Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Cole is on a roll !

It’s a doggy dog world.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

Let there be snark.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Not all heroes wear capes.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Early Morning Open Thread: Sundown Voters for A Sundowning Party?

Early Morning Open Thread: Sundown Voters for A Sundowning Party?

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There’s more and more evidence coming to light that the Asterisk-Elect’s electoral college victory relied on the revanchist fantasies of some of America’s least loveable left-behinds. David Roediger, at Counterpunch:

… Coming myself from a “sundown town”—that is, one which for most of the twentieth century remained whites-only, in part by disallowing even visits by African Americans after nightfall—I had read the work of the sociologist James Loewen on such places with great care. In the massive volume, Sundown Towns, and on the website accompanying and updating it, Loewen paid special attention to Wisconsin. Partly this was because, proportionately, so many of its towns fit into the sundown category and partly because their histories were so typical. Many had an early Black presence that was removed over time or in a hot moment. Some featured billboards warning of their policies. They included small towns, but also growing industrial ones, whose good, sometimes union, jobs became the property of whites.

Did sundown towns elect Trump in Wisconsin? My research assistant, Kathryn Robinson, and I tried to find out. Since it is much easier to get county-level election returns than municipal ones, we concentrated on “sundown counties,” those having a county seat that could be established as a sundown town or likely sundown town in Loewen’s mapping. An incredible 58 of the state’s 72 counties fit into such a category. Of the 58 sundown counties 31 are 1% or less African American (and only eight more than 2%), suggesting that the proxy of the county seat works in identifying sundown areas at the county level.

The simple answer on Trump and sundown towns in Wisconsin is: “Clearly they elected him.” Sundown counties gave Trump almost 935,000 votes to Clinton’s just over 678,000. His margin in the sundown areas exceeded 256,000 votes. That Clinton won the fifteen non-sundown counties by almost 230,000 votes could not make up for Trump’s 58% to 42% margin in the sundown ones. Just short of two/thirds of all Trump voters in Wisconsin came from sundown counties. Only nine sundown counties chose Clinton with 49 for Trump…

Of course, the NYTimes‘ Media Village Idiots are busily attempting to buff away these angry white fingerprints, because calling someone a racist is far more impolite than being a racist…

Not even those most depressed about Donald J. Trump’s election and what it might portend could have envisioned the scene that took place just before Thanksgiving in a meeting room a few blocks from the White House. The white nationalist Richard B. Spencer was rallying about 200 kindred spirits.

“We are not meant to live in shame and weakness and disgrace,” he said. “We were not meant to beg for moral validation from some of the most despicable creatures to ever populate the planet.” When Mr. Spencer shouted, “Hail, Trump! Hail, our people! Hail, victory!” a scattered half-dozen men stood and raised their arms in Nazi salutes.

Mr. Spencer, however you describe him, calls himself a part of the “alt-right” — a new term for an informal and ill-defined collection of internet-based radicals. As such, he poses a complication for the incoming president. Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, whom Mr. Trump has picked as his chief White House strategist, told an interviewer in July that he considered Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right.”

Perhaps we should not make too much of this. Mr. Bannon may have meant something quite different by the term. Last summer “alt-right,” though it carried overtones of extremism, was not an outright synonym for ideologies like Mr. Spencer’s. But in late August, Hillary Clinton devoted a speech to the alt-right, calling it simply a new label for an old kind of white supremacy that Mr. Trump was shamelessly exploiting…

The alt-right is not a large movement, but the prominence that it is enjoying in the early days of the Trump era may tell us something about the way the country is changing. At least since the end of the Cold War, and certainly since the election of a black president in 2008, America’s shifting identity — political, cultural and racial — has given rise to many questions about who we are as a nation. But one kind of answer was off the table: the suggestion that America’s multicultural present might, in any way, be a comedown from its past had become a taboo. This year a candidate broke it. He promised to “make America great again.” And he won the presidency…

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    long-term I’d rather be a Dem than a Repub

    In the long term, we are all dead.

    if Dems’ demographic advantage is squandered by third party voting

    What are the chances?

  2. 2.

    gene108

    I believe we get to demographic utopia, when I see it happen.

    The fact is a growing number of young, hardcore, liberals in CA does not help in winning back Kansas or West Virginia.

    There will still be enough conservatives voting in rural states to off-set all the hipsters moving to Brooklyn.

  3. 3.

