There is nothing, it seems, that can’t be blamed on the white patriarchy. The ludicrous extreme of such claims can be seen in Wednesday’s op-ed by Charles Blow in the New York Times. (click on screenshot below). Apparently the movement of the “oppressed” towards Republicans, as well as the high votes of white women for Trump, are not the results of individual reasoned decisions, but of the machinations of The Patriarchy. The column is unbelievable.
Maybe sociologists know why the votes have gone this way, but I don’t. Regardless, Blow says something that nobody disputes: people of color voted for Trump by a higher margin this year than in 2016. That’s also true for gay people—big time. Given Trump’s views and actions, I’m surprised, but I lack both the the expertise or chops to explain the numbers that Blow quotes:
A larger percentage of every racial minority voted for Trump this year than in 2016. Among Blacks and Hispanics, this percentage grew among both men and women, although men were more likely to vote for Trump than women.
. . . The fascinating story and movement are in the Black vote. Black people vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. Black women vote more reliably Democratic than Black men — only 3 or 4 percent of Black women voted for the Republican candidate in 2008, 2012 and 2016. However, Donald Trump doubled that number this year, winning 8 percent of Black women’s votes.
Black men on the other hand have been inching away from the Democrats in recent elections, and continued that drift in this election. In 2008, 5 percent of Black men voted for John McCain; in 2012, 11 percent voted for Mitt Romney; in 2016, 13 percent voted for Trump; and, this year 18 percent voted for Trump.
The gay shift is remarkable:
This one pushed me back on my heels: the percentage of L.G.B.T. people voting for Trump doubled from 2016, moving from 14 percent to 28 percent. In Georgia the number was 33 percent.
This for a president who has attacked trans people in every way imaginable. As the Human Rights Campaign president, Alphonso David, pointed out in June, “The Trump-Pence administration is the most virulently anti-LGBTQ administration in decades.”
White women, too, are faulted (see below) for voting for their oppressors:
In any case, white women vote for Trump at higher rates than all other women, despite the fact that Trump has spent his first term, indeed his whole life, denigrating women.
Let me be specific and explicit here: White people — both men and women — were the only group in which a majority voted for Trump, according to exit polls. To be exact, nearly three out of every five white voters in America are Trump voters.
It is so unsettling to consider that many of our fellow countrymen and women are either racists or accommodate racists or acquiesce to racists.
Well, Blow is a black man, so perhaps the idea that voting for Trump means a vote for racism—the weasel-out Blow proffers is “acquiesce to racists”—comes more naturally to him. But surely there are many people who voted for Trump who don’t see themselves as racists, or even see themselves as anti-racists. Instead, they may have considered other issues more important in their vote: their economic well-being, their fear that they might lose their jobs to overseas companies or to immigrants, and so on. It is like saying that anybody who voted for Biden is a “woke enabler.” Now remember, I think that anybody who voted for Trump was making a serious mistake, voting for an unhinged demagogue who was destroying America. But I’m not willing to tar them all with the monicker of racism.
But that’s not the worst thing in this editorial. That would be Blow’s analysis of why so many “oppressed” people voted for Trump in the first place. Here it is:
All of this to me points to the power of the white patriarchy and the coattail it has of those who depend on it or aspire to it. It reaches across gender and sexual orientation and even race. Trump’s brash, privileged chest trumping and alpha-male dismissiveness and in-your-face rudeness are aspirational to some men and appealing to some women. Some people who have historically been oppressed will stand with the oppressors, and will aspire to power by proximity.
Seriously? A Stockholm Syndrome explanation?
This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, it’s not really an explanation at all: it literally begs the question. He’s made up an explanation that lacks any evidence at all.
Second, it infantilizes people of color, arguing that they mistakenly sought a nonexistent “power by proximity”, and are not going with the program that comports with their ethnicity. They are, as blacks call other blacks who show “white” behavior, “Oreos.” In other words, it is white men who have made black and Hispanic men and women vote for Trump.
Note, too, that Blow uses the term “historically oppressed.” But if you’re not oppressed now, as many blacks, Hispanics, and women aren’t, should you consider the past history of your in-group when voting? Those who voted for Trump because they thought (correctly or not) that his policies made them better off might disagree.
