General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The untold truth behind the GOP election meltdown [View all]dogknob
(2,431 posts)Excellent. Thank you.
I am a (nearly) 43-year-old white male living in a district of California (Issa) where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2-1. Being car-free, nearly all of my campaigning in this election cycle occurred online. I did it relentlessly, mostly outside the comfort zone of DU. I hit Facebook almost daily. I wrote politically-slanted fan-fiction on a gaming site. I posted original music containing not-so-sneaky themes of power-abuse and suburban angst on Soundcloud. I basically dropped everything I could have been doing to help myself so I could wade into a chilly pool of apathy and goose everyone I could find.
Down-ticket was a huge priority for me when it became clear that Romney would be the nominee; that guy was bound to trip over his dick from the get-go, but inevitably most of the discussion ended up being about President Obama -- and it was always just a matter of waiting for someone arguing to get to what I knew was eventually coming:
Playing the "playing the race card" card.
Many people don't even realize how racist the phrase "playing the race card" is. Almost everyone picked it up from the OJ trial and it has served as a handy conversation-ender ever since. Folks who drop this line are almost always in denial; the MSM told them that the election of President Obama was "the end" of racism in America. Lots of white people are tolerant as heck until some brown people move in down the street, then they start worrying about their property value.
The trick is to hammer away at that myth while keeping one's cool and not hipping people to the fact that you are schooling them about their own lurking racism. Do not insult. Do not rant. Show don't tell. People have been conditioned to hate learning and resent those they identify as teachers. That's pretty damn sad, but I played along and changed the subtitle under my name to read "self-appointed know-it-all political asshole."
By the week of the election I had lost count of the number of Facebook posts that started with something like "I never get political on FB, but..." with "Thanks for posting this. Stuff like this is why I didn't block you from my news feed 6 months ago" running a close second.
I could go on forever about how we DUers need to cultivate an outreach strategy if we want to hold onto what we gained on Tuesday, but someone with 50,000 posts should probably tackle that. My stuff tends to drop like a rock around here.