No Stupid Questions

• Young white men are included under “Young People and Students.”
• Old white men are included under “Seniors and Retirees.”
• Many white men have disabilities and are covered under “Americans with Disabilities.”
• Many white men are covered under “LGBTQ+” - trans men, gay and queer men. Heck, some even include allies under the umbrella.
• Many white men who are neither young nor old (or members of their family) are members of unions, or would like to be, and thus covered under “Union Members and Families.”
• Likewise, many white men are covered under:
  • Faith Community
  • Rural Americans
  • Small Business Community
  • Veterans and Military Families

Economically, Democratic policies favor poor and middle class people, which statistically makes up the majority of all white men. And there aren’t any policies that oppress white people or men the way that Republican policies oppress women or reduce support for all of the groups that Democratic policies help support.

In other words, unless you get off on the oppression of those groups, almost all white men are served by the Democratic party, even if they can’t find themselves on the list you shared.

“Black Lives Matter” was a response to black men and women being murdered by police at higher rates, of the news stories of those deaths being under-reported by comparison, and of the victims being blamed more than people of other races, particularly white people.

“All Lives Matter” as a response to “Black Lives Matter” missed the point. It’s “Black Lives Matter, too.” If all lives mattered, people wouldn’t have needed to protest the killings of black people in the first place.

Imagine if you were at a restaurant and everyone around you got their order but you, so you said “Hey, I need my order.” If the server responded with “Yes, everyone needs their order” and walked off, that would be about the equivalent to saying “All Lives Matter.”

So, is there a parallel between thinking that white men should be pandered to and saying “White Lives Matter?” Absolutely.

I'm just gonna be blunt and accept the downvotes here:

All this "the Democrats failed because [blank]" arguments are just blame shifting. We all saw what Trump was about, what he did while in office, and especially what he did after he lost that office the first time. We all know what kind of threat Trump represents to the future of this country.

The fact that (up to) 15 million Democratic voters stayed home and/or voted 3rd party is a failure on our part to take that threat seriously.

Americans are dumb.

Democrats could have done a better job, no doubt about that. But it isn't their fault Americans are dumb and too lazy to inform themselves responsibly. The data is all there. It's freely available. Americans chose to vote based on feelings and allow themselves to be captured by propaganda instead of looking at the facts and they made a horribly uninformed decision.

No change in the Democrat's strategy changes that Americans are just plain dumb.

"All Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" both advocated against new police accountability practices.

This is why I think Black Lives Matter should have just called itself the Police Accountability Movement, take the wind out of the racist sails, but everybody kept downvoting that suggestion.

Anti-incumbent voting is way up across the globe. People are pissed off about inflation (corporate greed) and they just knee-jerk "vote them out".

Please remember that most people don't pay attention to the details of economic policies or politics very much. They only get a general "vibe" from whatever bubbled media and bot content they consume. People have voted against their own interests for generations because of this phenomenon.

I'll never forget years ago when my father was listening to Rush Limbaugh and that asshole Rush said, "I understand my listeners are hard working people who are very busy and simply don't have the time to pay attention to these political things so that's why you can just get your information here, I will tell you what to think." Not an exact quote, but close enough. That type of thing has been going on for generations.

I think it’s less that young white men actively supported Trump because the Dems didn’t pander to them, and more that young, upper-middle class, suburban white men were altogether uninspired to vote because in either scenario, they wagered they’d be okay.

The lesson seems to be a very clear and unfortunate rebuke of women as presidential candidates, but very specifically black women, as Harris seems to have gotten even less support in this demographic than Clinton did. It’s shameful, but I believe that if Newsom had been the nominee and ran a near identical campaign, Israel and all, that he’d likely be president elect today.

The "All Lives Matter" retort wad nothing more than an attempt to dilute the issue of police brutality and wrongful killing of black people. That was it, nothing more.

Right wingers invent retorts to everything, even if it goes into extremism and silliness. Eating horse paste instead of getting a vaccine, drinking their own urine instead of getting medical care, destroying their own personal property as a protest against numerous companies for imaginary slights, nonsensical boycotts, and on and on.

