By Oduche Azih
With the advent of Trump, writers and analysts Cas Mudde, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jelani Cobb and a host of others, went back in time to micro-analyze the demographic spread of Obama’s victory in his two Presidential runs. In the first, a majority of White voters, (about 54%) cast their votes AGAINST him. This statistic has to have been available to those whose day job it is to develop and archive such information. However, why spoil Obama’s victory parade with ungrateful griping about who didn’t vote for him?
It made no immediate sense.
Hence no one pushed it. Four years down the road the Obama rejectionists in the White voter population again rose to some 57%, no thanks to racist Donald Trump permanently sniping from Trump Tower about his birth certificate, etc. I also concede that Mitt Romney also presented a level-headed and quite credible challenge.
However the truth of the matter is that no matter how much credit we give Trump, the White backlash has had an organic growth within the ranks feeding off the usual downward trends as the economic cycles go. Hence “take back our country, our land, our jobs” etc. took centre-stage in Right-wing discourse.
By the time Trump, (who passionately complained about The Electoral College until he won by it despite losing the popular vote by over 3million votes), defeated Hillary Clinton, the polished elements among the GOP spin doctors were desperate to pass it off as a result of the coalescing of the unenlightened and potentially racist votes of the mytical “Joe the Plumber” and the like. Certainly the professional cadre, the super rich millionaires and billionaires cannot possibly harbour such despicable(?) attitudes. With the election won and lost, the analysts went to work. White voters, who saw Clinton as wanting to run a dreaded Obama third term, had voted resoundingly against her. It is amazing that this insidious cancer even spread to a fraction of the White women ordinarily leaning democratic, leading to her loss. You hear silly reasons like, “She should have divorced Bill” and all such crap.
WE ARE NOT GOING BACK! So said Presumptive President Kamala Harris in her positive campaign for the White House.
Regarding the narrative above and the Trump phenomenon, we say NEVER AGAIN!
However, we must not forget how the Bible belt lost God and found Trump.
The devil seeds are all over the place. The seedlings need to be constantly uprooted.
Oduche Azih, an elder statesman wrote from Anambra State.
