Election 2016 and race: this is certainly not common knowledge
Much of what people think they know about the 2016 election and race is wrong:
Trump actually won a smaller share of the white vote than Mitt Romney. He was nonetheless able to win because he won more Hispanics and Asians than his predecessors, and more black votes than any Republican since 2004.
…In other words, the problem wasn’t that Donald had extraordinary support among whites (he didn’t) ”“ but instead that Clinton was significantly less popular than Obama among minority groups.
In fact, contrary to predominant narratives about the election, Obama significantly outperformed Clinton with whites as well. Hillary got the lowest share of white voters of any Democrat since 1984. But again, most of these votes did not go to Trump (who did worse than Romney among whites, and about the same as George W. Bush in 2004). Instead, as with Democrats’ lost female votes, many whites (especially young people) opted to vote for third-parties instead.
Clinton was a really, really poor candidate.
As for the prospects in 2020, it’s a long way away. But there’s this, which could become very significant:
Anyone who thinks Trump’s decision to pardon boxer Jack Johnson and commute Alice Johnson’s unfair sentence wasn’t part of a greater plan is delusional.
Donald Trump is wooing black voters…
While the Democratic Party is sleeping, focused on winning November’s midterms rather than uniting behind a single 2020 candidate to challenge Trump, the president is wooing black voters with the help of Kim Kardashian, who’s married to the Mad Rapper and has 60 million Twitter followers, many of whom are black…
If they’re not careful, the Democrats will look up and realize that the black base they’ve taken for granted for decades, might not be as enthusiastic as in the past.
The author is most definitely not a Trump supporter, so she is writing the column as a warning to Democrats. But I doubt she’s aware that some of the defection of black voters had already occurred in 2016.
In April, when Kanye West drew attention for his Trump-friendly words, I wrote a post on the subject. Here’s a quote:
This sort of thing and the possibilities it suggests must be staggeringly frightening to the left. If they ever lost the black bloc of voters, or even a significant portion of that monolithic group, the left would have a great deal of trouble winning elections. That is their fear, and it is a valid one.
The fear seems to be rising.
I has long been difficult for me to understand why the Democrats so regularly capture large numbers of votes from two groups: African Americans and Jews. Neither of them has been well served by the Democratic party, yet they regularly line up and support the D ticket.
If Trump can shake this support up a little he will change American electoral politics for years into the future.
Time to break out the World’s Smallest Violin. Oh, and start emptying LBS’s plantation.
F,
It’s an example of abused spouse syndrome. It doesn’t matter how the democrats treat the backs, the blacks vote democrat because the democrats love them.
F: it’s been puzzling to many of us.
Please note that President Trump has been reaching out to both groups, with impressive results. (Moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, WITHOUT the expected massive uprisings throughout the Arab world, got a lot of attention, and deservedly so.)
President Trump got a lot of votes from both African Americans and from Jews in 2016. He seems intent to build on that. He didn’t get my vote in 2016, but at this rate, he’ll get it in 2020.
I think most American Jews have a self-understanding which renders them inaccessible to the Republican Party. Tom Wolfe delineated his understanding of this mentality in Bonfire of the Vanities in the inner dialogue of Lawrence Kramer. It’s bad taste to vote Republican. Where you see a Jewish Republican constituency, it’s among Orthodox who are quite (communally) inner-directed, have a vigorous and elaborate understanding of the social and natural world (waterproof to Jewish liberalism), and who are somewhat downmarket among American Jews. Well-organized Orthodox communities will still vote Democratic, however, in pursuit of goals which can be met through patron-client relationships. Also, the Republican Party is the home of evangelicals, whom the current generation of American Jews find distasteful, by and large (much as a previous generation found bluebloods distasteful – see Matthew Yglesias on what his grandmother had to say on that subject, or read Ed Koch’s jabs at Whitney North Seymour). What might change that is if the Keith Ellison – Linda Sarsour – Jimmy Carter BDShole constituency reaches a critical mass in the Democratic Party. That could have a significant effect on voting patterns in the 19 counties around Manhattan and the 3 counties in South Florida, as well as taking a fat chunk out of the Democratic Party’s fundraising stream. You might even see some buffers added to mass entertainment products.
With blacks, they’ve been since about 1964 so uniformly and unshakably in the Democratic camp that it’s hard to see Trump making much headway. Rudolph Giuliani presided over a dramatic improvement in the quality of life for New York’s blacks, but he shook loose no more than 15% of the black electorate. (Keep in mind that his opponent in 1993 was David Dinkins, a good-natured black man; his opponent in 1997 was Ruth Messenger, someone with no particular appeal to anyone not like her). Between 1930 and 1964, blacks split their votes between the parties, though the Democrats had an advantage. I don’t think you’re going to find blacks voting Republican for the same reasons Catholics in Ulster don’t vote Unionist.
