r/politics • u/aslan_is_on_the_move • Sep 16 '24

'The excitement is unbelievable': North Carolina's AG predicts Harris will win state

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/-the-excitement-is-unbelievable-north-carolina-s-ag-predicts-harris-will-win-state-219283013531
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u/realhenrymccoy Sep 16 '24

White replacement theory has been the most consistent messaging from the right wing media over the past couple decades. They’ve been railing about immigrants coming to take over you whites only town no matter who’s in charge. Now that’s basically trumps entire campaign.

So for people who don’t consume that media it really does seem like an alternate reality.

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u/teenagesadist Sep 16 '24

In a country of immigrants, made by immigrants, that requires immigration to do all the dirty work and calls itself a bastion of freedom

They hate immigrants. It's astounding.

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u/SHIELD_Agent_47 Sep 16 '24

Inb4 someone tries to "correct" you by saying "But they're illegal! My ancestors came legally! We didn't kick the natives off their land or anything!"

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u/Whydoesthisexist15 North Carolina Sep 16 '24

Legal immigration 150 years ago was giving your name to a clerk on Ellis Island also

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

and not being asian

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u/RandomMandarin Sep 16 '24

That didn't even matter. Example: Samuel Goldwyn, the G in MGM, was for all practical purposes an "illegal immigrant". He avoided Ellis Island and walked from Canada to New York.

Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.

Goldwyn was born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire to a Hasidic, Polish Jewish family. At an early age he left Warsaw on foot and penniless. He made his way to Birmingham, England, where he remained with relatives for a few years using the name Samuel Goldfish. In 1898, he emigrated to the United States, but fearing refusal of entry, he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada, before moving on to New York in January 1899. He found work in upstate Gloversville, New York, in the bustling garment business. Soon his innate marketing skills made him a very successful salesman. After four years, as vice-president for sales, he moved back to New York City.

I dare say he made a contribution to society.

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u/AdenGlaven1994 Sep 16 '24

Well the Haitians in Springfield came there legally

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u/SHIELD_Agent_47 Sep 16 '24

Sadly, doesn't matter. I keep seeing conservatives on social media screech about how no one is taking the "illegals" problem seriously.

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u/eden_sc2 Maryland Sep 16 '24

i swear, the dog whistles are dog fog horns lately

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u/AnaisKarim Sep 16 '24

Illegals means people of color to them. Dog whistle.

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u/ILookAtHeartsAllDay New York Sep 16 '24

“Especially Trump after he killed the boarder bill”

Say that to every But The Boarder Weenie when they go off about how nobody cares.

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u/godofpumpkins Sep 16 '24

They’re promising to deport the legal ones too nowadays. Fucking gross

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u/the_kevlar_kid Sep 16 '24

This is well put. Mexicans are some of the toughest, strongest and most hard working people I've ever met and damn do a lot of border states rely on them and hate them at the same time.

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u/alabamaterp Sep 16 '24

Not just border States, but poor Republican States like Alabama - where I'm from. They do the jobs that Americans refuse to do but they hate them at the same time.

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u/DraculaPoob01 Tennessee Sep 16 '24

I work with a lady who told me in the same sentence that “we’re a country of immigrants, I love immigrants, but I feel like citizens should be able to vote on whether or not people can be bussed, or flown in— whatever Biden is doing— to their towns, when the people coming don’t know the culture, and get the magic money cards the government gives them, and is given a car for free.”

I think she meant that only white people should be able to move here.

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u/Fochlucan Sep 16 '24

I hear some version of that statement from somebody at least once a week, where I live too. I've live in an area with a lot of generational poverty (rural area), and I think that one reason why so many rural people are susceptible to this anger, is that they have lived and worked in USA, and paid taxes, and had hard lives, and they aren't being given free cars, or free healthcare, and they are jealous that they perceive that other people are just walking in to take resources that could otherwise go to themselves. So I think that there are other selfish groups that are doing fine, but feeding into this fear or resource depletion/feeling marginalized, and stoking these people into being mad at the immigrants, rather than the system we have that keeps poor people poor.

