Wednesday, October 19, 2022



America’s problem is White people keep backing the Republican Party

Below is a black writer's racially-focused comment on the American political divide. I would have thought it a more informative and less racist comment onthe facts if he had headed his article "America’s problem is that minorities keep backing the Democratic Party".

But it's the Leftist way to be obsessed with race. The Ku Klux Klan were Democrats and Karl Marx despised Jews, even though he was one. And can we forget Democrat governors Orval Faubus and George Wallace? Wallace declared in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". Democrats are now reviving that in some American colleges


A clear majority of White Americans keeps backing the Republican Party over the Democratic Party, even though the Republican Party is embracing terrible and at times antidemocratic policies and rhetoric. The alliance between Republicans and White Americans is by far the most important and problematic dynamic in American politics today.

Non-Hispanic White Americans were about 85 percent of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, much larger than the 59 percent of the U.S. population overall in that demographic. That was similar to 2016, when White voters were about 88 percent of Trump backers. It is very likely that White Americans will be more than 80 percent of those who back Republican candidates in this fall’s elections.

The political discourse in America, however, continues to ignore or play down the Whiteness of the Republican coalition. In 2015 and 2016, journalists and political commentators constantly used terms such as “Middle America” and “the working class” to describe Trump’s supporters, as though the overwhelming Whiteness of the group was not a central part of the story. In this year’s campaign cycle, recent articles, in The Post and in other outlets, have highlighted Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s supposed weaknesses with Black voters. This is a strange framing. It is likely that more than 70 percent of White voters in Georgia will back Abrams’s Republican opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, but fewer than 20 percent of the state’s Black voters will vote for the incumbent. If Kemp wins reelection, it will be because of White Georgians, not Black ones.

Republican voters are not just White people without four-year college degrees (a group Trump won by 32 percentage points in 2020), though that has been the common framing in much political commentary. The Republican Party is the preferred choice of White people who describe themselves as evangelical Christians (whom Trump won by 69 points in 2020), White people in rural areas (Trump by 43 points), White people in the South (29 points), White men (17), White Catholics (15), White Protestants who don’t describe themselves as evangelicals (14), White people in the Midwest (13), White women (7) and White people who live in the suburbs (4). (These numbers come from post-election surveys and analysis from the Pew Research Center, the Cooperative Election Study and Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan Burge.)

In contrast, the people of color in those demographic groups (for instance, Asian Americans without four-year degrees, Black Protestants, Latina women) mostly favor Democrats.

While the majority of White people with four-year degrees backed Democrats in 2020, about 42 percent of them supported Trump. He also won more than 40 percent of White voters in the Northeast and in the West. The main bloc of White voters that overwhelmingly opposes Republicans is White people who aren’t Christians. (Joe Biden won this group by about 30 points in 2020.)

After Trump did better in 2020 with Latino voters (gaining 10 percentage points over 2016) and Black voters (up two points in that period), there has again been an effort by some in the media and even some Democrats to play down race and suggest the Trump base is really one of Americans without college degrees or those annoyed by progressive views on gender and race. But the actual percentage of Republican voters who are Black (2 percent in 2020) or Latino (8 percent) is tiny.

Overall, Republicans win the majority of White voters (55-43 nationally in 2020) in most elections.

Being the party of White Americans has given and will continue to give the Republicans two huge advantages. First, White Americans are about 72 percent of the U.S. electorate, about 13 percentage points more than their share in the overall population. White adults are more likely than Asian and Hispanic adults to be citizens (not recent immigrants) and therefore are eligible to vote. The median age for a White American is higher than that for Asian, Black or Latino Americans, and older Americans tend to vote at higher rates. If the electorate mirrored the country’s actual demographics and those groups voted as they did in 2020, Trump would have won only about 44 percent of the national vote, three points less than his 47 percent two years ago.

Second, the electoral college and the Senate give outsize power to less populated states — which in America today tend to be disproportionately White.

The alliance between White Americans and the Republican Party has existed for decades. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won the majority of White voters was in 1964, a year before Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act. The Republican Party spent much of the next three decades courting White Americans, in part, by casting Democrats as too tied to the causes of minorities, particularly Black people and Latino immigrants.

Through the presidency of George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s first term, however, Republican leaders generally distanced themselves from this style of politics — feeling that the old tactics were not only morally wrong but also would doom the GOP in a country with a growing non-White population. But Trump and his allies have brought anti-Black and anti-immigrant sentiments and a focus on White identity back to the center of the Republican Party’s electoral strategy.

