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“I Am Done Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils. I Will Not Vote for Joe Biden in 2024.”
(inthesetimes.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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electoralism
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213,313,508 eligible voters in 2008, 131,407,000 voted, 95% of black voters for Obama, 59,948,323 went to McCain (a supermajority of them white) even after eight years of George Bush, when polled conservatives policies are highly unpopular with a supermajority of the population (whites included)
Race, demographics, and cultural identity have far more valence on the outcome of elections than ideological commitments, especially in a country with such poor political education
The supermajority of all voters are white.
The majority of Obama voters were white.
Conservatives in 2008 were almost exclusively white.
Race for sure played a factor, it always does. But it absolutely does not outweigh ideology.
Conservatives also exist within the democratic party and in 2008 they were Hillary people, many of whom were still mad at Obama for ruining her coronation the first time which led many of them to not vote for him
Exactly that's my point, and the supermajority of non-whites voted for Obama, while the majority of white voters who voted went for McCain, if ideological commitment formed the core of election outcomes then that wouldn't have been the case, and we would see a more even distribution among demographic groups
The majority of McCain and white Obama voters voted the way they did because Obama was black, the conservatives voted the way they did because he was liberal and to be liberal is to be black or support black causes, and white Obama voters (aside from the ones who genuinely didn't care he was black) voted for him because voting for the first black president would've been a cultural signifier they could use as social capital in the more cosmopolitan spaces they inhabit
White Obama voters who voted a second time couldn't have cared less about his ideological promises because he betrayed all of them in his first term
Holy shit that’s insane.
Go look at the graphs of the electorate before and after 2008. It is not wildly different.
A majority of people did not vote because of race.
You’re drawing very sweeping conclusions from one and a half data points.
lmao yeah that just strengthens my point, otherwise if ideological commitments swayed voters then YOU have to explain why white Obama voters didn't punish him for betraying those ideological commitments in his first term, it's almost like demographics and cultural signifiers were more important than concrete ideology, and the need for cultural identification among white liberals only intensified between 2008 and 2012 after the mostly cultural conservative backlash against Obama and HIS Democratic Party, a backlash that surprise surprise found its expression in racial politics
What a profound argument, I've now changed my mind
Great point.
Since most in the US have no concrete ideology, there are only demographics and cultural signifiers. Politcal Parties are just lifestyle brands