Tag: Election 2016
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Are Democrats Actually Capable of Learning from 2020?
The U.S. presidential races in 2000 and 2004 went for Republicans. In 2008 and 2012 went for Democrats. In 2016, for Republicans. In 2020, for Democrats again. Despite Democrats winning the presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, they saw historic losses in the midterms for 2010 and 2014. If we want to understand how we…
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Whatever Happened to the Obama Coalition?
In 2008, Barack Obama was widely described as having built a game-changing political coalition: young people, racial and ethnic minorities, educated professionals, urban and suburban voters. He was held to have built an innovative campaign infrastructure, leveraging big data and social media in an unprecedented way, increasing turnout and Democratic vote share with constituencies that…
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Religion and Politics in the Age of Trump
In a previous essay I demonstrated that Democrats have been consistently losing ground with both people of color and people of faith in virtually every midterm and general election cycle after 2008. Republicans, meanwhile, have seen consistent gains with many constituencies. What occurred in 2016, therefore, was not an aberration – but the culmination of…
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Trump is Doing Surprisingly Well with Minority Voters. It Might Not Matter.
In 2016, Donald Trump got a lower share of the white vote than the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and white turnout was stagnant as compared to 2012. Trump was able to win nonetheless because he got a higher share of Black and Hispanic voters than his predecessor — up roughly 3 percentage points with…
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Trump Voters Have Been Misunderstood All Along (Including By Trump)
Unprecedented numbers of Americans — including a growing share of Republicans and independents — recognize racial injustice as pervasive, support police reform and back the protests against police brutality. Apparently oblivious to this emerging consensus, Trump is trying to run a Nixon-style “law-and-order” campaign for the 2020 election. And it is killing him politically. Trump has seen a dramatic and…
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Pelosi’s Impeachment Bid Will Fail
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that a formal impeachment inquiry is going to be launched, looking into President Trump’s alleged attempts to get dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden from the Ukrainian government, among other accusations levelled against the president by a whistleblower from the U.S. intelligence community. Trump will definitely get impeached…
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How the Media Could Get the Last Laugh on Trump
“Behind every image, something has disappeared. And that is the source of its fascination.” Jean Baudrillard, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared (p. 32). According to a New York Times report, “At the midpoint of his term, Mr. Trump has grown more sure of his own judgment and more cut off from anyone else’s than at…
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Rethinking the Role of Race/Racism in the 2016 Election
I am pleased to announce a publication in the peer-reviewed journal, The American Sociologist: “Race and the Race for the White House: On Social Research in the Age of Trump” (non-paywalled link). The essay demonstrates that a good deal of the social science research “proving” that race / racism was one of the primary drivers of…
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First the Farce, then the Tragedy
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx, ‘The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ (Chapter 1) “Be careful how you move, the traps are covered in the lights. Landmines…
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Historical Patterns Suggest Trump Will Probably Win a Second Term in 2020
6/30/2020 Update: I have been bullish about Trump’s prospects from 2016, through the midterms, his impeachment, and even through the COVID-19 outbreak. In the early stages of the pandemic, Trump’s approval ticked up. And indeed, even today Trump continues to receive high marks for his handling of the economy, despite many Americans being out of…
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The Media Bubble is a Thing. For Real.
In a recent article for the Times Higher Education I pointed out how the lack of ideological diversity among social researchers not only undermines the extent to which research is trusted, funded or utilized, but also undermines researchers’ “capacity to understand phenomena, predict trends, or craft effective interventions.” Journalistic outlets face many of the same…
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In the Trump Administration, Principled Civil Servants Like James Comey Are Critical
Let’s be clear about one thing straightaway: James Comey did not sabotage Hillary Clinton. If that had been his intention, it was well within his power to outright destroy her candidacy. In the wake of Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s improper meeting with former President Bill Clinton, the Department of Justice was scandalized. Under pressure, Lynch…
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An Emerging Democratic Majority? Don’t Count on It.
“What is at stake in the conflict over representations of the future is nothing other than the attitude of the declining classes to their decline—either demoralization, which leads to a rout….or mobilization, which leads to the collective search for a collective solution to the crisis.What can make the difference is, fundamentally, the possession of…
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Trump’s 2016 Victory Should Not Have Been Surprising
As an epistemologist, I generally avoid predictions in favor of trying to determine what is known and how to build upon or utilize knowledge. But when I do feel compelled to go on record with predictions, it is generally with a sense of urgency–to draw public attention to an approaching black swan. Black swans are…
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Who Cares About Bernie Sanders’ Historic Candidacy?
In March 2016, the Green Party nominated Dr. Jill Stein as their candidate for President of the United States. They have had female vice-presidential nominees on every single ticket since 1996, and ran all-female tickets in 2008 and 2012. But unfortunately, the highest the Green Party has ever performed in a general election was in…
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Why 2016 May Be Donald Trump’s Race to Lose
As the 2016 presidential primaries got underway, there seemed to be a couple incontrovertible truths: Hillary Clinton’s nomination was inevitable, and Trump stood no chance (it was going to be Jeb or Rubio). Yet, here we are six months before the election, and Trump has seized the Republican nomination while Clinton is still working to…
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Hillary Clinton Is No Friend of Black Empowerment
As an African American, I have struggled to understand why so many of brothers and sisters seem to prefer Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Some have argued that black people are terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency, and so they rally around Clinton under the belief that she is more electable in the…
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Bernie Sanders is more electable than Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States, and he will have the Democratic National Committee to thank for it. Much has been made of the “math” of the Democratic nomination, and how it favors Hillary Clinton—in large part due to her huge lead in unpledged “superdelegates” (whose decision will determine…
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Don’t say Black Lives Matter, prove it.
Let’s be clear: for various reasons a large swath of Americans support institutionalized racism, both actively and passively. And in light of the pivotal role the police have played, and continue to play, in preserving the systems, institutions and dynamics which undergird racial inequality in the U.S.–powerful backlash against Black Lives Matter was to be…
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Change We Can Believe In
“It was like hamburger meat shootin’ out of his chest.” His burger was rare; blood & oil ran down his double-chinned beard, down his marshmallow-chain fingers, staining his freedom fries. Nirvana on his face. Brown on the outside, pink on the inside. Just like a nigger. I. That nicotine itch on the back…
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Foreign Policy Fundamentalism
Originally published in The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3 (Summer 2015) Print version available here. With pomp and polish and platitudes, the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. It began in December, as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a run for the White House. Bush is more moderate than much…
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If Underpants Gnomes Took Over the Pentagon, Very Little Would Change
In the Comedy Central television series South Park, the boys discover a cartel of gnomes who steal people’s underwear. Over the course of the episode it’s revealed that these seizures are part of their business plan which goes: Step 1: Collect Underpants → Step 2: ? → Step 3: Profit The punchline, of…