That especially goes for gays, who have done so well, and are so oppression-free, that many of the Woke consider white gays, at least, to have “privilege”, not numbered among the oppressed (see here, for instance). White gays have considerable power, and there’s absolutely no reason they should vote for Trump just to be hauled up the ladder on the coattails of The White Patriarchy.
It’s richly ironic that gays, Hispanics, blacks, and women are told by Blow that their votes were not only wrong, but were conditioned by the White Patriarchy as a misguided grab for power. As I said, it goes to show that there is absolutely nothing one doesn’t like that cannot be blamed on the White Patriarchy. Perhaps Blow should do a little more research on the complex question that he simplifies into intellectual pabulum. But of course, the New York Times now sees everything through the lens of race and oppression.
I think the Stockholm Syndrome Blow applies to blacks might better be applied to wokes. If you must profess wokeness to pass a class, to get or keep a job, to avoid ostracism from your group, it’s easier to just start believing it than to rebel or to engage in the self-loathing that comes when you profess one thing but continue to believe another.
Very good point.
‘Intellectual pabulum.’ Love that phrase.
I take some comfort from the statistics that show blacks and other minorities voted in record numbers for Trump.
For it tells us that pluralism is alive and well.
And, lest we forget, pluralism is the foundation stone of democracy.
When you see blacks, hispanics, gays, and other arguably oppressed minorities choosing to support the Republican ticket than in 2016, my theory is that it is a reaction to the absurd extremes that the woke movement has gone to. To put it another way, Woke is unable to see its own privilege. Black people probably don’t like being thought of as a bloc. Nor do gays all vote with one voice. Trump has not failed to court gays and minorities. Funnily enough, not all gays agree with same sex marriage and some gays are oddly religious. You know what other demographic tends to be quite religious? Probably the reason we’re seeing a higher percentage of minority votes for Trump this time is just that there have been so many more votes this time. Minority Republicans may have thought that Hillary had it locked last time and didn’t show up.
“Probably the reason we’re seeing a higher percentage of minority votes for Trump this time is just that there have been so many more votes this time.”
You do know what it means to say ‘percent’
do you not?
Jerry writes “Black men on the other hand …. in 2016, 13 percent voted for Trump; and, this year 18 percent voted for Trump.”
Surely he refers each time to percent of the total number of black men who voted. And as surely you know, this has nothing to do with “..just that there have been so many more votes..”
Yeah, I do. That’s why I suggested that minority Republicans may have decided to stay home last time. Had you read the entire comment, you would likely have spotted that.
I note that there was only one more sentence to go in order to discern my meaning. Anyway, I can and will elaborate further. The 2016 election was a contest between collectively the two most unpopular Presidential candidates in the history of the nation. Voter turnout was low. Unless you were a fervent supporter it was hard to get enthusiastic about Trump, whom most still viewed as a joke. An exception to this is the demographic where after 8 years of a black President, at last here’s someone who looks like you and promises to bring back the manufacturing jobs that used to drive your broken down rust belt town. This was the demographic that the Democrats sorely misjudged that year.
In 2020, Trump’s far from a joke. And mail voting has become more of the norm this year due to the pandemic. Mail voting has been made extremely easy in many states. A few states sent out ballots without voters having to request them. Obviously there’s a much lower barrier of lethargy to get over with that. Quite simply, black Republicans who couldn’t be bothered could now be bothered. It doesn’t take a genius.
Democrats also misjudged Hillary’s appeal among working class white women. Two of my sisters-in-law would happily explain to you how they would like to see someone other than HC become the first female President. Someone more like them. That explains the percentage increase in the Republican female white vote this year. Some of these women might have voted Libertarian last time or not voted at all. This time they would have voted for the incumbent.
I have the following numbers ‘wrong’, but statistically close enough to make the point.
From 2016 to 2020:
US population increase was very nearly 8 million, about 323 million to the present roughly 331 million. That’s 2.5% very nearly. Let’s assume reasonably that the numbers of eligible voters increased also 2.5%. The voter participation rate is estimated to have increased about 10%. Those two numbers produce not exactly their sum, but very close to 12.5%. Let us assume also that black males were just about the same.
Let’s take 12.0 million to be the number of black male voters in 2016, and 13.5 million in 2020. Those two numbers are order of magnitude correct, need not be better. But important here is the fact that 13.5 is our above 12.5% larger than 12.0 .
