The Democratic party has a problem with white men. We mean that in the vernacular sense that it has an animosity toward white men, but also in the literal sense that it is creating political difficulties for the party.
Whenever the Democrats win an election there is an obligatory spate of sneering stories about how the Republicans are demographically doomed to irrelevance as the party of white men, but after a big win such as the Republicans scored in the recent mid-term races even the most Democratic media are obliged to acknowledge that white men remain a formidable voting bloc. White voters accounted for 75 percent of the electorate in the mid-terms, the Republicans won their votes by a whopping 62-to-38 margin, and among the men who comprised approximately 50 percent of that category the voting was even more lopsided, so there has been some journalistic soul-searching about how the Democrats might broaden their appeal to white men.
One of the more thoughtful pieces appeared in The New York Times, where the apparently white and male Thomas P. Edsall bravely conceded that many of the Democratic party’s policies do not serve the economic self-interest of white males. He notes that Obamacare takes $500 billion of funding over ten years from Medicare, which benefits a population that is 77 percent white, and shifts it to subsidies for the uninsured, who are 59 percent non-white, and admits that many other aspects of the law have a similarly racial redistributionist effect. He clings to the hope that some minimum-wage hike referenda that passed in a few heavily white states suggests a willingness among white men to embrace central planning, fails to note a wide variety of other anti-white Democratic policies from affirmative action to anti-coal legislation that would lay off Loretta Lynn’s father to the Justice Department’s stated policy of not pursuing hate crime prosecutions on behalf of white victims, among countless other examples, and he quickly veers into the usual nonsense about the Republican party’s opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and other social issues that tend to play better with blacks and Latinos than white people, but we appreciate his willingness consider that white voting patterns are to some extent rational rather racist.
More typical of the Democratic ruminating was Andrea Grimes’ foul-mouthed analysis at a pro-abortion web site of Wendy Davis’ hilariously inept attempt to win the governorship of Texas, which blames the debacle on white people’s lack of empathy for the poor black and brown women eager to abort their potential black and brown children. She fails to take stock of the embarrassing fact that Davis lost several majority-Hispanic counties which had previously been reliable Democratic constituencies, or Davis’ blatantly dishonest biography or any of her other countless gaffes, including some less than empathetic jibes about her opponent’s physical handicaps, and instead recycles the usual stereotypes of narrow-minded white people. The possibility that such unabashed racial and sexual prejudices might have had something to do with Davis’ landslide defeat has also apparently escaped Grimes’ attention, and that of the party at large.
The common Democratic complaint that white people are uniquely self-interested is all the more unconvincing after so many years of the “What’s The Matter With Kansas” argument that white people have been duped into voting against their economic self-interests by wedge issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. Our frequent conversations with non-white folks and a sampling of their popular music suggest that blacks and Hispanics are more prone to anti-homosexual sentiment than the average white person, polling data verifies that Davis’ ardent enthusiasm for abortion was a key reason for her failure to carry those majority-Hispanic counties, the Democrats might have squeaked out a few southern Senate races with the large number of black of voters that have been aborted since Roe v. Wade, Asian-Americans in California are questioning their loyalty to a party that insists on affirmative action schemes that punish their overachievement, and there’s bound to be some limit to even the non-white Democrats’ patience for the party’s insistence on opening the borders to an unlimited influx from the third world. Writing off the vast majority of 75 percent of the electorate worked well enough in the ’08 and ’12 presidential elections, but the Democrats are wise to question the long-term viability of the strategy.
Although we are loathe to offer the Democrats any useful advice, as white men we will note that they have other pressing problems in winning our vote. The Democrats’ project of endlessly expanding government power, except of course for its ability to restrict abortion even in the most late-term circumstances, will inevitably infringe on the individual liberty to which white men have been long accustomed. A resulting racial spoils system will also offend a majority of white men, who have been successfully hectored by the past decades of education and popular entertainment into a belief in color-blind policies. The Democrats’ immigration policies might well succeed in diminishing the white male’s share of the vote, but we suspect that we’re not the only ones who resent being told by a bunch of mostly white know-it-alls what to eat and what kind of car to drive and what kind of light bulbs to screw into our lamps, and that freedom and economic opportunity will eventually have a broader appeal.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 