Daniel Thwaites | Where is the blue wave?

Like so many others, I’ve been watching the United States presidential election with a mixture of bemusement and alarm. More than others, I’ve been hoping that the outcome would be determinate, and that is precisely what is happening now – long-drawn-out legal battles and paper-thin margins would be avoided.

Most shocking to me, and requiring examination and explanation, is how well the Republicans have done. Where was ‘the blue wave’? This should have been a ‘bat-up and ketch’ for the Democratic Party, but that hasn’t happened.

Instead, it appears at this point that the electorate have removed the president, but otherwise not really rewarded the Democrats. At the end of the day, with a pandemic raging and a recession afoot, the Republicans have advanced in the House of Representatives and look set to retain the Senate.

Before it’s all pushed down the memory-hole by shiploads of further blathering, let’s recall that the polls and punditry pointed to a Biden blowout. And with the kind of lead projected, he was to have long coat-tails that would usher in a Democratic Senate and a strengthened Democratic House majority.

Just as in 2016 when Hilary Clinton was expected to handily defeat Trump, the reality is turning out to be far more complicated.

For starters, you would think the chattering classes would have learned something from the debacle of 2016, but they have not. After that election, there was a great deal of hand-wringing for a day or two and quite a few expressions of shock about how little the coastal elite who populate the news networks actually know about their fellow citizens.

Again, that ‘awakening’ lasted for a day or two, then evaporated as the press corps swarmed like lemmings to obsess over ‘the-latest-outrageous-thing-Trump-has-said’.

PRESS FLUMMOXED

In particular, the press seemingly has no ability to understand those outside their tribe of liberal internationalism. They are flummoxed by the quirky stubbornness of religious people (the majority) who refuse to sign on to the breezy secular insistence, for instance, that abortion raises no particularly interesting moral issues, or that overturning centuries of tradition by redefining marriage is no big deal.

The Democratic candidate for president I liked most, Andrew Yang, has nailed the problem squarely when he was recently recounting his experience of running for the presidency:

“I would say, ‘Hey! I’m running for president!’ to a truck driver, retail worker, waitress in a diner and they would say, ‘What party?’ And I’d say ‘Democrat’, and they would flinch like I said something really negative or I had just turned another colour or something like that.”

He went on:

“So you have to ask yourself, ‘what has the Democratic Party been standing for in their minds?’ And in their minds, the Democratic Party, unfortunately, has taken on this role of the coastal urban elites who are more concerned about policing various cultural issues than improving their way of life that has been declining for years.”

A fascinating study by Bloomberg News about the donor base of either party concluded that over 70 per cent of donations from the New York Police Department, and from the US Marines (military), went to Trump. Also Trump was the big favourite among farmers and construction workers.

On the other hand, Biden’s popularity was unmatched in Silicon Valley with, for example, 97 per cent of donations from Facebook employees going his way. Wall Street money favoured Biden. And nobody has to ask where the cultural mandarins of Hollywood feel there’s a good return on investment.

Which party, then, respects the aspirations and moral sensibilities of the working class more? That is no longer an easy question to resolve.

I believe the vast sensible majority of the voting public in the United States is deeply sceptical of libertarianism in economics (the traditional infatuation of the Republicans) and of libertarianism in the social realm (the new infatuation of the Democrats), and that therefore neither party represents what most voters want. Which is slightly left of centre on economics, and slightly right of centre on social issues.

I know what you’re thinking: that’s Roman Catholic social teaching. Well, I’m glad we understand each other perfectly.

One theory, popular among very many of my Jamaican friends, is that the persistent overperformance of Trump is because of American ignorance and/or latent racism. I’ve grown progressively sceptical of those explanations of voter behaviour, and those theories become harder to sustain when you dig into the numbers we do have, with all their unreliability fully acknowledged.

After four years of non-stop screeching from every mainstream angle that Trump is the leader of a white supremacist movement, he doubled his share of votes from black women. Admittedly, that’s from a small base, but nonetheless, ‘who would’ve thunk it?’

APPEAL AMONG BLACK MEN

The Democratic Party will also have to sharpen it’s appeal to black men. Among black men, Trump’s share of the vote rose from 13 per cent in 2016 to 18 per cent in 2020. So just about one in every five black guys said ‘no thanks’ to the Democrats.

Among Latinos, the largest minority, perhaps up to 35 per cent decided Trump was the better choice. These are voters who fully understand his position on illegal immigration. Some 31 per cent of Asian-Americans voted for Trump. LGTBQ support for Trump seems to have doubled from 14 per cent in 2016 to 28 per cent. A full 26 per cent of Trump’s vote appears to have come from non-whites.

What are we to make of all this? For one thing, very many people are listening to, but not accepting, the nostrums of the media overlords. As it becomes increasingly clear that Biden will squeak by, it’s also clear that the Democratic Party is out of step with at least half the country.

What might it have looked like if they didn’t have Trump’s glaring personality deficits to rely on? The fact that, aesthetically, he revolted so many? When asked: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”, a full 56 per cent of voters said “Yes” in 2020. For comparison, consider that Reagan romped into a second term with only 44 per cent saying yes to that same question; George W. Bush with 47 per cent; Obama with 45 per cent. Trump managed to blow that incredible advantage, I think, by personally annoying too many people, and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

For those for whom the handling of the pandemic was the top issue, some 41 per cent of voters, Biden won by a three-to-one margin. For the 28 per cent of voters for whom the economy was the top issue, Trump hauled in 80 per cent of the vote.

I believe the Democrats have squeaked by on the basis of Trump’s personal unattractiveness and the pandemic, rather than a really compelling message. They should therefore be careful to not squander this gift.

- Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.