election. With the declaration Friday,
November 6, three days after the election, that Biden won Pennsylvania’s
20 electoral votes the toxic Donald
Trump presidency finally ends. The victory of Biden and his running mate,
California Senator
Kamala
Harris, means for the first time the United States has elected a woman to
one of its two highest offices. Those are the facts, but hardly the whole
story.
For all the encouragement we take from the fact Trump is on
his way out, we recognize
Trumpism likely isn’t dead. He won over 70,000,000
votes with the counting continuing, and his party may control the senate,
depending on what happens in the Georgia Senate runoff elections. Republicans
unexpectedly picked up seats in the House. In the immediate aftermath of the
election, Trump fired off a long list of false claims some broadcast networks
wouldn’t air.
His team launched a plethora of lawsuits that appear meritless.
In short, he’s up to all his old tricks. The full-throated rejection of Trump
and his enablers we’d hoped for didn’t happen.
The nation may face four years of divided government in which
gridlock appears the
most likely characteristic of life in Washington. The fact
Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell know each other well offered a
glimmer of hope for deal making, but McConnell’s inherent capacity for
obstructionism left most saying, “Don’t hold your breath.”Whatever lies ahead, the election results
left a bitter aftertaste that requires addressing on several fronts.
The White Folks Problem
We don’t have all the numbers yet, so precisely analyzing the
demographic aspects of the 2020 election must wait.What we know is that Trump again won a strong
majority of white voters, 57% in one set of exit polls. In 2016, we gave these
voters a pass since few
knew what Trump was, the Democratic candidate was the
roundly unpopular Hillary Clinton, and Trump had no meaningful public record. We
can’t give them such a pass in 2020.
Since 2016, Trump has revealed himself for what he is – a
racist, white nationalist who disdains the brown nation the United States increasingly
becomes each day. Trump’s opponent this
time went into the election with a positive favorability rating. He’s assembled
a record as president littered with racist acts and statements no one can
credibly claim they don’t understand. Given that, we must ask, what are the
white people who supported Trump voting for?
The answer, we’re afraid, lies in a hateful impulse against
demographic change. Given Trump’s record, statements, and approach, we assume
white people who voted for him, at the very least, prefer arresting the
progress of the last fifty or so years toward a just, equal society. This not-so-charitable
view of white Trump voters will no doubt earn us blowback. But what other
conclusion can we draw? Do we completely disbelieve our eyes and ears?We choose not to do that.Sometimes life requires harsh judgments.
The Black Men Problem
Many have been disappointed that Trump
increased his share of
the African-American vote, almost entirely due to support he got from black
men.Again, the numbers aren’t
conclusive yet, but one exit poll suggested Trump received as much as 20% of
the black male vote. African-American women remained the Democratic Party’s
most reliable constituent group, voting for Biden around 92%. Of course, some
people are asking why so many black men voted for Trump.
The benign, respectable explanations center on (1) Trump‘s
attacks on Biden’s support for the 1994 crime bill that resulted in mass
incarceration of black men for minor drug offenses; (2) Biden’s selection of a
former prosecutor as his running mate; and (3) Trump’s supposed expertise in
business and entrepreneurship. This line of reasoning makes a credible argument
for those wishing not to state cruder explanations. Woodson finds these
explanations credible and feels that it is asking a lot to expect Black men to
support any candidate at a margin greater than 82 percent. In Woodson’s view, it
is entirely
credible for Black men to require Biden to prove to them that his
support for the 1994 crime bill was a “mistake” as he has claimed. Rob feels no
compulsion to avoid harsher judgements. He thinks that some African-American
men find appealing Trump’s bullying,
misogynistic style, with its underlying
philosophy grounded in patriarchy and homophobia. He doesn’t enjoy saying that,
but thinks it may be true based on anecdotal evidence we’ve each collected in
barbershops and on ball fields. Henry believes both explanations bear further
consideration. For him, the interplay between the two may be more complex and
he does not wish to draw a
conclusion now. There’s been a lot of talk about how
America needs racial healing. And we agree that it does. But, according to Rob,
the male vote suggests black America, too, has some internal work it must do on
itself.
The Latino Problem
Biden may have lost Florida and Texas because of his under-performance among
Hispanic voters. He got a lot fewer votes in Miami-Dade
County, Florida than Hillary Clinton did.He also got a lot fewer votes in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas than
Clinton did. Biden’s aides pointed out his success with Latino voters in
Arizona and Nevada.Fair enough, but the
weakness in Florida and Texas illustrated that he didn’t invest in a
comprehensive strategy that took into consideration all aspects of the Hispanic
vote.
The notion of demographic change fueling a permanent
Democratic majority in presidential elections has always rested on the party’s
nominee getting a huge share of the Latino vote. The 2020 election demonstrated
Democrats don’t fully understand all the nuance involved in courting the
Hispanic electorate. That must get fixed – and soon.
We had hoped the 2020 results would produce euphoria. The
elongated count, the pandemic, and apparently not winning the U.S. Senate
prevented that. But, getting rid of Trump is no small feat, especially given
the demographic factors we’ve laid out here. After the last four years, let us
not take our blessings lightly.
