President Donald J. Trump attends a celebration of the one-year anniversary of his Pledge to America’s Workers Thursday, July 25, 2019, in the State Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Donald Trump’s Rainbow Coalition
In the WSJ Tunku Varadarajan reckons with the election of Donald Trump. Have Democrats permanently lost their hold on the black unity vote?
To find answers to the presidential election, Mr Varadarajan talked with Michael Barone, aged 80, a senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner and an emeritus fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (where Mr. Varadarajan proudly admits he also is a fellow).
First, Mr. Barone tells Mr. Varadarajan a good many immigrants, a group “traditionally believed to be resistant to Republican charms,” became disenchanted.
Second, we saw the unraveling of “black political unity.”
According to polls 16% of black voters backed Mr. Trump, up from 8% in 2020; 83% voted for Kamala Harris, down from 91% for Joe Biden four years ago.
Contrary to Conventional Wisdom
How many times did you read or hear that Trump is a racist? Do you remember those charges ever documented? Mr. Barone explains that Trump was born and raised in Queens …
… in the New York City borough of Queens—”a famous melting pot, by many calculations the most diverse place on earth—and “did business with all sorts of people.”
(Trump) doesn’t seem to discriminate on the basis of background when dealing with people.” Still, given his campaign rhetoric, “no one would have predicted that you would see a drawing power with immigrants.”
Trump is seen as someone who doesn’t have a particular dislike of “people of foreign origin.” Trump’s focus was on keeping out or deporting illegals who are criminals.
And who among us, Hispanics included, is in favor of having criminals as neighbors?
A Losing Hand: Bad Civic Policies
Many immigrants saw their American Dream souring and voted accordingly, Mr. Barone argues.
“Part of what we’re looking at is bad central city governance. This may also have had to do with the Covid restrictions that were in place, and the fact that most of these states—though notoriously not Florida—were really shut down by Covid ukases, as some critics might call them.”
In a nutshell, Mr. Barone says, “bad civic policies drove immigrants to Trump.”
Why Leave Paradise
Despite California having “the most beautiful climate, breathtaking scenery, and great cultural institutions,” it also is a state with” terrible government.”
“How do you get people to leave paradise?”
That’s easy, continues Mr. Barone: crime, rampant vagrancy, the Covid nanny-state, bad public schools, high taxes and housing shortages caused by Nimbyism and environmentalist absolutism.
Many immigrants who couldn’t afford to leave California moved toward Trump.
“It’s an interesting political experiment because there wasn’t a lot of electioneering in these states.”
Most of the campaign focused on the seven swing states, all which Mr. Trump carried. “The 43 nontarget states”—of which Mr. Trump carried 24 and lost 19 three times in a row—“provide a proving ground for public opinion. And we see that in the biggest states, with the kind of governance there is, the Republican Party gained.”
Republican Florida and Texas also moved toward the GOP, as illustrated by their Senate elections: “Rick Scott, who won by a hair in 2018, won comfortably in Florida. And Ted Cruz, hard-pressed in 2018, won by a wider margin this time.”
Of Course, Immigrants Voted Republican
Don’t forget who the dominant party was during the years of immigration on Ellis Island.
Mr. Trump’s policies, “including greater immigrant restriction, tariffs and protectionism, are reminiscent of the Republicans in their 1894 to 1930 position, when they were the dominant party.”
A Demotic Trump Portends a Political Realignment
Although accusatio from Progressives to Trump probably had you thinking otherwise, Demotic is a perfectly good word, especially in describing Donald Trump, contends Mr. Barone.
… when you point out what demotic means—‘of the people,’ or something similar—they get the point.” Mr. Trump’s ability to connect with voters has “shaped and hastened” two developments that could portend a political realignment.
After the famous escalator descent at Trump Tower, Donald Trump warned against Mexican “rapists” and complained that Mexico wasn’t “sending their best.”
As Mr. Barone recalls, “just about all commentators—and I won’t suggest I was an exception—said, ‘This man is going to have a hard time attracting votes from people from immigrant backgrounds.’ It was commonly said that he was a racist, usually without any attempt at documenting that charge.”
