The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Five Thirty Eight's Hakeem Jefferson and Michael Tesler dive into why racist White Republicans will vote for Black Republican candidates over any Democrat whatsoever, and yeah, tribal loyalty in the Trump cult is definitely a thing if you haven't been keeping up with, I dunno, the last 5 years of politics.

Can white voters who back a Black candidate still hold racist beliefs and views?

That question has come to the fore in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory in the blueish state of Virginia. Conservatives were quick to counter claims that Youngkin’s win represented the effectiveness of stoking racial fears with results from Virginia’s down-ballot election for lieutenant governor — a contest where the Republican candidate, Winsome Sears, made history by becoming the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, for example, emphatically mocked the notion that “voters called white supremacists elected a Black Lt. Gov.” Conservative commentators on Fox News and Twitter, including Sears herself, also used the historic victory as an ostensible shield against accusations of Republican racism.

But supporting a Black candidate hardly precludes voters from harboring racist beliefs and motivations. Republicans are increasingly more likely than Democrats to hold prejudiced views of minorities, so Black Republicans like Sears often draw especially strong support from white Americans with otherwise anti-Black views simply because they draw most of their support from Republican voters.

A clear example of this was in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, when Ben Carson made a bid to become the GOP’s first African American presidential nominee. Support for Carson was positively correlated with the belief that Black Americans have too much influence on U.S. politics, according to data from Washington University in St. Louis’s American Panel Survey (TAPS) in late 2015.

Whites who thought African Americans had “far too little” influence disliked Carson and preferred Hillary Clinton by 60 percentage points in a hypothetical general election matchup. Meanwhile, Carson was very popular among whites who were most concerned about African Americans having “too much” influence in politics. So much so that whites who thought African Americans have “far too much” influence preferred Carson to Clinton by 45 points.

Again, much of that relationship is down to partisanship — Republicans are more likely to hold prejudiced views and also more likely to support a Republican candidate. But that’s the point: For many white GOP voters, anti-Black views don’t seem to get in the way of supporting a Black Republican.

You can see a similar pattern in the January 2016 American National Election Studies Pilot Study. Carson received more favorable evaluations among the sizable minority (40 percent) of overtly prejudiced whites who agreed with the racist stereotype that “most African Americans are more violent than most whites.” This group rated Carson significantly more favorably on a 0-100 scale than the white moderate Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush (52 to 39, respectively). Then-candidate Donald Trump was the only politician in the survey who was rated higher than Carson among overtly prejudiced whites.1

The contrast between how prejudiced whites rated Carson and Obama is rather revealing, as well. The sharp negative relationship between support for Obama and the endorsement of anti-Black stereotypes is consistent with several studies showing that prejudice was an unusually strong predictor of opposition to Obama from the 2008 election through the end of his presidency. These patterns also fit well with other political science research showing that racially prejudiced whites tend to be more opposed to Black Democrats than to white Democrats.

To make sense of why racially prejudiced white Americans are willing to support some Black candidates, it is worth considering why they so strongly oppose Black Democrats in the first place. Given the racialized nature of the two-party system in the United States, most Black political candidates are Democrats who embrace liberal positions on issues of race and justice. When asked whether they would support such a candidate, research shows that racially prejudiced white voters worry that these candidates will represent the interests of Black Americans, both because of a shared African American identity and because Democrats are perceived as the party more supportive of Black interests. So, it makes sense that racially resentful white Americans oppose candidates like Obama, as his racial identity and partisanship signaled to voters that he was more supportive of Black interests than prior presidents.

Put another way: Racially prejudiced white voters are not opposed to Black candidates simply because they are Black, but because they believe that most Black candidates will fight for “those people” and not “people like us.”

 

Yep.

 

It's the "those people" rule again.

It's why white voters, especially white women, abandoned Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a big part of why Trump won.

Racist Republicans love candidates that will fight for white folk and actuvely hurt Black and brown folk. Trump and Carson were the candidates who were best seen as making these racist views not only permissible, but possible as US policy.

They saw Hillary as a race traitor, more interested in helping Black America than white America. Winsome Sears on the other hand is a Black former Marine and small businesswoman openly posing with a rifle in her arms, and she won easily. (Same went for Jenean Hampton here in KY in 2015).

Permission to be racist is what they want, and you don't get much more permission to be a racist than "Well I voted for Virginia/Kentucky's first Black woman Lieutenant Governor and she won, so we're clearly not racists, YOU ARE, LIBTARD!"

That's it. That's what they want, that's what they got. Useful idiots serving the cause of white supremacy by bowing down to it, no matter how many of their own they hurt. A Black woman advancing the cause of white America? That's how it should be, to the Trump cultists.

They couldn't be happier.

Meanwhile in Bevinstan...

Yet another poll shows Matt Bevin has now tied up the Kentucky Governor's race with Andy Beshear with under two weeks to go, and Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Joe Gerth wonders what it's going to take for KY Dems to learn how to close a race they led for months against arguably the most unpopular Governor in America.

Democrats across Kentucky must be banging their heads against the wall and mumbling to themselves, “Not again.”

