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Carville: Democrats have a wokeness problem


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9 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Wokeness is a problem, sure, but Carville lumps economic equality into that along with rightly mocking dumb crap like "Latinx". Bundling a mandatory living wage in with woke culture is a great Republican tactic.

Isn’t that precisely his point?

”Look at Florida. You now have Democrats saying Florida is a lost cause. Really? In 2018 in Florida, giving felons the right to vote got 64 percent. In 2020, a $15 minimum wage, which we have no chance of passing [federally], got 67 percent. Has anyone in the Democratic Party said maybe there’s nothing wrong with the state of Florida? Maybe the problem is the kind of campaigns we’re running? 

If you gave me an environment in which the majority of voters wanted to expand the franchise to felons and raise the minimum wage, I should be able to win that. It’s certainly not a political environment I’m destined to lose in. But in Miami-Dade, all they talked about was defunding the police and Kamala Harris being the most liberal senator in the US Senate. And if you look all across the Rio Grande Valley, we lost all kinds of solidly blue voters. And the faculty lounge bullshit is a big part of it.”

Edited by formermav43
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7 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Wokeness is a problem, sure, but Carville lumps economic equality into that along with rightly mocking dumb crap like "Latinx". Bundling a mandatory living wage in with woke culture is a great Republican tactic.

I saw this clip yesterday for the first time and thought of the 2021 woke culture, the same that Carville seems to say is a problem, and I thought you'd appreciate this because of your past deriding of liberal centrist democrats who are unintentionally embarrassing and racist:

 

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I don’t find much if anything to disagree with in what Carville had to say.  Democrats failing to look at 2020 election results and seeing they have work to do with people who don’t usually vote for them (rural America) and those who usually do but who strayed away (Latino voters on the border) is a huge mistake.

For well beyond his margin of victory, votes for Biden were votes against Trump.  Replace Trump with a slightly less abhorrent character and the Democrats lose.

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By nature the Dems are divided on different goals and strategies.  Maybe not so much divided on the goals, but the priority of them.  But all Dems are concerned about the welfare of others, that makes them more humane in the treatment of others, always looking for the good in people.   That's the image of the party.   So going in on the attack is not their norm.  

The Dems need to keep hammering the message that they are accomplishing things in contrast to the last admin.  Show the positives and let the negatives speak for themselves.  100 days in they can start to show progress, and the longer we go, the numbers will reflect that positive trend.

We had 4 years of division, hate and fearmongering.  We are better than that.  We are proving that.   The republicans are masters at wallowing in mud.  We can't beat them at that game.  We need to get out of that pit and move forward.   I get the idea that is Biden's general plan.   Let an independent DOJ go after the bad actors, don't politicize that.  

BUT I wish they would develop a scoreboard that shows what each administration had accomplished within set time frames, i.e. first 100 days.  They need to show people what they had and what they have now.  Need to squarely place the blame where it belongs.  

 

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The item about AOC versus MTG is the point not "wokeness". He doesn't believe wokeness is the issue. He believes how it is perceived by the public because of the right wing press. If one side is crazy and flings feces at you, it is fine if you can message that it is the other side that is the problem.

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20 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

It's his point in this interview, but his tune always changes once he picks a horse during an election and that horse is always centrist/center-right. Classic Carville.

Carville had no problem unleashing Hillary's woke supporters against Sanders. 

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I passed within a couple of feet of Carville one day in Alexandria riding my bike on a path. For a split-second that spot had the two funniest looking people in America.
I had a dream that I met you and you looked like a shorter, swarthier Ron Jeremy.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

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1 minute ago, Ten Bears said:

I had a dream that I met you and you looked like a shorter, swarthier Ron Jeremy.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk
 

I want your dreams. I am almost thinking of taking a day trip to Montgomery, Alabama just to take this RDCanecutter to dinner.

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THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those.

Edited by Onboard 2.0
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I don't think most people can define woke/identity politics - or comprehend where it may fall on a political spectrum. Carville is attempting to obfuscate the concept. 

In the center, Hillary was a woke candidate. Warren and Harris were woke candidates. The moneyed woke supported Biden.  

