Free Republic

As the reality of President-elect Donald Trump settled in very early Wednesday morning, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes summed up an explanation common to many on the left: The Republican nominee pulled ahead thanks to old-fashioned American racism. But the attempt to make Trump’s victory about racism appears to be at odds with what actually happened on Election Day. Consider the following facts. Twenty-nine percent of Latinos voted for Trump, per exit polls. Remarkably, despite the near-ubiquitous narrative that Trump would have deep problems with this demographic given his comments and position on immigration, this was a higher percentage of those who...

Regardless of the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump's rise will force the Democratic Party to eventually have to address how its elected officials have neglected black Americans, its most loyal constituency. The Democratic Party's worse nightmare happened when Donald Trump reached out to black Americans at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. Trump's outreach was prefaced by challenging blacks to do an honest assessment of their return on investment after 50 years of voting Democrat. The most damning words that Trump spoke were "what the hell do you have to lose" by voting Trump? The last thing Democrats...

Unhinged: A "journalist" who claims he can discern meanings other than those suggested by a man's words has essentially turned his own imagination into his primary source The media’s Donald-Trump-as-racist narrative is apparently unfalsifiable. No matter what Trump does, it’s proof he’s a racist. If he ignores black voters altogether, that makes him a racist. If he appeals for black votes in front of a largely white audience, as he did a few weeks ago, that’s proof that he’s a racist. And if he actually goes to a majority black area to speak at a mostly black church? That’s the...

Black votes matter. If Republicans could get 20 percent of black votes, the Democrats would be ruined. This is highly unlikely, given the approach used by Republicans. However, the point is that Democrats must not only continue to get nine-tenths of black votes, they also need to get a high turnout of black voters on election day. People who expected the election of President Barack Obama to lead to racial healing and a post-racial society failed to take account of the political reality that racial healing and a post-racial society would, at a minimum, reduce black voter turnout. Black votes...

A Thad Cochran campaign call Wednesday afternoon tumbled into disaster when a questioner asked why the Cochran campaign was "harvesting black people" for votes. The call was held to push back against claims from the campaign of Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Cochran's intra-party challenger who contends he won last week's Republican primary runoff election illegitimately by courting the votes of Democrats and African-Americans. But the call was quickly hijacked by callers who later referred to themselves as supporters of McDaniel. One repeatedly interrupted Cochran campaign adviser Austin Barbour. "Quick question," said the caller, who did not identify himself. "Since...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Democratic Party has long maintained a near monopoly on the African-American vote, a claim Republicans hope to tackle by putting on a new face this week in New York. The GOP hails its 2004 delegate pool as its most diverse ever. Minorities make up 796 of the party's 4,853 delegates and alternates -- 16.4 percent overall, a major jump from 10 percent such representation in 2000 and 6.3 percent four years prior. The figure includes 290 African-Americans, as well as 297 Hispanics and 209 other minorities.