As has been the case in recent elections, Democrats have fielded a candidate for major statewide office who comes screaming out of the gate with a lead in the polls, only to see it wither away in the final month or so before the election.

Some early internal polls had Attorney General Andy Beshear with nearly a double-digit lead over Gov. Matt Bevin after he dispatched House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins and former state Auditor Adam Edelen in May.

But a Mason Dixon poll released last week has the race as a tie, with momentum clearly on Bevin’s side as we hit the last two weeks before Election Day.

We saw the same phenomena in 2015, when Jack Conway led Bevin in mid-summer polling only to see it turn as brown as the trees by November. Bevin won by nine percentage points.

We saw it in 2014, when Alison Lundergan Grimes had a four-point lead over Sen. Mitch McConnell, according to the Bluegrass Poll, only to see it evaporate. McConnell won by 15 percentage points.

In 2008, Bruce Lunsford pulled within a point of McConnell, only to lose in November by six percentage points.

Democrats say their internals still have Beshear ahead of Bevin, and Republicans say their polls actually have their candidate leading.

Either way, the race has tightened, and we’re seeing the same pattern emerge that has meant doom for Democrats in recent years. That’s not to say Beshear still can’t pull this out, but if he does, he’s going to have to sweat it out on election night.

It ain’t gonna be easy.

Bevin has run the last six weeks on ending abortion in Kentucky and ads about scary MS-13 gang members invading Kentucky from Mexico, and he's probably going to win because of it.

I'm tired of KY Dems blowing leads time and time again.  Another four years of Bevin and Kentucky will be dead last in education, teacher pay, health care, environmental safety, and will become the first state without a single abortion provider.

And my neighbors are either going to stay home or vote for this prick to take everything from us.  It infuriates me to no end.  Bevin straight up lied about Medicaid, he lied about teachers, he lied about everything, and he dumped the state's first black statewide officer off the ticket since Reconstruction because she was a drag with his white supremacist base.

But he's a 50-50 shot to win.

Amazing.

We deserve the destruction this asshole will bring.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

With the candidate filing deadline today, Joe Sonka at Insider Louisville goes over the 2019 Governor's race here in Kentucky and what and who we can expect on the ballot for the May 21 primaries, but who you won't be seeing is Bevin's current Lt. Governor, Jenean Hampton.

Gov. Matt Bevin finally made his re-election bid official on Friday, but this time he will not be running with his current Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton. Instead, the governor chose state Sen.Ralph Alvarado of Winchester, a physician who has sponsored legislation to limit medical malpractice lawsuits and create tax credits for K-12 students to attend private schools.

Republican Congressman James Comer considered a primary challenge against Bevin but issued a statement Sunday night explaining his decision not to make such a run – though not without adding a searing criticism of the governor’s behavior during his first term.

Instead, Bevin will face a trio of political newcomers in the Republican primary, including state Rep. Robert Goforth, William Woods of Corinth and Ike Lawrence of Lexington.

Goforth, a veteran and pharmacist, won a special election last February to the state House and won that seat again in November. He chose Lawrence County attorney Michael Hogan as his running mate, who lost a close primary race for attorney general in 2015.

Goforth has criticized Bevin for his harsh words toward teachers who protested his public pension reform proposal, support for charter schools, and the expansion of gambling with instant racing facilities that resemble slot machines.

Woods has a platform of opposition to Bevin’s pension bill, support for abortion rights and support for medical marijuana, with that tax revenue steered toward providing every public school with armed guards. Justin Miller of Florence is his running mate.

Lawrence, who filed for office just hours before Tuesday’s deadline, ran for mayor of Lexington last year, winning less than 2 percent of the vote in the primary. James Anthony Rose, also from Lexington, is his running mate.

On the Democratic side, the primary has shaped up as a three-way fight of big-name candidates, including Attorney General Andy Beshear, House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins and the former state Auditor Adam Edelen.

Beshear chose Jacqueline Coleman as his running mate, a teacher, basketball coach and current assistant principal at Nelson County High School. The other two gubernatorial candidates both looked to Louisville for their running mates, with Adkins choosing the former Jefferson County Board of Education member Steph Horne, and Edelen tapping the prominent businessman Gill Holland.

Perennial candidate Geoff Young — who has lost by wide margins in five races over the last seven years — is also running as a Democrat on a ticket with Josh French. Young, from Lexington, received less than 2 percent of the vote last year in the Democratic primary for the Sixth Congressional District.

Back last November, the state's Tea Party leaders told Bevin in no uncertain terms to keep Hampton on the ticket, because dumping the state's only elected black statewide officeholder would make Bevin look like more of an asshole than he already is.  For her part, Hampton all but admitted she was going to be dropped from the ticket last week before Bevin made his decision official last Friday.

Bevin remains one of the country's least popular governors, and thankfully Alison Lundergan Grimes passed on the Democratic side, where her baggage plus the weight of her father's long history in the state would have almost certainly spelled doom.

