Two candidates whose candidacies are based on winning the declining white vote have captured the first primary in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Sen. Bernie Sanders and real estate tycoon Donald Trump had lost a week before. Now the media “narrative,” this year’s term, will declare them victims and the likely presidential nominees of the Democrat and Republican parties. How can this be given that the share of whites, meaning Caucasians of Anglo-Saxon descent, is declining each year? Imagine, a jeweler using an arthroscopic surgeons’ tools, removed two tiny areas from the nation and added up the votes. Iowa and New Hampshire, combined population less than 5 million of the total of 319 million in the country. That is not quite 2 percent. As late night TV hosts repeatedly said, there were more blacks on the university basketball teams in the two states than in their black populations. The two states both allow people to cross lines and vote for a candidate in either party. Most states require primary voters to be registered members of the party whose race they are voting in. Next up are Nevada and South Carolina, both with big minority populations, and polls show Clinton with big leads. She lost to Sanders by 18 points, less than the 30 the polls predicted. Trump may do better since there are so few blacks and so many evangelical, Confederate flag lovers. As for New England, it used to be joked that the New England states were in their own world. “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.” This evening’s Huffington Post banner headline said: “NH Goes Racist Sexist Xenophobic.” Sanders and Trump appeared to share one thing. But they were opposite sides of the coin. Sanders wants to be a socialist. Trump want build walls around the country. Sanders approves of same sex marriage and legal abortion and even legal weed. Trump wants to put anyone who marries someone of the same sex in jail along with any woman who had an abortion, even if raped. Here is where the polls seem at odds with each other. Majorities approve of the gay marriage, legal abortion and legalizing marijuana. With the two major parties apparently under the control of leftists and rightwing nut cases, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also a billionaire, may enter the race as an independent. He has been a Democrat, a Republican and now an independent. The biggest problem with Trump and Sanders is that they are both boring. The media has supported Trump and opposed Clinton. Bloomberg might give the nation the solid third-party choice most countries already have.
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Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
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Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
November 2016
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