campaigns have become a lot worse in many ways, with jingoism and even some outright bigotry being a big part of that, but I'd blame that on a broader loss of social cohesion or respect for our most prized political values (including moderation, deliberation, inclusiveness, focus on the complexity of core issues and not on pointless distractions etc. etc.) due to things like the bad economy and perhaps even our attitude to Internet-powered social media.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

So what was it exactly that got hoary old racists to move to the party of Lincoln while not stopping waving the Confederate flags around, if it wasn't the politics of the Republican Party changing? The influx of crystal meth perhaps?

0815test 7y ago
Did you miss the part where the party of Lincoln managed to rebuild the Southern economy and society from the ground up? Of course, it wasn't the first "Reconstruction" that they attempted in the South, either - but hey, second time's the charm! And no, even waving the Confederate flag isn't exactly a contradiction with celebrating that either, or at least it wouldn't be until quite recently indeed (yes, it's a fact that race relations are going sour once again, unfortunately). But explaining why that was the case would be taking us quite far from the original topic, so I'm not sure that it's worth even trying to address this point.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >But explaining why that's the case would be taking us quite far from the original topic, so I'm not sure that it's worth even trying to address this point. Well, in for a penny and all that. From the outside it looks pretty simple. A sizable cross section of the USA completely and utterly lost their minds after a dark skinned guy became president, so they got behind the candidate who was most openly and consistently bigoted. It probably helped that he also had a TV show with a simple catchphrase and hats emblazoned with a jingoistic but ultimately meaningless campaign slogan. However without the relentless bigotry to push his campaign forward, he would have been just a tacky loudmouth grifter from New York with a gold toilet and stupid hair. Given that these last qualities would, on their own, be far more likely to lose him votes than gain him any with the majority of people who ultimately ended up supporting him, it seems a fairly safe assumption that most of his supporters just really liked the hatefulness he directed towards an amorphous enemy that had been conjured seemingly out of whole cloth, with the aid of a heady mix of fear, gullibility and delusional levels of paranoia. Of course it didn't really help the other party very much, when they chose to parachute in a Washington insider as their candidate, who possessed almost no charisma, an obviously corrupt ex-president as a husband and a roughly equal level of hubris to Trump. edit - To be fair, this is not the whole picture. There is also what might be the largest unacknowledged contemporary political group, those voters who are best described by the song 'Asshole', by Denis Leary. For them, Trump was never someone they ever remotely respected or agreed with. They know he is a fool who will wreck the place. And they voted for him for exactly that reason, as they find fucking up shit for the hell of it to be highly amusing.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    > A sizable cross section of the USA completely and utterly lost their minds after a dark skinned guy became president Except for the part where, you know, that didn't really happen. Obama was a great president for many, many reasons, but one of those was precisely how he managed to turn race relations into as near to a non-issue as could practically happen, given that he could and did appeal to an exceptionally broad and diverse cross-section of American voters. Even by the time Hillary became the Democrat candidate, the attitude had become quite different on all sides, in a way that's hard to underestimate. Trump wasn't always seen as bigoted or even foolish, either. I do agree that political campaigns have become a lot worse in many ways, with jingoism and even some outright bigotry being a big part of that, but I'd blame that on a broader loss of social cohesion or respect for our most prized political values (including moderation, deliberation, inclusiveness, focus on the complexity of core issues and not on pointless distractions etc. etc.) due to things like the bad economy and perhaps even our attitude to Internet-powered social media.