Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
It's not analysis, it's simply a perspective.
If the evangelical vote was the difference between him winning and losing, then yes, you could say that he won because of them. What makes it worthy of note is that it's a voting block he can't expect a lot of support from, which distinguishes them from the voters you would expect to vote for him. Likewise with Trump. Or you could simply treat each voting demographic as equal to all the others, none worthy of comment in how they choose to vote, but in practice we don't do that do we. One block of voters can swing an election one way or the other, and that's what might be happening here.
Here's something you can say that would not bother me: I'm surprised that Trump is getting as much support from evangelical voters as he is.
But you didn't say that. Instead, you suggested that Trump's potential nomination was "thanks mainly to religion." You were using this as an example of the negative effects of religion. But imagine this. Let's say that 95% of religious people voted for Cloned Abraham Lincoln and only 5% voted for Donald Trump, but yet Donald Trump won with a narrow enough margin that if that last 5% had voted for Cloned Abraham Lincoln, Trump would have lost.
This doesn't show a negative effect of religion. The solution here would clearly be
more religion, not less (that is, if more people were religious, there is less chance of Trump being elected in this hypothetical). These are exaggerated numbers, but something like this is probably true of the GOP race as well--that the more religious a person is the less likely they are to vote for Trump. Thus, if voting for Trump is bad, then more religion would be good.
But yet you used this as an example of the
negative effects of religion. Perhaps you should understand why people are having difficulty understanding what you are trying to say here--and think what you seemed to say is wrong.
Quote:
Oh come on OrP... You can agree that I find it ridiculous, since I do, but the rest of that post is silly.
The American constitution protects religious freedoms, it shouldn't make any difference at all to voters what the religious beliefs of candidates are because what matters is their suitability for the job of running the country and their religious beliefs are irrelevant to that, they could be Hindu or Muslim, or atheist, or whatever.
Okay.
I'll just point out that evangelical voters supported Romney in the 2012 general election even though he is not an evangelical Christian.
Quote:
I notice that you didn't comment on the fact that I find it ridiculous that there is such a thing as the 'black' vote, and the 'Hispanic' vote. Do people with the same colour skin all vote the same way too in the US such that it's worth giving that a demographic distinction? or is this just another manifestation of the racism that is rampant in American culture.
Huh? How am I supposed to comment on something you didn't say? And yes, the black vote is one of the most monolithic voting blocs in American politics. And, it has been a major topic of conversation on the Democratic side, with Bernie's inability to appeal to African-Americans being cited by many as the one of the main reasons he will likely lose.