There will be no seventh trial for Curtis Flowers. If the Supreme Court of the United States doesn’t vacate the 2010 conviction in the Flowers case, jaws across America will hit the floor. Mine will be one of them. Curtis is almost sure to get … Continue reading Why there will be no trial seven for Curtis Flowers
By Alan Bean
Like many of you, I switched to a different network on election night whenever a commercial came along (I hate commercials as much as I hate political ads). The talking heads on every station were sounding the same message: due to changing demographics, the Republican Party must reach out to minorities if it is serious about long-term survival.
Democrats won over 90% of the African American vote and close to three-quarters of the Hispanic vote (over 80% if non-Cuban Americans are excluded from the calculation). And this after President Obama largely ignored the criminal justice system (a major problem for black voters) while presiding over the unprecedented mass deportation of undocumented residents.
Obama wins the minority vote (including 62% of the Asian electorate) by sitting back and letting Republicans be Republicans. (more…)
By Alan Bean
The American electorate is more racially divided in 2012 than at any time in the recent memory. This encourages the simple conclusion that white Americans prefer Mitt Romney to Barack Obama because Mitt is white. But a recent report by the Public Religion Research Institute paints a far more complex portrait of the white American voter.
As has been widely reported, white women are about equally divided between the two candidates; it’s the men who break strongly for Romney. In 2008, Barack Obama carried a higher percentage of the white vote (41%) than any Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Moreover, working class whites give Mitt Romney a favorability rating of 45% compared to Barack Obama’s 44%; among college educated whites, both men are favored by 49% of those surveyed. If white America throws its support behind the Republican candidate in tomorrow’s election (as they assuredly will) it has little to do with a birds-of-a-feather firing of mirror neurons.
The white electorate divides sharply along five distinct fault lines: education, gender, age, geography and religion. The Public Religion Research Institute Survey compares the white working class to college educated whites. College educated white voters favor Romney, but by a scant 2 points; the white working class favors Romney by 13 points (48-35).
In other words, when we are talking about “the white electorate” we are primarily talking about white working class voters. In this election, 80% of minority votes will go to the Democrat; Romney will be the overwhelming favorite of the white working class; and white college educated voters will fall somewhere in between these extremes. Since white middle class voters comprise 36% of the voting population, their clout is difficult to exaggerate. White college educated voters account for 21% of the electorate, black voters, 11%, and Latino voters, 13%. (For the poll under discussion 11% of white voters are neither working class or college educated).
As we have seen, white women are far more likely to favor Obama than their brothers, boy friends and husbands; and this applies just as much to the white middle class (41%-41%) as to white college educated women. White working class males, on the other hand, will favor Romney by 27 points (57%-28%). It should be noted, however, that working class males making less than $30,000 divide their votes evenly between Obama and Romney while working class males who have received food stamps in the past two years, favor Obama by a margin of 48% to 36%. The authors of the study use this data to argue that the white working class, contrary to popular opinion, do not always vote against their perceived interests. (more…)
By Alan Bean
An article in the Guardian, a British paper, discusses the challenges the rising tide of Latino voters in the United States poses for the Republican Party. Gary Younge argues that the ill-famed “Southern Strategy” made sense when white Americans comprised 85% of the electorate, but has become problematic in an age when the majority of babies born in the United States are non-white. These babies are almost two decades from voting age, however, so 74% of voters are still white. According to today’s Washington Post poll, Mitt Romney holds a commanding twenty-three-point lead among white voters.
This is the major dilemma for the Republican Party: racially loaded messages may appeal to many white voters, but they lose you minority votes. You can win white votes by railing against the entitlement-addicted 47% and the crime-prone “illegals” who cross the border in search of welfare, but not without giving Latinos and African-Americans a bad name. White racial resentment remains the greatest single force in American politics. The economy tops everyone’s list as an election season concern, but these issues are viewed through a racial lens. Black voters cannot be persuaded that Obama wrecked the American economy; white voters can.
Three-quarters of white evangelicals vote Republican. If you ask them why, they certainly won’t tell you they feel more comfortable voting for a white man. They may say that Obama is a free-spending socialist and we need a president who believes in American capitalism. But most, I suspect, will say it’s all about abortion. Republicans want to stop the Holocaust and Democrats don’t–simple as that. (more…)
Friends of Justice 