Has Obama Lost White America?
If Republicans will study the returns from Massachusetts, then review the returns from Virginia and New Jersey, light will fall upon the path to victory over Barack Obama in 2012.
Obama defeated John McCain by winning the black vote 24 to one, the Hispanic vote two to one and taking a larger share of the white vote, 44 percent, than did John Kerry or Al Gore. As the white vote was three-fourths of the national turnout, Obama coasted to victory.
Now consider Massachusetts. In the 2008 election, no less than 79 percent of the voters were white, and Obama carried them by 20 points, winning the state 62 to 36.
How did Scott Brown turn that 26-point deficit into a six-point victory? By winning the white vote as massively as did Obama. While there are no exit polls to prove it, we do have exit polls from Virginia and New Jersey, which tend to corroborate it.
Bob McDonnell won the Virginia governor’s race by 17, while McCain lost Virginia by six. As McDonnell did equally poorly with African-Americans, losing the black vote 90 to nine, while McCain’s lost it 92 to eight, what explains his Virginia landslide?
The white vote. McDonnell won Virginia’s white vote 68 to 32, though his opponent was a downstate Democrat more conservative than the Northern Virginia candidates he beat in the primary.
In New Jersey, same story. McCain won 8 percent of the black vote. Gov. Chris Christie won 8 percent of the black vote. How did Christie turn a McCain loss of New Jersey by 16 points into a five-point victory?
The white vote. McCain won the white vote in New Jersey 50 to 49, but Christie won the white vote 59 to 34, almost two to one.
Republicans have won three major races — two of them upsets and one a Massachusetts miracle — because the white share of the vote in all three rose as a share of the total vote, and Republicans swept the white vote in Reagan-like landslides.
What explains the white surge to the GOP?
First, sinking white support for Obama, seen as ineffectual in ending the recession and stopping the loss of jobs.
Second, a growing perception that Obama is biased. When the president blurted that the Cambridge cops and Sgt. James Crowley “acted stupidly” in arresting black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates — a rush to judgment that proved wrong — his support sank in white America and especially in Massachusetts, where black Gov. Deval Patrick joined in piling on Crowley. Deval is now in trouble, too.
Then there was Obama’s appointment of Puerto Rican American Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her militant support for race and ethnic preferences and her decision to deny Frank Ricci and the white firefighters of New Haven a hearing on their case that they were denied promotions they won in competitive exams because they were white caused 31 GOP senators to vote against her.
While Massachusetts is Democrat over Republican three to one, Reagan carried the state in 1984 and Hillary Clinton clobbered Obama in the 2008 primary, though the Kennedys were in Obama’s corner. The Scott Brown Democrats were the Hillary Democrats were the Reagan Democrats.
But if McDonnell, Christie and Brown could roll up large enough shares of the white vote to win in three major states McCain lost, why did McCain lose all three?
Answer: In 2008, the working and middle class had had a bellyful of the Bush-McCain Republicans. They were seen as pro-amnesty for illegal aliens and pro-NAFTA, when U.S. workers had watched 5 million manufacturing jobs disappear in a decade — and reappear in China. They were willing to give Obama a chance because Obama had persuaded them by November he was not just another big-spending utopian liberal.
So what have Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi been doing for a year? Crafting a federal takeover of health care with a vast plan that provides coverage for the uninsured — most of whom are minorities — while sticking it to Medicare recipients, 80 percent to 90 percent of whom are white.
Immigrants are 21 percent of the uninsured, but only 7 percent of the population. This means white folks on Medicare or headed there will see benefits curtailed, while new arrivals from the Third World, whence almost all immigrants come, get taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. Any wonder why all those Tea Party and town-hall protests seem to be made up of angry white folks?
What the McDonnell, Christie and Brown victories teach is that the GOP should stop listening to the Wall Street Journal and start listening to these forgotten Americans.
An end to affirmative action and ethnic preferences, an end to bailouts of Wall Street bankers, a moratorium on immigration until unemployment falls to 6 percent, an industrial policy that creates jobs here and stops shipping them to China appear a winning hand in 2012.
Obama is on a trajectory to lose a sizable number of black middle-class votes, too, in my opinion. Given his policies, it will be the end result of the old human practice of voting one’s pocketbook.
The only thing that could prevent such an outcome is a concerted effort on both sides to engage in identity politics. I hope conservatives don’t engage in this.
Well, Pat is on to something here, and he’s echoing what people like John Judis and Thomas Byrne Edsall are writing at The New Republic as well. But it is more complicated. The opposition to Obama is not talking about immigration, Prof Gates, Sotomayor, firefighters, affirm action, etc. And the opponents of health care reforms aren’t talking about the illegal immigrant provisions is simply untrue. They’re talking about fighting “socialism” and saying don’t tread on me. Why does pro-white advocacy, “white populism” if you will, always seem to take this form?