Even when Republican politicians are not campaigning directly on racial issues, the party is organized around defending the status quo in America, which is weighted toward White Americans. Policies such as raising taxes on upper-income people and making college free would reduce gaps in income and opportunity between White Americans and people of color. By opposing them, Republicans in effect protect White advantages.

So it’s no accident that Republicans are winning the majority of White voters. It is in many ways the result of a successful strategy. It’s not that Trumpism brought White voters as a bloc to the Republican Party (they were already voting Republican) — but rather that it hasn’t scared many of them off.

Perhaps the best way to understand American politics is an overwhelmingly White coalition facing one that is majority-White but includes a lot of people of color.

Perry Bacon Jr.: Have Democrats reached the limits of White appeasement politics?

Democrats are doing a lot of White appeasement to address this Republican tilt: nominating White candidates in key races; moving right/White on racialized issues such as policing and immigration; trying to boost the economy particularly in heavily White areas where the party has declined electorally.

Some of that has worked; Democrats did somewhat better among White voters in 2018 and 2020 compared with 2016. But it is very likely that the majority of White voters will again vote Republican in 2022 and 2024.

And because White people are likely to be the majority of voters for at least two more decades, America is in trouble. Across the country, GOP officials are banning books from public libraries, making it harder for non-Republicans to vote, stripping away Black political power, aggressively gerrymandering, censoring teachers and professors and, most important, denying the results of legitimate elections. The majority of America’s White voters are enabling and encouraging the GOP’s radical, antidemocratic turn by continuing to back the party in elections.

It’s not, as much of our political discourse implies, that the Democrats have a working-class or Middle America or non-college-voter problem. The more important story is that America has a White voter problem. And there is no sign it’s going away anytime soon.

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The Left’s addiction to destruction

It was the late English philosopher Roger Scruton who once wrote: ‘Good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created… The work of destruction is quick, easy, and exhilarating; the work of creation is slow, laborious, and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century.’

It certainly is. And it is the so-called progressive camp that seems to excel at this.

That the Left prefers violence and destruction over reason and debate should be rather clear by now. It seems the daily newspaper headlines give us a good indication of this behaviour with stories of rioting, looting, and trying to burn down cities as they protest various causes. It is how they ‘make their case’.

They do not really have sound arguments or logic on their side, so simply destroying things is how they proceed.

Sure, it is not just the secular Left who act this way. Political Islam does similar things. Groups like ISIS are well known for destroying anything they regard as an affront to Islam. Whether it is religious extremists blowing up ancient ruins, Black Lives Matter rioters tearing down statues, or even green militants trying to destroy great works of art – they are all cut from the same cloth with destruction as the preferred MO.

‘Works of art?’ you say. Yes, you must have missed the latest craze of the crazed Left: attacking famous works of art in the name of saving the planet. There have been a number of cases of this occurring recently. As one news report: explains:

Climate change protesters threw soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery on Friday, the Just Stop Oil campaign group said. The group, which has been holding protests for the last fortnight in the British capital, released a video showing two women walking into the gallery and throwing tins of Heinz tomato soup at the painting. It is one of five versions of the Van Gogh painting on display in museums and galleries around the world.

Both women were arrested for criminal damage and aggravated trespass, police said. Just Stop Oil said the painting, which dates to 1888, had a value of $US84.2 million. An international movement that has seen climate activists smear cake across the Mona Lisa and superglue their hands to masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli, Vincent van Gogh and Umberto Boccioni has also arrived in Australia.

Two Extinction Rebellion protesters were recently arrested at the National Gallery of Victoria after glueing themselves to the 1951 Picasso painting Massacre in Korea. At their feet lay a banner reading “Climate Chaos = War + Famine”. A spokesperson from the gallery said there was some minor damage to the frame, but that the painting itself was undamaged, likely due to a protective varnish.

The group’s activists have been blocking roads around the British parliament over the last few days. Last Sunday, police said that more than 100 people had been arrested after a weekend of protest-related activity by environmental groups.

Hmm, so in the name of saving and preserving things – in this case, the planet supposedly – these nutters are going on a rampage, attacking priceless artworks to show their moral superiority.

As to these yokels gluing themselves to walls or pavements or streets, my idea is that they should just be left there to fend for themselves! Give them a few days super-glued to a busy street and see how long before they beg for help.

They are idiots who destroy rather than build. Nothing is sacred for these hoons. But as their destructive antics become even more alarming, one fears for what lies ahead.

As a result of activists terrorising art galleries, we can expect to see the need for far more stringent security measures being put in place, with the costs to visitors going up and the ability to get close to some of these great works of art taken away from us.

Since I began this piece with the words of one noted figure from England, let me finish with two more. Sir Winston Churchill said: ‘To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.’

