John Lewis Misdirects His Anger Toward Trump



John Lewis says he isn’t going to President-elect Trump’s Inauguration because Lewis does not consider Trump a “legitimate” President.  Lewis also says this is the first time in 22 years that he will miss an Inauguration.  For dramatic effect, Lewis conveniently forgets that he also boycotted George W. Bush’s first Inaugural—also because Lewis did not consider him to be a “legitimate” President. 
Lewis wants us to think the problem is Trump or the Russians.  He knows this is not true.  Here is part of what he does know: 
Obama won Michigan in 2012 by 350,000 votes, Clinton lost by roughly 10,000. In Detroit and Wayne Counties more than 75,000 Motown Obama voters did not bother to vote for Clinton. They simply stayed at home. If even 2% of these louts had voted for Clinton, Michigan would have stayed blue.
In Wisconsin Trump received exactly the same number of votes as Romney did in 2012.  But Clinton got 230,000 votes less than Obama did. She lost by 30,000 votes.  If just 8% of the Democrats (mostly black voters from the Milwaukee area) had voted for her she would have won. 
Clinton’s black voter turnout dropped more than 11 percent compared to 2012.  Almost two million black votes cast for Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Clinton. If, in North Carolina, blacks had turned out for Clinton as they had for Obama, she would have won the state.
If Clinton wins Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina she wins the election.  If even 1 in every five Blacks in these three states got off their collective butts and voted in the last election John Lewis would feel all warm and fuzzy about this Inauguration instead of having his current embarrassing snit.
But Lewis knows where the real blame lies and it is repugnant to him.  The Black voters he fought for could not be bothered with voting for a white woman.  They successfully voted for a Black man in both 2012 and 2008 but would not show up for Clinton, making them both racists and sexists.  That is a thick slice of humble pie for a man like Lewis.
This man is a genuine hero of the Civil Rights Movement.  This was a righteous time in American history when people like Lewis faced real peril to right a wrong too long abided.  He was on the right side, but paid a fearful price. 
For the most part, Lewis has got to know that the peril and pain were worth it.  The great center of the Black community that had the talent, drive, intelligence and discipline for success, men and women held back only by institutional racism, leaped ahead after the legal chains were broken.  The least able were the last to move on and that left the dregs of the community where they are now. 
Lewis has got to look at this thin percentage of generationally unemployed, gang affiliated, drug using, criminally inclined, educationally indifferent single parent homes and ask himself “I took a beating for you?  Martin died for you? What are you going to do for yourselves?”
John Lewis is ending his life a frustrated, angry and unfulfilled man.  It is too painful to admit who is really at fault.  I’m sorry, Rep. Lewis, but Trump doesn’t own this one.  Take a little comfort in knowing that you don’t own it either.  Talk to your constituents.
            Go to the Inauguration and keep the faith. 

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