The most well written and fully fleshed out article on the Franken mess.

[GaryCnf]

94. When I read your post

and the other reply just before it, I realized that I have to work on talking about what I believe instead of springing into a defensive (and reactionary) posture.

My original post came dangerously close to saying that Democratic women voters don't count, which is not just offensive, it's stupid.

What I was trying to get across was that there are a set of issues which motivate almost all of us in the black community. What's more, they are a set of issues which are uniquely "black." This is not to say SOME white Democratic voters don't share our view on those issues, they do. It's only to say that those issues dominate us as a political community because they are literally matters of survival. When we don't hear Democratic politicians talking about them, we don't think "Well, they care about preserving the ACA" or "They are standing up against a sexual predator like Trump" and "We know they're better than the Republican" and get fired up about going through the extra hassles many of us have to go through in order to vote. When we hear (and I've even heard it here) "It's a binary election, your pet issues aren't as important as winning, do your duty" we go "whatever" and stay home.

What I really meant to say about the women vote is that there is no similar set of issues which unifies women. We will never get 90%+ of the women's vote. On the other hand, and I think this is what I did not get across, there is undoubtedly a segment of women (a segment significantly larger than the segment of white people as a whole who are just decent people upon who we can count in every election) who do vote 90%+ Democratic and that segment needs to be identified and spoken to JUST LIKE we should be speaking to black Democratic voters in every election. (Aside, I am near ecstatic over the way the Jones campaign changed course at the last minute and reached out to black voters in a way that we did not see in 2016, 2004, 2000, 1996 and 1992. I went to Montgomery to help with interest for Jones in the black community a little over a month ago and then the start of last week and the change was amazing. What happened yesterday in terms of turnout brought tears to an old man's eyes.)


I thank you for your response.