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In reply to the discussion: The inevitable Hillary will lead to President Rand Paul. [View all]Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)But we'll start with your claim that Black Americans are the base of the Democratic party. Are they the only group who votes Democratic? Obviously not. Blacks are one group, one of the larger groups, but not the only one that with some consistency vote Democratic.
Here's the truth though my friend. Many people are getting frustrated. They are tired of the same old recycled nonsense year after year, and they are asking why doesn't someone do something. That is the attitude that many people have concerning the upcoming election and why the Republicans stand a 64% chance to take control of the Senate. Now, if I was a smart ass, I'd ask why the African Americans aren't planning on going out and supporting Democrats, but we both know that would be ignorant as hell. The truth is those few percentage points of moderates that swing back and forth hear the Rethugs saying things they agree with. They hear the arguments from the Rethugs that they are voting against the "job killing minimum wage hike". When the GAO came out and said yes, half a million jobs would be lost, everyone on the Left went insane, furious at this assessment. The Rethugs looked damned good to the less politically active than us people.
So we lost the minimum wage hike move, and we lost the argument because the Republicans were talking about saving jobs, while we were left using our these people are suffering on the minimum wage argument which went no where.
So what is Rand Paul doing? He's picking his topics with great care. He went to Berkeley and got a positive response from the liberals there on the issue of NSA surveillance. He wasn't hoping to get the Liberals in California to vote Republican. He couldn't convince that many people to vote Republican if he hit them in the head with a shovel just outside the voting booth. But what he did was even worse. He got the Liberals to agree with him on one subject, one topic.
So what you ask. He's right on one issue. Even a broken clock and all that, posted in this very thread. But when the Liberals discuss him to more moderate voters, they'll say, well he's right on this, and perhaps that, but he's awful. The more moderate voters will take a look, and decide that a lot of what he says makes sense. Not all, certainly they will not agree with everything, but enough that they wonder what will happen if we give him a chance.
In the same time, Hillary will be giving the usual excuses that we have to protect our children from drugs and we have to fight the war against Terror, and we have to keep drug users locked up in prison. I believe that given those two choice, and assuming that Rand is able to come up with some canned answers on a few more issues, he can, and in fact I believe he will win.
Because he doesn't need to convince the entire population of African American's, nor does he need to convince the population who is tired of the war, nor those tired and disgusted with the War on Drugs, nor those who are terrified or furious at the militarization of the police, nor those who are offended by the NSA, he doesn't even need the entire Occupy movement to back him. He just needs a few percentage points from each group. President Obama won with about five million votes. If Rand Paul can pick up three million of those votes, he's won. Three million people. That's less than one percent of the population of this nation. One hundred and seventy five million people voted in the last Presidential Election. So he'd need one out person out of every fifty voters to switch to him from the Democrats to win.
That's what I'm talking about. How giving ground on populist issues is going to hurt us. By turning our backs on the voters will see us losing. It's what's got us losing the Senate now. We don't have long to turn it around and save the Senate, soon momentum will be in the hands of the Rethugs, and we will be trying to catch up.