July 28, 2020--Playing The White Card

There was a tsunami of political polls last week.  They tell one consistent story--Joe Biden is increasing his lead over Trump in every demographic category but one. 

Be it the ABC-Washington Post, Quinnipiac, or even the Fox News poll, Biden has opened double-digit leads among senior citizens, young voters, Hispanics, and African Americans among others.

The one demographic outlier is support for Trump among white voters. In the aggregate, across all age groups, 49 percent of white voters support Trump while 42 percent say they plan to back Biden. And with white people without college degrees Trump's lead is even larger--an unfathomable 57 to 35 percent.

This is both curious and significant. Curious because it stands out so starkly while on the other hand it is concerning since white people make up 61 percent of all voters and that means if Trump does exceptionally well among them he has a fighting chance to be reelected.

Is it "only" racism that is responsible for these numbers? 

I suspect for a good half of them it is. But that gets us just part way there. Racism is deeply rooted. Slavery, for example, has existed in America for more than 400 years. That is the definition of deeply rooted.

What then about the other reasons a majority of white people appear to support Trump?

Is it racism that a large percent of them are attracted to Trump's tell-it-like-it-supposedly is style? Especially when he attacks the coastal elites in the media, universities, and among the professional class?

Is it racism when Trump talks about the concerns of suburban "housewives" and a percentage of "stay-at-home moms" find his message resonates? And then there are Trump men who, proverbially, want their woman "barefoot and pregnant."

Is it racism when some white women like their men extra-macho and somehow, though hard to believe, find Trump to be attractively so?

Of course, some of this also includes a racist component. For example, the suburban women he is desperate to appeal to are white women, the same white women 52 percent of whom voted for him in 2016. When Trump turns his attention to suburban women he is not thinking about women of color.

My bottom line--the business of gender and race and voting is more complicated and unpredictable than it at first might seem. Thus the reasons why, say, a large percentage of white women voted for Trump four years ago and might do so again needs to be understood, even if one dislikes what is discovered.

June 23, 2020--Men

The latest Quinnipiac poll has Biden widening his lead over Trump by an additional 3 or 4 points. The trends are not looking promising for the embattled president.

More interesting and important than the national numbers are how the candidates are faring in swing states that will ultimately supply the Electoral College votes needed to win and the demographics of each candidate's voter base. 

For example, breakouts from the Q and other polls show how many18 to 29 year-olds say they favor Biden or Trump (60% for Biden and 31% for Tump).

Also revealing is the distribution of voters 65 and older who favor Biden, 52%, to Trump's 40%. And the 80 percent of black voters who say they are for Biden in contrast to the 10 percent who say they are intending to vote for Trump.

In just one demographic does Biden lose to Trump--among men. Not just men who did not attend college, but all men.

While women by 59 percentage points favor Biden just 33 percent plan to vote for Trump. Trump, though, leads Biden among men by 51 to 38 percentage points.

This leads to my question, a very different one than Quinnipiac poses--what is wrong with men?  

51 percent say they're for Trump.

Are we so fragile that our masculinity is threatened by accomplished and assertive women that a majority of us plan to vote for that autocratic bag of fear and wind? That after almost four years of Trump in action it is inexplicable to me that more than 10 percent of men would vote for him.

What do men see happening if Tump manages to get reelected? Restore our wounded egos? So much so that we are OK that his coronavirus policy is leading to the unnecessary death of well over 100,000 Americans? And day by day he is leading us to a nuclear war with North Korea and God knows what with Iran. That makes him OK to vote for?

My friend Al has an explanation as good as any I've heard--He says it's because men are stupid. Simple as that.