The founder of the Proud Boys terrorist organization once shoved a butt plug up his own ass on video just to "own the libs."

I understand not being from here you aren't as familiar with these slogans and their context. Black Lives Matter as a movement is a movement against police violence that disproportionately impacts young men who are African Americans. Hispanic men and other minorities are also targeted by police, but to a lesser extent.

https://usafacts.org/articles/what-the-data-shows-about-police-use-of-force-by-race/

So the slogan Black Lives Matter is a specific condemnation of this situation. Black lives are disproportionately fucked up by police violence, they matter, ergo we need to do something about police violence.

All lives matter as a phrase, wasn't used as a slogan or anything until after Black Lives Matter. It exists almost entirely in the context of Black Lives Matter, and is used almost exclusively to advocate against reforming the police and lowering the use of force against Black Americans. Its sole purpose is to try and discredit the motives of people advocating for less police violence in Black communities, by implying that by singling out Black lives is not ethically correct. The police act as though Black lives don't matter, so by responding to that by saying All Lives Matter, all you are doing is trying to paper over the problem.

With those explanations out of the way, I think that Dems should not be saying All Lives Matter. It may work better among young white men, but you do so by ignoring a very real and dangerous aspect of the problem. If the Dems want to reach those young white men, I think the answer isn't to water down the existing slogans, but to add legs of the platform to address separate issues.

Show young men how police corruption fucks their lives too. I remember growing up hearing how much worse ticketing and traffic stops are for young men, so that could be a way to push back. Police will do violence to your black friends, and on top of that they issue tickets to men at almost twice the rate they do to women. If that isn't an in to get young men on board with police reform I don't know what could be.

Please don't take that as me saying women have it easier in traffic stops. Cops are horrible, and when cops are sexual predators they are just as dangerous as other predators but alsoalso have state authority to abuse. There have been stories of cops using police databases to stalk women and more, but that doesn't mean you can't bring up men's issues here too. Black lives matter, women need to be protected from cops abusing authority, and men shouldn't be unfairly burdened by traffic tickets. Dems need to learn to find those parts of the problems and speak to them because all three problems can be tackled together.

Yes. It's a very wrong perspective.

So let me break it down, and I'm not trying to be alienating or picking a side in the arguments of sex, gender, or color.

In the US, at least, it's very close enough to say that it's a half split on biologically born male and female.

Around 25% of those people identify to associate with the LGBTQIA+ group.

Around 32% of Americans are black

19% are Hispanic

7% are asian

And I'm adding this for effect: 58% are european

Now! If we look at the multiple demographic and ethnic ideas and peoples, then we see a different perspective, idea, and solutions.

I didn't even mention religious or political ideologies, which would make the breakdown even deeper.

My point is that "who we fight for" is not a thing that we can identify with our eyes anymore. We should fight for affection and life. The hardest part is seeing people oppose what looks like who we/what concern ourselves with. That should tell you that not everyone who looks like the person who opposes you might not be your enemy. We have seen what happens when fear and hate control our emotions. Yet very few people want to do anything about it

Well.......yes and no.

Yes there was a point, but that wasn't the correct time to complain about that problem. It's silly to me to try to compare police violence against white lives vs black lives. There is a biased based on facts. Black Lives Matter highlighted this difference, but people argued 'against' the message with a bad faith argument of 'All Lives Matter'. The whole point was black lives are being killed more often than they should be, so black lives matter, also. Not that the are the only lives that matter. To paraphrase Michael Che, if you see someone with a 9/11 never forget shirt just say "excuse me, but all buildings matter."

Dem outreach to whites or white youth is a different topic from police reform. It should be anyway.

Anyone concerned with whether the democrats "who we serve" page mentioned men specifically was unlikely to vote for a woman of color anyway.

You might be on to something in the sense that coming back with a more inclusive response is a better approach. I don't think that makes them "right" though.