    Taylor

    @jk:

    NY Times Public Editor appears on Tucker Carlson’s show and throws NY Times reporters under the bus for their tweets about Trump

    She just painted a bullseye on Alexander Burns.

  5. 5.

    Debbie(aussie)

    I have seen in comments requests for good/ interesting tv, try Glitch. An Aussie made series set in small town, with a number dead persons coming back to life. Second series currently in production. Available on Netflix. Not much of a tv watcher but this one drew me in.

    A reason to get pissed at govt not your own
    n.
    Talk is that we may need to implement our own Standing Rock type protest. More info available at Guardian for those interested.
    Keep up the fight. I believe in you all and your cause. We have facts on our side, hard to imagine that that is not enough. Deb

  7. 7.

    Keith G

    @Baud: Re the quote:

    if Dems’ demographic advantage is squandered by third party voting

    I have always been worried that DemocratI can advantages in demographic change would be squandered by the Democrats themselves. It’s like a frontier farmer depending on the certainty of a mild winter and not working his ass off to store sufficient fodder. The mere fact that demographic change is occurring does not unquestionably lead to the notion that those members of the changed demography will become happy, motivated, and dependable voters for the Democratic Party. “Vote for us because we’re not as bad as the other guy” is unfortunately not the most compelling argument to make to win dependable voting behavior.

  11. 11.

    Lounger

    It’s sundown in America. But, per Bannon, “darkness is good.”

    Anne, can’t say it enough, thanks again for all of your hard work.

  12. 12.

    raven

    There’s more and more evidence coming to light that the Asterisk-Elect’s electoral collage victory relied on the revanchist fantasies of some of America’s least loveable left-behinds. David Roediger, at Counterpunch:

    typo

  15. 15.

    Keith G

    @Baud: Be smarter marketers…. for a start. Storytellers spinning simple narratives win the presidency more often than wonkish gnomes pushing lists of bullet points or websites full of policy pages. I remember my fellow liberals in college decrying how Reagan just didn’t get it. “How can he win and be a leader? He over-simplifies everything.” Bush II, ditto. Trump, ditto.

    Next to Reagan, the two best storyteller candidates for president were Democrats. They both won. I’m not being glib. I just happened to think that there are simple narratives that can be used that can unite the different segments of what should be our natural voting base. Instead of a politics based on how different everyone is, we need to develop the politics of what we have in common.

  17. 17.

    Cermet

    And our history almost completely forgets that slavery – in the form of State controlled jails – re-instituted full blown, total and complete slavery until the 1940’s!!! Those chain gangs weren’t generally work crews out on the roads (but, of course, some were and the movies only focus on that tiny slice of the enslaved population) but slaves working dangerous coal mine jobs and the most vile, dangerous jobs in the steel mills of the south. Vast, mostly unmarked graves dot areas around the abandon mills and mines where so many black teens and blacks in their twenties were murdered through forced labor. This dark period in our history still is with us, but the drugs laws sub for the old “loitering’ arrests of blacks and the prison’s can’t farm out the labor any more to companies. Yes, racism and semi-slavery is still very alive and well as it serves white owned prison gulag and all the invested systems feeding on black (and not an insignificance white) poor population for the wealthy.

  18. 18.

    Luthe

    The use of the term “sundown” made me think of how dementia patients sundown: they get crazier as dusk approaches. Which is what I thought this post was going to be about.

  19. 19.

    Brachiator

    The obvious fallacy is the implication that non sundown counties in these states are not racist, or are less racist than sundown counties.

    And in California, such cities as Glendale, Beverly Hills, and the beach cities (Hermosa Beach, etc) were sundown cities, sometimes all day cities. It would be interesting to check how they voted even though Los Angeles county overall voted overwhelmingly for Clinton.

  20. 20.

    BC in Illinois

    It’s been a while since I read the James Loewen book on Sundown Towns–it was an eye-opening view of small-town Illinois–but I remember his point that those towns that ran their Black residents out of town in the early 20th century had a recognizably different character and tone in the late 20th century. Even after the signs of “don’t be caught here after sundown” had come down.

    In the same way, those who think of themselves as “White Nationalists”–including those who think that “White Nationalists” is a more positive term than “White Supremacists” –still in their mind think of the US as a “White Nation.” That wouldn’t matter, in a way, if they found themselves a rock and declared themselves a White Nation, where they could all parade around and say, “Look at me! I’m White!” But if they look at the actual United States, with its mixtures of nationalities and languages and colors, and force themselves / convince themselves to see only a White Nation . . . then it will take a whole lot of force and damage and destruction to impose that view on the rest of us.

