#The End of Race Politics

[thearbourist]

Coleman Hughes - The End of Race Politics

[emilianadarling]

The Pennsylvania Senate race is still too close to call.

While it's unlikely to affect the presidential race, I hope Americans are aware that the NBC decision desk (pictured above) and New York Times decision desk have not yet called the Pennsylvania Senate race between McCormick (R) and Casey (D), deeming it still too close to call. The AP called the race for McCormick on Wednesday November 7, citing a 30,000 vote margin between the candidates with an estimated 91,000 votes remaining to count -- the rationale being that there were not enough potential votes left in areas favouring Casey to make a difference.

Since then:

The number of estimated votes left to count has been updated by PA from 91,000 to at least 100,000 per a Thursday announcement from the PA Secretary of State, including provisional, military, overseas, and some Election Day votes;

McCormick has filed multiple lawsuits in an attempt to prevent or limit continue counting of provisional ballots, some of which have now by Friday been withdrawn or dismissed;

Efforts from a group called "PA Fair Elections" to challenge 4,000 mail-in ballots (mostly from overseas or military voters) have now all been withdrawn or dismissed. A number of these challenges had previously been flagged both by the media and by individual voters. (Screenshots of these challenge emails being circulated on tumblr alongside accusations of 'cheating' -- in the end these challenges were made in bad faith, but technically made and ultimately dismissed through legal means.)

This DOES NOT MEAN that the Pennsylvania Senate seat is in any way guaranteed to flip once all the remaining votes are counted. The race is extremely close -- enough so that the AP is confident standing by its call.

What it DOES mean is that the votes have not yet finished being counted, and that it is not yet truly known who will have the most votes in the end. Although McCormick has already declared victory, Casey (in my view very reasonably and wisely) has not yet conceded and is calling for all votes to be counted.

By Pennsylvania law, a recount must occur if the race is within 0.5%. It's looking likely that this will occur. While recounts rarely change the outcome unless results are truly within the main of a handful of votes, they are an important tool for ensuring confidence in the final results.

I know that people are grieving and demoralized right now, but these tight margin races are CRITICAL for determining how large the margin of victory will be for Democrats to flip the Senate in future elections. (Assuming future electing aren't subverted or dismantled somehow by a second Trump administration, but we have to hold out hope for institutional residence here.) The outcome of this and other right Senate and House races may have enormous consequences in a few years, and it would be agonizing to look back and realize that the window of opportunity to ensure a fair outcome had been squandered.

So -- what can Americans do?

Send a note to Bob Casey and his team via his campaign website in support of his efforts to ensure all votes are counted (particularly given the legal challenges from the Republican candidate and Republican-aligned groups) and decision to wait to concede until all votes are counted. The man is getting dragged in Conservative media in particular for 'refusing to concede'; add your voice to the people validating that decision as both reasonable and moral.

Keep an eye on this race as the counting (and potential recounting) proceeds, including any further legal challenges attempting to prevent or limit the counting of all ballots. Regardless of the outcome, all eligible votes MUST BE COUNTED. To do otherwise would be both subversion if democracy and an stoicism legal precedent for future elections.

Watch for other legal challenges, particularly in battleground states or right races, seeking to disqualify or prevent the counting of ballots. Look for credible sources, especially local ones. Make noise about them with cited sources if you think there is a risk they may be missed. Notify groups like Democracy Docket or the American Civil Liberties Union if you have concerns. Shared truth and shared confidence in the legitimacy of election results -- including that all eligible votes are counted -- is essential for democracy to function.

Push back on claims that the election results are fully known or finalized. With multiple House races still undecided and a few razor-thin margin Senate races with ballots remaining to be counted, those kind of statements are simply not true. And state-level race are inherently more likely to not make it onto people's radar than the presidential race if candidates try to make it so certain ballots aren't counted or contesting the results if a tight race flips.

