I can just hear the screams now...the polls are rigged! Plus, they were wrong in 2016! None of that is actually true. While methodology varies from pollster to pollster, and is open to criticism, they do not put their finger on the scale to favor one candidate over another. As far as the claim the polls were wrong in 2016, the average of national polls that year were just a point off what the candidates received and the results in the swing states were all within the margins of error of the polling averages in those states.
What is remarkable is that despite so many issues over the years that should have doomed Trump - his putting kids in cages, his solicitation of foreign powers to help him win elections, his self-dealing and outright corruption, his utter disregard for the Constitution and democratic norms, his huge budget deficits, his racist and xenophobic rhetoric, his ridiculous trade wars that hurt American consumers, his giving aid and comfort to our enemies while attacking our allies - he still had a solid chance of winning as of early 2020.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and Americans finally woke up to the fact that they had a President in the White House who is utterly and completely incompetent. Trump has demonstrated beyond any doubt he lacks the ability to lead the country. While some of us who followed his career were well aware of Trump's unfitness for office, it has taken the death of some 130,000 Americans from a pandemic for many voters to wake up to that fact.
Competence, or rather the lack thereof, will be what killed Trump's re-election campaign. Maybe Trump still has time to turn things around and prove to Americans he's up for the job. I kind of doubt it though.
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The Indianapolis Star reports this morning that the Indiana Republicans have launched a "diversity" initiative to recruit African-Americans and Latinos. The article quotes at length Indiana Republican Party Chairman Kyle Hupfer who claims he has worked for years promoting diversity in the party. Hupfer says in the article he wants to see more minority Republican candidates and more minorities
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| Indiana Republican Party Chairman Kyle Hupfer |
What a pile of human excrement.
Chairman Hupfer is a YUGE supporter of President Trump, the most openly racist president since Woodrow Wilson. Trump has labeled Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists. And remember the "good people on both sides" comment about the white supremacy protests? Just last week, Trump defended Confederate monuments, the Confederate flag, and retweeted a supporter yelling "white power" from his golf cart.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise to anyone who has followed Trump's career. Trump has a long history of racial discrimination as a businessman, including discriminating against African-Americans in housing. Outside the world of business, Trump has taken public positions that are often tinged with racism, to say the least. The most prominent of these pre-presidency positions is his steadfast support of the death penalty for the Central Park Five, even after they were exonerated of murdering the woman jogging in the park.
In June of 2020, Vox Magazine published a story documenting Trump's "long history"of racism. While I don't agree that all the entries in the years from 1970s to 2020 are evidence of racism, many, if not most, are.
Of course, liberals are constantly throwing out the charge of racism against virtually every Republican candidate. As a result, many people understandably have ignored the claim Trump is a racist. But this time, liberals are actually right.
Fortunately, Indiana Republican Party Chairman Hupfer has consistently pushed back against Trump's overt racism, standing up for Latinos and African-Americans who might be considering the Republican brand. Kidding. Chairman Hupfer has done NOTHING of the sort.
There will be a time in the not too distant future when the Republican Party, sans Donald Trump, will have to reinvent itself. As part of that re-calibration of the party, GOP leaders will realize they must reinvent the party so it can attract African-American and Latino votes. Part of that process will be excommunicating from party leadership posts pro-Trump Republicans, like Hupfer, who said and did absolutely nothing as the President turned the GOP into the party of white supremacy.
1 comment:
"Indiana GOP's Laughable Diverity Outreach" would be just that if it weren't so very, very sad. It's not just Hupfer's alignment with Trump that contradicts his stated desire to seek diversity within GOP ranks. The Marion County and State GOP have a long history of recruiting Black candidates to run for elected office and then abandoning their campaigns. Black GOP candidates have long complained that the party wouldn't even provide them with basic campaign resources such as voter walk lists. Minority candidates have been invited to participate in GOP "roundtables" organized with national GOP leaders to discuss how to increase diversity within the ranks and then not been given opportunities to speak. Emmitt Carney, Marion County GOP 2014 Marion County Sheriff candidate was initially paraded around as a Black Republican running for major office, only to be ignored in the months prior to Election Day. GOP leaders turn on Curtis Hill when accusations of inappropriate touching at an off work hours party rose to the level of sexual battery. Silence when white Republican Jim Brainard is accused of sexually harassing a fellow elected office holder.
And this GOP’er will never forget the county leader’s response to why Pakistani Tony Samuels was being enthusiastically backed by GOP insiders in the 2000 congressional primary run against black Phd Butler professor, Marvin Scott. The answer, “Well, Tony’s dark skinned.”
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