November 12, 2017
Tuesday’s resounding electoral victories gave us reason to feel hopeful for the first time in a year. In Virginia and New Jersey, Ralph Northam and Phil Murphy won decisively against Republican candidates who waged ugly, racist campaigns. In addition, Democrats scored victories around the country, including the first trans woman elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, the first Sikh mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, the first African American mayor of Helena, Montana and the first African American woman mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. While these results are truly encouraging, we must be careful not to over-interpret them. Since Tuesday, Democrats have been crowing that these wins prove that blatant appeals to bigotry are ineffective. Unfortunately, a closer look at the numbers disproves that comforting message.
In Virginia, Ed Gillespie’s gutter tactics garnered him 63% of the white male vote and 51% of white women, for 57% of the white vote overall (Source: “Exit poll result. How different groups of Virginians voted,” The Washington Post, 11/11/17). In contrast, Northam received 87% of the vote of Black voters and 67% of the vote of Latino voters for a total of 80% of the votes of Virginians of color. In New Jersey, 55% of white women voted for Kim Guadagno, while 94% of Black women voted for Phil Murphy, mirroring the Trump/Clinton percentages from a year ago (Source: “Decision 2017. New Jersey Results,” NBCnews.com, 11/11/17).
The sobering fact is that for a significant number of voters, a campaign message steeped in the fear-mongering demonization of Black and Latino Americans is a winning one, or at the very least, not a disqualifying one. Democrats need to be careful not to learn the wrong lesson from Tuesday’s results. The fever has not broken. Too many Americans believe that the path to their redemption lies through the expulsion or subjugation of people of color.
For proof of the intransigence of retrograde bigotry, we need look no further than the spectacle of Bible thumping, serial pederast, Roy Moore of Alabama. Moore, a homophobic, islamophobic secessionist, beat the incumbent establishment Republican, Luther Strange, by 6 points in the primary. On Thursday, The Washington Post broke the story that Moore had pursued sexual relationships with four teenagers (including one as young as 14) when he was a 32 year-old prosecutor. Moore has been defiant in the wake of these revelations and refused to withdraw from the race. Alabama State auditor, Jim Ziegler, compared Moore’s exploitation of high school girls to Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, in an effort to excuse Moore’s behavior. To add insult to injury, Moore condemned The Washington Post and his accusers as “evil.” The fact that he was not immediately struck down by a bolt of lightning is the strongest argument for atheism that we have seen in some time. Senate Republicans were not much better, giving Moore wiggle room by stating, “if” the allegations are true, Moore needed to step aside. Instead of demanding that Moore exit the race, Alabama Republicans are considering moving the special election in order to give them time to convince Moore to withdraw and recruit another candidate (Source: “Republicans float pushing back Alabama special election,” by Lisa Hagen and Ben Kamisar, The Hill, 11/10/17). The Republican Party’s unwillingness to unequivocally condemn Moore and cast him out of the Party proves the moral rot at its core. Sadly, a shockingly significant number of people would rather elect a racist pedophile than a Democrat. Democrats need to realize that these people are irredeemable and stop chasing the chimera of the disaffected white working class voter. The lesson of Tuesday is that the Democratic victory will only come through reassembling a coalition of voters of color and college educated whites. Time will tell if the Democrats have learned it.