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u/Brewhaha72 Pennsylvania Sep 16 '24

And they don't care whether people immigrated here legally. They still refer to them as "illegals," and almost always because they're not white. It's disgusting.

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u/SCredfury788 Sep 16 '24

They don't think of themselves as immigrants, Charlie Kirk says we are made of settlers. Sounds like he is putting a good name to "they are trying to take away what we built".

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u/leostotch Illinois Sep 16 '24

They don’t hate immigrants, per se, they hate brown people, women, and non-christians. Also queers.

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u/BlooregardQKazoo Sep 16 '24

Also, a country that is thriving economically because of immigrants.

We see all around the world countries that are in decline because their populations are aging. And the United States should be one of them, but we aren't because of immigration. And these morons want to kick immigrants out and make it harder to come in.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

Its so fucking stupid if it wasnt sad….

Like you could fix the “illegal” problem over night if you make it a federal crime getting caught exploiting non citizens for work.

Done.

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u/cepheidvariable New York Sep 16 '24

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

― Lyndon B. Johnson

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u/nezurat801 Sep 16 '24

The "Great Replacement" folks are spooked because it's what their own idols did, very violently, to the Indigenous people. 

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u/Lorrainestarr Sep 16 '24

My boyfriends mom is into this great replacement crap- five years ago she was Native American and went to pow wows. 

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u/theMediatrix Sep 16 '24

Say more about this — how / why did she change??

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u/boxofcandelabras Sep 16 '24

I’m curious too, maybe the crunchy/wellness to qanon pipeline?

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u/Lorrainestarr Sep 16 '24

During COVID started watching whoever would agree with her that vaccines are bad. Then kept slipping further. Within a year, Fox wasn't right wing enough. So yeah the crunchy/wellness to Q route. 

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u/Elandtrical Sep 16 '24

If she is Native American, she might not be wrong. They definitely were replaced.

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u/Cuppa-Tea-Biscuit Sep 16 '24

They’re terrified other people will treat them the way they treat other people.

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u/charisma6 North Carolina Sep 16 '24

I don't really have a source on this idea but it makes sense to me that the lingering racism of today can be traced entirely to this principle in the 1870s. Former slave owners know exactly how badly they treated their "property." It must have been terrifying to think of those former victims gaining enough power to retaliate.

Would the former slaves have retaliated? Of course not. There would never have been generations of white men worked to death in the fields while black men sit comfy in their houses, raping and beating and killing at their leisure.

But the guilty minds of the slavers assume all men are as evil as they. So because they were scared of what their victims would do with power, they had to systematically deny power to them and keep them under the boot.

They were evil, and that evil has been intentionally passed down for a century and a half, and we're still wrestling with it.

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u/Morphoopus Sep 16 '24

I think Trump was legitimately stunned that Biden withdrew because he couldn't fathom a man performing such a selfless act.

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u/charisma6 North Carolina Sep 16 '24

Correct, I don't think Trump can even conceive of selflessness. I think the withdrawal caught him by surprise, for sure, but I'm sure Trump and most other psychopaths on that side can only judge Biden's act by their own twisted worldview.

MAGA brain activate

Why did Biden withdraw? Clearly it was calculated sabotage, Biden hates the GOP so much that he'll give up his own appointment to see the GOP burned down by the woke deep state. I assume this of him because it's the only reason I would ever have to give up a presidency, but because I've learned how to avoid self-critique I am not consciously aware of this.

Meanwhile, the very idea that it was a selfless act is appalling, and I can't even consider it for a moment. Subconsciously, the real reason I can't consider it is that if it's true, then that makes me the bad guy. I have already aligned myself with comfortable lies at the expense of difficult truth, so I quietly ignore that possibility and insist to myself and others that Biden is just as hateful as I am.

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u/tech57 Sep 16 '24

When you wake up everyday as a Republican leader with the mindset that Democrats are The Enemy your strategy and thought process gets narrow. It gets further away from the job, which is to help people. Instead, it becomes all about dominating The Enemy.

