Under the cloud of Donald Trump’s election this week, light is being shed on some things that, to be candid about it, make his election more troubling than I thought it was.
No, it wasn’t the economy that was the real issue. Instead, what we now know is this:
Trump didn’t win because Republicans and independents voted for him. Kamala Harris lost because too many Democrats and independents decided not to vote .
Let me explain.
As of yesterday (Thursday), these are the numbers: In 2020, Joe Biden received 81,283,056 total votes from Democrats and independents. Kamala Harris received 69,048,230. This means she received 12,348,868 fewer votes than Joe Biden because that many peopel sat out the election.
Trump even got fewer votes this time than he did in 2020, a little less than a million, but of the 13,069,605 fewer Americans who voted this year compared to 2020, the overwhelming number were Democrats and independents.
Kamala even received a smaller percentage and fewer votes among black and Latino voters than Joe Biden did. In 2020 Biden got 91% black vote. Harris got 83%. He got 63% Latino vote. Harris got 56%.
Those percentages alone defeated her. Had she gotten the percentage Biden got in the black and Latino communities in 2020, she would have won by a larger margin than he did.
The question, of course, is why? Why did so many Democrats and independents sit out this election?
You and I both know the answer. It’s not rocket science. It was misogyny and racism.
Kamala Harris lost the presidency, not because Donald Trump was more popular, but because she was a black woman.
The pundits are already missing this obvious reality. They believe the problem was “messaging.” Harris, they insist, didn’t sufficiently separate herself from an unpopular president, especially on economic policies. She didn’t effectively convey a “populist” message that could have captured voters’ attention.
Pundits see what they always see while missing what is staring them in the face. Kamala Harris lost because of who she is and there was not one thing she could have done differently that would have changed what happened.
What is more, there was not anything Trump did that made it happen. He simply benefited from a baked in prejudice against Kamala she simply could not overcome.
Like Hillary Clinton, she lost the electoral college because she was a woman. Unlike Hillary, she lost the popular vote because she was a woman and black.
Perhaps some of the non-voters had other reasons for not voting, but those numbers were miniscule compared with the total number who didn’t.
The ugly truth is that misogyny and racism are alive and well among Democrats and independents who tend to vote Democratic.
The number who chose both over Kamala Harris is in fact numbing: Twelve million, three hundred forty-eight thousand, eight hundred sixty-eight.
Had half of them voted, Kamala would have won. Because they didn’t, we now face four years of an American presidency worse than our worst fears, a presidency no one ever imagined could happen here, but has.
All because white men and women, black men and women, Latino men and women who voted for Joe Biden, didn’t want to vote for Trump, but then refused to vote at all this year because the Democrat was a black woman.
That’s the “reckoning” the pundits ought to be talking about.
linnposts.com 