Before reading the rest of this post, I suggest you take a look at the exit polls, the most comprehensive of which is available on CNN.com.
He basically uttered the reason why he really lost the election -- on the social justice battle, more so than just demographics alone.
The modern definition of social justice centers around a society that allows for an equal opportunity for everyone to succeed. This is the definition that will be used in this post. It's the main sticking point between liberals and progressives that believe that social justice is still a work in progress that is nowhere near complete, while conservatives and libertarians insist that the core objectives of social justice have already been achieved and those that argue against that just simply fail to recognize it. The question of whether or not social justice objectives have been achieved is also a matter of debate racially between liberal-leaning ethnic minorities and conservative-leaning whites.
There's a reason why voices from the conservative media and the Republican Party are opening their eyes to that. Commentators such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and politicians such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Scott Walker of Massachusetts, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour all have came out and said that Republicans need to change their sales pitch to minorities, and in varying degrees, have all realized that to make headway with minority voters, they cannot be completely dismissive and unsympathetic to social justice issues. When taking into consideration that these same personalities of the right are condemning Romney's comments, it makes for a noticeable shift in the GOP's modus operandi.
There's a reason why voices from the conservative media and the Republican Party are opening their eyes to that. Commentators such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and politicians such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Scott Walker of Massachusetts, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour all have came out and said that Republicans need to change their sales pitch to minorities, and in varying degrees, have all realized that to make headway with minority voters, they cannot be completely dismissive and unsympathetic to social justice issues. When taking into consideration that these same personalities of the right are condemning Romney's comments, it makes for a noticeable shift in the GOP's modus operandi.
Voters reason through emotion and social justice carries more weight emotionally than it does logically -- the left's arguments are primarily emotional and secondarily logical; the response from the right is its inverse. However, in the event that one side feels that the ideals of the other side threaten to suppress the ideals of their own, then any logical explanation made by either side is thrown out the window: it's purely emotional. That emotion is often expressed in the savior mentality, most notably this past election cycle in the rabid support of Barack Obama by the Democratic base, the desire by many conservatives to see the triumph of Mitt Romney, and the fervent supporters of Ron Paul. Whichever campaign understood how important it was to take advantage of the emotional argument was going to end up triumphant -- Romney did a decent job, Obama did a fantastic job in that regard.
The true explanation about today's economy, viewed widely as a time of hardship, is that it is final phase of transitioning to a post-industrial economy, and the beliefs that we had in mitigating that transition were completely wrong thanks to poor decisions made in both the private and public sectors. Our awareness of that transition has been made through the media, personal experiences, and pragmatic beliefs shaped by various schools of economic thought, and as such, we positively and negatively equate economic issues to social justice issues. It goes back to the positions that I mentioned previously, but in the economic frame, this amounts to the advocacy of greater government regulation of the economy by the left and a push for lassiez-faire solutions on the right. Strict advocacy of either can manifest itself to heavily distorted viewpoints and becomes a really bad game of telephone when relating these viewpoints to voters.
So here's where minorities come into play, whom voted for Obama on an 8 to 1 margin: minorities comprise 37% of the population and made up 28% of the electorate in the 2012 election, latter up from 26% in 2008. By 2050, these ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the United States population. When the math breaks down, a little under half of all voters that backed Obama were minorities (roughly 22 to 23%). As long as minorities value social justice, and minorities see the Democratic Party as the party that supports social justice, the Democratic contestant (in this case Barack Obama) will always win.
The social justice postulate continues to illustrate itself in regards to income. If you look at the exit polls, specifically the ones on income and a fair component to the income question, what the American economic system generally favors, those that have incomes lower than $100,000 and feel that the American system favors the wealthy (both commanded majorities in those polls), most of them voted for Obama. While this would appear in conflict with the majority of Americans exit polled that felt that the government was doing too much for the economy (think stimulus packages) and voted overwhelmingly for Romney, it is not so much when realizing that the questions are almost mutually exclusive. In the end, those on the lower end of the income scale and those that are of the belief that the economy is slanted towards those with wealth will almost always argue in favor of varying degrees of social justice.
