Discussion: Gillum On DeSantis: 'I Am Simply Saying The Racists Believe He Is A Racist'

I was chuckling myself as I wrote it. But honestly, there’s a learn-the-hard-way dynamic you can observe in life. There’s just maybe a new meritocracy taking shape in this country, where whiteness and maleness and all that aren’t as important to employers as ability to do the damn job. As discipline and effort, lifelong training, natural ability, all that. There are people terrified of that and I don’t blame them. They should be terrified. A high-school diploma and sense of white entitlement aren’t going to be enough any more.

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Your editing of the quote “Muslim [n-word]” implies that Gillum actually said that word, which he did not. He spelled it out. I know this is dicey language in print media, but I think an accurate quote would be a better here.

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If the premise of your argument is that Trump keeps his promises, yeah, you’re pretty desperate. :smile:

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HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA Tell that to his wives.

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“I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist"

Not literally, anyway.

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Nah all GOP is racist and unfortunately there are Dems that are as well.

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People are saying DeSantis is a racist. A lot of people.

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Video in tweet has Gillum explaining Hamilton ticket issue and he gets a big cheer when he says it isn’t one of the 99 problems.

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Not only was this one of the best debate lines I’ve heard, but DeSantis delivered the best sidekick facial expressions ever. #doofus

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Gillum was great last night, and his response was perfect.

An easy argument to make is that he has to win more votes than the other candidates. Another easy argument to make is that he does not have the experience to be President yet.

If you want to measure how much the Democratic Party values black voters, ask why they have not moved the first primaries out of two mostly-white, mostly rural, and mostly red states, Iowa and New Hampshire?

If the Democrats want to show that they really care about diversity, they should move the first primaries to states that are more diverse where candidates like Gillum would have a fairer chance.

No democracy, no justice.

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This re-framing of the racism issue has a lot of potential to change the discourse.

For years, GOP racist dog-whistles have worked because the criterion has been “are they being literally racist”. No, technically a dog-whistle isn’t racist, it is just code that racists understand. By changing the question to which candidate racists understand to be speaking their language, then a dog-whistle incriminates whoever uses it.

In other news, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia reshuffled his cabinet to ensure half the positions are held by women. There’s an idea ripe for the borrowing.

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Okay, no. They haven’t moved them for fear of pissing off those voters in those two states. That’s it. It’s not nearly as simple as you’d like to make it in your desperate attempts to trash the Democratic Party.

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This! You hit the nail on the head as to why his answer resonated so deeply. He flipped the script pretty dramatically. It’s something even the most boneheaded people can understand. Instead of just calling racist candidates “racist,” point out that all the other racists seem to think they’re racist too. It lands on one logical conclusion.

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Haha…indeed. He’s seriously impressed me so far, as has been Beto and a few others. Between the two of them, one a handsome black man and the other clearly blessed with echoes of Robert Kennedy in his looks, it would be the swoon ticket lol

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Nah. As a practical reality, Iowa and NH make better litmus tests for nationwide election viability than would a liberal stronghold.

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Yeah, well, two can play the dogwhistle game.

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Really? You think that Democrats not moving them is to avoid “pissing off those voters in those two states?”

You mean those mostly-white mostly rural voters?

Ok, then.

I am not sure why advocating for more diversity in the early primary states is a “desperate attempts to trash the Democratic Party,” but whatever.

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I was just discussing this with a friend. As much as I want a woman on the ticket, if Beto loses, Gillum/O’Rourke is a freaking dream(y) ticket. I mean, it’s just too damn delicious to pass up. I’m getting excited just thinking about it. The optics of it alone against Trump/Pence would be devastating.

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How do you know that? In reality, it hasn’t really worked out that way.

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