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Sunday, August 27, 2017

The Lexdate: #SolidarityAgainstWhiteSupremacy March & Ruminations about Electoral Demographics and Strategy


I had woken up, planning to have a more personally product day, even though I had gotten a fair amount done. Someone at church this morning announced that people were planning to go to the #SolidarityAgainstWhiteSupremacy march today (hashtag mine). Considering my angsty rage about politics and society and my resolution over the last few months to help people and get more involved, I felt that I should put my actions where my words went. Plus, as a white guy, I feel a responsibly to fight bigotry against so many ancestries, religions, sexual orientations, etc. etc. So I decided to go, and I ended up live tweeting it. Check it out below (please reading even further for my ruminations about electoral demographics and strategy behind it).













When I said that Chicago was bigger than both, I meant it had a bigger population than Boston and San Francisco. Chicago is the third most populated city in the US, damnit!
































PROJECT UPDATE AND POLITICAL THINKING: FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE ELECTORAL POLITICS WORK FOR MY SIDE, THE LIBERAL SIDE

After last night, I planned on writing something about how my project and contemporary life today in the US shit storm have become somewhat intertwined. They have both come to inform each other, learning things about today from early 19th century and making sense of early 19th century based on at least Electoral Politics.

I think I can best articulate it by saying that local and state politics matter A LOT and so does the population of every state, whether that population includes disenfranchised and suppressed voters like children, undocumented immigrants, felons, and populations that those in power stop from voting through administrative requirements. Even though they can't determine who holds an office, that officeholder state gains power from having those disenfranchised people in their jurisdictions.

That being said, the states have some level of unofficial competition going on. Provide a good place to live in and exist in, have politicians agreeing with each other from the local level to the county to the state to the federal politicians, and have them put through good laws and policies that put people first and give them a good experience, and that state will very likely have a happy place. The same goes for many states doing the same thing.

Nonetheless, the politicians in the country and states have shown that they can take away representation, destroy the quality of life, yet increase the population, keep them in a state of a horrible life, yet the politicians continue to gain power. Put marginalized people into states of poverty and suppress their votes by making it hard to meet adminstrative requirements because of the poverty. Take away abortion rights and family planning services, blame woman for being irresponsible and horrible for having sex while at the same time arguing about the importance of preserving life, and the population grows. While at the same time fight against immigration because more liberal and probably more prosperous areas of the country that can use the increased labor from immigrants, cutting down on the populations of those areas that want to increase qualities of life.

And the worse thing: while the states do have a certain amount of competition, it takes a lot to make people switch between states because you know what? Community is important. Family is important. A few people like to move and get away from all that, but most of the time, people tend to like where they are and don't want to leave. . .even though I've heard at least one phone call to the Politically Reactive podcast in which a young woman in the South said that she had enough hearing people in her family and community saying such horrible racist and hateful things that she planned on moving to the North to get away from it. So maybe things have gotten bad enough that following conservatives moving out of liberal states, we'll have liberal people moving out of conservative states.

I used to think that such a move would make for a horrible trend, but it might not. I thought having too many liberals focused in a concentrated geographic location would cause them to loose seats in the House and places on the Electoral College, so their votes would mean less. Based on that thinking, I thought liberals should move to rural areas to taint then change the seats and places toward more rural locations. Now I'm seeing, however, that with enough of a mass move before 2020, the balance of liberal representation could move toward the usual liberal strongholds. Thing is. . .it has to occur by 2020. If it doesn't, then it seems like liberals moving out to rural areas after 2020 would be more effective to spread out liberal political sentiments more throughout the country, which has its appeal, but I don't think individuals would very much like that sort of change and initiative. So I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

Posted by The_Lex at 9:50 PM

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