As it is, state AG Andy Beshear and Matt Bevin have been fighting for three years straight anyhow, so at least he has the practice in facing off.  We'll see how the primaries go, but at this point I'd vote for an empty barrel of Woodford Reserve over Matt Bevin.

Besides, it's the coldest day of the year and Matt Bevin is bitching about why many Kentucky schools are closed Wednesday because it hasn't occurred to him that some kids in the state have to walk to school after Bevin gutted already slim school transportation budgets last year and wind chills of -20 below might be bad for students.

The guy deserves to lose.

One Day In Louisville Makes A Hard Bevin Humble

Louisville, Bluegrass setting
And the city don't know that the city is getting.
The creme de la creme of the chess club
In a show with everything but Rand Paul!

Time flies doesn't seem a minute
Since Matt Bevin insulted the chess kids in it,
All change, don't you know that when you
Play at this level there's no ordinary venue...

Gov. Matt Bevin said in a promotional video featuring the West Louisville chess club that some people might be surprised by the connection between the club and the neighborhoods it draws children from, unleashing a barrage of criticism on social media.

"I'm going to go in and meet the members of the West Louisville Chess Club," Bevin said in the video. "Not something you necessarily would have thought of when you think of this section of town."

Bevin made his comments in a promotional video published online Tuesday. In the video, he took a tour of Nativity Academy, an independent private school in Phoenix Hill. The club often plays in locations around the city.

Also: Matt Bevin bashes Andy Beshear but won't say he's in governor's race

“Governor Bevin met with the West Louisville Chess Club to showcase an important program that is encouraging sportsmanship and character building among Kentucky’s youth,” Bevin’s spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn said in a statement. “It is disappointing that some are trying to shift the focus away from the incredible accomplishments of these talented kids.”

The West Louisville Chess Club "primarily targets" young children who live in the West End of Louisville, according to Lyndon Pryor with the Louisville Urban League.

The Louisville Urban League, located in the Russell neighborhood, is a partial source of funding for the club.

Councilman David James, who represents District 6 in Louisville, was present at the event where Bevin filmed the promo. James said it is a sign of Bevin's deteriorating relationship with the state's African-American community.

"It was just an obvious move by the governor to take photos with the African-American community," James said. "To perpetuate a stereotype of the African-American community like that is unbelievable."

As a black Kentuckian who likes to think that he plays chess fairly well, I have to say that Bevin perpetuating a stereotype of black Kentuckians is completely believable, because 1) he's a Republican and 2) he's a rather racist asshole, but I repeat myself.

Yes, his running mate, Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, is Kentucky's first African-American elected to statewide office.  And she's been as silent on Bevin's cartoonishly bad racism since the day she was sworn in.  Frankly I haven't heard a peep from her on this "deteriorating relationship" in 30 months, and she seems pretty eager to get out from behind Bevin's shadow and get out of here, so why should she start caring now?

Considering Bevin seems to regularly engage in behavior where when he's not checkmating himself with obvious blunders like this, he's flipping the board over like an angry toddler and making sure nobody wins, and I remain convinced there's a significant chance that he may not run for re-election next year.

The Privilege Of Learning

I've talked a lot about Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, but not so much about his Lt. Governor, Jenean Hampton.  She's the first African-American to be elected to statewide office, and that's a massive accomplishment.  The problem is her politics are just as awful as Bevin's, if not actually worse on the subject of education in the Bluegrass State.

After the luncheon, Hampton met with The Eastern Progress’ editorial staff and fielded questions about Bevin’s recent executive decision to impose immediate 4.5 percent budget cuts to higher education. 

When asked about the potential for rising tuition costs, some of which could stem from Bevin’s decision to cut university funding, Hampton said students who wish to attend college in Kentucky can find the resources to pay for school if they are prepared and work toward it. 

“It’s not a right, it’s a privilege,” Hampton said. “Those of us who go to work must give part of their earnings to put you through college, and I disagree with that.” 

Hampton pointed to her experiences as a student, adding that she worked while in college and paid her own way. Rising tuition costs wouldn’t necessarily serve as a deterrent to students who wish to attend college, but rather would teach students to plan ahead and work for what they want, Hampton said.

By Hampton's logic, why should Kentucky's public universities even exist?  Jesus hell.

EKU officials say they have already made moves to account for Bevin’s immediate 4.5 percent reduction to the current budget. Officials said the $3.1 million loss in funds would not affect any current programs. Instead, officials said the university would make up for the funding shortfall by tapping reserves and non-recurring funds. 

Hampton mentioned that budget cuts could push universities to innovate and make difficult decisions. Saying state institutions should focus on programs that are more likely to lead to student employment after graduation. 

“I would be looking for degrees that would land a job,” Hampton said. “I would not be studying history.” 

Hampton compared state universities to private businesses, saying they will make necessary changes to continue to attract customers. She said competition between universities should drive down costs overall. 

“Let’s inject some competition in there,” Hampton said.

Would someone please explain to me when the sole point of public education became "Get a good enough job that you repay your debt to the state that educated you"?    Republicans are bound and determined to get rid of public education in this country, and that should scare all of us.