There is only a very small window post-election to ensure things like outstanding legal challenges over whether certain ballots can be included in the count are resolved. Please stay alert and do not let that window close without doing all you can to ensure every eligible ballot is counted -- particularly in those tight, tight down-ballot races. 🙏

Note: This post should be accurate as of the end of day on Friday, November 9. Once the results of the PA Senate race are known and truly final, I will update this pay with the results.

[bittsandpieces]

US americans.... you'd better be fucking voting

[jensorensen]

The Great Regression

Like many Americans, I marvel at the speed with which we went from the historic election of Barack Obama to the brink of fascism. Clearly these events are not unrelated; racial resentment exploded in reaction to Obama's presidency. But this moment of reactionary politics goes well beyond that historical first and now seems to permeate every aspect of life, anywhere some degree of social progress has been achieved.

Receive my weekly newsletter and help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.

[jasontoddsmommyissues]

I saw a video on Tik Tok about how Trump and JD Vance’s fear mongering about Haitian immigrants is likely to trigger an uptick of hatred and violence towards Black Americans in general, and man did that break my fucking heart. I’m white personally, but goddamn I am sick of this. I remember the 2000s, I remember how the “war on terror” turned into anyone who even just looked vaguely Middle Eastern or belonged to a religion that uses head coverings being treated like dangerous criminals. I remember the “border crisis” turning into an open invitation to discriminate against anyone of Latino/Hispanic descent. I remember how the pandemic turned into a wave of violence against Asian Americans. I don’t want to do this again. I don’t want to sit around listening to bigots talk about my fellow humans like they’re some sort of dangerous animals. I don’t want to open my news app to stories of innocent people being hurt and killed for no valid reason.

I don’t give a fuck what your skin color is, or what country you/your ancestors came from. If you can’t see how disgusting this is, how absolutely despicable it is to act this way towards your fellow man, I don’t know what to say.

[skitskatdacat63]

2024 Chinese Grand Prix - Fernando Alonso

[lord-squiggletits]

Part of why I hate this fandom's take on Autobots vs Decepticons is ppl (mainly 'con fans honestly) who can't have any nuance of the situation whatsoever and love to write plots like "oh the humans are racist and abusive towards Cybertronians so this is how Megatron is right" no actually I don't think colonialism/imperialism and racism are justified so long as you can point the finger and say "they were the aggressors first" or "their hands are no cleaner than ours bc their society sucks too" sorry. Please come up with better sociopolitical narratives in your war story.

[dandelionjack]

giggling at the fact that they had fake prime ministers and fake presidents up until now and then for some reason real life president of the united states of america barack obama

[tariah23]

It’s always crazy to see black celebs spew this same rhetoric because it’s such a privileged take… like, they’ve been famous for so long and have gotten their money up, moved out of the projects or whatever tf, that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be genuinely feel. It’s impossible for them to connect anymore. As far as the qrt, oh wow ☠️.

[comet-soda-lite]

Imo the X-Men are at their best when they're doing queer allegory and at their worst when they're veering into sanitized idealized Zionism

[cinnamonzen]

From left, Fox News's Harris Faulkner, ABC News's Rachel Scott and Semafor's Kadia Goba after they interviewed Donald Trump in Chicago last Wednesday. (Joel Angel Juarez for The Washington Post)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/04/nabj-trump-interview-media-coverage/

content, for those who are paywalled (all links from original article)

Opinion | The NABJ interview with Trump provides a model for media coverage
No other sit-down this cycle has laid bare as much about the candidate.

by Jennifer Rubin
August 4, 2024 at 7:45 a.m. ET

The National Association of Black Journalists’ invitation to former president Donald Trump** to sit for an interview last Wednesday at its Chicago convention had its critics. Don’t platform him. Don’t allow him to soft-pedal his racism. The critics’ assumption that NABJ members were somehow being manipulated proved to be unfounded; instead, we got the most revealing questioning of Trump in this election cycle. In the process, the interview revealed shortcomings in news coverage of Trump’s campaign so far.