Black male votes for Trump are then about 1.56 million in 2016, and about 2.43 million in 2020, applying your 13% and 18% quotes to 12.0 million and 13.5 million respectively.
The difference is about .87 million, that is, 870,000 votes.
Your contention is that most of these 870,000 are people who would have voted for Trump, did in 2020, but didn’t in 2016. Notice that 870,000 is well over half of 1,500,000.
So out of the increase of 1,500,000 votes, on the one hand, well over 4 times as many votes typically went to Biden versus Trump, yet well over half the actual increase were these particular Trump voters of 2020 but non-voters of 2016.
That is beyond belief.
And sorry, the above is almost like doing one’s own income tax. But truth versus non-truth can sometimes be determined simply by calculating.
This is ‘off the top of my head’, so could be a goof-up in there somewhere.
It will be interesting to learn why Trump increased his vote from blacks and gays since I don’t see any apparent reason why. Trump also increased him vote among Latinos, particularly in Florida and Texas. These articles by Christian Paz and Mike Madrid provides an explanation. Latinos are not a solid group, coming from different countries with different cultures. Some Latinos think that Trump will allow them to attain the American Dream. Others have bought into Trump’s rantings about Biden being a socialist. Some Cuban-Americans in Florida still believe that Democrats were somehow pro-Castro. Undoubtedly to the surprise of many liberals, a not insignificant number of Latinos favor a more restrictive immigration policy.
Democratic strategists need to better understand what Latinos want. Touting identity politics to this group may not be a good idea. They are a quickly growing part of the population and will play an increasing role in deciding future elections.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/why-democrats-latino-wave-never-quite-materializes/616703/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/trump-latinos-biden-2020/616901/
I have a lot of Latino neighbors. Some of them are Spanish, and have been here much longer than we have. But lots of them came here more recently, work hard, and have seen their standard of living rise accordingly. They do not see themselves as victims of anything, but they are also very aware of what conditions are like in their country of origin. They likely have some strong beliefs about how their country of origin got that way.
Trump has done quite a few things over the last few year to get more black voters. Courting people like Candace Owens and Kanye West. Pardoning a great deal of black criminals. A 500 billion dollar “platinum plan” intended for their advancement. He also boasted a lot about record low black unemployment numbers.
I do not know how effective these measures were. The most common view in my right-wing bubble was that Republicans will unlikely get black voters without alienating even more of their non-black voters. Therefore, Trump’s pro-black policies were mostly considered a foolish betrayal.
My guess is that Trump’s horrible personality traits endear him to African-Americans. With his grandiose sense of self, extroversion, infidelity, ignorance and fraud he makes me think of a stereotypical rapper. His show “The Apprentice” was targeted by advertisers who looked for non-white customers.
The simple explanation for Trump’s better-than-usual performance with minority groups is:
1) The attacks on Biden’s legislative history, particularly the 1994 Crime Bill, were both damaging and true. And did shave off some black support.
2) The Biden campaign did very poor Latino outreach and actually lost ground relative to Hillary Clinton. And it’s really something to perform worse than that historically awful campaign in ANY metric.
I think your ‘simple explanation’ is wrong.
First, the idea that voters today were reflecting on Biden’s record 25 years ago is flat-out incredible.
Second, you discount the power Trump’s one notable dalliance with perspicacity: his critique of Washington’s elite.
As others have suggested, rejection of the suffocating cloak of Wokeism played its part, but I’d argue it amounts to the same thing: liberal elites tread as if on social justice egg shells, and regular dudes – of whatever persuasion – are sick of it.
Trump was an antidote of sorts to this.
Whatever, I’m dancing like Pinker that he’s gone.
It’s hilarious when anyone thinks Trump was an “antitode” to wokeness.
Trump has supercharged SJW-ism and made it more mainstream than ever before. BLM has never been more popular than when it had a comical cartoon villain like Trump to oppose.
Political extremes feed off each other and always have. Using the radical right to fight wokeness is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
I don’t think people, as a rule, reason in that way. People probably think more like:
0. I don’t like woks
1. Wokism is on the rise
2. Trump says he’s going to deal with it
3. Biden gets all coy when people ask how he is going to deal with it
4. Vote Trump!
I live in the UK, but you describe exactly why, if I was American, I would have voted for Trump despite his objectionable personal qualities.