On the right - white identity movements (woke/red pill) dominated the Republican Party.

 

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2 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those, but yeah they're not strong enough either.

You are out of your league in this discussion. No offense intended.

FDR economic policy is Center-Left today (mainstream when he was in office).  It is not a woke issue.

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2 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

You are out of your league in this discussion. No offense intended.

FDR economic policy is Center-Left today (mainstream when he was in office).  It is not a woke issue.

Yeah that's kind of  point of the post the whole woke thing ?  Empty concept meant to play a you're not in our club, divisive tactic game.

 

Thanks for looking out for me though.

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2 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Empty concept meant to play a you're not in our club, divisive tactic game.

By completely missing his point, you a) proved his point, and b) provided pretty much the only data point in Carville's favor in this argument. The reason you're not in the club, though, is not that anyone was trying to exclude you, only that you posted outlandishly false premises, which anyone who has studied American history objectively knows to be incorrect, to arrive at a fantastically wrong conclusion.

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21 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

I don't think most people can define woke/identity politics - or comprehend where it may fall on a political spectrum. Carville is attempting to obfuscate the concept. 

In the center, Hillary was a woke candidate. Warren and Harris were woke candidates. The moneyed woke supported Biden.  

On the right - white identity movements (woke/red pill) dominated the Republican Party.

 

This. The GOP have been accusing businesses that publicly came out against voter suppression as "woke". Fucking voter suppression.

It's just a new attack buzzword that tested well among the GOP base in some Frank Lutz wet dream.

Edited by yoladu
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Just now, Onboard 2.0 said:

Yeah that's kind of  point of the post the whole woke thing ?  Empty concept meant to play a you're not in our club, divisive tactic game.

Not really. And it's not empty, since it is used across the political spectrum. And needed, because there remain assholes with Neanderthal brains. 

Here is a good primer:

While the common charge that identity politics promotes a victim mentality is often made glibly, Wendy Brown offers a more sophisticated caution against the dangers of resentment (the moralizing revenge of the powerless).

She argues that identity politics has its own genealogy in liberal capitalism that relentlessly reinforces the “wounded attachments” it claims to sever: “Politicized identity thus enunciates itself, makes claims for itself, only by entrenching, restating, dramatizing, and inscribing its pain in politics; it can hold out no future—for itself or others—that triumphs over this pain” (Brown 1995: 74).

The challenge that identity politics retains attachments to hierarchized categories defined in opposition to each other and over-identifies with artifactual wounds has been met with more discussion of the temporality of identity politics: can an identification be premised on a forward-looking solidarity rather than a ressentiment-laden exclusion (see Zerilli 2005; Weir 2008; Bhambra and Margee 2010)?

It also invites consideration of whether pain is always a regressive, fixed ground of identity claims, or whether it might be a legitimate reality for mobilization, as Tobin Siebers suggests of disability (2017: 322–3).

Some proponents of identity politics have suggested that poststructuralism is politically impotent, capable only of deconstruction and never of action (Hartsock 1998: 205–226).

There are, however, political projects motivated by poststructuralist theses. For example, Judith Butler’s famous articulation of performativity as a way of understanding subject-development suggests to her and others the possibility of disarticulating seamless performances to subvert the meanings with which they are invested (Butler 1999 [1990]). Drag maybe constituted such a disarticulation, although other critics have suggested other examples; Adrian Piper’s conceptual art seeks to disrupt the presumed self-identity of race by showing how it is actively interpreted and reconstituted, never determinate and self-evident. Linda Zerilli discusses the “world-building” work of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective—a feminist group that rejects a subject-centred view of women’s injured status in favor of a protensive practice of freedom (2005: chapter 3).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/#LibeIdenPoli

 

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14 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Not really. And it's not empty, since it is used across the political spectrum. And needed, because there remain assholes with Neanderthal brains. 

Here is a good primer:

While the common charge that identity politics promotes a victim mentality is often made glibly, Wendy Brown offers a more sophisticated caution against the dangers of resentment (the moralizing revenge of the powerless).