And conservative Jewish writer Melanie Phillips put it this way: ‘The great battles today are not between left and right. They are between morality and nihilism, truth and lies, justice and injustice, freedom and totalitarianism, and Judeo-Christian values and the would-be destroyers of the West both within and without.’

While I take Melanie’s point, there is still a political and ideological divide here. Conservatives, as the name implies, like to conserve. We like to preserve what is good in a culture. We like to maintain order amid chaos, and some beauty amongst ugliness.

But the radical Left simply wants to tear down and destroy. It is their way or the highway. And their way usually seems to gravitate towards bullying, intimidation, aggression, and destruction.

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Even Barack Obama now attacks Democrat ‘cancel culture’

Barack Obama has attacked “cancel culture” in his own Democratic party, arguing that “all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes”.

Obama, 61, described some in his party as “buzzkill Democrats”, saying that those in or seeking office needed to “be able to speak to everybody about their common interests”.

He told the Pod Save America podcast: “Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy.

“I think where we get into trouble sometimes is where we try to suggest that some groups are more . . . because they historically have been victimised more, that somehow they have a status that’s different than other people and we’re going around scolding folks if they don’t use exactly the right phrase,” he said. “Or that identity politics becomes the principal lens through which we view our various political challenges.”

He did not give an example, or name anyone, but the left of his party has been accused of promoting identity politics. Republicans have described the party as “woke” and criticised the Black Lives Matter campaign, which has strong support from many Democrats.

Obama also said the party needed to be clearer in its messaging to voters and that colleagues often got bogged down by “policy gobbledygook”.

“Look, I used to get into trouble whenever I got a little too professorial and, you know, started . . . when I was behind the podium as opposed to when I was in a crowd.”

The former president spoke less than a month before the midterm elections, in which the Democrats may lose control of both houses of Congress. The party now holds the Senate by the barest of majorities, and the House of Representatives by not much more.

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ANYTHING can be a "marriage" now

In 2015, when a Supreme Court majority ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that “state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same-sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” I wrote that the high court had an obligation to tell us if there were any standards left when it comes to human relations.

If it could come up with one, I wanted to know on what that standard was based. I predicted that having abandoned a constitutional standard, a millennia of tradition, sociological evidence, even the scriptural definition of marriage and family, that others who operated outside tradition would be next in line to demand their “rights.”

It took just seven years for that prophecy to come true.

A New York judge has now ruled that in a tenancy case, “it’s possible for two men to both claim partnerships with a third man—and that the man whose relationship is being questioned should have a chance to prove his claim in court.” Thereby opening up the possibility of recognizing polyamorous relationships, entitling them to protections under the law.

Reading the opinion written by Judge Karen May Bacdayan offers more proof that the slippery slope characterizing modern culture has evolved into a mudslide.

Bacdayan appears to have based her ruling not on an immutable standard, but on her personal beliefs, writing: “What was ‘normal’ or ‘nontraditional’ … is not a barometer for what is normal or nontraditional now.”

Notice the quotes the judge puts around the first reference to normal and traditional, indicating a prejudice against what was once considered normal and traditional. Can anyone claim anything is normal in 2022 without being assaulted on social media and to one’s face by the “woke” crowd?

She continued by saying that “the definition of ‘family’ has morphed considerably.” Indeed it has, and not to the benefit of many individuals, their children, and society.

The “reasoning” behind Bacdayan’s ruling ought to stun most rational people. She writes that “many articles have been written about multi-person relationships in recent years, revealing a preference that for some has long been known.”

So, according to Bacdayan, it appears that creating “many articles” is the way to justify any relationship or behavior.

There were “many articles” written in defense of slavery and denying women the right to vote. Had Bacdayan’s philosophy been applied, these and other injustices might never have been rectified. There were many articles written in defense of unborn human life, but it took 50 years and more than 60 million aborted babies for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Where will this decision on polyamorous relationships lead?

In 2015, YouGov found that 25% of those polled said they believed polyamory to be “morally acceptable.” A 2020 YouGov poll found that “one-third (32%) of U.S. adults say that their ideal relationship is non-monogamous to some degree.” According to what definition of morality?

The two-parent, male-female home has been the bedrock of societies. Some traditions have lasted because they work. When social mores are individually rejected, school shootings, street violence, and anti-American ideology can be the result.

Ancient Rome and other licentious societies collapsed from within because of their indifference to moral restraints. What makes Americans think we can avoid a similar fate?

We are committing cultural suicide, and few want to risk the criticism that comes from standing against the tide. We “invent ways of doing evil,” the Apostle Paul wrote.

If a judge and a growing number of Americans no longer recognize what many consider immorality, then immorality wins.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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