Contradictions always catch up with you. Consider the presidential election. In 2008 and 2012, Obama relied heavily on the black voters who normally don’t vote, to show up at the polls. And they did.
This year, there’s some speculation that not as many black voters will turn out for Hillary Clinton as they did for Obama. That could conceivably swing the election to Donald Trump in states like North Carolina, Florida and elsewhere — and even hand him the presidency.
Obama, his wife and other prominent Democrats are visibly upset about this. But what business do they have being upset? They fostered the idea that you should vote for a candidate because of race and race alone. Obama was to be “the first black president.” In reality, he’s only half-black, but we’ll ignore that. The point is: Millions of black voters were told to vote for him because of his race. They ignorantly and happily complied.
This year, there’s a white woman running as Obama’s very entitled heir apparent. If race is the main or only reason they should have voted for Obama, then why should these black voters show up and vote for some wealthy, nasty and corrupt white woman under investigation by the FBI for serious crimes?
You might reply: It’s policy and principles that matter. OK, then. Which policies and principles? Socialism or economic freedom? Individual liberty or group-think collectivism? Why, that’s never discussed. You’re supposed to vote your race. Democrats do better when the real issues don’t get air time.
The same line is fed to women, who are told they must vote for a woman candidate; and Hispanics, who are told they must always vote for the Hispanic candidate, and so forth.
When you make race the central factor, you can’t expect people you’ve persuaded to make race the central factor to stop doing so when it’s no longer convenient for those in power.
Whether Donald Trump wins the presidency remains to be seen. But it seems clear that if he does, it will be due to the facts that (1) fewer blacks showed up to vote than in 2008 and 2012, and (2) more disgruntled whites (and others) showed up to vote for a candidate who wasn’t a career politician, like all the others have been.
Maybe if Democrats spent less time talking about race and more time talking about economics and liberty they’d do better. (Yes, I’m being sarcastic.) Of course, if they ran on their issues and principles, they’d have to finally admit they want to rescind the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights and replace it with something much closer to what the people had in Soviet Russia, Communist Cuba or even Hitler’s National Socialist State. In a way, you can’t blame them for running away from the issues. Racial celebrity is all they had in 2008 and 2012.
Look what they’ve got this year.