There is nothing as racist as wokeness and this is just one more painful example.
Jerry,
If you look at the comment section for that article, and for other recent woke articles, I think you’ll be heartened to see how much pushback they are getting at this point.
This was a recent one too, where Roxane Gay
still can’t figure out what happened, and has divided the nation in to those on the left, and “— “The other United States is committed to defending white supremacy and patriarchy at all costs.” —
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/opinion/trump-supporters-election-2020.html#commentsContainer&permid=109989462:109989462
Plenty of people pointing out she just doesn’t get it yet, that demonizing and calling the other side “racists and white supremacists” is not only facile and wrong, but a losing strategy.
I almost never look at comments for NYT article (I often forget they exist), but I’ll check this out, thanks.
HI Dr. Coyne, you really should read the comments….go for the most liked as you can sort them that way.
I have found that not infrequently, the comments are more trenchant and perceptive than the article occasioning the comments.
I find that to be often true. I also believe it is particularly the case with a vacuous one like Blow’s.
On the other hand just saw this very liked comment:
EP
DubaiNov. 6
Times Pick
I’m old (55) and tired. I don’t know that I have the energy to fight for the future of everyone. I left the US after Trump won. I was in Africa for a couple of years and now I’m in Dubai. What I definitely know is that since I left the US, not a single person has told me to “go home” and no racial slurs have been directed at me (a welcome change from my life in the US). And I feel safe. There are no Nazis in Dubai. There is no KKK in Dubai. There is no QAnon in Dubai. It’s very relaxing.
70 million people have voted for Trump this time around. That’s 70 million people who are ok with hating brown people. As a brown person, that worries me.
I’m ready to fight for the future of the blue states. I’m too tired to fight for the red ones too. And they don’t want me in their fight anyway.
I’m no expert but it might be best not to criticise the government in Dubai. Summary arrest and torture can follow.
Here’s what Wikipedia says:
“The UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens do not have the right to change their government or to form political parties. There are reports of forced disappearances in the UAE, many foreign nationals and Emirati citizens have been abducted by the UAE government and illegally detained and tortured in undisclosed locations.
Flogging and stoning are legal forms of judicial punishment in the UAE due to Sharia courts.[8] The government restricts freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the local media are censored to avoid criticising the government, government officials or royal families. Freedom of association and freedom of religion are also curtailed.
Despite being elected to the UN Council, the UAE has not signed most international human-rights and labour-rights treaties”
I think one comment on the original article from Scott in Ohio absolutely nails it:
If I owned a store in Portland and my financial security (nd in the USA that means health security too) depended on it, say, my main focus in life would be not getting closed down by the pandemic and not getting my store burned down by protestors. I might have voted for Trump in that scenario.
Well I,/i> wouldn’t because it is my firm opinion that everything Trump says is a lie including any promises to protect my security, but somebody else might.
Seventy million people voted for Trump. I have no idea why anybody would do that and therefore I dismiss them as idiot Trumpers, but maybe it is me that is wrong and they see something I don’t. Very few people on “our side” stop to think about why the other side still votes Trump. We just dismiss them as idiots and that, I think, is why he won once and came quite close to winning twice.
Nah! It’s about the centuries-old myth of the American tough-guy antihero, the embodiment of the Marlboro man/ John Wayne/ Dirty Harry/ Die-hard movies and every other outlier who is lauded for taking the law into his own hands – because his cause warrants it. He’s a “Man’s Man,” and the bad boy that women find SO much more appealing than Joe Lunch-Pail or Mr. Boring Suit, the guys who farm, go to work and pay the bills.
Also, this guy can only thrive in wartime and when he has forces of evil to battle. He’s totally out of place in civilized society and has to find enemies to oppose. And he attracts others who feel the same way. He stands for their OWN view of themselves as defenders of their way of life – or something or other.
Note, however, that these traits in women generally don’t sell. To this demographic, tough women are threatening ball-busters and “unlikeable.” So, the patriarchal sexist view holds up. BTW, listen to women singing the blues about their cheating men who beat them sometime. Note the indulgent “boys will be boys” attitude in many women. This is another delusional wrong-headed viewpoint that romanticizes unhappy situations.
