Election experts endorse Cory Booker's explanation for Trump winning Michigan

[applegrove]

Election experts endorse Cory Booker’s explanation for Trump winning Michigan

Election experts say the 2020 candidate is onto something.

DANIELLE MCLEAN at Think Progress

https://thinkprogress.org/cory-booker-was-right-voter-suppression-helped-trump-win-michigan-eada3f38e838/

"SNIP......

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) claimed during Wednesday night’s presidential debate that President Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 because Republicans and Russians worked to suppress the votes of African Americans.

Election experts say he’s onto something.

“We lost the state of Michigan because everybody from Republicans to Russians were targeting the suppression of African American voters. We need to say that,” Booker said during the second night of the second set of debates, in Detroit.

“If the African American vote was four years earlier we would have won the state of Michigan,” he continued. “We need to have a campaign that is ready for what’s coming, an assault especially on the highest-performing voter group in our coalition, which is black women.”

......SNIP"

[evertonfc]

1. my advice

Don't let the Russians supress your vote. I mean, I understand the argument but go damn vote. Unless a Russian has you locked in a vault- vote like your life depends on it. For some people it just might.

[pnwmom]

4. People arriving at voting places and finding their names not on the rolls.

Others had voting hours sharply cut back, and were having to wait for HOURS to vote, while voters in white districts got to sail through.

[triron]

5. Yep. Machines going down in Detroit also. Russian hackers are incredibly good according to Malcolm

Nance. They are good at covering their tracks so no one even knows they were there.

[uponit7771]

19. THIS !!!! Without provisional ballot auditing its easy to registration shave in America

[ismnotwasm]

10. That's not how voter suppression works

[brush]

12. That was reported on election day. Machines not working, no extension cords.

That was part of a multi-pronged repug strategy to suppress the black vote.

[demmiblue]

2. Wrong forum. n/t

[Miigwech]

3. No shit! They targeted African American communities like in Detroit,

stole votes in black voting precincts with voting machines that hardly worked. Forensic voting exams couldn't be done because the machines were so bad.

[blm]

6. Same in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and NC

Georgia, and Florida.

[triron]

8. Yep. And in Arizona, it was hispanics.

[usaf-vet]

15. Wisconsin in Milwaukee

Scott Walker and his cronies have been fine-tuning the suppression "machine" since the day he took office.
All the Russians need to do in Wisconsin was to plug-into the existing "machine" built by the WI GOP.

[blm]

21. Yup

[LiberalFighter]

7. Tell the voters that the Russians are trying to steal their votes.

And to top it off. Encourage them to vote early and if possible on a paper ballot.

[think4yourself]

14. I'm especially wary of early voting.

I live in GA. I don’t think we have had an honest election here since 1996.

[rzemanfl]

26. Wondering if I need to wash socks. I feel the same way about FL. n/t

[jimlup]

9. As a Michigan Citizen ...

this!

[brush]

11. We've known that for three years here. Tens of thousands of ballots in Detroit, a...

majority AA city were allegedly cast without a vote for the president, the top of the ticket.

Know one with any sense believes that tens of thousands of black voters didn't bother to vote Democratic, or even repug for that matter.

[MichMan]

29. Please prove that tens of thousands of undervotes for president were cast in Detroit

The City of Detroit's official website tends to show otherwise


There were 248,780 total ballots cast in 2016

Of those

Trump 7,682 or 3 %
Clinton 234,871 or 95 %
Johnson 1,533
Castle 342
Stein 1,735
Soltysik 186
Write In 1,020

Total votes for president = 247,369

That means there were 1,411 ballots cast with no vote for president

Note: In Michigan Write In votes are only counted if and only if the candidate pre registers as a write in candidate. That means any votes for Bernie Sanders, Elvis, Mickey Mouse and others not registered as write ins are counted as "no votes" for president. I would guess that Bernie received the vast majority of those

In comparison in 2012

There were 1,398 undervotes for president (which was nearly identical to 2016)

Interestingly, in 2012, there were only 821 votes for third party fringe candidates and only 364 Write Ins. That compares to 3,798 third party and 1,020 write ins in 2016

That indicates that voters in 2016 were much more dissatisfied with both Clinton & Trump compared to 2012 with 4 times as many voting for third party and write ins compared to 4 yrs earlier.

