The Left, the 2020 Election, and Race

matloff

A few months ago, in an e-mail exchange with a dear progressive Latina friend, I mentioned that I would vote for neither Biden nor Trump. I also pointed out that as a Californian, my vote doesn’t matter, since California will certainly choose Joe B. As she knows I too am a progressive, she replied, “No, you must vote for Biden. We need a landslide count, to repudiate Trump.”

My friend of course was not referring to Trump’s environmental record, or even his position on health care. No, you all know the issue she had in mind: Race.

The Left views Trump as a racist, pure and simple. I disagree, but the point is that this is how the election was perceived by the Left.

As Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post put it last Friday on NPR (emphasis added):

…this election is not just a choice between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, but it’s a choice between American democracy and white supremacy. And I think that if we are going to have these two overlapping – these two camps that are overlapping but not joining, as David said, if we’re going to have them come together, have this nation come together, we must as a nation talk about the role of race in our politics and in our society. The longer we ignore the role of race at play, the longer these divisions are going to go on and the deeper they will get.

In Capehart’s eyes, we have 70 million white supremacists in our midst. Yet he ignored David Brooks’ points just before his:

…I expected a 10-point Biden win. It didn’t come. The electorate surprised us in all sorts of ways – Republicans picking up seats in the House, Trump getting more non-white voters than any Republican in 60 years, gay voter – the gay vote for Trump or for Republicans doubling.

 

This putatively racist president actually increased his support among people of color and other minorities. The Left cannot stand something so diametrically counter to their narrative.

The Asian-American Left was exasperated by Trump voters among their co-ethnics, especially the Chinese. “Trump calls Covid-19 ‘the China Virus’! You must vote him out!” They cannot see that pocketbook and security issues might be top priority for those turncoats, and that maybe they don’t think the term “China Virus” is so terrible anyway.

Trump increased his support among Muslim-Americans, still small yes, but an increase nevertheless. Maybe the pocketbook and security issues concerned them the most too, and maybe some of them remember that that infamous list of seven majority-Muslim countries in Trump’s travel ban had originally been compiled by the Obama/Biden administration.

And most devastating to the Left’s narrative of all, the Hispanics! Trump got increased support among them too. Ah, the Left would say, but there is a REASON, explained in a New York Times article, “The Macho Appeal of President Trump.” It was pointed out to me by a Leftist trying desperately to defend the narrative. See, he says, it’s not that Latinos like Trump’s policies, no.

It’s an excellent article…Oh, wait, hold the phone! Isn’t that claim about the Latino vote…uh…racist? Racial stereotyping?

And if Trump himself had made such a claim, the Times, CNN, NPR and so on would say “In an effort to appeal to his white supremacist base,Trump tweeted today without evidence that Latinos care more about machismo than about real issues.” But no, here the NYT says it, and it’s not racist at all, according to the Left. On the contrary, to them, the NYT article shows that the Left’s narrative was right after all.

It’s become tiresome to always follow and/or preface my remarks like these by the disclaimers: No, I didn’t vote for Trump; yes, race IS an important topic, no,, I did not support the travel ban, etc. That’s why I wrote my blog post on not voting for either man, and gave it a handy TinyURL tag, https://tinyurl.com/yb7xkn29.

But I do care about careful discourse, and believe it to be vital to a functioning democracy. Call me quaint.

44 thoughts on “The Left, the 2020 Election, and Race”

  1. I know many non-whites who voted for Trump. They voted for him because some now perceive the New Democratic Party as elitist and it is.

    While Trump may be a rich businessman, his changes to the H1-b, promotion of American made products and limiting illegal immigration have benefitted all working class Americans, no matter what their background. Who cares if he is rude? Know anybody from NYC that isn’t?

    I grew up as a Democrat, in a 100% Democrat family and I always had a strong dislike for the Republicans. Over the last couple decades it has become clear that the New Democrat party is even more anti worker, than the Republicans. And now I can honestly say, I can’t stand the Democrats even more than the Republicans. They have pretty much lost me, and that wasn’t easy.

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  3. Half my family voted for Biden, the other half voted for Trump. I wrote in Tulsi. The Trump voters agreed that Trump was a liar, a braggart , A huge embarrassment etc. but they thought the Dems would be more destructive to the country, They believed that our slide into identity politics, open borders ( see the Dem party Platform) critical race theory / implicit bias trainings permeating our schools, , hostility to view point diversity on our campuses etc was a much greater threat to our democracy. They weren’t racists, bigots, or fascists.