The Post reported*, “Trump drew audible gasps and disbelieving laughter over the roughly 35-minute sit-down session as he berated a Black reporter who pressed him about past offensive comments, falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants were ‘taking’ attendees’ votes, and suggested [Vice President] Harris ‘was Indian all the way’ before ‘all of a sudden she made a turn’ and ‘became a Black person.’”

Rachel Scott of ABC News, in addition to confronting Trump with some of his past racially incendiary remarks, got him to admit that he would spare Jan. 6** insurrectionists who assaulted police officers. (When he added “if they’re innocent,” she noted the many had been convicted.) And in a rare real-time correction, Scott didn’t let Trump get away with claiming that Democrats allow babies to die after birth. (“Sir, that is illegal in every state,” she interjected, The Post reported.*)

The interview clearly unnerved Trump apologists and garnered criticism from independent-minded Republicans such as former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

Trump’s NABJ appearance also afforded Harris the opportunity* later on Wednesday to rebuke his hateful rhetoric in a way that made him look like a sad has-been. “It was the same old show. The divisiveness and the disrespect,” she declared in a speech in Houston. “And let me just say: The American people deserve better. The American people deserve better.” She continued, “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.” That’s how one puts Trump in his place without getting into a personal spat with him.

No other single interview or media encounter with Trump in this cycle has laid bare as much about the candidate or opened him up to as much criticism. Kudos go to Scott and her co-moderators in Chicago. The NABJ interview also raises a troubling question: What’s wrong with the rest of the media?

Not one question in the CNN-hosted debate with Trump and President Biden* on June 27 confronted Trump about racism or antisemitism. (As to the latter, there has been inadequate coverage — certainly not on the front page of most papers or headlining cable news — devoted to Trump’s disparaging comments that any Jew who does not support him is a “fool” and “should have their head examined,” or agreement with a radio host who called Harris’s husband a “crappy Jew.”) CNN’s debate moderators did not ask about pardons for Jan. 6. insurrectionists.

Unfortunately, too many in the mainstream political media have been taken in by Republican spin. The preposterous suggestion that, after the assassination attempt, Trump might have “changed,” entertained as a possibility by far too many outlets (as The Post’s Philip Bump and a select number of other commentators pointed out), unsurprisingly turned out to be wishful thinking.

The initial reaction to Trump’s NABJ interview appeared to be tepid in many quarters. Relatively benign phrases such as “racially insensitive” to describe such patently bigoted comments serve only to normalize Trump. Too few reports noted that Trump was yanked off the stage by his own staff after 35 minutes. Reports that the event (not Trump) turned hostile or that Trump’s outbursts made this a pivotal moment for Harris wind up blurring Trump’s sole responsibility for infusing racism into the campaign. Likewise, speculation about whether his disastrous appearance was an attempt to “win back the news cycle” reduces campaign coverage to horse race speculation, rather than educating voters about the challenge to pluralistic democracy.

Now, some outlets did provide needed context. “The moment was shocking, but for those who have followed Mr. Trump’s divisive language, it was hardly surprising,” the New York Times reported. “The former president has a history of using race to pit groups of Americans against one another, amplifying a strain of racial politics that has risen as a generation of Black politicians has ascended.” The report also put Trump’s remarks in the context of his racist “birther” attempts to delegitimize the first African American president.

The mainstream media now faces a test of sorts. After the June 27 debate, the media spent three weeks flooding the zone with coverage of Biden’s frailty, in effect demanding every Democrat to defend Biden or distance themselves from him, and consulting a host of experts on aging. Failure to deploy similarly exacting treatment of Trump would confirm Democrats’ complaints that there is a bizarre double standard in coverage that allows Trump to escape appropriate scrutiny. It’s long past time to stop using euphemisms and soft-pedaling his bigotry. (As I have noted*, the vast majority of outlets also have steered clear of assessing Trump’s mental and emotional state, despite repeated episodes in which his slurred speech, verbal glitches, incoherent ranting, mixing up people and bizarre references are obvious to anyone watching.)

Truth demands the free press pull no punches, even if that appears to be “taking sides.” (Taking the side of truth is the media’s job.) The NABJ journalists showed how it’s done. Now we wait to see whether others will follow their lead.

