Oh dear, what can the matter be?
By Only 18 Black delegates at GOP convention – lowest share (0.7%) since at least 1912! #RNCinCLE pic.twitter.com/qH166hg0zo
— Daniel Donner (@donnermaps) July 19, 2016
What a puzzling phenomenon this is, to be sure.
The peak came in 2004, during the reelection effort for George W. Bush. That year, nearly 7 percent of the Republican delegates were black, including 16 percent of those from Louisiana, 13 percent of those from Maryland, and 13 percent of the delegates from New York and Michigan. By 2008, those figures had plummeted: 1.6 percent overall, including none from Louisiana and none from Maryland.
2008? What was it that happened in 2008 that might have caused African-American delegates to stay away from the RNC?
I’m sure it will come to me in a moment.
Lovelace told Capehart that his estimate from last month was still preliminary (hence the dotted line, above) and that the party was working with outside groups to “ensure people from diverse backgrounds are able to participate during the convention.” Attempts to contact Lovelace on Tuesday morning were not successful.
He may have realized that it was time to move on to a nice cushy think tank. Or he may have been chased off by a ululating Trump supporter. (BLUELIVESMATTERCRIMINALSANIMALSBUILDTHATWALLLLLRAAGH!)
Meanwhile, another Washington Post reporter thinks the GOP’s Trump’s racism racial controversies are the problem.
The standard press/pundit approaches to Trump’s racism scarcely warrant comment; white supremacy isn’t going to defend itself you know! But in this article the writer glissades past the outbreaks of violence at Trump’s rallies and the almost masturbatory delight Trump took in them.
…the overall lack of ethnic diversity at the convention illustrates one of his greatest challenges: how to court black voters after four decades of controversy over his racial views, including campaign-trail rhetoric that has alienated many minorities.
Follows a short list of examples (with bonus anti-Semitic stereotyping!) that the reader is supposed to pretend (or allows the reader to pretend) are unique to Trump, rather than things Republicans do on those rare occasions when parrots fly and dolphins live at sea.
Why ignore the violence? Perhaps the reporter is showing a bit of foresight. If he’s going to spend the next 3,000 months writing stories that treat Donald Trump as anything more than an ambulatory, semi-articulate grease clog with some attic insulation stuck on one end, it won’t do to note he once said he’d like to punch a protestor, indicated he would pay the legal fees of a man who did punch a protestor in the face, or expressed a fear of weaponized fruit. Or perhaps he just missed it, the way he seems to miss two presidential elections.
Twelve years ago, the GOP seemed on its way toward broadening its base, boasting 167 black delegates at its convention.
At first I thought that a 7ish% turnout is not something to boast about, but I was forgetting the IOKIYAR effect.
That year, President George W. Bush drew 16 percent of the black vote here in Ohio, unusually high for a Republican, to help secure his reelection, as well as 11 percent nationally,
Not mentioned: 2008, when McCain received 4% of the African-American vote, or 2012 when Romney received 7% (both worse than Reagan, after four years of Reagan). Why, it’s almost as though there’s a trend that can only missed if one ignores one decade + two years of history.
and party leaders had hoped to increase minority engagement in 2016.
Ha ha ha. And it would have worked. If successful minority engagement didn’t involve engaging minorities in any way that minorities would like to be engaged.
Maybe the GOP could start with making its party less welcoming to racists.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says he plans to run for U.S. Senate in Louisiana.
Duke’s announcement came Friday on his website.
A registered Republican, he would be seeking an open seat vacated by Republican David Vitter.
Oh well, put it on the to-do list for 2020.