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  4. I cannot recall a post of yours that I have read where I didn’t learn something. As usual, you offer a breeze of realism that’s always a breath of fresh air.

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  6. Thank you, as always, for your well-thought-out well-constructed piece. I must say, however, that I don’t agree with some parts of it. You are missing, I believe, the issue of misogyny. It’s not just machismo, it’s Trump’s condescension toward women, preferring them only for roles where they are eye candy and to show that he isn’t misogynist which he is. He can, of course, be frequently found with Melania, Hope Hicks & his daughter Ivanka, all of whom are his eye candy. Misogyny is rampant in IT and found in all cultures and ethnic groups.

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    • Well then, since you brought it up,
      I was reading The Guardian a few years back, and in the discussion of misogyny crept in … misandry. “white privilege” became “white male privilege” which became “our problem is white men”.
      You can see how that’s not going to be a winning message, eh? Particularly with those in decade 3, of Ds’ “bigger pie” not showing up. Nor “service” jobs, which turned out to be far fewer, of the variant “Do you want fries with that?” and certainly not as stable or providing the same wages nor benefits. Aka, millions of “those left behind”.
      Overlay that with messaging that says our poverty isn’t evenly distributed across races or ethnicity, nor wage rates, nor opportunity, nor [etc.] Are we a better country if we have the same disparities but distributed across races, ethnicities and gender, is that our goal?

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    • What about the videos of Joe Biden during from the US Senate chamber showing his strange behavior toward young women and girls? The Tara Reid allegations? Not excusing Trump but there is plenty of inappropriate behavior in both camps.

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  7. I believe in using an evidence-based scientific approach for problems such as epidemiology, and is difficult to forgive Trump for politicizing standard disease-control measures.

    The freedom to not wear a mask in a crowded place at this time is not equivalent to the freedom to carry around a firearm, it is equivalent to carrying that firearm in a crowded place and randomly firing it into the air at random intervals.

    I voted for Biden because I was more worried about Trump’s handling of the pandemic than I am about his handling of H1B, and I live in a battleground state so sitting it out was not an option.

    Evidence-based and not emotion-based arguments should be the standard starting place for all issues, including climate change and immigration.

    I only wish that robust evidence-based arguments would be used for the H1B issue as well, as opposed to the “How to Lie With Statistics” approach that seems to be popular.

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    • To paraphrase a couple of famous statesmen, “You’re entitled to make your own arguments, but not entitled to make your own science.” Sadly, that is exactly what BOTH sides have done. Lots of scientists have said we should open the schools, for instance, but the Dems refused because they want to hit Trump with it.

      And those are the same Dems who will bring you phony H-1B “reform” next year. He has already said he will bring in Staple a Green Card. And many H-1B critics will praise it.

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    • With the MSM’s support no science that didn’t follow the lockdown/mask/6 foot agenda was given a fair airing. Usually being deep 6’d by social media which has zero medical cred.
      There are examples of what worked and what didn’t but the states picked the lockdown approach.
      If there is a real villain my vote is for Cuomo. He sent Covid seniors to elder care homes where a lot of them died. In my opinion he should be sued into poverty by the relatives of those victims. And to top it off he has reportedly said he wont take a vaccine developed under Trump’s presidency. Evidence based? MSM et al only use the “evidence” that supports their bias. And we all get to stay home, mask up, and shut up.

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  8. The hordes of non-Whites who voted for Trump makes it even more clear that he lost due to massive fraud in the vote by mail in urban areas of the battleground states.

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  9. So apparently it wasn’t about race, even for minorities. It was probably more economic, about jobs, for all those people out of work due to covid, white and minority. These people were more impacted than white collar office workers. I responded at one point to a BLM tweet by a black man, saying we had to get rid of Trump because of his totalitarian tendencies. His response was that it made no difference, it would still be racism. For many minority and working class people the greater issue may be economic. Having more or less abandoned the working class and hitched their wagon to ethnic and identity politics, this may come as a big surprise to the left. My fear is that the totalitarian threat is still there, especially if a smarter man than Trump appears with the charisma to exploit it. But if the left wants to counter that threat, they’ll have to do it on economic issues, not abstract threats and humanitarian feel good appeals.