Its all in the Malleus Malepartirachalbus:
A pact entered into with the White Patriarchy (and concomitant apostasy from Wokeianity),
Sexual relations with the White Patriarchy,
Aerial flight for the purpose of attending;
An assembly presided over by Orange Satan himself (at which initiates entered into the pact, and incest and promiscuous sex were engaged in by the attendees),
The practice of maleficent magic,
The slaughter of babies.
But to be fair to wokeness, white heterosexual males are the only people with agency in their worldview, and so unless people slavishly obey their woke masters, they will inevitably be the puppets of white heterosexual males.
They are very much like Southern Plantation owners, who justified their mastery over the slaves on the basis of their own personal benevolence, and worried that their slave would be taken advantage of if they were no longer under the control of their masters.
Its actually amazing that journalists are not more aware of how reactionary, condescending and patronizing they sound.
Biden and Harris didn’t have to personally loot a Starbucks to nonetheless suffer from an association in the public mind with all the activities that accompanied the many 2020 protests. Not all Blacks are pleased by symbolic gestures that end up wrecking neighborhoods and diminishing local business. And although NPR may gush over Angela Davis, not all citizens of minority neighborhoods are keen on abolishing the police, a guild that includes many minority officers and chiefs. Here too, Biden’s brief rejection of any such intention was not forceful enough, and not repeated often enough, to make the impression it should have.
Difficult to argue with this.
It’s why claims that Biden has to ‘unite’ the country are vacuous. Alien invaders might do that, but he can’t.
What he has to do is concede that there are legitimate competing perspectives, and govern accordingly.
As happens with many that run for office, Biden had to thread the needle with the Woke. He had to present to most voters as Left-Center but not alienate the Far Left to the point where they wouldn’t show up and vote for Biden. While he may not be able to unite the country, I think we’ll know more about where he really stands now that the election is behind him. IMHO, I doubt either Biden or Harris are going to pay attention to calls to “defund the police”. He can go a long way toward uniting the country by simply demonstrating he’s not the socialist boogie man that Trump tried to make him out to be and showing what good government is like.
“He can go a long way toward uniting the country by simply demonstrating he’s not the socialist boogie man that Trump tried to make him out to be and showing what good government is like.”
Perhaps he can have his staff prep and stand by to periodically inform the public as necessary the socialist corporate welfare largess endorsed by Republicans/conservatives.
You’ve already got your “alien invaders”. A rational response to the pandemic will go a long way.
It seems strange to me to tie Biden and Harris with “an association in the public mind with ALL the activities that accompanied the many 2020 protests.” Firstly: they weren’t in power; tRump was. Secondly: most of the protesting was peaceful until local militarized police overreacted, Boogaloo Boys (and/or other such groups) showed up, and militarized federales) entered the picture. With the entrance and escalation of violence, protesters may have finally participated in part, but they did not start it (at least in Portland.) Thirdly: many blacks and whites are not satisfied with symbolic gestures like removing names from schools or tearing down statues (breaking windows and setting fires is not symbolic protest. It’s violence and should be dealt with as such.)Fourthly: whoever came up with the phrase “defund the police” did not do anyone a favor. No-one wants the police to be defunded. They want some of the funds designated for policing to be reserved for training, etc., for the social functions police have been made responsible for but for which they have no knowledge or training. One should not deal with mental health issues or family arguments with a gun. Yes. There are still many valid reasons for maintaining a police force. Let’s just demilitarize them and give them training.
Since most of policing is funded and the associated issues are decided at a more local level, not under federal purview, it seems reasonable that Biden and Harris would not make pronouncements. As opposed to tRump who had opinions (and took actions) about matters he had no business making pronouncements about or acting on.
Arguments that such and such occurred on Trump’s watch were somewhat rendered moot by his position that he was President only over his supporters rather than the nation as a whole. He could use this in his favor in so many ways. When people demonstrated in the streets, they were cast as obvious Democrats and, therefore, were not his problem. In some ways, he did this with the pandemic. If the Dems wanted to make a big deal about it, then it was their problem and not Trump’s. The fact that it first peaked in the cities which were largely run by Dems helped. Trump turned everything on its ear.
You may be right as to how tRump perceived his role and responsibilities as President.