Links to both 2016 & 2012 are posted below

[link:https://detroitmi.gov/document/november-6-2012-general-official-election-results-summary|

[link:https://detroitmi.gov/document/november-8-2016-official-general-election-results|

[brush]

31. Pls prove what side you're on. It was reported on election day that thousands...

of ballots had no check for president. Are you trying to prove that there was no suppression of AA votes in Detroit?

[MichMan]

32. Is that how we prove what side we are on? Just make up numbers that aren't accurate?

I supplied data direct from their own website that refuted the claim that tens of thousands of no votes were recorded. I guess the elected officials like Janice Winfrey, who is in charge of the City of Detroit elections, must have lied on their own website then.

There is enough legitimate stuff about our elections that needs to be discussed so it doesn't happen again, but making up numbers with no basis in fact undermines any rational debate and makes us look foolish.

[brush]

33. Try this.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212342967

[MichMan]

34. Another link to the same OP we were already disscussing ???

[JI7]

13. the same is happening right now with Kamala Harris

[She_Totally_Gets_It]

16. We black American voters already know this. It's white people who keep suggesting that Trump

win reflected "economic anxiety" or the fact that Hillary didn't visit the "fly over states" to pander to "hard working white class" voters.

Black Americans are begging America to listen to us THE FIRST FUCKING TIME when we try to tell you what's going on. We are the only ones who will save this country!

[applegrove]

18. It is everything together. It was a dozen things or more. Why do you think it can only be one?

[She_Totally_Gets_It]

22. Because people ignored all of the hate and voted for this nutcase anyway....

I will never fall for the "economic anxiety" lie. Perhaps that is used as an excuse to hate, as it often is.

Plus, there is ample evidence based on studies, survey data and constant rolling polls.

We need to be more nuanced here. It has often been the case that disaffected whites will blame "the other" for their plight, so they hide their bigotry behind class explanations.

This is Democratic Underground. We should know this.

[applegrove]

23. I read a book that showed scientifically in a regression analysis

that when people feel financial insecurity they vote on intuition not on facts. There were many reasons Hillary lost. She was not an exciting candidate, comey, her vp pick wasn't inspiring, economic anxiety, racism, vote supression of black people, russians, gun humpers, anti abortions voters, and on and on. We need to work on all these things. There is rarely one reason for an election result. We are talking 300 million people. They all don't act or think the same.

[She_Totally_Gets_It]

24. Yeah. Everything you said is valid. But THIS discussion

is about how white people voted and why they voted for Trump. All the recent analysis basically debunk the “economic anxiety” narrative. A deeper analysis demonstrated that those voters only used economic stress as a shield or smokescreen to mask their bigotry.

When I get home from work, I will come back and post some of these studies.

We must begin to be honest about race in this country and its impact. Nothing will change until this our reality. We can no longer afford to be naive about this.

[applegrove]

25. Naive is to know there were 20 reasons why Hillarry lost and ignore 19

of them.

[happy feet]

30. Naive is to discount the major reasons Hilary

Lost. In a nutshell black voter suppression, Comey, the media endlessly focused on Hilary's emails giving Trump many times more free press. Studies have proven this. Remember Hilary won just under 3m more of t g e popular vote and lost the electoral vote by only 10,000s votes from 3 states.

[applegrove]

37. We can do it all. Every meme the right puts out we punch back.

[She_Totally_Gets_It]

41. No, naive is accepting that though those other factors may have played a role, you dismiss the

very prominent role that RACE played. Please just stop! Denying racism is not going to help us in this fight. Just stop!

