DL Open Thread: Thursday, November 4, 2021

Opinion: D’s Have To Confront Rethugs’ Relentlessly Racist Dog-Whistles.  It’s been the R strategy since Nixon, and it works when D’s ignore it:

Crucially, the Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, was able to use racially coded attacks to motivate sky-high white turnout without paying a penalty among minority voters. This appears to solve the problem bedeviling Republicans in the Trump era: how to generate high turnout for a candidate who keeps Donald Trump at arm’s length, as Mr. Youngkin did.

Before Tuesday night, conventional wisdom held that racially coded attacks could well spur higher white turnout but that those gains would be offset by losses among minority voters. Mr. Youngkin proved this assumption false.

This should terrify Democrats. With our democracy on the line, we have to forge an effective counterattack on race while rethinking the false choice between mobilizing base voters or persuading swing voters.

Oh, did I mention this having been the R strategy since Nixon?:

Nixon aide John Ehrlichman would later tell Harper’s Magazine:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

How Some Of America’s Wealthiest Avoided Paying Taxes: Including WV’s wealthiest citizen (and Governor) Jim Justice, CO’s Governor (and dotcom billionaire) Jared Polis, and Trump Secretary of Education (and AMWAY heir) Betsy DeVos.

Don’t look for any reforms from the corporatist Dems, of whom Polis is, and was, one.

Two Judges Poised To Unlock Trump’s Jan. 6 Secrets.  Looks like they will.

Arbery’s Killers To Face Virtually All-White Jury.  Injustice guaranteed.

Shane Darby Pushes For Police Reforms.  She’s destined for bigger things. Either in Dover–or in the Mayor’s office:

Darby also responded to criticism she said she’s received about her stance on the Wilmington Police Department.

“There is this narrative that certain city council people want to draw on me in regards to police reform about me being anti-police, about me hating police, or having some kind of hate towards them. I don’t hate them, I don’t hate individuals, I hate systems.

“The system was created to disenfranchise Black and Brown and poor communities. That is fact, that is truth, and I’m not going to move away from facts or truth. I have no problems with individuals who are police officers. I wish them the best. I serve in the National Guard, I’m in public safety, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to anyone, but what I’m not for is for systems to stay in play and not speak out about them, and say they are problematic and being scared of what people are going to say about me, or to me, because of what I say. It is facts how they have been terrorizing Black and Brown communities since their very existence, and they still do. It is embedded to who they are, their training, their practices, into everything that exists. “

We need systemic change.  We need elected officials to say so.  Shane Darby said so.

What do you want to talk about?