- Monday, December 1, 2014

To paraphrase President Obama’s controversial spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright: “America’s race-baiting chickens are coming home to roost.”

See, there is a tectonic shift in political demographics taking shape, and it’s not the one you’ve been sold by the lame-stream media. This demographic shift is actually deciding elections like the 2014 midterms, yet largely goes unreported since it doesn’t reinforce politically correct dogma.

Turns out the Leftist intelligentsia that dominates the punditry would rather be wrong on Election Night than tell the truth before or after.

The conventional wisdom claims conservatives turn out en masse in midterm elections like the one we just had, while presidential elections are more demographically diverse and thus favor the Democrats. But as is typically the case, the actual numbers proves the conventional wisdom wrong.

True, as I pointed out in a recent column for The Washington Times, a surge of evangelical voters in key “red states” tilted battleground U.S. Senate elections in the Republicans’ favor.

However, when you look at the broader numbers nationwide, a deeper and far more troubling truth is revealed concerning race: The Democrats were decimated in the 2014 election despite a minority turnout that was almost exactly what it was in 2012, when President Obama was re-elected.

Blacks were 13 percent of the electorate in 2012 and 12 percent in 2014. Hispanics were 10 percent of the electorate in 2012 and 8 percent in 2014. Those turnout numbers are basically indistinguishable, and the differences are not significant enough to produce the Republican rout few pollsters saw coming.

Furthermore, fewer voters identified as “conservative” in 2014 compared to the 2010 midterm elections. That year, 42 percent of the electorate described themselves as “conservative” while only 37 percent did this year. The latter figure is actually closer to the 35 percent who described themselves as “conservative” in 2012’s presidential year.

This data contradict all the fairy tales the lame-stream media has crafted to explain why we just had one of the top Senate swing elections of the past 70 years. Or why Democrats are now at their lowest numbers in state legislatures nationwide since before the Great Depression. And why Republicans will simultaneously serve as governor in Massachusetts, Maryland and Mr. Obama’s home state of Illinois for the first time since “Leave it to Beaver” was still on network television.

So what is the moral of the 2014 midterms then? Call it “white flight.”

There were only three states with Senate contests this year where Democrats managed to grow their percentage of the white vote – Minnesota, Oregon and Mississippi. Obviously, Minnesota and Oregon lean Democrat, but why was Democrat Travis Childers able to double his party’s share of the white vote in conservative Mississippi from the 2008 Senate contest?

Look no further than the disgusting race-baiting used by Republican Thad Cochran to win the primary runoff there against Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, which drew the collective ire of a slew of well-known and respected conservative leaders a few months ago and further proves my point.

The biggest story from the 2014 elections is that people aren’t just tired of Mr. Obama’s lawless act and ineffective policies. They’re also fed up with the Marxist/Cloward-Piven/Saul Alinsky tactics he and his Leftist acolytes repeatedly deploy to get their way.

Middle-class whites like my mom, who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and was proud to see him break the presidential color barrier, are fed up with being told that if they don’t like the fact they can no longer afford their health care, they’re a racist. That if they can’t afford to pay for the college tuition of illegal aliens, they’re a racist. That if they think someone should show the same identification to vote that they show to get a government-issued library card, they’re a racist. That if they think Ferguson, Missouri, rioters should be arrested for destroying private property, they’re a racist.

And so on, and so on.

The white base of support needed by the Democrats to form a winning national coalition is eroding, but not because Republicans have won those hearts and minds. I think we all know that’s not true, for the current leadership of the GOP runs away from almost every ideological fight.

Rather, this is a reflex action against race-baiting. A majority of those voting for Democrats this year in states like Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina were actually non-whites.

In North Carolina, incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan ran race-baiting ads that said a vote for Republican challenger Thom Tillis could create more Fergusons there. Her support among white voters plummeted to 33 percent on Election Day, and she lost a race she never trailed in a credible poll.

Similar results occurred all over the country this year:

* Arkansas: Incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor received only 31 percent of the white vote, which was 83 percent of the electorate.
* Georgia: Democrat Michelle Nunn received only 23 percent of the white vote, which was 64 percent of the electorate.
* Kansas: Liberal independent Greg Orman received only 41 percent of the white vote, which made up 88 percent of the electorate.
* Kentucky: Democrat Alison Grimes received only 31 percent of the white vote, which was 89 percent of the electorate.
* West Virginia: Democrat Natalie Tennant received only 34 percent of the white vote, which was 96 percent of the electorate.

Before believing this phenomenon was relegated only to those U.S. Senate races, consider the gubernatorial clash in the crucial presidential battleground state of Ohio — which Mr. Obama claimed in both of his successful presidential bids.

Democrat Ed Fitzgerald received only 24 percent of Ohio’s white vote, which made up 78 percent of the statewide electorate. That’s a 17-point drop from 2012, when Mr. Obama received 41 percent of the white vote while winning the Buckeye state.

Over in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election, Democrat Mary Burke lost the white vote to Gov. Scott Walker by 14 points. Mr. Obama lost that state’s white vote by only three points in 2012.

Over and over again we see white voters who voted for Mr. Obama not once, but twice, abandoning both him and the Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections. The Obamaistas chose to take the Marxist musings found in the comments section of Lefty blogs mainstream and, after originally falling for it, the mainstream has rejected it.

Sure, Mr. Obama won two elections for himself this way. But by the time he leaves office in two years, he’ll also be known as the man who was even more successful getting Republicans elected than Ronald Reagan.

(Steve Deace is a nationally syndicated talk show host and also the author of the new book “Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again.” You can “like” him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.)

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