Civility and Misplaced Outrage

The buzz word in the media this week appears to be “civility.”  I mourn the fact that it has been on life support for decades, but now that crude behavior has been shown to be a choice of the left as much as the right, it suddenly deserves some attention. 

            What many on the left have used as their defense of discriminatory (i.e. Sarah Sanders being refused service at a lunch counter—I mean restaurant), vulgar (i.e. Peter de Nero and that Samantha—can’t think of her last name—person), and violent (i.e. Maxine Waters and her dog whistle to her base) behavior is the 4^th grader’s response of “They did it first.”

            What appalls me is the number of people who equate Trump’s disgusting behavior with his victory.  Let me use data from the Brookings Institute, Pew Research, the Washington Post and the Democratic party’s own post-election autopsy to educate them.   

There are six states that sent their electoral votes to Barack Obama in 2012 but did not return the favor for Hillary Clinton.  Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida all went red in 2016.  If any three (!!!) of those states would have stayed in the Democratic column, Hillary Clinton would be President today.

Do you think Trump “won” Wisconsin?  Try again.  The number of popular votes that Wisconsin gave Trump is, almost to the penny, the same number it gave Romney in 2016.  Romney lost but Trump won.  What was the difference?  Whether you like it or not, whether it fits your bias or not it was Black voters who just didn’t show up on election day. 

Black voter turnout in the last election was down below even 2008 levels.  It counts in the millions and is cost the Democrats the election.  It wasn’t Trump’s base that elected him, it was the lack of participation of Black voters who readily came out to elect a Black man but wouldn’t get off the couch for a white woman.  This is what we called racism and sexism.

But, you might ask, what about all those white, male, non-college educated voters—the great unwashed—that were supposed to turn the tables for Trump?  Those voters were markedly lower in 2016 than in the 2004 election of George W. Bush.   There numbers were also more than 20 points lower than white men or women with college degrees who did vote.  

Here are the numbers that count.  In Michigan, the Black vote dropped by 5%.  In Ohio the Black vote dropped by 8%; in Pennsylvania by 3%; Wisconsin by almost 30%; North Carolina by better than 10%; Florida by 8%.  In each of these states, white turnout was virtually static, dropped slightly or rose by less than 5% in each case.

But how did Trump get the nomination to begin with?  Here is where the media managed to hoist itself on its own petard.  Trump got almost $2 Billion worth of free air time from the press during the primaries.  Most of it came from CNN who gave him 54% of their primary candidate coverage.  MSNBC gave him 50% of their coverage and Fox trailed with 47%.  By contrast Bush and Rubio shared 10% of the press coverage and the rest of the pack were in single digits of on-air coverage.  Any one of those people would have been better than Trump.  But the press didn’t want better.  It wanted a presumed easy target.  During the primary Trump was given twice the amount of free publicity as was PAID for during the 2012 Romney/Obama campaign.

            Misdirected anger frequently leads to incivility; the angry trying to make up for in invective what they lack in veracity.  But if the Democrats now believe that an election slogan of “Vote for us; we’re no better than they are!” will win them the next election they are going to be very disappointed. 

            Examine the facts.  Examine your conscience.  Keep the faith.