[Bret L]

Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Massac The Unspoken Race Dimension


By Washington Watcher

"Scott Brown’s stunning victory over Martha Coakley is filled with national implications. Of course, what makes his win so dramatic is that Massachusetts is one of the bluest states in the country. Brown underlined this in his victory speech when he said "When there's trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured, there's trouble everywhere, and they know it."

Democrats control Massachusetts’ entire Congressional delegation and
Obama won the state with a 26% margin in 2008. That a Republican can
now win a statewide election by over five points is truly remarkable.

But if the GOP is to learn any lessons about this election, they need
to look at what really makes Massachusetts different.

Massachusetts is blue—but it is also still White. According to Census
estimates, 79.2% of the population is White, 8.6% is Hispanic, 7% is
Black, and 5% are Asian. In 2008 exit polls, Blacks made up 9% of the
electorate (probably disproportionately high because of the Obama
effect), whites made up 82% and Hispanics and Asians both made up 3%.

While no one took exit polls on Tuesday night, it is a very safe bet
to assume that Whites made up an even greater percentage of the
electorate this election than they did in 2008. Brown won by getting
huge numbers of white independents and white Democrats to shift the
GOP.

Whites are the only swing voters in America. There is not, in fact,
"trouble everywhere." Democrats do not need to worry about losing in
Detroit, DC, or Atlanta.

William F. Buckley famously quipped that he would rather be governed
by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the 2000
members of the faculty of Harvard University. But even the random
white names in the Boston phone book would normally have voted
Democratic. In 2008, Barack Obama won 59% of the white vote in
Massachusetts and John Kerry won 64% to retain his senate seat. In
contrast, only 43% of whites nationwide voted for Obama.

However, aside from the Harvard professors, most of the white
Democrats in Massachusetts are not liberals who are tied to the party
out of ideology. Rather, they are Irish ethnics and union members
wedded to the Democratic machine for cultural reasons. These people
were rioting when blacks were bussed into their schools, but they
still voting for Ted Kennedy.

Republicans will never win the Harvard professors over. But they can
win over the white ethnics and Union members, as Reagan and Nixon did
in their landslide reelections. Scott Brown did an outstanding job
appealing to this demographic. His campaign became synonymous with his
GMC Canyon pickup with 200,000 miles on the odometer. As Peggy Noonan
noted, "He is a regular guy, looks like an American."

Coakley made it clear she was with the Harvard professors, not the
phone book, when she insulted Brown for shaking hands outside Fenway
Park, called Red Sox hero and Brown supporter Curt Schilling a "Yankee
Fan," and said that the American people were wrong on Health Care.

But as much as the national Democrats want to put all the blame on
Coakley, Brown would not have been able to win were it not for the
enormous unpopularity among Barack Obama among whites. And we cannot
forget that Obama’s fall from grace among whites began when he sided
with black Harvard Professor Henry Gates against Irish-American
Cambridge Cop James Crowley.

On July 22, when Barack Obama’s approval ratings among whites was
still well above 50%, he said Crowley "acted stupidly" in arresting
black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct and
suggested that racial profiling was involved.

Only 20% of whites believed Obama’s comments on the incident were
appropriate and his approval ratings immediately plummeted among them.

Obama has not held a press conference since.

Brown made absolutely no comments on Gatesgate or any other racial
issues. But MSNBC mudslinger Keith Olbermann still called him a
"racist" and "reactionary" because he accepted support from the Tea
Party movement, which Olbermann is "the saddest collection of people
who don’t want to admit why they really hate since the racists of the
South in the sixties insisted they were really just concerned about
states’ rights." [Olbermann: Scott Brown's A 'Homophobic, Racist,
Teabagging Supporter of Violence Against Women', NewBusters.com,
January 18, 2010]

Olbermann’s comments actually have an indirect relationship with the
truth. With the Democratic nomination in 2008 between a black man and
a white female and then Barack Obama appointing that woman as
Secretary of State, an African American as Attorney General, and a
Hispanic Woman as his first Supreme Court Justice, white men are
legitimately concerned.

As Donny Deutsch said, appearing on the same TV show as Peggy Noonan:

"[Brown] is a traditional looking middle-aged white male. We're going
back to basics. You know, we obviously have our first African-American
president, we've had the female candidates and what not. You look at
him, he looks like the candidate, the traditional view of the
candidate."

No doubt some voters were indeed happy to go "back to basics" with
Brown.

Furthermore, there is an unspoken but obvious racial dimension aspect
to Obamaca it is not just an increase of government power and
spending—it is also a transfer of that spending from whites (who are
the main benefactors of Medicare benefits that will be cut; and of
course the bulk of taxpayers) to minorities (who make up over half of
the uninsured.)

As the white share of the population of the country continues to
decline, there is only one way for the Republicans to get back into to
power: to win the James Crowley vote in Massachusetts.

And while voters may have told pollsters that health care was the
number one issue in this campaign, Republicans should not think that
parroting the Club for Growth talking points is going to be a
consistent winner among this demographic. While these people opposed
Obamacare, they also oppose free trade and support tougher regulations
on Wall Street.

There are two issues that James Crowley voters are most at odds with
the Democratic Party: immigration and affirmative action. Scott Brown
did not mention affirmative action. He took a pretty strong position
against illegal immigration in his platform, but did not make it a
campaign issue (although he seems to have used it in his push-
polling).

Martha Coakley’s weakness and public opposition to Obama made it
possible for Brown to win by making populist appeals with free market
economics. But this will not work in every election.

If Republicans want to make Brown’s takeover of the James Crowley vote
permanent, they need to make opposition to mass immigration and
affirmative action the centerpiece of their agenda."

"Washington Watcher" [email him]] is an anonymous source Inside The
Beltway.

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