The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part One: Bigotry as a Winning Strategy

Democracy is not dying in America. But that's not for lack of effort by leading Republicans and conservative billionaires. Those folks are attacking democratic institutions with everything they've got, because their interests and the interests of the American people are very much at odds. The driving force of American politics in the current decade has been conservative leadership attempting to cement their long-term goals as public policy before changing population demographics overwhelm them and their old, white hegemony at the ballot box. This is the first in a series of articles that will focus on how conservatives are attempting to transform America into an oligarchy where elections are held only to determine which Republican will have the job of making sure corporations and billionaires get everything they want.

Republicans expected to win the 2012 election. In the immediate aftermath of that loss, conservatives noted that the tide of changing population demographics and growing minority vote not only contributed to Romney's loss (given that few non-whites voted Republican) but also that these same trends would prove even bigger challenges in the future, given that American minority populations are growing faster than the white, Christian conservative base of the Republican party.

Here's what conservative pundit Sean Trende had to say:
"For Republicans, that despair now comes from an electorate that seems to have undergone a sea change. In the 2008 final exit polls (unavailable online), the electorate was 75 percent white, 12.2 percent African-American, 8.4 percent Latino, with 4.5 percent distributed to other ethnicities. We’ll have to wait for this year’s absolute final exit polls to come in to know the exact estimate of the composition this time, but right now it appears to be pegged at about 72 percent white, 13 percent black, 10 percent Latino and 5 percent “other.”

Obviously, this surge in the non-white vote is troubling to Republicans, who are increasingly almost as reliant upon the white vote to win as Democrats are on the non-white vote. With the white vote decreasing as a share of the electorate over time, it becomes harder and harder for Republicans to prevail.

This supposed surge in minority voting has sparked discussions about the GOP’s renewed need to draw in minority voters, especially Latinos, usually by agreeing to comprehensive immigration reform."

Republican party leadership was quick to pick up on the theme of expanding minority outreach. Here's a quote from the Republican National Committee "Growth and Opportunity Project", issued in 2013: "We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities. But it is not just tone that counts. Policy always matters."

That was the strategy the Republican establishment recommended, but it wasn't the one they got in 2016. Here are some quotes from Donald Trump:
March, 2016: "I think Islam hates us... And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States."
From Time magazine, August, 2016: "Donald Trump kicked off his presidential bid more than a year ago with harsh words for Mexico. "They are not our friend, believe me," he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants: "They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.""
November 2017: Regarding the suggestion from Greg Sargent of the Washington Post on Twitter that, "Trump regularly attacks high-profile African Americans to feed his supporters' belief that the system is rigged for minorities", Trump responded, "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

As it turns out, there was another, completely opposite strategy to the more-inclusive campaign the Republican leadership had suggested: go full-on white supremacist. During the 2016 campaign, Sean Trende described the Trump strategy in terms of numbers: In 2012, the electorate that went to the polls had been 59% white, but, "If we do see Donald Trump push the white vote up into 63-64%, it suggests that as whites move towards minority status that they become more aware of their whiteness, and it plays into politics. It is a disheartening and dangerous trend, but it might be something we don't have any control over."

Trende was exactly right: the "forgotten" white voter who ignored Mitt Romney found a home in Donald Trump's whites-only Republican party, helping Trump carry rust-belt states that nearly everyone thought were safely in the Democratic column. Trende, to his credit, noted after the election that, "my observation was expressly limited to the idea that missing whites could help the GOP win. People interpreted this as advocating for a "whites-only" GOP, which I expressly disclaimed."

Final point: I said this is a series about how Republicans are attacking democracy. Successful appeals to white-supremacy are repugnant, but it takes more than an assault on inclusiveness and on America as the great melting pot to destroy democratic institutions. Next time, I'll talk about how Republicans have translated their attacks on minorities into policies that keep minority voices from being heard.

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