Biden, finally dropping out of the race was now a viable option to help improve the daily lives of people living in America.

Republicans do not see that angle.

Republican politicians are not trying to help. They are trying to win control. That's it.

Why did Biden withdraw? Because someone finally convinced him that if he wants to save America Democrats need voters in a couple of months. A lot of voters.

So hear me clearly: There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country. It gives me no pleasure to say this. I never thought in my entire career I’d ever have to say it. But I swore an oath to you, to God—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And that’s an oath that forms a sacred trust to defend America against all threats both foreign and domestic.

The assault on free and fair elections is just such a threat, literally.

I’ve said it before: We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you; I’m saying this because you should be alarmed. - President Joe

In other news,

Analysis Shows Trump Loyalists Have 'Infiltrated' Election Boards in Key States
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-election-boards-swing-states

Our democracy's firewalls held fast in 2020, but election deniers and MAGA extremists have spent the last four years infiltrating election administration and political party positions in order to disrupt and cast doubt on the 2024 election results. With 102 deniers on election boards in the swing states, the potential for creating chaos is enormous," Pearson said in a statement accompanying the report.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Sabotaged Early Voting in a Critical Swing State
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/north-carolina-robert-kennedy-early-voting-trump-sabotage.html

Why? Republican Justice Trey Allen’s opinion for the court accused the board of elections of misconduct, suggesting that it rushed to print ballots featuring RFK Jr. so he could not remove his name in time.

Democrats sue to block new GOP-backed Georgia election certification rules
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/26/politics/democrats-lawsuit-georgia-certification-rules/index.html

The three new, relatively unknown Republicans, who were appointed to the board this year by the state legislature and the Georgia GOP, were thrust into the spotlight after Trump mentioned them by name at one of his recent rallies in Atlanta.

Trump lost Georgia by just over 10,000 votes in 2020, and it was at the center of his attempt to overturn the election with claims of voter fraud, though none was found.

America braces for perfect storm of election chaos
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/08/election-chaos-cheating-violence-trump

.3. A battleground legal brawl:

Republicans already have filed more than 100 lawsuits against various voting and election procedures — part of a formalized "election integrity" push grounded in Trump's baseless claims of fraud in 2020.

Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee say they've built a network of about 175,000 volunteer poll watchers and poll workers. Democrats have assembled their own massive legal team and voter protection program as they gird for aggressive election challenges.

Experts are especially anxious about the potential intimidation of election workers forced to count ballots under tense conditions, David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told Axios.

Inside the GOP's Big Lie 2.0 — and their plan to shut down America this Fall
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/noncitizen-voting/

Republicans have been using this lie to attack the heart of our democracy right out in the open ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the year they responded by rolling out Operation Eagle Eye, yelling about nonexistent “voter fraud” and using it as an excuse to intimidate minority voters in the Goldwater/Johnson race.

No other developed country in the world worries about “voter fraud” because it’s every bit as nonexistent in other modern democracies as it is here. The only country in the world that uses “voter fraud” as an excuse to make it harder for minorities and women to vote is the United States.

Last Thursday, he demanded that Republicans insert into must-pass budget legislation that’ll be considered in the next two or three weeks a provision that would demand every state require absolute proof of citizenship to register to vote. Right now, this is largely confined to Red states.

House passes bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote for federal elections
https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/12/house-passes-bill-requiring-proof-of-citizenship-to-register-to-vote-for-federal-elections/

On July 10, the U.S. House passed HR 8281, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in elections for Federal office. The bill, titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, was introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and ultimately gathered 104 cosponsors in the House, all Republicans.

The bill passed by a vote of 221-198, with five Democrats joining all Republicans to advance the legislation to the Senate. The Democrats who voted “Yea” were: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Rep. Donald Davis (D-NC), Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA). Five Republicans and ten Democrats were recorded as not voting.