*links to another WaPo article

**originally links to a WaPo category and cannot be replicated here

[qqueenofhades]

I should ask more specifically if you have any thoughts on Marianne Williamson's bid for the presidency and her campaign. She's a bit of a kook, but her PLATFORM seems really solid and definitely might appeal to the "vote republican for the economy!" moderates.

To be honest, I haven't looked up her platform or any of her policies, and I don't care if they appeal to the mushy middle who always wants an excuse not to vote for Democrats because they're "too socially liberal." Considering that whatever candidate the GOP runs, be it Trump or DeSantis or another of their terrible people, will be an unrepentant, unreconstructed, full-out fascist who can't be allowed to win at any cost, any person selfish enough to deliberately increase the odds of that candidate winning, as prominent third-party candidates always, ALWAYS hurt the Democrats, is not a serious figure or someone who should remotely be given any attention or artifical media prominence.

[starswallowingsea]

looking at the notes of that last poll was a mistake

[tunnels-end]

It is deeply, deeply beneficial to TERFs if the only characteristic of TERF ideology you will recognize as wrong, harmful, or problematic is "they hate trans women".

TERF ideology is an expansive network of extremely toxic ideas, and the more of them we accept and normalize, the easier it becomes for them to fly under the radar and recruit new TERFs. The closer they get to turning the tide against all trans people, trans women included.

Case in point: In 2014-2015, I fell headlong into radical feminism. I did not know it was called radical feminism at the time, but I also didn't know what was wrong with radical feminism in the first place. I didn't see a problem with it.

I was a year deep into this shit when people I had been following, listening to, and looking up to finally said they didn't think trans women were women. It was only then that I unfollowed those people, specifically; but I continued to follow other TERFs-who-didn't-say-they-were-TERFs. I continued ingesting and spreading their ideas- for years after.

If TERFs "only target trans women" and "only want trans women gone", if that's the one and only problem with their ideology and if that's the only way we'll define them, we will inevitably miss a vast majority of the quiet beliefs that support their much louder hatred of trans women.

As another example: the trans community stood relatively united when TERFs and conservatives targeted our right to use the correct restroom, citing the "dangers" of trans women sharing space with cis women. But when they began targeting Lost Little Girls and Confused Lesbians and trotting detransitioners out to raise a panic about trans men, virtually the only people speaking up about it were other transmascs. Now we see a rash of anti-trans healthcare bills being passed in the US, and they're hurting every single one of us.

When you refuse to call a TERF a TERF just because they didn't specifically say they hate trans women, when you refuse to think critically about a TERF belief just because it's not directly related to trans women, you are actively helping TERFs spread their influence and build credibility.

[stephen-barry]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/economy-inflation-top-publics-agenda-midterm-elections-poll/story?id=92348366

I once again urge democrats to do what candidate for US Senate for Pennsylvania, John Fetterman said in 2022, and promise a windfall profits tax on Big Oil and other excesses profit industries - if elected in November. Also, John wants investigations into price gouging in other industries, like food.

The GOP "blames" democrats for high gas and other prices. Taxing sky high third quarter profits would be a good way to reduce votes for Republicans.

[ileftherbackhome]

while i agree with the viewpoint that we shouldnt really be super focused on that fact that terfs misgendered a cis woman, i also agree with the viewpoint that the fact that white cis women were misgendering a black cis woman needs to be discussed because this is the endgoal of terf ideology.

they want to gatekeep womanhood so they can harass and exclude black women from their circles. that post also said that it's not a mistake that jrk misgendered a black woman but i do think that her cisgender identity needs to be discussed within the context of misogynoir and how transphobia is used to harass black women for no reason.

and we also have to talk about how the origins of queerphobia come from white supremacists because of the fact that they needed to demonize the cultures of the black people they were gunna enslave and their acceptance of queerness precolonialism is important in the discussion of the origins of tranphobia and how to prevent women from joining the terf ideology and acting like this.