She argues that identity politics has its own genealogy in liberal capitalism that relentlessly reinforces the “wounded attachments” it claims to sever: “Politicized identity thus enunciates itself, makes claims for itself, only by entrenching, restating, dramatizing, and inscribing its pain in politics; it can hold out no future—for itself or others—that triumphs over this pain” (Brown 1995: 74).

The challenge that identity politics retains attachments to hierarchized categories defined in opposition to each other and over-identifies with artifactual wounds has been met with more discussion of the temporality of identity politics: can an identification be premised on a forward-looking solidarity rather than a ressentiment-laden exclusion (see Zerilli 2005; Weir 2008; Bhambra and Margee 2010)?

It also invites consideration of whether pain is always a regressive, fixed ground of identity claims, or whether it might be a legitimate reality for mobilization, as Tobin Siebers suggests of disability (2017: 322–3).

Some proponents of identity politics have suggested that poststructuralism is politically impotent, capable only of deconstruction and never of action (Hartsock 1998: 205–226).

There are, however, political projects motivated by poststructuralist theses. For example, Judith Butler’s famous articulation of performativity as a way of understanding subject-development suggests to her and others the possibility of disarticulating seamless performances to subvert the meanings with which they are invested (Butler 1999 [1990]). Drag maybe constituted such a disarticulation, although other critics have suggested other examples; Adrian Piper’s conceptual art seeks to disrupt the presumed self-identity of race by showing how it is actively interpreted and reconstituted, never determinate and self-evident. Linda Zerilli discusses the “world-building” work of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective—a feminist group that rejects a subject-centred view of women’s injured status in favor of a protensive practice of freedom (2005: chapter 3).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/#LibeIdenPoli

 

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All I can do as someone who is trying to get the best people elected is to avoid being shrill and try to convince the few people who might be convincable when I have a chance. Nobody likes overintellectualized jargon, and no one likes vocal fry, and no one likes Latinx, and no one likes someone misrepresenting "everyone on the right".

All I can do is not be stupid in the way I communicate.

It's not that complicated.

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3 minutes ago, tantric superman said:

All I can do is not be stupid in the way I communicate.

It's not that complicated.

The problem is what "it" you are referring to. The kind of language that is used in political advertisements is one thing -- it certainly shouldn't be shrill, and it obviously ought to be tailored to the audience of either undecided voters who might be swayed, or else decided voters who need to be enthused to turn out. But the kind of language used in the daily conversations of those who seek to better understand trends, phenomenon, and the impactful issues of the day can be as full of jargon as they need to be -- those are questions it is right and proper for the ivory tower to be pondering, and when they ponder, they do so in academic terms that the vast majority of people don't use.

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58 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those, but yeah they're not strong enough either.

Says the GOP supporter.  

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Yes. It's democrats that fundamentally want to alter the political process and mechanisms we've lived under:

https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/proposed-law-would-allow-arizona-legislature-to-overturn-presidential-election-results/article_c2a70681-59c0-512f-ba86-2bf23128f9ee.html

 

Quote

Proposed law would allow Arizona Legislature to overturn presidential election results

Except that whole voting thing, you know, getting rid of that is all Republicans. But that's barely germane to the democratic process, right?

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56 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Not really. And it's not empty, since it is used across the political spectrum. And needed, because there remain assholes with Neanderthal brains. 

Here is a good primer:

While the common charge that identity politics promotes a victim mentality is often made glibly, Wendy Brown offers a more sophisticated caution against the dangers of resentment (the moralizing revenge of the powerless).

She argues that identity politics has its own genealogy in liberal capitalism that relentlessly reinforces the “wounded attachments” it claims to sever: “Politicized identity thus enunciates itself, makes claims for itself, only by entrenching, restating, dramatizing, and inscribing its pain in politics; it can hold out no future—for itself or others—that triumphs over this pain” (Brown 1995: 74).

The challenge that identity politics retains attachments to hierarchized categories defined in opposition to each other and over-identifies with artifactual wounds has been met with more discussion of the temporality of identity politics: can an identification be premised on a forward-looking solidarity rather than a ressentiment-laden exclusion (see Zerilli 2005; Weir 2008; Bhambra and Margee 2010)?