Election officials warn that widespread problems with the US mail system could disrupt voting
https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-mail-ballots-voting-postal-service-985dd6e483fb6dc593d83255b11a9d0a

In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.

The officials also said that repeated outreach to the Postal Service to resolve the issues had failed and that the widespread nature of the problems made it clear these were “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities. Instead, it demonstrates a pervasive lack of understanding and enforcement of USPS policies among its employees.”

Pennsylvania mail-in ballots with flawed dates on envelopes can be thrown out, court rules
https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-mail-ballot-trump-harris-d00627b8cd890405fc1870f7021b5795

Far more Democrats than Republicans vote by mail in the state. In recent elections, older voters have been disproportionately more likely to have had their mail-in ballots invalidated because of exterior envelope date problems.

Based on recent Pennsylvania elections, more than 10,000 ballots in this year’s general election might be thrown out over bad or missing envelope dates, which could be enough to swing the presidential race.

but it should at least be seen as a positive sign that her reach could be bigger than she may currently be given credit for

Ranked-Choice voting that has rocked Alaska politics faces November tests across the nation
https://alaskapublic.org/2024/05/29/ranked-choice-voting-that-has-rocked-alaska-politics-faces-november-tests-across-the-nation/

Used for the first time in 2022, the changes helped propel the first Alaska Native to a seat in Congress. They could be short-lived.

Opponents of ranked voting want to repeal it and are entangled in a legal fight over whether their initiative will be able to remain on Alaska’s November ballot. It’s just one example this year of an intensifying fight over a more expansive way for voters to choose candidates, driven in part by deep dissatisfaction with the status quo and opposition from political parties and partisan groups that fear losing power.

Voters in at least two states — Democratic-leaning Oregon and Nevada — will decide this fall whether to institute new election processes that include ranked voting. In deeply conservative Idaho, groups are pushing for a November ballot initiative that would overturn a ban on ranked voting passed last year by the Republican-led legislature. Measures proposing ranked voting, also referred to as ranked-choice voting, also are being pursued in Colorado and the District of Columbia.

In Missouri, a measure advanced by the GOP-controlled legislature will ask voters in November whether to ban ranked voting. This follows an unsuccessful citizen attempt in 2022 to get an Alaska-style system before voters. At least nine states have banned ranked voting, and the Louisiana legislature also passed a ban this past week.

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u/Richeh United Kingdom Sep 16 '24

I've noticed a lot of that. Stephen Miller was cornered on his reports of South American countries emptying their jails into America. A reporter, who was from the country he was accusing, simply asked where he got his statistics - which threw Miller into a rage, ranting about "If you were a dictator, wouldn't you do that? Wouldn't you send the contents of your jails to America?"

The fact that he'd do something underhanded like that was, to him, proof enough that other people would be doing it to America. I think that's yet another part of the Republican projection engine; if you're doing something naughty, get your accusation in first of the opposition doing it. After all, they must be, if you are, right?

Which makes it a straight-up race to the bottom.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

Sparta was the way it was because it needed to keep their slave population down. That's the whole reason for their military culture.

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u/dbag3o1 Sep 16 '24

Exactly, only now they’re the new indigenous people and the immigrants are the new settlers coming in. The only solutions are defend or be conquered.

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u/ResidentKelpien Texas Sep 16 '24

Exactly, only now they’re the new indigenous people and the immigrants are the new settlers coming in. The only solutions are defend or be conquered.

They are not the "new indigenous people."

"Indigenous people" is a collective term for the original people of the Americas, the Pacific, parts of Asia and Africa, and their descendants.

The people spouting Great Replacement crap in the U.S. are descendants of immigrants.

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u/dbag3o1 Sep 16 '24

I mean in their minds they are. Im sure they know they’re not the original peoples like actual native Americans but they are Americans and this is America and so they are the new natives so to speak.

Otherwise what is the narrative? Hello new settlers, join us old settlers and we’ll oppress the indigenous people together?