Here are only several studies that demonstrate the centrality of RACE. There are plenty more, but I post these here:

https://psmag.com/news/new-study-confirms-again-that-race-not-economics-drove-former-democrats-to-trump

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/polq.12737?_ga=2.123870670.551383267.1565132746-1557602708.1565132746

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/30/still-believe-trumps-racism-wont-get-him-re-elected-thats-what-you-thought-the-last-time-too/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/16/17980820/trump-obama-2016-race-racism-class-economy-2018-midterm

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/07/20/its-2019-time-to-stop-making-excuses-for-trump-supporters/

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/18/2016-election-race-class-trump/

Huffington Post: Denial of racism won't make it go away. More reading: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-racism-dont-ignore_n_5d30c5d0e4b020cd9940b3cb

The Nation: Economic Anxiety Didn't Make People Vote Trump, Racism Did: https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-make-people-vote-trump-racism-did/

NYTimes: Trump voters driven by fear of losing status, not economic anxiety: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html

Alnet: Sociologists destroy the myth that uneducated white voters support Trump because of economic anxiety: https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/sociologists-destroy-the-myth-that-uneducated-white-voters-support-trump-because-of-economic-anxiety/

THIS IS NOT ONLY ME who is making this argument, countless studies are being released almost every week supporting this argument. Ample research.

[radius777]

38. Whites across economic lines supported Trump

Many studies have been done on this, and the data shows clearly that the election of Obama caused a backlash that led to the rise of Trump and White Nationalist hatred that we see today.

Hillary is white but viewed like Obama - a threat to white male hegemony, and received similar hatred as a result.

66% of white men supported Trump, only 27% voted for Hillary.
53% of white women supported Trump, only 42% voted Hillary.

[applegrove]

39. They vote with emotion than logically when under financial anxiety.

And many in the mid west have lost once good jobs. So they are more likely to vote on race and scapegoating if they suffer from financial struggles as the middle class and the poor have increasingly suffered since Ronnie Reagan started the neocon revolution. Sure obama in power was used by the GOP to bait and swich as obama's presidency was sabotaged to keep the recession long (keynesian spending had always previously been done in recessions). It was everything alltogether.

[radius777]

40. Some do, but most Trump voters are no different

than any other GOP voters, who have always been driven by racial resentment as a backlash to civil rights. Trumpism simply puts it out in the open and is more violent.

Hillary/Dem voters were/are on average far more economically/socially oppressed than Trumpers, yet they didn't turn to hatred, but the 'Stronger Together' message Hillary ran on.

Also, Trump and his supporters now tout his 'amazing economy' (which mainly helps the rich) - yet still holds onto his base, who are supposedly voting for 'economic anxiety'.

[She_Totally_Gets_It]

42. I don't know why this person is in such denial over race. What is going on here? There's studies

all over the place that prove the obvious. The OP is delusional.

[Perseus]

17. And they hacked the voting machines

Anyone who doesn't believe the creature only won by cheating is fooling themselves, or support the buffoon, but his margin was so low that there is no doubt in my mind they cheated, and that is why the "Electoral College" must go.

I cannot understand, or maybe I don't know, why Democrats are not fighting hard to get rid of the electoral college, it only helps republican cheating, less states they have to worry about, they only have to concentrate on the key states, they don't care about the others.

That crap the the creature won because he communicated to that white base that other politicians, blah, blah, blah...Peopl are not that stupid and the creature did not have enough support. They cheated.

[rzemanfl]

27. Agree with you but I must wash socks. n/t

[triron]

36. An exit poll statistical analysis by a Ph. D. expert showed the deviation toward Trump in 26 of 28

state polled indicated definite fraud in the counting vs the vote cast.
Like Stalin said" it's not who votes but who counts the votes"

[yaesu]

20. that tipped the scales in tRumps favor, yes, but the main reason he won was

the entire state, less the Detroit area, is crawling with tRumpsters.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

28. Before the 2016 election,

when we were saying, "Black Lives Matter," I had a sign that read, "Black Votes Matter."

I had written an impassioned letter to Miami Herald columnist, Leonard Pitts, explaining why I felt this way, how I believed that Black votes were either not going to be counted/deemed legal or were going to be suppressed, and what this was going to mean to the outcome of the election. Sadly, he never responded (either to me or in a column), and I feel like an opportunity was missed in that message NOT getting the attention it deserved.

Blissfully, we saw that matter in the Alabama senate special election (Doug Jones and Royboy). Black women, I salute every single one of you.

I'm ecstatic that Senator Booker has spoken truth to this.

BLACK VOTES MATTER. [/b

[ecstatic]

35. Agree 1000%. Why can't democrats get together and be united on

what happened on 2016?! The narrative is all over the place, with many blaming Hillary, etc. Get it together, get on the same page, dammit!