Oliver Willis

Like Kryptonite To Stupid

Not The Same America

June 24th, 2009 Politics 15 Comments

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John McCain won the same percentage of the white vote as Ronald Reagan did in his landslide 1980 victory. The Republican campaign to alienate minority voters continues to pay dividends!

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15 Responses to “Not The Same America”

1. Crusty Dem says:

   June 24, 2009 at 12:33 pm

   Fortunately for the GOP, they’re making some nice inroads in the hispanic vote. If they can get past the Sotomayor debacle, they might even make it up to double digits. Someday.
2. gruntled atheist says:

   June 24, 2009 at 1:26 pm

   John McCain won the same percentage of the white vote as Ronald Reagan did in his landslide 1980 victory.

   Given that McCain was running against a person actually capable of being President, a significant portion of those white votes came from the bigot brigade. My guess is 16 percent.
3. Indeed says:

   June 24, 2009 at 1:40 pm

   a significant portion of those white votes came from the bigot brigade.

   “I believe in States’ Rights!”
4. mike in dc says:

   June 24, 2009 at 2:08 pm

   I think the GOP is kinda stuck, though. They can’t really broaden their appeal to minorities without upsetting white GOP voters who have issues with most of the policy ideas that would actually appeal to minorities, and they’ve pandered so much to the latter that most minorities really seem pretty alienated from the GOP at this point.
5. jr says:

   June 24, 2009 at 2:14 pm

   This is why they attack ACORN. They only want whites to vote
6. Dennis says:

   June 24, 2009 at 2:27 pm

   This is why they attack ACORN. They only want whites to vote

   Yes. It has nothing to do with it being a corrupt organization, jr. Nothing at all.
7. SaveFarris says:

   June 24, 2009 at 2:36 pm

   I think the better question is: why does Reagan get ONLY 58% of the vote in 1980? I mean for goodness sakes: Jimmy Carter!!!
8. Crusty Dem says:

   June 24, 2009 at 3:28 pm

   SF, it’s 58% of the white vote, not total vote (51% there, and actually, it looks like Reagan pulled 56% of the white vote).

   But the comparison is heavily flawed by the inclusion of Anderson, who pulled 8% of the vote. When the 3rd party candidate isn’t a complete joke, it really messes up the analysis; or have we forgotten the whole “Clinton never received the majority of the vote” BS that dominated during the talk of a permanent republican majority…

   The main difference is that McCain won the white vote 55-43, while Reagan won it 56-36. That’s a 20 vs 12 point spread, and it’s not insignificant. The biggest demographic change is among hispanics, from 2% in 1980 (WTF?) to 9% in 2008, with an increase in democratic spread from +19 to +36. That’s a huge spread popping out of nowhere, and I’ll go out on a limb and assume it’s only going to get larger in the future…
9. Oliver Willis says:

   June 24, 2009 at 7:10 pm

   Yes. It has nothing to do with it being a corrupt organization, jr. Nothing at all.
   At least one of you is admitting it for a change.
10. Jaim says:

    June 24, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    “Fortunately for the GOP, they’re making some nice inroads in the hispanic vote.”

    LOL. This is completely not true. Try looking at some poll numbers, sparky.

    The inroads were all happening before the GOP went full metal wing-nut on the immigration issue. Thanks Tom Tacredo!
11. Crusty Dem says:

    June 24, 2009 at 8:26 pm

    umm, that was a joke, Jaim. Read the next two sentences..
12. News Reference says:

    June 24, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    Right winger “Dennis” claims ACORN is a “corrupt organization”.

    Then why did Republican President Bush fund it?

    Are you saying that Republican President Bush was funding corrupt organizations with Federal money?

    Baby steps, “Dennis”, baby steps…
13. Crusty Dem says:

    June 24, 2009 at 10:13 pm

    Dennis, if you apply the standard that allows you to call ACORN a “corrupt organization” to other groups and institutions, you’ll find that the GOP, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and the Salvation Army (along with just about any group with more than a few hundred members) are all corrupt organizations.
14. durablend says:

    June 25, 2009 at 11:42 am

    But but but this is a center white…um…I mean right nation!”
15. Todd Dugdale says:

    June 25, 2009 at 10:08 pm

    McCain’s numbers for the white vote were, in all likelihood, the hide tide.

    The Republicans ran a senior, white war hero against a mixed-race younger man. The racist appeals were hardly concealed. The “Bradley Effect” was invoked constantly, mostly by people who failed to understand it, and its expected effect always seemed to mysteriously rise to the exact number that McCain would need to win. For all intents and purposes, the Republicans were fervently hoping that racism would do what their candidate could not do.

    Pinning big hopes on the “white vote” is quite stupid. First, most whites do not really consider themselves part of the “white race”. Study after study has shown that whites subconsciously feel that they are the “absence of race”…and only when they consider race at all. Second, white voters are unlikely to overlook the jingoism, poor economic policy, history of incompetence, and religious fundamentalism that the Republicans represent just because they, too, are white. Simply put, being white does not automatically make one a wingnut. That would seem to obvious. Third, the racial identity appeal essentially relies on an odd notion that minorities have some “unfair advantage”, while completely ignoring all of the “unfair disadvantages” that minorities face in the real world. Therefore, the wingnut proposes that we take from the minorities and redistribute to the oppressed whites. Fourth, most of the “oppression” that whites really do experience comes from the very forces that the Republican party represents.

    But this is par for the course for Republicans. They believe that the vast majority of the nation are wingnuts merely waiting for the right wingnut candidate to emerge so that they can release their “inner teabag”.