    [ Not that it can’t be done. I dare say that the juror in South Carolina, who looked at the video of a White Man shooting a Black Man in the back–a man who was fleeing, at a distance, of no threat to the White Man–I will say that that juror looked at the video and never saw the Black Man. He saw a White Man only, and he couldn’t bring himself to impose any punishment on the White Man. The Black Man? He is not one of this White Juror’s people. He is not a part of the White Juror’s White Nation. ]

    If our nation goes back to the direction of the Sundown Towns, then we are going back in the direction of Chief Justice Taney, in the decision concerning Dred Scott:

    “In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument…They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

    It is a chilling and terrible thing, to think of “Sundown Towns” and “White Nation” as the guiding political vision of our national leaders. These are mis-leaders. They must be resisted and rejected and fought, every step of the way.

  21. 21.

    Betty

    I believe that if they check Pennsylvania, they will find the sundown phenomenon was in effect there as well.

  22. 22.

    vigilhorn

    Anybody else getting emails from James Comey? I’ve had 3 in the past week. They all involve so-called fraud by a third party trying to claim money rightfully belonging to me. So far, I’m up to $45.3 million. Woo hoo! Thanks, Jim!

  25. 25.

    Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap

    @gene108: Exactly, our demographic advantage gave us 2M more votes but we were jobbed by the Electoral College.

  27. 27.

    Jeffro

    @BC in Illinois:

    It’s been a while since I read the James Loewen book on Sundown Towns–it was an eye-opening view of small-town Illinois

    Added that to my Amazon wish list…thanks!

  28. 28.

    ThresherK

    It imputes innocence to anyone who is not a member of an explicitly white nationalist organization.

    Stone Mountain, Georgia, 1915. William Joseph Simmons:

    Dammit, Leo Frank, now look what you gone and made me do.

    (I’ve been listening to Parade a lot the last two days.)

  29. 29.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @Debbie(aussie): Hi Debbie, the French have a similar TV series called “Les Revenants” or “The Returned.” It was also an American TV series called “Resurrection”

  30. 30.

    sherparick

    @rikyrah: I found this a very accurate point: “…The sundown foundations of Trump’s victory in Wisconsin ought not to be minimized. At the very least, it is worth reminding ourselves of how little racist politics in the U.S. are based on lived contact and how much and tragically that they rest on talk radio, imagination, rumor, representation, and whitelore. Such is probably the case even when we move beyond Black and white…. ”

    It is not very surprising that article of Christopher Caldwell, a former editor of the very conservative “American Spectator” paints “affirmative action” and civil rights laws as “multi-culturalism.” I would guess that Jake Silverstein,the NY Times Magazine editor would point out that he just ran Caldwell’s piece as a another point of view article on the Trump election.

  31. 31.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @Luthe: Me too. My dad suffered from Sundowner. My mom had to close all the curtains at night and turn on all the lights to keep him calm.

  32. 32.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: There’s a fix for the electoral college (granted, we won’t get that fix but it could be fixed) but we need to win in Congress too. That’s where the hollowing out of Democrats from flyover country really matters a lot.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Glendale is solidly Democratic now thanks to mass immigration — the new citizens from Armenia know which side their bread is buttered on. Second biggest new group is Korean-Americans.

    The area went Democratic when James Rogen got tossed out in favor of Adam Schiff and has been solidly blue ever since.

  34. 34.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    @FlipYrWhig: No clearly the best way to combat an openly White Supremacist GOP as the country grows ever less-white by the minute is for Dems to wring our hands over the idea of giving those people too much power/influence in our tent, villify identity politics, blame political correctness and write endless won’t-someone-think-of-the-rural-white-voters think pieces etc. /sarcasm

  35. 35.

    Aleta

    Thanks for the link to David Roediger’s article showing the vote in Wi places with former Sundown towns. When I looked into the state where I partly grew up, which (fought North in the Civil War) likes to officially mention that it passed nondiscrimination laws very very early, I learned how town governments managed to keep the lines drawn and their AA and Spanish-speaking citizens down, below white people, in all ways, including fear and housing demolition to force them to move away.