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    • You need to take a much closer look at the agenda Harris/Biden is bringing with them. Even if the R’s hold the senate Harris/Biden can still implement a lot of “green agenda” totalitarian rules. How far they can go until the 2022 midterms is the question. And if the MSM and social media continues to bow down to the Left’s agenda without a peep the US will be in full police state sooner than you think. Some states (California, New York, Washington, etc) are leading the way. Watch what their governor’s roll out as they will likely be the breeding grounds for the next wave of Federal takeover that started with the ironically misnamed Patriot Act.

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  10. Perhaps some Chinese Americans, Muslim Americans, and Hispanics voted for Trump because they have racist views about Harris.

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    • Actually, it is African Americans, more specifically, descendants of African slavery in America that despise Kamala Harris because she pretends (lies) that she was brought up in a segregated society as the African Americans were. It’s false. She lived a privileged life with both her parents being PhD researchers making a good living. After her parents divorced, Kamala spent significant time in Canada being raised by her mother.
      Kamala was brought in not to win the Black vote, but to in fact win the White liberal suburbanite vote. White affluent liberals care more about identity politics than any other group.

      Some days Kamala likes to play the Black card, other days she calls herself an Indian. She’s non-white which is fine, but stop comparing her to actual African Americans who have had it bad. She doesn’t fall into that category.

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  11. In other news, the Indian media is celebrating the Biden/Harris win because they are claiming that both of them will remove restrictions on H-1B visas, and also pass legislation that removes country cap quotas for employment based Green Cards. Back to the same ol’ rubber stamp operation like Obama’s administration.

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  12. Theres been quite a lot of hullabaloo about Benford’s law in terms of voting patterns, I was curious if you’ve ever heard of it?

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  13. My first question is, Norm has your Latina friend ever discussed the racism in the Hispanic community?
    That is, how dark-skinned Latinos are sometimes treated badly by light-skinned Latinos?

    Probably not, because the discussion on race is really just limited to white racism – all other is swept under the rug.

    Barring an election revelation, Joe Biden will be president. But in reality, he’ll be forced to step down within 2 years due to his cognitive decline.

    So my second question is this. In the near future, Kamala Harris is President. A young black man is shot by cops and the eyewitness testimony is conflicting.

    However, the cops aren’t white – instead they are:
    – Chinese-Americans in San Francisco OR
    – Cuban-Americans in Miami OR
    – Mexican-Americans in Phoenix OR
    – Korean-Americans in Los Angeles OR
    – East Indian-Americans in Yuba City

    In the next few decades, there are going to be more and more cities where the law enforcement is not majority white. And the same
    will be found with the local government. This is increasingly true in California.

    Who will the Left blame in these cases?

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  15. Speaking of Statistics – What do you think about the Indian (I think his first name is Shiva) on YouTube who has charts that seem to show a break in the voting patterns in battleground areas that look statistically improbable for happening once and downright impossible when it occurs multiple times in different states.

    It shows the vote for Trump in a precinct falling the higher the percentage of Republicans in the precinct.

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    • Unfortunately, that was debunked… they were plotting a quantity that is meaningless unless compared across several states, which they didn’t do…

      It’s mostly large scale ballot harvesting in swing state cities that did Trump in.

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  16. We are so thoroughly conditioned to think of “racism” in terms of “white hostility towards non-whites” that many people can’t conceive of it any other way. Yet a great deal of rhetoric currently coming from the Left — e.g., the narrative of “White Privilege”, and indeed of “Whiteness” in general (try Googling “whiteness” while restricting your search to a mainstream media outlet, like the New York Times or the Washington Post) — is difficult to see as anything other than intense hostility directed towards white people as white people, hostility motivated by a seething resentment over ancient crimes like slavery and Jim Crow. (The fact that much of this rhetoric comes from white people doesn’t change anything, because they see themselves as the good white people, who have redeemed themselves by confessing the sins of…, um…, those other white people).

    It’s useful pull back from a parochial American perspective and try to see things from a world perspective. The thing is, the world has always been filled with conflicts motivated by resentment over ancient crimes. Sometimes these crimes are imaginary, but often they are very real. Either way, nothing good ever comes of it. We need to keep in mind that we are part of the same world as everyone else, and that what happens elsewhere can also happen here.

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