Kamala Harris’s resounding defeat affirmed the worst of what many Black women believed about their country, even as some looked to the future with a wary determination.
Black women could see the mountaintop.
Across the country, they led an outpouring of Democratic elation when the vice president took over the top of the presidential ticket. But underneath their hope and determination was a persistent worry: Was America ready, they asked, to elect a Black woman?
The painful answer arrived this week.
It affirmed the worst of what many Black women believed about their country: that it would rather choose a man who was convicted of 34 felonies, has spewed lies and falsehoods, disparaged women and people of color, and pledged to use the powers of the federal government to punish his political opponents than send a woman of color to the White House.
If you think she lost because she is a black woman, then you are ignoring a lot of other factors that are far more significant. It won’t help anything to focus on that single aspect of her candidacy.
The country is also filled with the 60% of black folks who didn’t vote. Then for whatever idiotic reason, trump had huge gains from the Latino population compared to 2020.
Over the total Latinos who voted or the total population? I’m willing to bet that the further went up while the latter stayed about the same.
There was a huge swing in the percentage of Latinos who chose him over Harris, com0ared to 2020. Trump went up like 17 points in the Latino vote.
Again I will say: is that because more latinos voted for trump, or less for harris (and yes those are two separate things).
Both.
Yeah probably. Sucks. Ugh.
She lost because she was a status quo right winger and didn’t represent a large portion of her base or address their ever growing concerns.
Yeah Trump won 46% of Latinos and 20% of the black vote, and the “everyone’s racist” trope is starting to lose its luster. We absolutely cannot win if we keep using race and gender as a prerequisite for exaltation and insist that they take deferential precedence over all else. To be sure, there’s a shitload of racists/sexists in Trump’s party, but the fact that their coalition is sucking in minorities should tell us identity politics is only part of the equation. He’s cultivating working class solidarity in a really powerful way, and it’s starting to appeal more and more to folks who’ve watched the Democrats pay only lip service to racial grievances, and then proceed to never make meaningful sacrifices to ameliorate the underlying problems of economic inequality and then work constructively to promote financial security. All racists are Trump supporters, but not all Trump supporters are racists.
Sure, but racism and sexism aren’t just white people problems. For example, I’m assuming the repeated efforts to reach out to black men in the last month were reactions to what internal polling was telling them. There are lots of people who’d vote for any man over any woman.
Everyone also seems to be looking for the one and only reason Harris lost. There isn’t one reason. I’m sure racism and misogyny are reasons, even if they’re not the only ones.
He’s cultivating working class solidarity in a really powerful way, and it’s starting to appeal more and more to folks who’ve watched the Democrats pay only lip service to racial grievances, and then proceed to never make meaningful sacrifices to ameliorate the underlying problems of economic inequality and then work constructively to promote financial security.
By doing what exactly? I’ve seen plenty of arguments like this about Dems not doing enough to seperate themselves from the status quo, and thus are losing ground to Republicans on things like the economy and fighting for the working class. I don’t disagree with that, but what arguments like that fail to convince me of is what exactly is Trump offering these Latino and Black voters that’s better?
“Change” and he’s further back in their memories. People are genuinely struggling - both in where they are and where they’re headed; he promises he can change that direction. He won’t, but people are desperate and Kamala ran as a status quo candidate
It’s more than just one thing, of course. Probably some racism and sexism too
Exactly. Most people don’t have any idea what will fix our issues they just know that something needs to change and Trump was the only one offering that. When people told Kamala they were struggling she just responded by saying that the economy is actually doing great. Trump promised actual changes (yes they’re all for the worse but the average idiot doesn’t know that) where as Kamala repeatedly just blew people off.
I think it’s less about offering specific policies that will help and more about looking them in the eye and saying “I hear you, it’s fucked up. We’ll change everything.” It’s a bit like when my wife has a bad day at work, and when I get home she starts venting. Sometimes I try to cut in and come up with a solution to her problems, but it usually makes things worse. One day she stopped me dead in my tracks, took a deep breath, and said, “Please don’t try to fix it. Sometimes I just need to vent and I want you to tell me you hear me and that you love me. That’s all.” She didn’t want me to offer a solution at all, she just wanted me to actively listen and comfort her.
I think that’s what Trump is doing. He’s engaging them on a human level and validating them as individuals with problems. He’s going to do absolutely fuck all to fix them, but it’s a really powerful level of connection that’s obviously working.
No one wants to hear this, but it’s pretty much only educated white and black folks that believe in the social program that has been floated by the democrats the last few elections. The country is a lot more diverse than that and South Asian, East Asian and Latino folks are largely what this site would call bigots.
100%
There’s a reason we got hammered for “virtue signaling” for so long. It’s a shell game that doesn’t require any real sacrifice on the part of educated whites, and minorities are starting to realize that.
Yeah, articles like this are nothing more than an attempt to scapegoat and spin the issue into Democratic “business as usual” so that the DNC doesn’t have to self-reflect on how they’ve spent decades selling out their base for rich corporate donors.
Although yes I agree with you, I also think the points the article raises are definitely a factor.
Yeah, 53% of white women voted for MAGA.
The racist misogyny is definitely coming from inside the house.
But yeah, this election with the 15 million voters, which included millions of Democrats and progressives, who didn’t vote and condoned and let very well known convicted felon, rapist, racist take complete control of the American government has cemented my view that America is definitely a racist country not worthy of my minority male ass helping to fix it anymore.
Didn’t half of this group vote for Trump too?
No. It was 17% of Black voters and less than 10% of Black women.
Of the 40% turnout of the black voters who bothered going out to vote.
Really, it isn’t that trump got more people to vote for him. It’s that less people who would oppose him bothered to go and vote.
Except for the Mexicans. Trump had huge gains compared to 2020 from them.
Oh. Rip. Sorry every other race and gender
Yes. Even in defeat and staring into the abyss the misinformation and grandstanding continues.
Many if not most people still work on common identity. They will vote for the person they identify with. That’s religion, class, family values whatever that means, and yes skin color. Say it ain’t so but that’s my take watching politics (inb4 the famous Lemmy misreadings, I don’t agree with that mentality, that’s simply my observation). Even with Obama some voters were saying “well he’s only half black” like that was the final ok.
Obama is no less black than Harris though.
“But half black and half Indian?!?” [Clutches pearls.]
There was Fox anchor that said straight to Vivek’s face that she wouldn’t vote for him because he’s Indian heritage.
Vivec is half-Chimer/half-Dunmer though
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought they were the same thing? The golden-skinned Chimer all transformed (painfully?) into the Dark-skinned Dunmer elven race?
Funny. Every black woman I saw interviewed on major news outlets in the past 3 weeks said she was voting for trump.
I was so confused.They may have hand picked those
…again. America did the same in 2016, even if Hillary won the popular vote.
Her “true self” has never hid.
Such calm words before a storm.
