OK, I confess I am mystified. An article in The Guardian by Musa al-Gharbi looks at the data now available on voting patterns in the US presidential elections of 2016 compared to 2020. Almost all groups moved towards being more pro-Trump, including both Black men and women, Hispanic men and women, Asian men and women, and white women. The only group that moved away from Trump was white men, with his margin declining from 31% to 23%. It is true that the minority groups overall supported Biden more than Trump, but they did so by smaller margins than they supported Clinton over him in 2016. Some sub=groups of minorities actually favored Trump, including Cuban Americans and Vietnamese Americans. The only sub-group moving away from Trump was Japanese Americans.
In terms of swing states, the move of Hispanics toward Trump gave him Florida and Texas, and the move of Blacks toward him gave him North Carolina. However, the flips of Michigan and Arizona were led by shifts of white men.
As I opened, I really do not know what is going on with all this, although the article noted that most of these trends have been going on for some time, if not especially noticed before.
Barkley Rosser
There is nothing better than an accumulated inventory of broken promises and disappointment to motivate one to reevaluate their political priors. When one expects nothing more than pandering, antagonistic posturing, and bloviating then satisfaction with their political choices is assured.
The white men came back. 🙂
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html
“But pinning Mrs. Clinton’s loss on low black turnout would probably be a mistake. Mr. Obama would have easily won both his elections with this level of black turnout and support. (He would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.)”
OTOH, at first blush then this struck me as an appropriate occasion to just ROTFLMAO.
Thx. Cheers.
White men are more likely to vote for a woman that reminds them of their mom than they are to vote for a woman that reminds them of the gal that dumped them.
IOW. Barbara Bush would have won in a landslide, completely aside from political leanings. Misogyny is a many splintered thing.
[The topic of this thread and a few spare minutes got me looking into the perennially popular John Elway’s politics and I found a pearl in an unexpected clam.]
https://www.si.com/nfl/broncos/news/denver-broncos-gm-john-elway-breaks-silence-with-statement-on-police-brutality-racism
[The 2nd entry under “comments.”]
Gandalf the orange
Jun 6
Until you accept that any issues with police is a symptom and not a cause, nothing will improve. Jobs!!! 1) How about the players and the owners take 10% of their salary/profits and start ups developmental league And pay those players $75,000 per year. Put those leagues smack dab in the worst areas. This would literally give jobs to thousands of mostly Afro-Americans. 2) pressure companies like Nike to bring there shoe factories back from China and build them in the distressed areas( hello Lebron) . 3) 20% of men and 30% of women in the army are Afro-American. Create a partnership between the NFL/police/army to incentivize those to enter the police academy after service…
We cannot guide our own way into an uncertain future safely if we are constantly being distracted by what is in the rear view mirror. Sure we need to learn from our past, but if we are not satisfied with our present then looking to the past can only illuminate our mistakes. How to get it done correctly is still elsewhere to be found. Eyes forwards and pay attention to where you step.
How to get it done correctly is still elsewhere to be found. Try this:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
[cut-and-paste]
Increase fast food labor costs 50% and consumer prices rise only 12.5% — due to 25% labor costs (Micky D’s). Double (!) more typical firms’ labor costs and prices rise but 12.5% — thanks to 10-15% labor costs (Target, Walgreen’s). Triple (!!!) extreme lowest labor cost firms labor costs and prices could climb only 14% — as low as 7% labor costs (Walmart).
Let’s guess that an average 12.5% increase in prices would cause 10% loss of sales — just to have a number to work with. If most similar businesses were raising prices at the same time there wouldn’t be many places to go for cheaper. With twice the money to burn, enough new low wage largess would work its way back into Micky D’s, Target, Walgreen’s and Walmart’s cash registers to make up for some of 10% sales losses.
The lower 40%’s newly added income and the upper 60%’s subtracted income (lost sales) should reshuffle overall demand somewhat towards the lower end of the consumer price spectrum. High end restaurant sales, for contrast, would not benefit from across the board low wage increases.
[snip]
Ron, you are right about problems with police being a symptom not a cause. I say getting everybody on the same economic level is one way (the best way!) to make the problems go away.
same economic level is one way (the best way!) to make the problems go away.
”
Thanks! this comes to the point. this sums it up. we need the same rules for everyone but the rules have to give everyone an equal chance. for my money it’s not capitalism that destroys equality, it’s the tax code. according to Elizabeth Warren, the wealthy pay about 2% on their net worth in taxes every year through all the different kinds of taxes, payroll tax, income tax, so further, so forth, and so on. By contrast, the poor pay an amount that is 7% of their net worth, that’s just not fair and it just slows down economic output. it’s not productive. it’s not efficient. it just slows down the per capita GDP. it doesn’t work!
our most odious form of inequality is the lack of housing for the poor. we need to tax home construction less but real estate more. the builders Federation posits that 45% of the price of a new home can be traced right back to taxes. all of those taxes should stop so that we can build enough homes for poor people. instead we should tax the theme parks the golf courses and the mansions. you don’t have to have separate tax brackets when you text real estate, because it’s the wealthy who own all the real estate poor people don’t own real estate. Only real property should be taxed. home construction should have an absolute tax break
until we get housing for
everyone
!
Biden won because of a virus. If you think he could have pulled this off absent the pandemic you should consider one of my many lovely bridges for sale.
