I mean if you suffer racism regularly, you probably get pretty good at spotting it.

This. What I have the hardest time understanding is why lower and middle class voters of any sex or race or religion would think that the Republican leaders they selected actually have their backs or even know they exist. They don't really like you! Stop voting for them!

There are lots of awesome Republicans out there that just believe in different solutions than me, but that aren't Evil. May they take back their party. If we are going to be a 2 party system I would like to see the best and brightest leading both sides. Yes, I know I am an idealist. Not likely to change my stripes at this stage of life.

Burrell, in total agreement. The Republicans have the House, and they will obstruct. It appears in the Senate that we will get filibuster "reform" but not filibuster abolition. So Republicans will still be able to obstruct in the Senate. And given that the Senate includes a number of so-called "moderate" Democrats who love to vote with Republicans on key issues, even abolishing the filibuster would not end Republican obstruction in the Senate for the next two years.

BTW, as I suspected, thanks to gerrymandering, the Republicans took a majority of the House with a minority of the popular vote. [link] Proportional Representation would have made gerrymandering fairly pointless.

I agree with Burrell, there is no way this is the final chapter. Bill O'Reilly is already using this to scare people and I think things are going to escalate with the "culture war."

I think fear of losing the majority is a big reason we saw the Tea Party spring up (the legit people of the Tea Party not the astroturfing at that happened) and people in the majority are afraid when change comes.

BillO talked about the end of Traditional America - that's White Protestant. Others are tolerated but they need to know their place, and their place is to stay in the minority and not try to "take over" America.

You have people who exhibit racist behavior and don't consider what they do racist. Here's an article on a woman who called the President the n word and called for his assassination. [link]

The Secret Service investigated her and here are what I think are the key quotes from her:

“The assassination part is kind of harsh,” Helms said. “I’m not saying I’d go do that or anything like that, by any means, but if it was to happen I don’t think I’d care one bit.”

FOX40 asked her to clarify.

“Really? It wouldn’t bug you if someone assassinated the president?” FOX40 asked.

“Well, it’s not something I would dwell on. It’s not something I would be upset about,” Helms responded.

and

“I don’t understand what I did wrong. I didn’t say, ‘Hey, someone go do this,’” Helms told FOX40.

Helms also said that, despite using a racial slur, she doesn’t consider herself racist.

I have relatives who've said racist stuff to me but it was "subtle" racism. You know, they insulted Mexicans but didn't call them dirty wetbacks in the process so what they said isn't racist. Or say that black people don't have the ability to own and run businesses which is why Obama shouldn't be President, but that's not being racist that's just how things are and how God made people.

I could not love Rachel Maddow more. Just LOVE! [link]

Oh yeah, that's just great!

All,

I am very concerned about a section of the Voting Rights Act going in front of the Supreme Court. Can someone talk me down off the ledge?

C’mon, it’s not like they’re white men.

Yeah, but....I mean, the right-wing isn't trying to control men's bodies!! (I know you were joking, but I just can't sometimes.)

Anyway, I have a cranberry coffee cake in the oven and am coming down from my rage attack.

It's weird. I'm not a political debater, per se, but over the past year or so I've found myself more and more fascinated by the psychology of voting, and what people think of as threats to themselves, or promises--truth or lies--what's the job of the people you elected, and what's your job as a citizen.

I don't believe most people have terribly complicated reasons for how they cast votes. It's probably a selection of sound bites, or reactions to how the candidates have behaved in the past year or so, what it takes to preserve their fiefdom--and the scope of fiefdom ranges from anywhere between the individual and the world.

Suddenly (or, you know, gradually over the past year) I am getting more and more fascinated.

That Rachel Maddow piece is very much about the point of voting, something that *should* be a common goal, no matter which side you fall on.

(And for all this--so much of the world can't tell the two US parties apart anyway...)

Religion is also part of the story. Most white women, like most white men, are churchgoing Christians, a group that is strongly Republican—especially evangelicals, who voted for Romney by almost four to one.

Does this apply to non-white Christians? What about other religions?

This is pretty impressive too:

In 2004, more than a third of Hispanic women voted for Bush, and in 2008, thirty per cent of them voted for John McCain. This year, just twenty-three per cent of Hispanic women voted for Romney.

As is this:

Ninety-six per cent of black women voted for Obama; seventy-six per cent of Hispanic women voted for him; and so did sixty-six per cent of women of other races, including Asians. Since about one in six voters is now a non-white woman, those votes were enough to cancel out the reverse gender gap among white women

FOUR PERCENT OF BLACK WOMEN DIDN'T VOTE FOR OBAMA. That's gotta scare the shit out of some people. And I have to wonder--how many of them voted Democrat, as opposed to Obama? What can 2016 possibly offer to get stats like that out of any demo?

I'm not thinking black women are the key to the office, but clearly minority women can swing shit, and shit was swung.

I don't believe most people have terribly complicated reasons for how they cast votes.

Don't you think most voters know who they'll vote for long before election day, though? I was surprised by the campaigning that seemed to think it was going to sway you at the last minute.

FOUR PERCENT OF BLACK WOMEN DIDN'T VOTE FOR OBAMA.

I assume some combination of margin of error and...I don't know, Herman Cain and Alan Keyes' wives?