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This was not an ordinary election https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
A contest that should have broken us out of politics as usual instead saw a hardening of the same political dynamic that settled over us after the Dixiecrats completed their flight into the GOP. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
So, what happened? People who depend on a culture of white supremacy for their dignity, their religious identity or their careers, voted Republican. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Blacks and Native Americans, who are the prime scapegoats of white supremacy, voted almost unanimously against Trump. Everybody else split based almost entirely on their relationship to race. That’s the 2020 election in a nutshell. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Winning margins for Democrats were higher the farther those voters were from states that failed to outlaw slavery prior to Lincoln’s election. Those states include Utah, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kansas and Kentucky. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
The urban/rural split in this election was unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times. Republicans lost 48 of America’s 50 largest cities, carrying only Oklahoma City and Tulsa, each by tiny margins. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
This Democratic dominance now extends with few exceptions down through the second 50 largest cities as well, even though many of those “cities” are pure suburbs like Plano, North Las Vegas, Hialeah and Jersey City. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Biden won counties producing well over 70% of America’s GDP while Republicans dominated the nation’s poorest counties, as long as they are overwhelmingly white. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
On income, whites were split into two tiers. Trump support was highest among the small number of whites at the pinnacle of wealth and the mass of whites at lower income levels, the same coalition that powered the Confederacy and its “Copperhead” allies in the North.
Republicans now win Beverly Hills and rural Kentucky. The GOP is literally the Beverly Hillbilly Party. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Down at the precinct level, Republicans often won more than 90% in precincts that are extremely poor and overwhelmingly white, precincts in places like Harlan Co., KY and Rusk Co., TX. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Where white people live in small, isolated communities, with limited contact with anyone unlike them, like the white belt of SE New Mexico or eastern Tennessee, Republicans dominated. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Democrats only matched these near-unanimous outcomes in precincts that are overwhelmingly black, on reservations, or in a few racially diverse big city precincts. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
No issues beyond the role of white nationalism moved voters in this election. Republicans didn’t even bother assembling a platform. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
Where referendums placed specific issues on the ballot, like drug legalization and the minimum wage, voters broke against type. Progressive priorities passed in Mississippi, Florida and South Dakota while mostly failing in California. This election wasn’t about issues.
Our problem is that, just like Nazism, white nationalism is not a negotiable position, subject to political horse-trading or compromise. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
With a few exceptions we remain locked in much the same racial and geographical divide that fed the Civil War. Needless to say, this is bad. https://www.politicalorphans.com/our-most-dangerous-election/
All we won in last week was a chance to fight another day.
