The Siren Song of the Non-White Vote

The Democrats’ most influential pollster, David Shor, has been in the news lately with his report on how Kamala Harris botched the 2024 election. Lots of interesting stuff, but one particular item in Shor’s analysis requires refutation for encouraging Republicans’ worst, stupidest, most mathematically illiterate idea about how to win elections. To wit: their endless quest to win the non-white vote.

I wouldn’t mention it, except the GOP is already diving headlong into this self-destructive behavior without any inveigling by a sneaky, socialist Obama pollster.

It is a fact that whites are the only ethnic group that ever votes majority Republican. By any rational calculus, therefore, Republicans’ sole objective every election should be driving up the white vote (for liberals, “the oppressor vote”), both as a share of the GOP voters and as a share of the electorate. It’s great if minorities vote for you, too, but that’s not what wins elections.

Instead, the geniuses of my party have decided to be the living embodiment of the joke about a guy selling apples at a loss, who explains he’s going to make it up with volume.

If you’re not winning 51% of the vote, you’re losing, Republicans.

Here’s Shor’s honey pot for the clueless:

“But if you look among Hispanic and Asian voters, you see these enormous double-digit declines. To highlight one example: In 2016, Democrats got 81% of Hispanic moderates. Fast-forward to 2024; Democrats got only 57% of Hispanic moderates.”

[GOP consultants, spokesmen and donors doing cartwheels] Yay! We won (at most) 43% of the “moderate” Hispanic vote. Now if we could only double the volume of Hispanic voters …

First, that stat reminds me of the headlines in the 1980s constantly warning about the explosion of AIDS in heterosexuals:

— People magazine, 1985: AIDS “poses a growing threat to heterosexuals.”

— The Washington Post, 1986: “The number of heterosexual AIDS patients more than doubled in 1985.”

— The New Internationalist, 1987: “[AIDS] is spreading rapidly amongst heterosexuals.”

Yes, the rate doubled, by going from one case to two.

Similarly, the GOP’s Hispanic vote went from a whopping 19% in 2016 to 43% (at most) in 2024. I can’t emphasize this strongly enough, Republicans: That’s losing.

Second, Shor strongly implies that whites had nothing to do with Trump’s victory because Harris “did exactly as well as Hillary Clinton” among white voters.

In fact, however, the big story of the 2024 election is that whites increased their share of the electorate for the first time since 1992. As NPR put it, 71% “might be the most important number of the election,” representing the white portion of the electorate. For whites to reverse their decades-long decline “is eye-popping and a big reason for Trump’s win.”

The GOP’s unrequited love of minorities has never worked, and it’s embarrassing. Suddenly, we find them championing AOC-lite policies, like emptying the jails, amnesty, affirmative action, menthol cigarettes and whatever the Platinum Plan was. All of this is HATED by the 71% of the electorate that likes them, and impresses, on a good day, 5% of the 30%. (Five percent being minorities who vote GOP, despite Democrat bribes; and 30% being the minority share of the electorate.)

But until Trump (2016 and 2024, anyway), Republicans studiously ignored white voters. Where else are they going to go — in the words of political savant Jared Kushner, just before Trump blew the 2020 election by losing only one demographic compared to 2016: whites.

For the GOP to obsess over groups that vote majority Democrat isn’t just a waste of time, it’s a suicide mission. As Democrats rush headlong into making themselves a party dedicated to hating white people, surprisingly enough, they’re losing white voters.

Joe Biden chose his vice president because she’s black (half — but good enough). He chose his Supreme Court nominee because she’s black. He chose two-thirds of his judicial nominees because they weren’t white. He chose his press secretary because she’s black. (And a lesbian! And an immigrant! A trifecta!) He chose his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because he’s black (and promised to discriminate against white men).

And so on.

That’s why, even as the country has rapidly transformed into one that is vastly less white, the share of Americans who identify as Republican has increased.

Pollsters explain this white flight from the Democratic Party with reference to what they call the “Racial Resentment Scale” and I call the “Equality Before the Law Scale.” (It’s a rule that white people must always be “resentful”, “phobic” and “fearful,” while minorities are “proud,” “brave” and “resilient.”)

Respondents are asked to agree or disagree with these four statements:

1. Irish, Italian and Jewish ethnicities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

3. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

4. It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough: If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.

Come to think of it, instead of the “Equality Before the Law Scale,” I think I’ll call it the “Not Willing To Lie to Pollsters Scale.”

Whites aren’t that bad, Republicans. Maybe you should stop being embarrassed that they vote for you.

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