He’s losing other ethnicities too, not just whites. I know lots of black people who are very disillusioned (myself included) at his total continuance of Bush’s failed policies. First and foremost the travesty of the health care “reform” and the wars in the Middle East. Running up the deficit, Wall St. bailouts, continued civil liberties violations, the list goes on.
Has Obama Lost White America?… good old Pat
@lynn…ditto. A lot of us “non-whites” see a sell-out or worse
What we’ve seen in Washington is the merger of soft-Communism and soft-Fascism into a hardened Globalizationist agenda that features some of the worst characteristics of each being pursued by both the wealthy elite and the insular, delusionally-utopian, infantile left-wing intelligentsia.
When you add on top of their sinister, bipartisan betrayal the fact that they are printing money by the ton to pay for their agenda and pay off their cronies — which necessarily leads to the fascist deployment of troops around the world to keep the dollar propped up — what emerges is a portrait of a profoundly selfish, profoundly evil and epically incompetent “establishment” that is far too morally stunted, greedy and power-mad to be trusted with he reins of power ever again.
What has become of America?
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/pdx/1442403975.html
It’s perfectly ok for the Right to engage in identity politics, the Left has done this for the past century. Obama could lose on the economy and the war IF the GOP could nominate a nonlunatic, not a fundie, not an anti-abort, not another religious warmonger. We need much more Ayn Rand and much less Jesus Christ in the GOP. We also need someone to stand up to Israel, which the Randians inconsistently support.
Annually, the U.S. Dept. of State issues over 150,000 Green Cards via a Lottery System. I am talking about legal immigration here.
Now, just think for a moment.
Over 20% young Americans do not have a full-time job right now.
That means, the U.S. government is actually inflating its unemployment crisis by giving Green Cards to over 150,000 foreigners — half of whom do not speak English at all and do not understand or appreciate the American form of government.
Any foreigner giving birth in America makes the newborn an American citizen automatically when the newborn’s parent(s) are here temporarily or illegally.
The U.S. government intentionally keeps its borders porous so that illegals may come here and take jobs at a wage that American citizens cannot afford to live by.
Whole immigration issue boils down to the myth that, if the U.S. government does not allow both legal and illegal immigration, there will not be enough wage-earning young workers to cover the ever increasing costs of the Ponzi schemes such as Medicare and Socialist Security that the U.S. government runs.
As far as I know, American government had officially ended slavery in America before any other nation on earth ended slavery on its soil.
Yet, American government continues Affirmative Action to compensate for slavery when almost all of the Affirmative Action beneficiaries are not at all descendants of former slaves.
American government runs gargantuan budget deficits.
Yet, American government doles out billions of tax-payers’ dollars in foreign aid to Middle East and Haiti.
American government claims to be a competitive capitalist system.
Yet, American government bails out General Motors and Chrysler.
American government should be fair in its treatment of people who have and who have not everything that they want.
Yet, American government gives money to failing banks and insurance companies so that their upper management can continue to receive annual bonuses and perks.
The Republicans always talk about cutting spending and waste in the government.
Yet, Republicans are the one who voted for creation of the U.S. Dept. of Education and the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security to increase the size of the American government.
“Negro” is a Spanish word simply meaning black.
It does not at all mean something bad or horrible.
Yet, we are required to use a term such as African American in America when we very well know that Africa is not a country, rather a continent, which has the proportionate share of white and fair-skinned population.
Hardesty, I wouldn’t see anything wrong with more of the Prince of Peace in the GOP.
The $64,000,000,000 (adjusted for inflation and the falling dollar) question is: CAN the Republicans nominate a non-loon in 2012???
Mr buchanan
Next time on Morning Joe when someone blames all the problems in the US on the last 8 years of the Bush administration. Please ask them how much worse it would be if the left would have been charge. after all the left always seems to spend more money and raise the tax rate higher than the right. Maybe we would not have been in Irac yet but by now Hussain would have his WMD so sooner or later we would have had to go there anyway, I’m sure there would have been 9-11 and likely much more.
Once again Pat is RIGHT ON THE MONEY. I am a conservative but also a populist. I am sick of all our products being manufactured in China, while unemployment skyrockets because all the jobs went there. I am also sick of republicans gleefully supporting more free trade and more outsourcing. That is a LOSING position. Also, NO MORE IMMIGRATION until we get unemployment way down. If Republicans want to win in 2010, 2012 they need to be out in front as the party AGAINST FREE TRADE with third world countries. They need to be seen as the party FOR THE LITTLE GUY, just like Teddy Roosevelt. How about also being for MORE TRADE SCHOOLS all across the nation as a way to train kids who are not going to college.