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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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She's being selected to represent the median voter in California, not you. Given the prominence of abortion issues these days, being the president of EMILY's list is a pretty great qualification for that! Also taking into account the issue pointed out here, she seems like a pretty great choice overall.

If there was a vacancy in Alabama instead, I could imagine myself making a similar rant about the possible literal creationist the Governor there might appoint---there's nothing more to it than not liking representatives from parts of the country with prevailing political views far from your own.

She's being selected to represent the median voter in California, not you.

No, she's being selected to represent the median Democratic voter, or even the median Democratic activist/fund raiser.

Despite California's reputation for being on the loony left, that characterization is more about the political class than it is about the increasingly Hispanic population. 57% of Californian's are pro-choice with 38% believing that abortion should be illegal.

Few will have views as extreme as an abortion activist.

You are are correct that in Alabama, a vacancy would likely be appointed by someone equally on the right, but let's not pretend this represents an average voter in any way.

If a governmor is going to making an appointment where people don't get to vote, one would hope for a more conciliatory choice, even if we would never expect it from Newsom. Using race and gender as the overriding factors feels icky to me as well.

Using race and gender as the overriding factors feels icky to me as well.

Shouldn't it feel icky? It's open racism and sexism, no different than the old days of "XXX need not apply" job postings. Not to mention it would literally be illegal for a private company to hire this way. What's weird to me is that Dem elites are so immersed in identity politics that this doesn't feel icky to any of them.

Doesn't really feel icky to me. The selection criteria for the appointment seems to be a reliable and unelectable Dem to keep the seat warm until the next election.

If you can do that and appoint a diverse candidate that will please part of your base, seems like a win-win.

Huh? The primary selection criterion, stated clearly and up front by Newsom, was "is a black woman". All other considerations, including the unobjectionable non-icky one you just changed the subject to, were secondary.

The primary selection criterion

Unless you think there is any chance he would have picked a Republican black woman, I think it's highly likely the primary selection criteria is "being a Democrat", whether being black or a woman ranks above being reliable or not being too powerful, or not having already announced they would run for the full seat is probably debatable, but it's not going to have outweighed political affiliation.

Do you think in a world where his choice was between a politically unreliable black woman who might run for election, or a non-descript white guy who wouldn't rock the boat, he would still choose the former? I don't.

The pool of "warm reliable bodies" is large enough where he can choose whatever arbitrary conditions he wants to score some political points.

So, I guess your argument is that it doesn't feel icky because you claim he's lying when he says he's doing the icky thing, and his hidden motivation is more practical (and, well, moral)? That's still beside the point - the fact that Dems are completely fine with announcing a racist appointment is the problem, not the 4D chess Newsom might be playing.

Also, I actually do think Newsom would have chosen somebody completely unsuitable, with the right characteristics, if he'd had to. We've seen a string of skin-colour-and-genital based appointments already from the Dems, from Karine Jean-Pierre to Ketanji Brown Jackson to Kamala Harris herself. I'm sure there are more, but I don't pay that much attention. It would be coincidental if all these people, selected from a favoured 6% of the population, really were the best choices. It really does seem like this is just what you have to do to play ball on the Democrat side.

I think I stated three objections, in bullet points, that are not mere policy disagreements. I expect California's governor to select a senator that wouldn't be to my liking, but I would have generally expected him to select one that lives in California, to have at least pretended that the Latinx community had a legitimate claim to the role, and to pick someone that had some career history other than attracting and dispensing patronage dollars. Likewise, I would expect Alabama to select someone far to my right and quite religious, but I wouldn't expect them to pick someone that lives in the Dakotas and inform everyone that isn't a white man that this is specifically a White Man seat.

The three objections you list seem to be about par for the course for senator badness. I could list five that are equally objectionable about one of the current senators from Alabama, but I'm not sure simply listing flaws of ideological opponents is a productive way to discuss anything. It's a bit too close to making isolated demands for rigor.

The point is that Butler's pros as pointed out by many other commentators outweigh the specific cons you listed for the sort of voters whose opinion matters to Newsom even though they may not do so for you. This is the exact sort of thing thing I would say to myself about Tuberville or Trump.

have at least pretended that the Latinx community had a legitimate claim to the role, an

The last time Newsom appointed a Senator, to a de facto permanent seat, no less, rather thana de facto 15 month gig, he appointed Alex Padilla, a Latino.

to have at least pretended that the Latinx community had a legitimate claim to the role

Latins are way below blacks on the oppression hierarchy, though, and most of the qualified Latinos are quite light skinned and prone to going off the reservation(remember, affirmative action hires aren’t Shaniqua either- these are PMC black women immersed in democratic patronage and have more in common with their white coworkers than with the hood granny from last weeks thread).

By the by, Latinos hate the use of the x suffix. If you're looking to speak on their behalf, you'd best start with not using a meme that is essentially an implicit attack on their language.

It is an attack, an awkward one at that, but fully deserved. Grammatical gender is a dumb feature and I will fight the whole of the world West of the Urals and South of the Himalayas on that point. At least English somehow managed to have some positive changes to it during the middle period even with the Normans doing their best to make things worse.

Even some of the progressives have picked up on this, and are moving to "Latine", which has the advantage of not sounding absolutely stupid.

Hopefully it's pronounced differently than "latrine".

which has the advantage of not sounding absolutely stupid.

Unless you speak Spanish, in which case it still sounds stupid.

I mean, come on, English already has ‘Latin’ and ‘Hispanic’ as a gender neutral term. Inventing much dumber ones is, well, dumb.

Latine would be the correct gender-neutral Spanish form, if Spanish-speaking culture cared about being gender neutral. So I don't think it sounds stupid in Spanish, just like a word only a politically correct person would use. In much the same way that "African-American" is a perfectly cromulent English word, but the group it refers to mostly prefer "Black".

Spanish doesn’t have a gender neutral form that wasn’t made up 30 seconds ago, and most -e words are masculine anyways(what would be the article, anyways? Le is already taken, it’s a masculine objective form).

It still sounds less stupid than any attempt at pronouncing "Latinx" in either language.

My framing above is intended to indicated how I would expect the governor of California to behave, which would include use of the term "Latinx".

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