re: Republican identity optics.

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How do you figure that? Just for the House, Dims ran 231 women, Repubs ran 78.

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that may have been in Texas, or for all statewide offices.

if i was wrong, my mistake.

regardless, it's not like republicans aren't voting for or enabling minorities. it's just the minorities they enable and put forth are not promoted by the media. John James has 10x the qualifications that Beto had when he first ran for office and you would have never heard his name if not for this board. One of them got their own 60 minutes spot, spot on Ellen and Colbert, and had celebrities endorse the country over. One of them got a few tweets from the president.

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What if..... we ran candidates based on their competence and ability, and not on their skin color?

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Well that is against the rules now. We need to judge people on their skin color and sexual identity etc today. It's a diff day, sad day for sure. What would MLK say about this?

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we need BLIND votes.

Candidate A - supports this, policy that
Candidate B - supports this, policy that.

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I agree. Today, Voters only need to be knowledgeable about how to press a button without actually knowing anything about the candidate.

I see (Sort Of) what you’re saying.

I think the solution (at least in the South) is to phase out racial gerrymandering. Rs need to start aggressively running candidates in racially gerrymandered districts. I don’t care if these candidates are white, black or purple- but why are Rs conceding these minority districts to Democrats??? The only way to spread the message is to actually RUN CANDIDATES AND BACK THEM WITH FULL RESOURCES.

For example, Cedric Richmond is in a carved out black District in Louisiana. Not a SINGLE Republican ran against him. Do you mean to tell me there is not one conservative black person in Louisiana that the R Party couldn’t get behind?

Racial gerrymandering has led to the polarization of the South on racial issues, and I think it’s tragic and worked to the disadvantage of ALL Southerners - white, black and otherwise. We have no reason to talk to each other.

What good has Sheila Jackson Lee done for anyone in her District for example, or for Texas as a whole?? To me she’s just as divisive and nuts as kooky right wing types the Rs get saddled with. Nobody talks about how bad Sheila Jackson Lee sucks in part bc the media is full of leftists that are biased, but also because NOBODY EVER CHALLENGES HER DURING ELECTIONS.

If we could as a country could focus on fighting about good economic policy by taking the fight to idiots like Lee then the need for minority reserved districts goes away.

It is important to me as a white Southerner that Black Americans are represented in government. Maybe it’s white guilt. But My God look at the tragic history of black people when they were marginalized. We had to Do some major shite to fix the fact that Nobody was around to say - Stop screwing black people over for 300 years. Now that those changes have been made, we need to move to the next step which is actually spreading a message of economic hope to minority and poor communities. It is the ONLY thing that will remind us we are all in this economy together.

If the Rs are smart they start targeting the Shelia Jackson Lees and that idiot woman in Florida with the Cowboy Hat of this world in their own Districts. This may work better if the candidates they chose are young, smart and non-white because the electorate will find them more relatable - but to me- Its not mandatory. R candidates will not win em all. But they will be able to spread some kind of message. Either way - the candidates will ultimately successful by (1) pointing out how bad these idiots are screwing over minority communities (bc they are); and (2) most
Importantly suggesting an alternative, affirmative policy path. A sort of reverse Beto Effect.

The end goal should be to eliminate identity politics, in favor of issue and geography based politics. Identity politics are toxic.