AS:
Of course, you “can” state this only because of the poorly accentuated polling done which said people woke up. Well the bigots, racists, the “I got mine – “f8ck” the rest of you who have been kicked to the side,” and I am rich and wish no more taxes to level the debt succeeded once again to lie with the assistance of polling who believe the poorly gained results from asking questions. The attitude of the nation will sink the nation and is far greater than a virus. Politicians afraid of “1” person in the White House and a kiss-ass in the Senate.
Don’t tell me of the past. What the “hell” are you going to do going forward – complain of complacency? This is not an issue of economics either which is a result of the former. The turn out was there and a huge turnout to boot from closet bigots and racists.
Run,
The problem of much of the US is not so much just that most of them have their heads up their asses as it is that those damned asses are so tight :<)
At a more visceral level then whether white boys, black boys, or mean girls then one that is possessed of either fear or jealousy is likely to express themselves in cruel intentions towards others, not just those that offend, but also those that they feel safe in offending. Human nature sucks. Greatness is at odds with smallness.
AS,
When you get past our front as a bunch of loud mouth jerks, then behind that you will see that we here in the US are mostly a bunch of no-nothing moderates, far more timid and fearful than our shouting would imply. If not for the associations of his liberal branding, then Joe Biden would be vastly popular. He could hardly be less offensive on his own.
“…getting everybody on the same economic level is one way (the best way!) to make the problems go away…”
[I believe that is a bridge too far. Not even conservatives are wrong about everything. I believe that you will find that even poor people would like the chance to be rich. Incentives do matter, just not more than everything and anything else.
Vast wealth has far too many privileges. Monopoly makes only a fair game, but a very unfair economy. Consolidation creates the greatest disparity in wealth along with emphasizing the advantages of price arbitrage over expenses, particularly labor and regulatory expense in contemporary times. Innovation given to destroying domestic employment and trashing the planet does not lead to a virtuous cycle. Innovation in production methods and products in the course of direct competition is too difficult a struggle for capital to choose to make of its own will whenever there is an easier path to profits.
I believe that our problem is a matter of economic power controlling political power rather than the other way around. This is not to say that full on socialism would be any better. In fact putting both political power and economic power in the same hands amounts to the same thing whether we call it capitalism or socialism. There needs to be a constant tension between these two countervailing powers, which must be kept separate if ordinary people are to have a decent chance in life.]
Ok, it is great that Biden won.
I wish I could be more optimistic about the
rest of the decade.
It would have been far greater if the Dems
had won the Senate, but maybe a miracle
will happen in Georgia.
Otherwise it was a Pyrrhic Victory, one that
will only lead to further angst & disruption,
although some grief will hopefully be avoided,
by preserving ACA at least. The hugely harmful
polarization will continue & no good will
come from that.
If we rejoin the Paris Accords, maybe
we can postpone Global Climate Collapse
for a few decades. But Mitch McConnell
& the gang will probably put a stop to that.
Best bet is to secure a mid-term Dem sweep
of the Congress in 2022, assuming that things
go as hoped on January 21, 2021.
@Fred,
Agreed that we should not expect much good going forwards. That is not the contemporary American way.
OTOH, I am content just to get rid of Trump. Political polarization and conflicts of interests have always been with us from the start. But how many times have we had a POTUS that was overtly sympathetic to the cause of Nazis, Klansmen, and Birchers? There have been none since Abe anyway, although before Abe that was mostly what our party was.
Many of Trump’s supporters were just weary from the pompous lies of the globalization cheerleaders. Trump has been their revenge. Most of us cosmopolitan pseudo-intellectuals work in professions that are largely insulated from the hollowing out of the US economy that came from globalization.
Pre-WWII globalization was different back when US workers were taking other nations’ manufacturing jobs away from them. The only manufacturing job that I ever had was in the first summer after I graduated from high school. My dad worked in a Sylvania plant for just one day. I got no other relatives that ever worked in manufacturing. Cabbies, mine workers, highway construction, farmers, soldiers, cops, truck drivers, and IT workers cover most them.
I worked in IT for a utility company, a few finance firms, and state government. We got teachers here at AB just as we did at EV. At these blogs we have heard from doctors and nurses and accountants and financial middle men and even a cab driver as well as a few actual economists, but I don’t recall any factory workers standing up for their POV on globalization here or at EV.
The Republican Party may remain the only refuge for Nazis, Klansmen, and Birchers, but without Trump then they will not get so uppity. Of course it is bizarre enough that the Republican Party has become the party of factory workers.
Only a banker could believe that the political polarization in the US is only about racism.
So, was the Third Reich just about racism directed against Jews? It should be well known that Hitler rose on the back of economic injustice which was the result of harsh reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, just as Keynes had predicted. The Jews, who were well represented in the bureaucracy of the Wiemar Republic, were convenient scapegoats and targets of displaced aggression. Similarly, Jim Crow was the natural response to the US Federal Government just walking away from Reconstruction policies after the Republican Party had achieved its political objectives.
Revenge is a dish best served cold even if it cannot be served to those that actually offended. Hate and anger must be expressed, better upon those that we might have power over rather than to those that have power over us.
Understanding human nature does not actually make it more difficult to be a humanist. Understanding human nature makes it more difficult to be a fool. Fools make very poor humanists in the long run.
I read that 30% of the electorate
believe that Trump was cheated
our of a win, while 60% are sure
that Biden won fair and square.
How do we convince the 30% not
to believe all the Trump BS and move on,
get over it, accept Biden/Harris as the rightful
winners? Or are they truly a lost cause?
Just as important, how do we get the GOP
members in Congress to do likewise?
Fred,
There is NO direct nor timely way to fix commitment bias. The harder that you punch against it then the harder it springs back.