Whatever Happened to the Democrats` Youth/Minority Voter Juggernaut?
After the 2008 election,
both the youth bloc and the
minority bloc
were widely lauded
for turning out in large
numbers to put
Barack Obama in the White House.
Indeed, the MSM punditry
conflated the young and the nonwhite into one overlapping
harbinger of unbeatable Democratic hegemony in the
rapidly-arriving demographic future—in contrast to those
(nearly) dead white males who
voted for John McCain.
Two years later, however,
the future ain`t what it used to be.
A September 3, 2010 Gallup
Poll
report
is headlined:
Blacks, Young Voters Not Poised for High Turnout on Nov. 2:
Republicans—and conservative Republicans in particular—are
already tuned in to midterms.
The Gallup survey found the decisive factor in this
November`s midterms is that the
older, whiter, and maler
you are, the more interested you are.
That wasn`t true during the
fatally inhibited
(on the GOP side) 2008 campaign.
According
to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Hispanics age 18 to
24 who voted increased from 20.4 in 2004 to 27.4 in 2008.
That was the highest young Hispanic turnout since 1972,
before the vast wave of immigration made had the paradoxical
effect of reducing the
proportion of Hispanics
active in American civic life. Turnout among young blacks
and
Asians
was also up sharply. [Dissecting
the 2008 Electorate: Most Diverse in U.S. History,
Pew Research Center, April 30, 2009]
The 2008
exit poll
found that 18 to 29-year-old Hispanics voted 76-19 for
Obama. 18 to 29-year-old blacks 95-5. (The exit poll didn`t
cover the
Asian vote.)
In contrast, although young
whites dutifully voted for Obama 54-44, their turnout
actually dropped slightly, from 2004 to 2008, from 48.5
percent of their possible total to just 48.3 percent.
Apparently the choice between Obama and John McCain was just
less galvanizing for young
whites than it
was for their nonwhite classmates.
The punditariat is always
denouncing conservative voters as ignorant and
unsophisticated. Yet the revival of apathy among Democratic
blocs in 2010 shows that the Obama fad of 2008 actually
dredged up some of the least savvy citizens ever to
find their way to the
voting booth.
The Democrats are paying
the price for the MSM
over-promoting
Obama to
minorities
and
youth
as if he were the awesomest
Will Smith
Fourth of July-weekend blockbuster movie hero ever. Now that
Obama`s actually in office, he instead reminds them,
vaguely, of that
earnest adjunct professor
who taught the boring Poly Sci 101 course at the
community college
that they dropped out of. Young people, minorities, and,
especially, young minorities, have simply lost much of the
interest in public affairs that they
briefly displayed in 2008.
This suggests the
medium-term strategy for Republicans for coping with
demographic change:
stand by your base.
Not surprisingly, that`s
the exact opposite of the line preached by mainstream
analysts: that Republicans can`t dare take an aggressive
line with Obama or on immigration because they will then
washed away by outraged young minority voters, who will
never forget
and
never forgive the GOP
for any disrespect toward Diversity. We`ve been instructed
repeatedly by the press that Republicans must act
gingerly upon any topic
touching upon diversity—just
as
John McCain did.
But in 2010, that`s sure
not happening. Past GOP Establishment spokespersons like
McCain, Bush, and
Karl Rove
are discredited. New, un-neutered grassroots leaders, such
as Arizona state senator
Russell Pearce,
author of
SB1070,
have emerged. Long-forbidden
topics, such as
anchor babies,
have
surfaced.
Public discussion of these issues has, as VDARE.COM has
always
predicted,
fired up the GOP base.
But also, contrary to the
conventional wisdom, this political incorrectness has not
only failed to elicit an effective backlash from young
minorities—it has also apparently heightened their apathy,
causing some of them to lose interest in politics.
Look at this table:

Moreover, 42 percent of whites have been thinking about
their civic duty, compared to only 25 percent of blacks and
25 percent of Latinos. And almost half of the public age 50
or over are contemplating the elections compared to merely
19 percent of the 18 to 29-year-olds.
(Gallup also found a sizable gender gap, although not the
kind that the MSM
likes to talk about:
45 percent of men have given some thought to the elections,
compared to only
31 percent of women.)
From a historical perspective, there`s nothing terribly
surprising in the collapse of the vaunted liberal youth vote
in these midterms. Young people don`t vote much, and when
they do, it`s typically because they got worked up over
personalities during Presidential elections. Here are
turnout percentages from the Census Bureau`s post-election
surveys:

Young people (the orange line) were fired up, relatively
speaking, over George McGovern in 1972, Bill Clinton in
1992, and Barack Obama in 2008. In contrast, old people (the
green line) reliably showed up to vote in Presidential and
midterm elections every year except the depressing Watergate
year of 1974.
Young people simply have more enjoyable things to think
about than public affairs: romance, music, friends, and
who would win in a fight: Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man?
And this pattern of blowing off voting in off-years is
particularly marked for young voters of recent immigrant
stock. Hispanics and Asians became somewhat interested in
the high turnout 2004 election, and went wild (compared to
their traditional lack of participation) over voting for
Obama in 2008:

In contrast, the turnout of
young Hispanics and Asians is generally dismal in midterms:

Only about one out of ten
18-24 year old Hispanics and Asians show up to vote in
off-years.
Of course, a large reason
that many young people of immigrant ethnicities don`t vote
is because
they can`t vote.
They`re
not citizens.
But that`s not the only
reason. Another is civic apathy. We can tell because, in
sharp contrast to the Census Bureau`s contention that it
couldn`t possibly dream of
asking residents of the U.S.
if they are citizens in the
decennial Census,
the Bureau always asks people in its post-election survey if
they are
citizens.
It turns out that in the 2006 off-year election, looking at
18 to 24 year old citizens alone, turnout was 24 percent
among whites versus 19 percent among blacks, 17 percent
among Hispanics, and 15 percent among Asians.
Bottom line:
the decline in the white share of the vote is happening slower than the
decline in the white share of the population. But this
is a lesson that many political strategists just can`t seem
to keep straight in their heads.
And, conversely,
appealing to white interests does not automatically alienate minorities.
When you think about common
human psychology, this shouldn`t be surprising. For example,
the press`s notion that Latino voters would respond to
Republican criticism of legal and illegal immigration with
relentless resentment, with endless spite, is just another
example of
projection
by the media elite.
The reality is that most
nonwhites can`t be bothered to feel as much racial hatred as
the MSM demands they feel. They`ve got a life.
Instead, human beings
generally try to associate themselves with what is being
praised by society and disassociate themselves from what is
being criticized. Being callow, young people are
particularly impressionable. Despite all the romantic piffle
about young rebels, the fact is that young people
(especially the kind who are likely to vote) tend to be
conformists. Hispanic and
Asian youths
are perhaps even more conformist than white and black
youths.
When viewed from this
perspective, the rise and fall of young Hispanic and Asian
excitement over Obama`s party in 2008 to 2010 makes sense.
Voting for a black candidate for President was not an act of
youthful rebellion for Hispanics and Asians, but of
conformity to the endlessly spelled-out wishes of the
respectable institutions of society: the
media,
the
schools,
and even, so far anybody could tell,
the Republican nominee.
Similarly, if the President
of the United States
praises
illegal immigrants (as George W. Bush did,
saying
“You`re
going to come here if you`re worth your salt, if you want to
put food on the table for your families”)
well,
Viva La Raza!
But on the other hand, if white people continue to
become ever so slightly less intimidated about
publicly defending their
own interests,
well, Hispanic and Asian young people have more fun things
to do with their time than worry about elections.
This implies a simple,
effective strategy for the Republican Party—the opposite of
that pursued by
Bush, Rove, and McCain:
Instead of appeasing professional minority activists and
thus making them more powerful by letting them claim to be
able to deliver goodies,
stand up to them.
The GOP remains,
overwhelmingly, a party whose most
enthusiastic supporters are
mature white men.
Stop being ashamed of that fact. Show some self-respect.
Stand up for the interests of your voters. Don`t let ethnic
hustlers bully your constituents so much.
The race racketeers can
smell fear. Moreover, as a former young person, I can attest
that young people care less about policy issues than that
they want to be on a winning side. They are acutely
sensitive to signs of weakness. The 2008 campaigns of
Hillary Clinton
and John McCain, with their terror of pulling the trigger on
Obama`s soft spot—his
long involvement
with Rev.
Jeremiah Wright—were
palpably abject, so they repelled the young. Young people
won`t invest their fragile egos in embarrassingly
emasculated political campaigns.
Young blacks
felt naturally triumphalist about Obama`s candidacy. Less
inevitably, the pathetic nature of the anti-Obama campaigns
lured young Hispanics and Asians into jumping
opportunistically onto the anti-white bandwagon alongside
blacks—with whom they otherwise don`t have all that
much in common.
Weakness invites contempt,
especially from the young, who have a pack instinct. In
contrast, self-confident strength, as demonstrated by
Arizona`s
SB1070
and some of the attacks on Obama, elicits respect and, at
minimum, discourages the mass of opponents.
The reality is that
Republicans
aren`t going to win over
black voters.
But, through a strong defense of their constituents`
interests, they can counter the black triumphalism that
brought so many blacks to the polls in 2008. And they can
definitely discourage Hispanic and Asian anti-white
opportunism simply by stopping being such pushovers.
It just needs courage.
Oh! Wait a minute…
[Steve Sailer (email
him) is
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com
features his daily blog. His new book,
AMERICA`S HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: BARACK OBAMA`S
"STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE", is
available
here.]