  37. 37.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Glendale is solidly Democratic now thanks to mass immigration — the new citizens from Armenia know which side their bread is buttered on. Second biggest new group is Korean-Americans.

    Yes, a great deal of change, some of it recent, and I think it is still true that Glendale is the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia itself. But they are still in some ways trying to get beyond the past. From a 1996 LA Times story:

    When council member and former mayor Richard M. “Rick” Reyes first drove up Brand Boulevard in Glendale in 1959, he had the distinct feeling that a Latino kid from South-Central didn’t belong there. Glendale was a stridently conservative bedroom community with a Midwestern flavor; it was 97% Anglo. Dancing in nightclubs was prohibited by law. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, the cemetery that had brought the city worldwide attention, did not bury nonwhites. It was a magnet for white supremacists, among them the commander of the American Nazi Party’s Western Division, who lived there briefly in the mid-1960s, as did the Grand Cyclops of the state Ku Klux Klan.

    Today, Glendale remains marred by scattered incidents of racist vandalism and hate crimes. But as with so many other things in Southern California, its old reputation as a racist’s haven is outdated. Glendale’s racist “shadow nature,” as a recent Glendale News-Press editorial put it, has not impeded the profound changes that the city has undergone in the past two decades.

    And Glendale was included in books on sundown towns.

    In 1920, when the population of Glendale totaled 13,536, there were only 22 black residents. By 1960, when Glendale’s population was 119,442, the number of black residents rose to 62. Fortunately, Glendale is no longer a sundown town. In 2000, Glendale’s population increased to 194,973 residents, and 2,468 of them were black.

    As late as 1962, the Ku Klux Klan marched on Brand Boulevard with a horse brigade, marching band and burning cross.

  39. 39.

    gorram

    @Mnemosyne: It’s interesting, because those aren’t ethnic groups known for leaning all that strongly to the Democrats until recently. It seems like part of the change is demographic change, in terms of different groups making up different proportions of the population, but part of it is also how those groups align with the two major parties and more generally are politically active.

    It doesn’t take much to imagine how an anti-Muslim and anti-Black campaign by Republicans could appeal strongly to Armenian-American and Korean-American voters and “win them back”, but that didn’t happen, at least in Glendale. Part of that is the details of the message – that it became very blatant that the anti-Muslim and anti-Black elements to Trump’s campaign were there for White (and probably not Armenian at that) audiences. I suspect part of it is that a lot of communities have pretty malleable political alignments. Heck the past century has been the steady movement of “ethnic Whites” from Democrats to Republicans, counterbalanced to an extent by growing numbers of voters of color, so this type of change seems pretty key to understanding what’s going on.

    Just in light of that, I wonder whether those sorts of demographic changes are playing out similarly across the country. California is kind of a natural model, and it seems as though a lot of “minority” populations (meaning both non-Black people of color but also “ethnic Whites” and complicated demographics like Armenians) aligned themselves to an extent with Republicans and White dominance up to a point. It’s really been the past fifteen to twenty years that that’s changed, after the state became both majority minority in overall population and in voter registration (and perhaps other key measures of power too – property ownership, business ownership, and income all diversified as well). The incentives changed to a certain extent and hostility and violence from racists/bigots seemingly stopped being factored in as the cost of doing business, when instead they could be seen as a nuisance (or worse) that could be solved.

    I don’t know how dependable that dynamic is, but it’s hard not to see it as a dimension to what happened in California and what might very well happen in many other areas as well. In some ways Trump comes across as borrowing a lot of the themes of Schwarzenegger’s governorship – bizarre and hypocritical anti-immigration stances, hypermasculinity, celebrity, unusual rhetoric and to a certain extent positions for Republicans that lend themselves to unusual (at times crypto-populist) support gains. In the state, that was the last gasp of the White electoral majority, and since then the Republican Party has plummeted into the ground. If the broader country can weather the storm, I suspect a lot of demographics might rapidly change their voter behavior in 2020 or 2024 as the Republican base becomes even more electorally untenable and power shifts accordingly.

  40. 40.

    gorram

    There’s also the very distinctive voting trends for Latin@s at play, also too. I don’t mean to have suggested they voted like either Black voters or like other non-Black voters of color (if for no other reason than Black Latin@s also exist!). There is a long history in California of both horrifying violence against Asian people, but also Asian collaboration with similar violence, especially against Black people. I don’t want to declare that dynamic dead, but the overall picture has started changing with increasing speed.

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