Black… People will vote their character and interests.
F,
Blacks justify voting democrat for a variety of surface reasons, primary of which is the victim mentality.
At base however, they do so because democrats paternalistically cater to their inferiority complex. They are willfully blind to their inner motivations as self-protection from confronting that inner lack of self-worth.
People confident of their competence intuitively find ingratiating behavior offensive. I’ve yet to find a black conservative who fails to possess a firm, calm certainty about the principles they embrace, which are antithetical to playing the victim. Most of all to themselves.
It is a tragic irony that the very philosophical principles that can free a person from continuing to see themselves as victimized are rejected as a ‘racist white construct’. That characterization by the Left is of course, entirely intentional.
What a truly evil thing it is “to call good, evil and evil, good”.
“Paul Krugman’s Intellectual Dishonesty”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270364/paul-krugmans-intellectual-dishonesty-mark-tapson
Among blacks, polled opinion on public policy questions is a good deal more variegated than voting patterns. The only thing that makes sense to me in re that is the observation ‘politics isn’t about policy’. A ballot for the Democratic Party is an identity marker for blacks and Democratic politicians are willing and able to provide a certain sort of emotional validation for black voters – or at least for opinion leaders in the black population who can then speak to voters. Republican politicians aren’t hostile to blacks or their interests, but are not inclined to provide this sort of validation and, in truth, the verbiage toward that end would be stewed through different filters than would the verbiage of Democrat pols, and such would vitiate its effect.
A fine example of nonsense peddled for emotional validation is the Black Lives Matter discourse. It’s complete and demonstrable humbug. You can lay out the data in precise format demonstrating that, but you will not penetrate people’s mental thickets. I’ve tried with committed white liberals with ample quanta of post baccalaureate schooling.
“Paul Krugman’s Intellectual Dishonesty”
When a Democrat invokes the ‘Southern Strategy’, you know you’re talking to someone dedicated to being ignorant and callow, foolish, or mendacious. There really isn’t a fourth option.
Clinton was a really, really poor candidate.
No she wasn’t. She lost because of James Comey, women intimidated by their husbands to betray their gender, and a few other factors that converged in a strange way to deny Madam Evita her rightful place in the White House.
Sounds like a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy to me. 😀
Trump will win 40 states, more or less, regardless of who the Dems nominate.
The Other Gary — Half-vast!
IF the economy stays strong unemployment will remain low and competition will raise wages. It is the economy stupid in 2018 and again in 2020. If djt can up his margin by just 5% with black, hispanic, and asian voterrs he might actually sweep Cornhead’s promised 40 states.
Meanwhile, I am happy with the current state of affairs. The left is acting crazy and incoherent, hollywood is losing big bucks, and the chattering class is unmasking to reveal their inner vile, wickedness.
Trump of course will get nowhere near a majority of black votes, probably not even 25%. But if he can get even 15-20% it will be very damaging to Democrats.
“No, she wasn’t…”
You’re right about that, no question:
Hillary was, in fact, an absolutely MISERABLE candidate (nn, as is her wont, was actually being kind).
However, this should not blind us to Comey’s role in this ridiculous matter (though to be fair to Comey—and one ought to try at least to be fair—he really had no choice: once Hillary’s emails were found on Anthony Weiner’s hard drive, the game was up; IOW, Comey, upon learning that the NYPD was going to investigate the matter themselves, had to cover his, um, backside.)
Ah, so how does one spell sordid….?
http://www.theeventchronicle.com/cabal-exposed/nypd-turns-fbi-seized-laptop-shows-hillary-clinton-covered-weiners-alleged-sex-crimes-15-yr-old-election/
http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/11/04/erik-prince-nypd-ready-make-arrests-weiner-case/
Poor Comey. Poor Huma. Poor Ant. Oh, the agony.
Poor Hillary. (Hillary Agonistes, indeed….)
All this being said, one must NEVER forget goofball numero uno, Bernie Sanders, to whom, in spite of his profound and earnest silliness, is owed eternal gratitude…for his cameo role (and the role of his perfervid acolytes) in blocking Hillary from her “appointment with destiny”.
(Ingratitude being one of the seven deadlies. Or it ought to be—maybe it’s the eighth?)
Yes, we are in his debt. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again!!! (All of you….)
In fact, contrary to predominant narratives about the election, Obama significantly outperformed Clinton with whites as well.
In 2012, Obama won my hometown by 25%. Hilllary won it by 4%.