Far-From-Dead White Males, by Michael Warren Davis.
Hillary Clinton leads among blacks (91% to 7%), Hispanics (66% to 24%), and women (59% to 35%) – statistics her political and media allies tout with orgiastic relish. That a candidate appeals to protected identity groups is meant to be inherently appealing. These groups are basically assumed to be an on the side of the angels, and politicians are expected to tailor their policies accordingly. Indeed, one of the great identity crises raging in the GOP is whether Republicans should make themselves more agreeable to Hispanics or blacks. …
Politicians and commentators are … loathe to discuss a candidate’s appeal to white men one way or the other. It’s impossible to say that appealing to whites – still by far the largest ethnic group in the United States – is intrinsically negative. Then again, appealing to them can’t be intrinsically positive either: political correctness won’t allow it. Ditto for gender: appealing to men isn’t usually considered a thing to be condemned, but the PC censors would never allow it to be regarded as a thing to be applauded either. To all intents and purposes, the white male vote is purely incidental. …
Whether Trump is consciously tailoring his message to white males can’t possibly be known – not to the extent, for instance, that we know Hillary Clinton tailors her stump persona and rhetoric to women. She literally sells a woman card, for Pete’s sake! But Trump’s unprecedented success in modern Western politics is evidence of the power of the white male vote. Their sheer numbers can make any candidate that appeals to them (or, rather, us) viable, regardless of how little they appeal to ethnic minorities. …
For all our talk of ‘systemic racism’ and ‘systemic sexism’ – the supposed accumulation of power in the hands of self-serving white men – white men have been regarded as electorally powerless. …
[T]he end of the 2016 US election, regardless of its outcome, will usher in a major paradigm shift. The white male vote will have to be taken as seriously as the minority and women vote – if not, vis a vis the former, more so. We simply can’t use ‘white male power’ as a rhetorical byword for political and economic injustice. It’ll have to be regarded as a legitimate and extremely consequential component of the democratic process. Politicians and party establishments won’t be able to suck up to ethnic and female voters at the expense of white male ones. They can’t act as though women and minorities are infallible, and white males are a variable. White males can’t be taken for granted anymore, their beliefs and concerns dismissed as ‘bitter clinging’. Whatever happens in November with Trump, they can’t – and they won’t – be overlooked again.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
