How President Trump can break up the Democrats’ fragile coalition
Posted on May 13, 2019
Uneasy lies the Democratic coalition, an amalgam of conflicting interests just waiting to be picked apart by a clever and calculating president.The progressive elite, reflexively anti-religious, smugly comfortable, aggressively gender ambivalent, sits atop the Iron Throne, compelling ideological obedience to their skewed values by browbeating all who might dissent.
These white liberals dominate the mainstream media, corporate board rooms, philanthropic foundations, and academia.
They think they know what their coalition partners want and so they push for open borders, abortion on demand at any stage of a pregnancy, policies that promote transgenderism and drug legalization, as they agitate against law and order, call for the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and promote job-killing regulations in the guise of the new Green Deal.
The white liberals assume that their coalition partners — African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans — are every bit as liberal as they are.
But that’s not true.
Black voters are far more pragmatic than the progressives that pretend to represent them. What they want is a government that makes their streets safer. They want better access to health care and to higher paying jobs. They want the police to protect them, not persecute them.
Hispanics, especially those Catholics who attend Mass regularly, want a piece of the American dream. They work hard and they play by the rules. What they don’t want is the daily assault on their Christian values that they see from Hollywood and the secularists who openly mock religious observance. A fix to the broken immigration system is important, obviously, but it is not nearly as important as a growing economy that puts food on the table.
Asian Americans have the most to lose from strict adherence to liberal orthodoxy. They are small business owners, shopkeepers, store owners, and dry cleaners. Their kids and grandkids study hard and get into the finest schools at a rate that skews the affirmative action race calculations. They have the most to lose when criminals run free, unbothered by law enforcement.
For Republicans and President Trump, there are three things they can do to exploit these divisions within the fragile Democratic coalition.
First, condemn consistently and forcefully the white supremacists among them. The American dream is a universal value, and it is not just opened to the palest among us. Western civilization’s greatest achievement had been its ability to find converts among all races and all tribes.
Second, defend traditional values as the greatest gateway to economic security. The Democrats are taking us to a brave new world, untried, untested, untethered to reality. Normal Americans don’t buy it.
Third, listen to the concerns of black, Hispanic and Asian Americans, value their input and ask for their votes. Don’t make the same mistakes of the progressive elite. Don’t take their votes for granted. Don’t assume that you know all the answers. Don’t be smug. And don’t attack their traditional values.