Posted on 10/08/2021 6:14:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
Here's a jarring thought: Most political analysts, and most political strategists for our two political parties, have been operating off flawed data and flawed assumptions. The result has been one political surprise after another, and the election of the two most unsatisfactory presidents, in the minds of many voters, since Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan in the 1850s.
The flawed data has been apparent for some years, since a June 9, 2016, column by New York Times election analyst Nate Cohn. As he recently reprised in a Twitter thread, his argument was that there are more noncollege white voters in the electorate than most analysts, relying on exit polls, believed.
Cohn pointed to other data sources -- the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, and the voter file data compiled by the Democratic firm Catalist -- that showed more noncollege white voters than the exit poll.
Cohn's column, as I noted at the time, was buttressed by an earlier series of articles by Sean Trende in RealClearPolitics. Together, they undermined the theory that the 0bama Democrats created an ascendant and growing majority coalition of college-educated white people and racial minorities. And the theory that Republicans, by relying on the declining number of noncollege white people, were headed for permanent minority status.
Nevertheless, practical politicians took little notice. Democrats assumed that Hillary Clinton would inherit President Barack 0bama's voters and add feminists enthused about the first female following the first Black president. Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio advocated the legalization of illegal immigrants, hoping that would attract Hispanic voters to cross party lines.
But none of them were elected president. Behind their erroneous conclusions were not just flawed data, but flawed assumptions. It was assumed that Hispanics would remain an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc, as Black people had since 1964, due to rampant racial discrimination, and that out of something like racial solidarity, they would recoil against Republicans who called for immigration restrictions.
That hasn't happened. In 2020, after five years of Donald Trump's rasping rhetoric, Hispanic voters, like noncollege white voters four years before, trended toward Trump (and Republican) all across the country. The trend has continued: The tide of illegal border crossings has apparently turned the more than 90% Hispanic Rio Grande Valley from Democratic to Republican. This suggests that the whole post-1970 enterprise of including Hispanics in racial quota programs was based on the false assumption that their experiences will mirror those of Black Americans. It looks as if they come closer to resembling the experiences of Italian or Polish Americans.
Flawed assumptions also worked against Clinton in 2016. It was assumed that she would carry "blue wall" Upper Midwestern states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa that had been mostly casting Democratic electoral votes in the 1990s and 2000s, largely thanks to white noncollege voters outside their million-plus metropolitan areas. It was assumed that the larger than usual percentage of such voters supporting the first Black president in 2008 and 2012 would have no difficulty voting to break the glass ceiling.
This ignored the reason why those voters had favored 0bama. As I have argued, 0bama's Midwestern strength in the region owed much to both Republican and Democratic voters whose political heritages made them inclined to think it would be good for America to elect a Black president.
Republicans there remembered their party was formed there to stop the spread of slavery, and that Midwestern Republicans played key roles in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Democrats there remembered that their industrial unions went out of their way to assure equal rights for Black people at some risk to their standing with other members.
So, the "blue wall" fell and remains in tenuous shape, and not, as some Democrats explained, because two-time 0bama voters were too racist to vote for Clinton.
But identifying their political opponents as racists, however scant the evidence, seems to be central to many liberals' self-image. Ruy Teixeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority, last week noted, "the firm belief that Democrats' working class problem is solely confined to whites and that white working class voters are so racist/reactionary that it is a badge of honor to ignore them." "This," he adds with wry understatement, "is highly questionable as a matter of political strategy and arithmetic."
The fact is that both parties, with their skewed pictures of the electorate, are failing to maximize their appeal: Trump Republicans from their scorn for college-educated liberals, and the anti-Trump Democrats from their contempt for those they consider beneath them. Two presidential elections decided by 77,000 and 42,000 votes, a narrowly divided Congress and a low level of presidential effectiveness are the results.
“The fact is that both parties, with their skewed pictures of the electorate, are failing to maximize their appeal: Trump Republicans from their scorn for college-educated liberals…”
Huh? I have an advanced degree and I don’t understand his point.
“The fact is that both parties, with their skewed pictures of the electorate, are failing to maximize their appeal: Trump Republicans from their scorn for college-educated liberals, and the anti-Trump Democrats from their contempt for those they consider beneath them.”
I’m clueless regarding how to reach college-’educated’ liberals, as they simply HATE America.
Agree on the second one...they DESPISE us, and, at some point, people beyond our small world will start to figure that out (and that may be happening, given Biden’s diving approval rating).
Really much simpler.
Dead voters don’t do exit polls.
Barone hasn’t written an article in years that wasn’t anything more than word salads.
Barone doesn’t get carried away. He’s one of us.
Don’t forget the Ghost voters, which are different from dead voters, because Ghost voters never exusted to then die in the first place. 🙂
This is true. The “elite” despise the “deplorables.” They view “deplorables” as subhuman who need to be controlled at the least and exterminated if necessary.
On the other side of the coin the “deplorables” have nothing in common with the wokester “elite” class and similarly despise them, their lust for control and their “Karen” attitudes.
I don’t know how it’s possible to appeal to both groups simultaneously.
If the “deplorable” class would just drop the “muy candidate ain’t pure” test and not allow the media to play them like a fiddle with the crazier conspiracy trash, the “deplorables” could steam roll the wokesters as there are a lot more “deplorables” than “elites.”
college-educated liberals are the true irredeemables.
Barone is worthless - probably always was. I used to think his analysis insightful, but even the blind could now see that what he was analyzing was a lie.
From his quotes above, you can see that he absolutely does not comprehend Trump or his supporters. He is a political pundit who cannot even recognize campaigning. Trump’s rallies had not been seen in this country in many decades, and are what used to be the basis of politics.
This is my kind observation. I think it is more likely that Barone has a scotch glass permanently attached to his right hand and is looking to be invited to a cocktail party.
English majors.
“ I think it is more likely that Barone has a scotch glass permanently attached to his right hand and is looking to be invited to a cocktail party.”
I considered that, and a stroke too.
I think it’s funny how he writes “Obama” as “0bama”, using a zero instead of the letter “O”.
I know he means liberal English, Education, and Gender Studies students, but what is the way he thinks Trump can appeal to them? He gives no example or help—he just says that those liberals are ‘prime for the picking.’
I don’t see it.
Barone is not what he once was, at least in my mind.
I feel like I just wasted a few minutes of my life reading this word salad.
Why can’t writers just get to the point? Do they get paid by the word or something.
Most articles I read can be summarized in one first paragraph so the reader can then read on if they want more details. Has the art of writing fallen so far as to make this worthy of print?
Barone is just providing cover for the rigging of elections.
True, but we had Trump, one of the all-time greats in between them.
“It was assumed that Hispanics would remain an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc, as Black people had since 1964, due to rampant racial discrimination”
FALSE.
Blacks remained Democrats because they were given welfare for not working.
Had blacks cared about discrimination, they would have PUNISHED Democrats for supporting it since the founding of the country.
Barone is full of bs. Pundits are wrong because there’s more and more ballot fraud going on. Can’t predict that.
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