But, while he was playing to his one-sided audience (including violent white supremacists that tRump political appointees were instructed to downplay vs. Antifa and Black Lives Matter), he used them and the federal military; and everything in his power including tweets, Fox News, etc., to rile up the opposition. That’s what he did in Portland. These actions generated the violence he wanted so he could mouth off about “Law and Order” and play tough against the protesters who received the blame for the violence. Portland is still dealing with the repercussions of this outside meddling. It still has 57 +/- local police officers who were made federales to deal with an influx of white supremacist militia that was thought to be coming to Portland in large numbers from out of state. There weren’t as many as expected. However, Portland still has police officers who are mixed local and federal. Who has authority over them? Last I read there is a suit ongoing to try to terminate this arrangement that was supposed to last for a weekend but, apparently, has continued.
Note how the Woke just assume that the interests of the T align with those of the L and G.
To the Woke, because they are all non-hetero-cis, they are presumed to form a block, just as the same is presumed of all people “of colour”.
Yes one reads online about quite a lot of friction between the LG and the T in that acronym. Maybe that’s why the B is always in the middle, as a buffer?
I am waiting for a Democratic leader to say “Guys, it’s not them, it’s us.” I think Brecht said it a long time ago:
sub
Gathering statistics on what groups voted for who starts a lot of discussion that is mostly opinion and guesses. Unless someone goes through the hard work of finding out specifically why someone voted the way they did, all the speculation is meaningless. Often why someone voted a certain way is simply some kind of herd mentality. They don’t even know why. Often it is a vote against something else. Often it is information that is false or just wrong but that is what they believe. We don’t want to do the hard work to find out what really makes people tick so we lump them together and then make our own opinion.
Here is some more speculation. I think a large number in the population does not really have the information to make an informed vote. All they know is what they happen to see on the internet, Twitter or Facebook. Jack voted this way because his buddy Bob did. That is about it for the informed American voter.
LOL!
Randall asserts that no one knows anything about ‘what makes people tick’ before declaiming, actually, he knows what: the web.
It’s precisely this level of discourse that beggars debate.
Actually he says “here is some more speculation” and “I think…” These are clear and deliberate flags that he doesn’t know.
Exactly. There are lots of low-information voters who pay little attention to the news or politics. If the economy is good they will for the incumbent.
“If the economy is good they will for the incumbent.”
A friend’s father is of this opinion. He holds that all politicians are liars. Therefore, which ever politician causes his 401K to maximize the most gets his vote. These politicians are drawn from the great pool of pure-as-the-driven-snow human primates. Whom does anyone expect to run for office? That half a chromosome difference sure shows.
MOSCOW —In a concession speech remarkable for its graciousness, Vladimir Putin committed to peacefully transfer power to Joe Biden.
— Andy Borowitz
A former UK ambassador said, “Take a moment to think about Trump’s golf caddy right now…”
‘A former UK ambassador said, “Take a moment to think about Trump’s golf caddy right now…”’
I have a vision of the caddy dumping the bag of clubs on the fairway and leaving Trump to CARRY his own bag. The ultimate sacrifice for a narcissist.
There’s rather a nice scene in Die Hard about Stockholm Syndrome and smug media commentators.
DH is one of my cultural touchstones. Totally agree about smug media commentators.
But I don’t think the character Harry Ellis has Stockholm Syndrome — he doesn’t adopt the pov of the terrorists over time. Instead, he stupidly assumes that the terrorists have his pov, and that he can use this to save his own life.
“Hans, bubby, I’m your white knight.”
Also the actor who played Ellis (Hart Bochner) is Canadian eh?
I meant the the rent-a-expert being interviewed on TV. He and the anchor man are talking about “Helsinki Syndrome”. What ever happened to Art B. He was great.
Oh yeah right sorry I was thinking about the Nakatomi hostages. Yeah I always liked Hart Bochner too, he’s still doing tv and movies.
On BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show they were semi-joking about rappers who back Trump: “Rich guys, with trophy wives, boasting about how rich they are – what do they see in him?” More seriously, there do seem to be many people who believe in Trump’s self-proclaimed business genius and admire/aspire accordingly.
Trump does have a very macho “gangsta” attitude that would appeal to the hip hop demographic. They might see him as one of their own.