So here's where minorities come into play, whom voted for Obama on an 8 to 1 margin: minorities comprise 37% of the population and made up 28% of the electorate in the 2012 election, latter up from 26% in 2008. By 2050, these ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the United States population. When the math breaks down, a little under half of all voters that backed Obama were minorities (roughly 22 to 23%). As long as minorities value social justice, and minorities see the Democratic Party as the party that supports social justice, the Democratic contestant (in this case Barack Obama) will always win.
The social justice postulate continues to illustrate itself in regards to income. If you look at the exit polls, specifically the ones on income and a fair component to the income question, what the American economic system generally favors, those that have incomes lower than $100,000 and feel that the American system favors the wealthy (both commanded majorities in those polls), most of them voted for Obama. While this would appear in conflict with the majority of Americans exit polled that felt that the government was doing too much for the economy (think stimulus packages) and voted overwhelmingly for Romney, it is not so much when realizing that the questions are almost mutually exclusive. In the end, those on the lower end of the income scale and those that are of the belief that the economy is slanted towards those with wealth will almost always argue in favor of varying degrees of social justice.
The Democratic Party understands how valuable it is to have a platform that centers around the colloquial definition of social justice in regards to getting voters to support the party. This is why the Democratic Party continues to have a near monopoly on minority voters. A historical example: when the Republican Party was seen as the more socially conscious party, roughly half of black Americans identified themselves as Republican until towards the end of the Eisenhower administration.
The Democratic Party also understood that voters will be mobilized against the candidate that can be perceived as a threat to social justice. Romney, nor any Republican candidates for that matter outside of Huntsman, never completely demonstrated the ability of devoid themselves of that socially threatening stereotype. At the same time though, the media does its part to make sure that it reinforces popular voter stereotypes. Regardless, the mobilization argument explains the record minority voter turn out and a second term for Barack Obama.
So what does this mean for the Republican Party? The next Republican candidate will have to articulate a vision of social justice that would be acceptable to minority voters or the GOP would have to hope that social justice would have to be a relatively moot issue. The only thing is, if social justice is a relatively moot issue by the next Presidential Election, and voters can positively credit Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole, then it sets up for the Democratic Party to dominate the federal election landscape for years to come.
The Democratic Party also understood that voters will be mobilized against the candidate that can be perceived as a threat to social justice. Romney, nor any Republican candidates for that matter outside of Huntsman, never completely demonstrated the ability of devoid themselves of that socially threatening stereotype. At the same time though, the media does its part to make sure that it reinforces popular voter stereotypes. Regardless, the mobilization argument explains the record minority voter turn out and a second term for Barack Obama.
So what does this mean for the Republican Party? The next Republican candidate will have to articulate a vision of social justice that would be acceptable to minority voters or the GOP would have to hope that social justice would have to be a relatively moot issue. The only thing is, if social justice is a relatively moot issue by the next Presidential Election, and voters can positively credit Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole, then it sets up for the Democratic Party to dominate the federal election landscape for years to come.
In the end, it was irrelevant who the Republican Party nominated because the party is widely seen as a social justice inhibitor. In my mind, the best candidate to win the election for the GOP would have been Huntsman, while there is a staunch group that insists that it would have been Paul. When social justice was ultimately what this election was about and which candidate would have been seen -- because this is all about perception -- as the most positive social justice torchbearer, minorities will get more apt to get behind that candidate, leading to victory. Huntsman would have fared the best on the GOP side.
Moreover and I'll close by saying this: the realized benefit of social justice is measured by personal worldview and separate ideological benchmarks of success. I would like to think, personally, that we'd start to move away from ideological benchmarks and promote critical thinking strategies in an attempt to objectively comprehend and analyze socioceconomic function.
No comments:
Post a Comment