Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
You mean an assumption about how a fairly small percentage of black, normally Democratic voters think?
The OP was about the tightrope Democratic strategists would be walking on if a respectable, black, fairly mainstream US Senator would be the Republican nominee against a white guy (especially if the Dem vp candidate was also white). It was essentially a post about tightropes, not politics. But we have no tightrope forum.
You chose a bad example of a tightrope.
One problem is that there is no overlap between "respectable" and "fairly mainstream" when it comes to Republicans these days. When Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney are being ostracized for being too far to the left (or, really, too anti-Trump), you're running out of space. There's no such thing as a reasonable Trump supporter.
Black voters typically vote in their own best interest and doing so is why they flocked to an old white guy (who had a famous black friend) in the Democratic primaries. Running a black Republican is unlikely to fool black voters, based on past history. The number of black voters who will switch to Scott because he is black and somewhere to the left of Marjorie Taylor Greene is probably very small, small enough that if the Democrats had to appeal to some other group to enlarge their coalition and counteract the shift, then there are more fruitful and more fulfilling avenues than appealing to white racists. If anything, appealing to hardcore racists will probably drive more blacks out of the Democratic Party or motivate them to sit out the election.
Now, if you wanted to talk about the tightrope Liz Cheney has tried to walk in trying to appear reasonable while not supporting Trump, how she has apparently failed to walk that successful, leading to what appears to be her impending ouster as chair of the House Republican Conference. You could talk about how Elise Stefanik, her likely replacement, has walked the tightrope of having a voting record to the left of Cheney while being more supportive of Trump.
That you want to talk about Tim Scott making Democrats need to appeal to hardcore racists makes it seem like what you really want to do is talk about hardcore racists and coming up with a scenario where Democrats have to appeal to them. You'd have a better shot talking about how Democrats will have to come up with a group to appeal to if they nominate Kamala Harris or AOC in a post-Biden world and lose the misogynists. You'd at least get some Warren-hating Bernie Bros as allies in that debate.