In which case: they should aspire to go bankrupt as many times as they can after having been given $1,000,000 by Daddy, file a numerous lawsuits, be hundreds of millions of dollars in debt with it coming due in 2021, being investigated for fiddling your financial records in New York, not paying income tax, being sued by 20+ women for the obvious re a “pussy grabber”, hire illegal foreign workers, be slow in paying same (make them sue?), etc.
etc., etc., etc.
“… they should aspire to go bankrupt as many times as they can after having been given $1,000,000 by Daddy”
I’m unsure where you got that $1M figure from unless you actually believed Trump’s lie about his father loaning him only $1M, which he also claimed to have repaid (two lies in one). Here are some links showing that Trump was a multimillionaire by the age of 3 and he actually got well over $400M from his father by various often illegal means. He has always lost huge sums of other people’s money, which is why he works so diligently at grifting, even as “president”.
Trump’s fraud to be listed in the Forbes 400:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-lied-to-me-about-his-wealth-to-get-onto-the-forbes-400-here-are-the-tapes/2018/04/20/ac762b08-4287-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html
Trump claims that his father only loaned him $1M but that is an obvious double lie:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-is-donald-trump-worth-his-father-gave-millions-investing-2018-10
Reasons to doubt that Trump is even a one billionaire, let alone the $10B to $11B that he claims to be worth (and he is very deeply in debt):
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-ten-reasons-to-doubt-trump-is-even-a-billionaire
Trump received at least $413M from his father through tax avoidance and outright tax fraud:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-is-donald-trump-worth-his-father-gave-millions-investing-2018-10
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-the-first-presidential-debate/fact-check-how-much-help-did-trumps-father-give-his-son/ https://apnews.com/0452d29cd2564eaf97605ab90acc3a67/NY-Times:-Trump-got-$413M-from-his-dad,-much-from-tax-dodges
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html
I think the Democratic party is associated with wokeness and that drove a lot of gays, blacks, Latinos to vote for Trump. Misguided, but probably cathartic.
How is that misguided? Wokeness is a very serious issue.
Malcom Nance made a great point on Real Time with Bill Maher last night. If GOP voters voted in much greater numbers on election day and Dem voters voted overwhelmingly by mail, does that not mean the data collected by exit polls the day of the election is not a representative pool of average voters? So all those higher rates of minority voters choosing trump are taken from a pool that is more GOP overall?
I don’t understand why guys like Blow want to write about these kinds of data.
First, the data come from exit polls (the actual ballots don’t have race and sex on them). This kind of self-reported data is notoriously biased and distorted. Like the pre-election polling. To be taken not very seriously.
Second, there is just a basic arithmetic error here, even if we take the exit poll data at face value.
Say 1000 black women voted in some county in Pennsylvania in 2016, and Hilary got 96% of their vote (960) to 4% for Trump (40) using Blow’s numbers. Turnout overall was up 10% in 2020, so now let’s say there were 1100 black women who voted in that same county in 2020. If Biden only got 92% of their votes (1012), he’s still way ahead of Trump (88) and his vote increase (+52 from 2016 to 2020) is still larger than Trump’s vote increase (+48).
So it’s just wrong to say Biden did worse than Trump among black women voters in that imaginary county. It’s the count matters, not the proportion.
It’s surprising and disappointing that NYT opinion writers are so innumerate that they can’t see past the percentages.
Also remembering this by NYT editorial board member Mara Gay back in March, where she tried to acknowledge (in an ironic gosh-what-happened sort of way) her error in agreeing that Mike Bloomberg’s $500 million primary campaign spending could have been spent instead to send $1 million to each American citizen. As this twitter user pointed out, Gay also seemed to imply she had not noticed the calculator on her iPhone.
https://twitter.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/1236307601987645447/photo/1
Right; IOW 924>920, that is, 84% of 1100 is more than 92% of 1000, the percentages being the differences 96-4 and 92-8 of them in ’16 and ’20 respectively.
But it’s still a worrying trend. Probably ‘all of the above reasons and more’ is THE reason.
And worrying because if those votes are counted on to overcome a deficit with all the others, and if others’ population increases at least as much percentagewise i.e. by 10%, but relative percentages stay the same, it can become a losing, not winning, proposition.
Here’s an example where blue wins in 2016 for dogcatcher in a town with 45,000, so using your numbers b=1,000, but w=44,000 (very white place). Assume that b vote 96% to 4% blue so that gives 920 extra for blue as yours. And assume that w votes 51% to 49% for red, who then only get 2% of 44,000 extra so only 880 extra for red, and so blue is dogcatcher by 40 vote margin, 880 versus 920.
