Remember when Donald Trump said, "He'd do great, even better than Mitt Romney did, among black and Hispanic voters"?
Remember how the media pundits all laughed?
Well, it turns out that BOTH were wrong, but the media was even more wrong and probably maliciously wrong.
Trump DID NOT "Do all that great" among those voting blocks, unless "great" means less than 10% of the black vote to you and just under 30% of the Hispanic vote. BUT he did do better than Mitt Romney did, and Romney did better than most previous Republicans had.
A lot of whites don't much like the nearly monolithic voting block that is African-Americans, BUT (1) It hasn't been that long since ethnic Catholics (Irish, Italians, etc.) were a monolithic Democratic voting block as well. It took those groups numerous cases of them being "screwed over" by their own to break that cycle. Why wouldn't it be the same for others?....AND (2) Just because blacks have been historically ill-served by Democrats, yes, even black Democrats, that doesn't mean they're going to support a white candidate they believe may be antithetical to their own interests.
Hispanics are a different breed. Hispanic is NOT a "Race." Moreover, Hispanics come from a wide range of areas with a wide range of views...much like Europeans. America's Cuban community has long been die-hard Conservatives and more likely to vote Republican because they're fervently anti-Communist, Others, gold to other views and hold other issues as primary for themselves.
The problem for Hispanics is that NEITHER major Party seems to know how to talk to them and few politicians from either side have seemed to care much about that.
But because groups tend to vote in a block does not necessarily mean they are voting mindlessly.
The African-American community was once solidly Republican largely because of Lincoln's legacy. They became Democrats after the GOP's hostile takeover of the Democratic Party in the wake of JFK's death.
Prescott Bush (R) and Averell Harriman (D) had been working on a Progressive (Corporatist) takeover of BOTH major Parties since the late 1940s. That re-alignment, often referred to as "Nixon's Southern Strategy," but it was actually the fruition of the Progressive wing of the GOP's hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.
If it marginalized black voters, it also alienated and marginalized America's working class Conservative vote, as well.
Many are STILL coming to terms with that deliberately obscured bit of history even now.
Here's the hope that Trump CAN offer; (1) He is NOT a politician, so he can be inclined to really shake up the system, (2) He's wealthy and made the bulk of his wealth here on domestic projects...he is NOT a globalist, (3) He isn't a real Republican despite the fact that he holds many Conservative views. He seems to know that the Republican Party, especially its "Rockefeller or Country Club-wing" is NOT at all Conservative.
Donald Trump is a wild card, and as such he's as yet an unknown quantity.
IF Trump is a real Conservative and cares about that very Americanist ideology, he may well do more to bring Conservatives across the ethnic/racial/religious lines together and that, more than anything else, would go a long way toward undermining the control of the global Corporate "elite." It would also go a long way to uniting Americans, at least along ideological lines, more so than they are now.
No comments:
Post a Comment