It also invites consideration of whether pain is always a regressive, fixed ground of identity claims, or whether it might be a legitimate reality for mobilization, as Tobin Siebers suggests of disability (2017: 322–3).

Some proponents of identity politics have suggested that poststructuralism is politically impotent, capable only of deconstruction and never of action (Hartsock 1998: 205–226).

There are, however, political projects motivated by poststructuralist theses. For example, Judith Butler’s famous articulation of performativity as a way of understanding subject-development suggests to her and others the possibility of disarticulating seamless performances to subvert the meanings with which they are invested (Butler 1999 [1990]). Drag maybe constituted such a disarticulation, although other critics have suggested other examples; Adrian Piper’s conceptual art seeks to disrupt the presumed self-identity of race by showing how it is actively interpreted and reconstituted, never determinate and self-evident. Linda Zerilli discusses the “world-building” work of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective—a feminist group that rejects a subject-centred view of women’s injured status in favor of a protensive practice of freedom (2005: chapter 3).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/#LibeIdenPoli

 

I’m not sure a lengthy excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the most effective counter to the charge that this is “faculty lounge politics.”

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3 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

I’m not sure a lengthy excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the most effective counter to the charge that this is “faculty lounge politics.”

Which was Carville's tactic by saying it. "Don't speak facts to me - that's faculty lounge politics, don't cha know."

Sarah Palin Presidential Rumors Continued: East Coast Tour Scheduled

 

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I think much of what Carville says here will find large agreement within centrist circles and, although he's not lower-case wrong in his assessment of how the party should be relentless attacking the opposition, he is WRONG overall by giving credence to a diversionary talking point about language that only helps Republicans.

Democratic consultants and media analysts have been navel-gazing Dem messaging for pretty much my entire life. This shit goes back to the Reagan era and when Carville raises a fuss over "wokeness" he's really just showing his age. They don't have a wokeness problem in the Biden era anymore than they had a political correctness problem in the 90's. Carville is smart enough to know this, he's just letting his age get in the way of his analysis. Sure, there are plenty of examples of language that don't fit nicely into political messaging but the point isn't the language, it's the underlying values, principles, and the push for social change. There might be excesses in academic jargon that are used now in our political arguments but I suspect the clunky ones will eventually fall by the wayside and be forgotten. Carville is getting caught up in words and forgetting that what matters is the social movements behind them and the way they help us see from a different and sometimes absolutely necessary perspective. 

 

Edited by Gourmand
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2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

Wokeness is a problem, sure, but Carville lumps economic equality into that along with rightly mocking dumb crap like "Latinx". Bundling a mandatory living wage in with woke culture is a great Republican tactic.

I think the headline and lead distort the focus of what Carville is saying. "Wokeness is a problem" was prompted by an observation of the interviewer. Wokeness is not the theme of Carville's remarks according to how I read it. He's talking about messaging and I think his point is apt.

Giving felons the vote and the $15 minimum wage are issues he says could make Florida, evidently abandoned by the Dems, swing the Dems' way.

Using emotion in the messaging about Climate Change is also on point. Greta Thunberg is pretty much the only light on this aspect. How dare you do this to her generation? Your own children? It's vivid and accurate. Her presence added fervor to my concerns about climate change which is itself a pretty dull, abstract term. 

One of the excellent women on MSNBC last night, I think it was the ex-GOP political advisor, noted how plain-speaking Joe called the infrastructure bill the American Jobs Plan where the Clinton administration called their bills: Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act [ISTEA] and National Economic Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act [NEXTEA]. I think that's what Carville is talking about when he uses the term Facult Lounge language.

In many walks of life including government, business, and academia we are killing written language by using the safe jargon of the grad student. I have a graduate degree (nothing fancy), and I'm turned off by grad school phrasing: Modalities of the Black American: Post Chattel Synergy and Semiotics in the Micro-Biosystem of Marginalized Citizens of Color Seeking Suffrage Privileges in the face of Socio-Political Resistance. 

Carville's opinions remain worthwhile to me.

