2026 Midterm Elections Thread

[Loose]

Voting is one of the main ways racial resentment expresses itself politically. The two are deeply intertwined. You can't cleanly separate one from the other.

And your framing is ahistorical. You're collapsing several very different political eras into one and misrepresenting how power actually shifted. Republicans were already winning national elections well before the late 1970s, and the Democratic "dominance" of the mid-20th century depended heavily on a racially exclusionary Southern bloc.

The major realignment wasn't driven primarily by economic downturns but by civil rights and the restructuring of racial and regional politics. Economic stress mattered, but it didn't create the shift, it helped mobilize it.

The New Deal is a perfect example of this, because the coalition explicitly excluded Black Americans to maintain white Southern support.

FYI I don't Necessarily disagree with you I just think its not the primary reason why racist white people vote, their has to be a larger overarching reason to convince them to take time off to vote. If it was only primarily racism, david duke and other actual open white supremacist would have saw much more success at the ballot box.

 

[Pull Up the Roots]

We should absolutely pursue policies that materially improve people's lives, even if those policies have the side benefit of helping people with racist views.

What we can't do is ignore the role those motivations play or pretend that better economic conditions alone will meaningfully change racist voting behavior. History doesn’t support that idea.

Policy also can't be "neutral" just to avoid upsetting those voters. We have to examine how systems actually impact Black people and adjust accordingly. Otherwise, we're not changing anything, just maintaining the status quo under a different name.

 

[Voice of Reason]

We should absolutely pursue policies that materially improve people's lives, even if those policies have the side benefit of helping people with racist views.

What we can't do is ignore the role those motivations play or pretend that better economic conditions alone will meaningfully change racist voting behavior. History doesn’t support that idea.

Policy also can't be "neutral" just to avoid upsetting those voters. We have to examine how systems actually impact Black people and adjust accordingly. Otherwise, we're not changing anything, just maintaining the status quo under a different name.

i Actually agree that’s why I’m unabashedly FBA focused. I’m willing to throw others overboard to get FBADOS off of the bottom