Well now, this [1] gets interesting.
.Much of the political commentary since the presidential election has focused on two groups of party switchers: those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 and those who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Trump voters who previously voted for Mr. Obama are the subject of intense fascination because they are viewed as providing critical insights into the racial and class dynamics that helped determine the outcome of the election. On the other side, many analysts see Romney voters who flipped to Mrs. Clinton as an illustration of how the Democratic Party now survives in significant part by appealing to more upscale voters.
Frustratingly, however, these perspectives play down the importance of a crucial group of disaffected voters: those who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 but then failed to go to the polls in 2016. Because this group is disproportionately young and black, this erasure is racially tinged.
The trouble of course is that the New York Times has got this one all wrong. I suppose there’s nothing new about that, particularly. But let’s break this down..
The first part of their analysis that can be discounted totally is the rather knee-jerk racism. This argument is to be expected. It’s reflexive among the left these days because they haven’t got anything else to bring to the table.
The fact is that if race was so much the issue, Obama wouldn’t have been elected twice. There simply aren’t enough blacks in the Electoral pool to elect him on their own, so clearly there was enough whites who voted for him. Race and racism doesn’t even enter the picture on this one… It’s almost as if the New York Times is unwilling to admit that we now live in a post-racial society. That point aside… Let’s do a quick overview of the actual balance on this thing.
The real reason so many people transported between Romney and Clinton is because policy wise, there really wasn’t all that much of a difference as I have described previously [2].
The centerpiece of this though, is the largely unspoken frustration of the leftists at the New York Times that so many people that voted for Obama didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. It amazes me that they still haven’t figured this one out.
I don’t have it to hand just now, but I commented at some point immediately following the election, that a re-election of Donald Trump was at the very least somewhat questionable because of my feeling at the time that Donald Trump got elected for two reasons. First, he wasn’t part of the establishment, and second, he wasn’t Hillary Clinton.
But, here’s the thing… Hillary Clinton will not be running in the next election. The people who sat on their hands after watching their primary process be interfered with by someone whose lack of Ethics made even the staunchest of Democrats cringe… it’s not a scenario that’s going to be happening again. The primary motivation for so many Democrats sitting on their hands was Hillary Clinton and her corruption. The reason for the large number of people voting for Donald Trump? Again, he wasn’t Hillary Clinton.
But, Hillary Clinton will not be running for president again, so barring any unforeseens, the lack of response from the Democrat rank-and-file cannot be depended on in the next cycle…
Nor can large amounts of crossover voting for Trump that occurred, be counted on, again because of Hillary Clinton and her corruption will not be there.
That said, I suggest the Republicans who sat on their hands and didn’t vote for Donald Trump are not as likely to be sitting on their hands in the next cycle, either.
So, the future race of Donald Trump versus an as-yet-unnamed Democrat seems likely to come down to the factor of motivation.
And that factor, dear reader, comes down to what Donald Trump manages to do between now and then. That’s because the only things that the Democrats have to run on at this point are 2nd Amendment issues, and illegal aliens. Both of those issues are being driven at this point by Panic, and outright untruth.
As Hillary Clinton’s loss in the most recent election demonstrates, fear and loathing of anything to the right of Fidel Castro can only be stretched so far.