I know you must be busy, but if you get a chance, I would ask that you write an article discussing the racial implications of the various 2009 elections. I would love to hear your thoughts. There really seemed to be a lot of what could only be described as "bloc voting" by whites, and I wonder if you think the election of Barack Obama, and the triumphalism of the mainstream media ("new era," etc.) may have had something to do with it.I don't have much to add other than here's a press release from an interest group claiming that the GOP gubernatorial candidate got 58.5% of the Asian vote in Virginia.In the race for Virginia Governor, the mainstream media keeps declaring it an "issues" oriented race, focusing on "pocketbook" issues, that McDonnell did better on than his opponent Creigh Deeds. As a Virginia resident who followed the elections, this doesn't explain it well enough for me. There has to be another angle. Yes, every ad for McDonnell I saw focused vaguely on "jobs." But other than ads attacking McDonnell for his 20-year old Master's thesis, every ad Creigh Deeds ran focused vaguely on "jobs." Everybody knew McDonnell's conservative positions on social issues, and that should have hurt him in what is (although still moderately conservative) becoming a more socially liberal state. Yet they still gave him a landslide victory, with 67% of the white vote and 54% of women of all races (the results weren't broken down by race and gender).
McDonnell's ads, and I think I saw most of them, in no way ever actually mentioned any details as to what his "jobs" plan was, how it would create jobs, and how it was different from his opponent's plan, almost like Nixon's secret plan to get out of Vietnam. His ads almost seemed to be providing explanatory cover, rather than trying to convince voters, basically having a hidden subtext of "Vote for me for racial reasons, and if a white liberal neighbor asks you...say you voted for me for 'jobs'."
I don't know much about New Jersey politics, but the reasons offered for the Republican win in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, corruption and taxes, just do not seem plausible. To begin with, New Jersey politicians have always been corrupt, many more so than John Corzine, yet always get re-elected. And as far as taxes, the only candidate who really seemed to have a solid tax-cutting platform, independent Chris Daggett, only received 6% of the vote. In addition to this, Chris Christie, although touted as a "moderate" post-election, always identified as "pro-life" in a dogmatically "pro-choice" state, and even proposed modest restrictions on abortion. Added to this, the Corzine campaign's focus on Christie's refusal to pay for mammograms, and you would think this would have hurt him with white female voters, but it couldn't have hurt too much, because Christie won 59% of the white vote (with 6% for Daggett), and still won 45% of women of all races (results weren't broken down by race and gender together).
67% of the white vote in Virginia and 59% in liberal New Jersey (65% if you gave Christie Daggett's votes)...these are ethnic bloc voting percentages comparable to those of Hispanics or Asians. And Barack Obama, personally, couldn't explain the defeats, since his approval rating outperformed the Democratic share of the vote. Even though the Republican Party is horrible on racial issues for whites, they are still, as you have noted, the party of white racial identity.
Four other results of note were:
-Wake County, NC school-board elections, where candidates pledging to end busing and forced racial integration won a majority for the first time in an "easy victory"
-Westchester County, NY, a liberal upper-income New York suburb, where the long-time County Executive, who supported a federal lawsuit settlement to purchase homes in upper-income white neighborhoods, and use them as "affordable housing" for lower income blacks and Hispanics, was soundly defeated by his Republican opponent, who pledged to oppose the settlement and fight the lawsuit, by a margin of 58-42
-Atlanta, GA mayoral race, now headed to a runoff, where whites appear to have voted as a bloc for the white candidate (just another liberal in a field of liberals)
-New York mayoral race, where blacks appear to have voted as a bloc (unsurprisingly) for the black candidate, and whites appear to have NOT turned out in large numbers for mayor Michael Bloomberg, who still won, but narrowly
If you get a chance, I would really like to read your view on these events. Either way, keep up the great work and take care.
Perhaps the GOP is indeed turning into the Covert Non-Black Party. But, will they eventually need to, you know, deliver some policies that actually help their voters?