But it’s also a 2020 example where the 51% to 49% stays the same for the amount w favours red. But the b drop is as your example, namely now only 92% to 8%. Assume also that both populations increase by 10% in the 4 years. So w give the red an extra 2% of 48,400, which is 968 more votes. But the b give the blue only an extra 84% of 1100, which is only an extra 924 votes, as in your example. Now red has won by 44 votes.
So the dogcatcher is now one of those goddam Republicans!
Many might well skip this explanation:
Note the example can be done semi-generally with high school algebra to see that in 2016, w must be less than 48 times more than b to lose then, but to win in 2020, then must be more than 42 times (also in 2016), with the other numbers as above. So I picked 44 times bigger, i.e. 44,000 to go with your 1,000 for b. The same ratio of whites to blacks would also hold in 2020 with the assumption that both populations increase by 10%, that is
48,400/44,000 is still 1.1 i.e. 10% increase, or equivalently 48,400/1100 is still 44 times more whites. No Latinos, etc. etc. I guess??
Just multiply by 1,000 to get the population of a typical European country. But they likely would need more than one dogcatcher in Ukraine (pop about 43,600,000) if they needed any at all.
A stab at extracting a puzzlement.
The LGBQ, blacks, women, latino individuals see his short bite bravado language as sticking it to the status quo. The violence and inequality that It brings regardless of it’s origin or history.
Just like they do, perceive to do, or want to do… daily or in transactions with it (society) so the rouge becomes the master, a channel for their anger and confusion… hence,
vote those condescending arses to oblivion. Ok so that’s a bit emotional but this is fighting talk.
That is, for those individuals who let their beefs claim there rationality and common sense.
Others not so much but I’d like to know what it was because it would be interesting.
In the end it clearly is a case of outrage befuddlement and it had its ‘tremendous’ moment… lasting four years and not done yet.
This podcast is Andrew Sullivan’s first in his new substack home.
It’s a conversation with Colemnan Hughes, an extraordinarily gifted writer and commentator. And I belive he is still an undergraduate at Columbia.
It’s a bit long, but very interesting as Sullivan is gay and Hughes is black…..and they spend alot of time discussing the election and why certain groups may have voted as they did.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/coleman-hughes-on-the-big-blow-to
I’m not even sure if the statistics in the article are correct. Most of the savvy political commentators I’ve been reading say these early unadjusted exit polls are basically meaningless this year, since there was a big political party difference in who voted early vs on Election Day. It could just be that of the percent of LGBT voters who decided to vote on Election Day and was included in exit polls is more Republicans leaning than the LGBT voters who voted early and weren’t included in the exit polls.
In 2016, with much less of a party split on early vs in person votes, the adjusted exit polls looked somewhat different than the early unadjusted exit polling. I’d expect a larger difference this year.
I heard some say that minorities voted for Trump because they had seen their economic situation improve. By killing immigration of all kinds, Trump improved their job prospects and pay. I don’t know if statistics support this but, even if they don’t, they may have been convinced that Trump’s (non-)immigration policy was in their favor.
It’s somewhat depressing that the only demographic group who voted for Trump in a smaller proportion than in 2016 was white men, who presumably couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary but could back Joe.
I don’t consider 8% black women, 18% black men, or 28% LGBT to be particularly high vote shares. 27% of Illinois voted for Alan Keyes versus Barack Obama in the 2004 senate race there, leading to the coining of the term crazification factor. 25% or so is always going to “go the other way,” it is just how politics works in this country.
I agree entirely. I used to like C. Blow a lot but in recent years he’s become more… well.. as you put it correctly.
Oh. Goodness. And Roxanne Gay? – in what I’ve seen and read of her (too much) she is quite a deranged person, a possible narcissist and a Woke Warrior.
I avoid her now.
Lemme tell ya Professor: If I went to a party and she was there I’d just go do something else.
I might try flying a kite, walk my d-g, fly a kite with my d-g, start learning golf, I dunno but I’d avoid the Roxy Party.
Sorry. I live in NYC and its still a huge party here so I’ve been drinking, like the whole town!
D.A.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/