Not So Tightly Wound
Immigrants, traditionally believed to be resistant to Republican charms, drifted toward the Republican Party. Then, much to the surprise of many, there was the “unraveling of the black political unity.”
“Polls tell us that 16% of black voters backed Mr. Trump, up from 8% in 2020; and that 83% voted for Kamala Harris, down from 91% for Joe Biden four years ago.“
The Souring of the American Dream
Many immigrants, Mr. Barone suggests, saw their American Dream souring and voted accordingly.
Part of what we’re looking at is bad central city governance. This may also have had to do with the Covid restrictions that were in place, and the fact that most of these states—though notoriously not Florida—were really shut down by Covid ukases, as some critics might call them.
In a nutshell, he says, “bad civic policies drove immigrants to Trump.”
A National Appeal against Discrimination
At this point, readers might wonder if Mr. Barone has forgotten to consider black churches and their historic relation to voting.
Mr. Barone reminds readers that black churches have been “a center of community, a place where black Americans have had autonomy and been able to run their own affairs.”
They’ve produced musical traditions that are one of the great glories of America.” Since the days of slavery, black preachers have talked “about unity—that we have to stick together.”
A Peerless Sage on National Elections
Mr. Barone, who has been studying elections since he was 16, has his own observations.
“Over the last 60 years—and I’ve been to all 50 states, all 435 congressional districts, and all 3,141 counties—that the condition of black Americans is much better. Not perfect, but much, much better.”
Blacks Refuse to Be Mistreated
“After a while, some black voters are going to decide, well, the need for political unity, the need for casting big margins for one side to increase political clout so we won’t be mistreated, is less great than my concern over inflation, or illegal immigration or, yes, government-sponsored transgender surgery for prison inmates and illegal immigrants,” an American Civil Liberties Union proposal to which Ms. Harris assented in 2019.
Like anyone else, black Americans may decide that “on the basis of some other issue that has arisen that they’re going to vote for a different party, a different candidate than they really would’ve considered before.
Mr. Barone thinks that is what is happening. That explains some of the panic among black activist organizations, Mr. Barone says—”the “grifters” of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as “respectable legacy institutions like the NAACP”—to talk up issues like police brutality to keep black political unity from coming undone.”
Black Voters Not Different than Yesteryear’s Catholics
A Catholic in the 1950s was “a member of a group that was not entirely comfortably integrated into the larger society. You had to avoid meat on Fridays. You had people cross themselves. They wore the ash on Ash Wednesday. They sent their kids to Catholic schools.”
A famous Catholic high school in Manhattan, Regis—a selective school for boys with high test scores—“would not forward your transcript to a non-Catholic university.”
“Catholics, or white Catholics, haven’t voted more than 55% for either party. They’ve been a split constituency,” discloses Mr. Barone.
“How far that will go remains to be seen. But I don’t think we’ll see 90-10 voting again from black Americans in presidential elections. We won’t return to a 90-10 state of mind. And that’s because I don’t think the causes of black unity are there anymore.
America has changed. And that’s the truth.”
Some of These Are Like the Others
“New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, California and Illinois.” They are among the most populous states, and they are not “politically homogeneous.
What do they have in common? “They’re basically the states with the highest percentage of immigrants to pre-existing population over the last 10 to 15 years since immigration got cut very much short after the 2007-08 financial crisis.”
Mr. Barone thinks we’ll not see 90-10 voting again from black Americans in presidential elections.
“We won’t return to a 90-10 state of mind. And that’s because I don’t think the causes of black unity are there anymore. America has changed. And that’s the truth.”
Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University Law School.
Micahel Barone is best known for the 40 years he spent as principal author of the Almanac of American Politics, which has been published every two years since 1972. For each edition, he recalls, he “needed to write 8,000 words a day every day, seven days a week, during a five-month period, which is a heavy load.” Anthony Trollope, according to Mr. Barone, “only wrote 5,000 words a day for his novels.”
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