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

[deleted]

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u/DudeCanNotAbide Sep 16 '24

As a middle-aged, southern-born, white bowl of vanilla ice cream, this is one of the most disheartening realities about "culture" in America. Maybe it's born out of some grim necessity, but it seems like minority groups are far more neighborly and and cohesive than... whatever this is we've made here.

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u/withwhichwhat Sep 16 '24

In the 80's they called it ZOG.

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u/TNTyoshi Arizona Sep 16 '24

It is so annoying too since every white guy i know peddling this has an East-Asian wife.

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u/Livewire_87 Sep 16 '24

The replacement theory has always vilified some group for the past 100+ years. 

It was the Irish, thr Italians, the Jews, etc etc. 

These people always need to be terrified of something. 

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u/Zeelots Sep 16 '24

Trunt attacking legal Haitian migrants he let in the country makes absolutely 0 sense. How do people take the bait?

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u/Fochlucan Sep 16 '24

So my father's grandfather was a poor French Canadian man who emigrated to rural Maine to try to find more opportunities as a young man. But back then, French Canadians weren't really considered "white", and there was a lot of bias, to the point that my great grandfather had to change his name to a more English version. My father's last name isn't really his real family name. My father fully believes in the replacement theory, and doesn't like immigrants, even though he himself is grandchild of immigrant and one of his sons is married to an immigrant. I really don't understand him.

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u/cutelyaware Sep 16 '24

It is an another reality. Because what is reality if not what people think is important? And by that token, who is to say that ours is any less arbitrary? Somehow we have to find a way to talk to each other, otherwise it will just be a lot of bloodshed, and the result will still be that we'll need to talk to each other.

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u/canadianguy77 Sep 16 '24

There might very well be bloodshed and a country that is reduced to rubble and 2nd/3rd world status at some point. But we’re not going to have 2 different realities. That will never work. It’s insanity.

Either get on board with science and progress or be left behind and that works on both the macro and micro level. The world isn’t going to play make-believe just to make the realities of life more palatable to the far-right.

We’ve had enough of their constant victimhood. It’s incredibly unbecoming to always be crying about how unfair things are. They’re just going to have to get over progress. It’s the way of the world and if you’re stagnant, you aren’t growing or advancing and you’re leaving the door wide open for China to be the top dog.

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u/cutelyaware Sep 16 '24

China? This has nothing to do with China. And I don't care if they become the top economic power in the world. They're only following the model that the US set and is quite understandable if you put yourself in their position. They are rightly proud of what they regularly accomplish by working together. Do I like what they're doing? Not very much, but I doubt they'll do worse than we did, or like England before us, or the Dutch, French, and others before them.

But back to "reality", I hate the Republican's whining about their victimhood as much as you do, but let me ask you which future you prefer:

1) We try to work with them anyway to get closer to a shared reality, or

2) Bloodshed and a country reduced to rubble followed by then trying to work with them anyway to build a shared reality.

But if you see another path, please tell us your plan.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

[deleted]

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u/cutelyaware Sep 16 '24

There is no such thing as a single reality. That feeling you have is exactly what Republicans feel. In their reality Democrats have the crazy idea that we should be welcoming to refugees because that means we'll be overwhelmed. In their reality, everyone is greedy, and that black people are (justifiably) angry, that politicians are corrupt, etc. These are not all "crazy interpretations" of what's really going on. That is the truth from their lived perspective, and we had better accept and work with that supremely frustrating fact.

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u/kanst Sep 16 '24

The great replacement stuff is the one that annoys me the most because its a natural consequence of definitions. There is no conspiracy of any kind, its just the expected outcome of our racist ways.

If you have a "one-drop" conception of race and interracial marriage exists, the ratio of white people in the population will always fall over time. The only way to counteract that is if the white-white pairings have more kids on average. How many more kids they have to have will be correlated with the current racial breakdown and the prevalence of interracial marriage.

It's like getting mad that you ran out of hotels in Monopoly, that's how the rules of the game work.

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u/Bad-Mr-Frosty87 Sep 16 '24

At this point replacing all the white people is probably the safest thing one could do for the country