July 10, 2019--White Male Privilege

Continuing to ponder the gender implications of the large vote Trump received in 2016 from white women, Guest Blogger Sharon wrote--

One of the questions I keep hearing is should Dems try to get Obama/Trump voters back or go full out Progressive to motivate more new voters.

As much as I hate many aspects of data mining and micro-targeting, it would probably help if the Dems knew more about these and other more reasonable Trump voters and those Dems that didn’t vote in 2016.

With that said, I suspect the real challenge isn’t what candidates say or how they say it but who they are. There just might not be anyone with a wide enough appeal. I cringed when Bill Maher said the only one who could beat Trump for sure is Oprah. But I fear he may be right.

It’s a tiny sample but when a friend from the Midwest had brunch with a friend from New York, he asked him why he and friends voted for Trump. His reaction was people knew him. For me that was a dis-qualifier. But with so many people not paying attention, this may be the key. 

As for more civilized discourse, an acquaintance assisting at the polls on Democratic primary day last month said a woman drove into the church parking lot screaming at her about representing “the party of death” and how she’d never vote for a Democrat. I thought this might just be a disturbed individual. Then I  googled our moderate businessman Senator and former Governor Mark Warner.  The first entry is an ad to defeat him in 2020 because he sides with the “party of death.” Interesting new branding. Not encouraging. 

I wrote--

The most recent ways the Dems are shooting themselves in the foot is to give so much attention to AOC and three (three!) of her colleagues. This gang of four is the gift that keeps on giving to the GOP now that they have someone even better than Nancy Pelosi to demonologize. How self-defeating can we be.

And then Jill Davenport wrote--

I was just this minute reading your blog about women and I believe you’re exactly right. And Bill Clinton was exactly right when he spoke about white men dying of broken hearts.  

There’s another reason as well, and this affects both genders . . . the white male privilege is on shaky ground, and so is the privilege thereby extended to their female counterparts.  They are terribly fearful of the most awful thing that they can imagine . . . being outnumbered by people of color who by nature they believe should be shining shoes in airports.  

Having a black man for president was an unspeakable affront to the proper order as they see it and they thus feel it needs to be restored.  

Obama brought out the latent and carefully hidden racism which came forth like a toxic flood when T-name took over "my" White House.  All of it is, of course, the result of just fear. 

I thought--

Jill's new idea about how for many conservative women male privilege is extended to them is something important to ponder. For me it helps explain why so many white women voted for Trump and how important it is for progressives to understand this in order to find ways to prevail.