I think race is almost always the most important issue in a U.S. presidential election. The challenge for the party more committed to the needs and interests of minority groups is to get those voters to the polls without antagonizing too many white people.
After Reconstruction, white Southerners regained power and became the solid south, solid for the Democratic Party that had resisted the Republican “party of Lincoln” which conducted the Civil War and enforced Reconstruction from 1865-1878.
The solid south helped elect Democratic presidents up to and including Kennedy. When LBJ became president he went hard on civil rights and managed to get Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This reversed the poles of the political parties. White southerners moved en masse to the Republicans, assisted by Nixon’s “southern strategy,” an appeal to white southerners and northern “ethnics” (read Catholics), who were angry about anti-war demonstrators (especially privileged and “elitist” college students), the feminist movement, crime, non-Christians, “queers” (when that was solely a derogatory term), hippies who seemed to be having too much fun (and sex) and others outside the normal. Black voters became firmly Democratic. Other racial minorities allied generally with the Democrats.
Nixon won twice. After a one term Carter presidency, Reagan doubled down on the new solid south and white resentment. One remarkable event of his 1980 campaign was a states-rights speech in Philadelphia … Mississippi, site of the famous lynching of three civil rights workers back in 1964. The Confederacy had risen again!
Over the next forty years the parties polarized further. Today the central electoral questions:
How many white people are disposed against the Democratic Party because they see the party as overly committed to people of color and operating against white peoples’ interests? Can Democrats attract some of these voters without abandoning their principles and their electoral base?
Are Republicans able to effectively message their commitment to white people, usually by minimizing the importance of racial discrimination or by declaring that it’s the white (Christian) Americans who have been injured as the victims of reverse discrimination?
The extent to which the Republican Party is a white Christian people’s heteronormative party is reflected in the composition of the Republican and Democratic caucuses in the Senate and House.
Jewish members of Congress are included here because they are not “white” enough - they are other. Percentages are per cent of the caucus, e.g., there will be 47 Democratic senators in the next Congress. 11/47 = 23%. There are a few members who are double-counted, e.g., Ilhan Omar (MN)is a black woman and Muslim, Becca Balint (VT) is a lesbian and Jewish. For religious status, J= Jewish M: Muslim B: Buddhist H: Hindu UU= Unitarian-Universalist
The Republican Party is a white Christian heteronormative party. In the age of Trump it is a white Christian heteronormative nationalist party. The Republican message is directed to white Christians and anyone else that can be brought in on promises of a better economy and/or liberal tears.
The immigration problem is perfectly suited to them. Trump can say outrageously racist things like Hispanic immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the nation” and “Haitians are eating the cats and dogs” and know that he runs little risk of losing voters. In fact, he is mobilizing the base.
Critiques of Democrats’ solidarity with minorities1 avoids the central question. Is the commitment to minority rights a principled commitment or an electoral strategy? Are there particular policies and practices that seek to apply these principles but do so ineffectively or in a way that unnecessarily alienates white voters and/or centrist independents?
more at jimhannon.substack.com