Edited by RomaVicta
Edit to acknowledge many others made the same points as me in good form. I'm vain enough to leave my post up anyway.
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1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those.

Ahh, my friend.

ppreflex.gif

 

I totally favor there being a political faction to take up your argument about spending in a less dogmatic way. I don't think Dem policies spring from some defect of the mind where they want to mindlessly spend. Sometimes it's a good idea to invest in getting the country going, and we surely cannot ignore our rusting bridges, shitty roads, or technological innovations that will be part of the future of infrastructure. What do you propose?

It's a largely inconceivable amount of money we're about to spend. It's the cost of decades of complacency and petty politics. The GOP, not necessarily you, makes it pretty clear that they are serving their wealthy masters in order to line their own pockets while protecting the pockets of their masters.

There are problems. How does the US address them? How about a policy. How about recognizing the internal problems compounding in the US and the dire problem facing the world if the place heats up a few more degrees? Denial is not a policy; denial is a refuge.

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1 hour ago, workswithseed said:

That was some funny ass shit. "I know I'm a hack, but that's still better than you, Sanders!" 

I think it's funny how GOPs closely follow Dem politics to point up the evils they do. They do some evils sometime, to be sure. But you never hear the same GOP talk about the evils of their own party. That's not really their identity. Their identity is not being ebil Dems. 

Hullabaloo caneck caneck.

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2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those.

more like re-establish.

it's interesting, Biden's proposals have wide spread report with the electorate, but the slightest of support in the Legislative Branch. It's almost like the Legislative Branch does not reflect the electorate. how the hell did that happened?

(i think we know.. it's the current mechanisms we have been living under)

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11 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

I think it's funny how GOPs closely follow Dem politics to point up the evils they do. They do some evils sometime, to be sure. But you never hear the same GOP talk about the evils of their own party. That's not really their identity. Their identity is not being ebil Dems. 

Hullabaloo caneck caneck.

I don't know what this has to do about evil dems, but okay.

I also didn't know you were aggy.

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2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those.

Hot take alert.

Would read again. 

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2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

THE Problem the democrats have  they want to  fundamentally  alter the political process, and mechanisms that we've lived under.  They want  more govt , and more govt largess, and have no understanding of the costs associated with either of those.

You probably think that the deficit matters and that the government actually spends the money it collects in taxes.

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1 hour ago, Nivek said:

Says the GOP supporter.  

Nothing the Democrats want to do "fundamentally alters the political process."  It's just progressive ideas that have always, always been part and parcel of the political process in this country.

As you point out, it's the current species of Republican that wants to disenfranchise vast swaths of the population and perpetuate minority rule.  They could hide behind the old political shibboleth that the majority doesn't know what's good for them, but actually, the converse is true.

 

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3 hours ago, formermav43 said:

 

”Look at Florida. You now have Democrats saying Florida is a lost cause. Really? In 2018 in Florida, giving felons the right to vote got 64 percent. In 2020, a $15 minimum wage, which we have no chance of passing [federally], got 67 percent. Has anyone in the Democratic Party said maybe there’s nothing wrong with the state of Florida? Maybe the problem is the kind of campaigns we’re running? 

If you gave me an environment in which the majority of voters wanted to expand the franchise to felons and raise the minimum wage, I should be able to win that. It’s certainly not a political environment I’m destined to lose in. But in Miami-Dade, all they talked about was defunding the police and Kamala Harris being the most liberal senator in the US Senate. And if you look all across the Rio Grande Valley, we lost all kinds of solidly blue voters. And the faculty lounge bullshit is a big part of it.”

What he is missing is "...if the 'woke" voters will still turnout for the moderate candidates."

But if they don't, the Dem doesn't win.  Same thing with labor.  If we can just ignore labor and they still vote for us, the job becomes easier.  If we ignore the pro-choice voters, and they still vote for the us, we win.  It applies to every fucking group. 

Moderate Dems are welcome to test the theory.  Go run in Florida on minimum wage and felon voting, but tell BLM to fuck off and see if you win. 

Building a coalition is hard, and has always been.  It was hard when Carville was still relevant.  What has changed is who those factions are and how you balance their concerns. 

 

 

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