By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  November 3, 2020 NOTE: This map and article accidentally earlier included South Dakota in Biden’s column

SILVER SPRING—This article will be uncharacteristically short, so let’s get to it.

If )we just go by the polls, former-Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris would be winning with an overwhelming Electoral College landslide: according to the essential Five Thirty Eight weighted polling averages, Biden is ahead by small (though not razor-thin) margins in the Southern swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, as well being ahead similarly in Arizona.  Biden is close in the other key swing states of Texas, Ohio, and Iowa, just behind President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence by even closer margins.  Ann Selzer, the “best pollster in politics,” had Trump a few days ago +7 in Iowa, and I think he will just manage to hang on in Ohio.  Because of the GOP propensity to effectively suppress votes in the South (i.e., cheat), I am not giving Biden any of those Southern states (North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, or Texas, but wow, Texas is purple now…).  However, I think there is a decent chance for Biden take Arizona (and there is an especially-strong, and high-performing, Democratic Senate candidate there in the form of Mark Kelly, former astronaut and husband to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived a terrorist shooting her in the head and became a famous advocate for stricter gun laws), so I will favor him slightly there.  Those weird congressional districts with separate Electoral College-awardings in Nebraska and Maine I am giving to Biden since he seemed to have decent leads there.  His decent lead in Pennsylvania and larger leads in Michigan and Wisconsin seem to make those pretty safe for Biden too (though Pennsylvania less so), so my official Map is Biden 291, Trump 247, with Biden retaking the Midwest states Clinton lost in 2016 that Obama had won 2012.

If I am wrong, it would probably be Arizona and I think that we could also most likely see Florida go to Biden with so many displaced Puerto Ricans from Hurricane Maria living there or that Trump might upset in Pennsylvania with Biden’s comments about fracking and energy policy hurting him there (as a sign of this, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette, which had endorsed Obama twice and has not endorsed a Republican since 1972, surprisingly endorsed Trump on economic grounds even though it called his “unpresidential manners and character” an “embarrassment”).  I also think there is a decent chance Ohio could go to Biden.  And a lot of the states mentioned and a few others could go either way, but I think if I am wrong, that is where I will most likely be wrong.

And yet, if the Republican-controlled courts, with the newly installed Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, get to decide by stopping vote counts or tossing out ballots, the election could be stolen.  But even with a polling error within the margin of error like in 2016, Biden should win with my map, minus Arizona.  I would love to believe Republican cheating will not be effective, but I feel that would be going against history. And it is hard to account for postal sabotage on the part of the Trump Administration.  

Of course, none of this accounts for possible election interference, hacking, or cyberwarfare…

But that’s it.  That’s my prediction.  Biden wins.  The world is saved.

NOTE: This map and article accidentally earlier included South Dakota in Biden’s column

See Brian’s two pieces where he out-predicted all of the mainstream press in picking Biden to win the nomination before early March’s Super Tuesday: Democrats Look Disastrous, But Biden May Yet Save Them from Themselves Starting in South Carolina; & Why Putin Boost Bernie Sanders and The Best Guide to Super Tuesday (no, seriously): Biden’s Got This (and the Nomination)

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 12, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) December 12th, 2017

UPDATE: While my overall prediction was wrong, the dynamics described here still stand, and since late-breaking voters broke for Moore overwhelmingly, it stands to reason the Jerusalem announcement had the desired effect, just not strongly enough to put Moore over the top.

NBC News

AMMAN — If you haven’t been paying attention, you might think that Donald Trump is just being an excellent Friend of Israel and the Jewish People.

If you have been paying attention, you know that Donald Trump doesn’t do anything unless there is a clear benefit (at least in his mind) to himself. And it’s quite possible that Trump’s recent move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to eventually move the United States Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has at least as much or more to do with white Evangelical Christians in the state of Alabama, as that state is voting today to fill its U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Trump’s picking of Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General. 

America has the largest Jewish population in the world (even including Israel) and a far larger population of extreme white Christian Evangelicals who literally believe that the Jews must control all of the Biblical “Holy Land” in order for Jesus to return, prejudicing them wholly against the Palestinians in favor of Israeli Jews, even more so than American Jews, with 82% of white Evangelicals believing that land of Israel was given to the Jews by God, a belief rooted in a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Among major world powers, America is the nation most supportive of Israel, one of only a few nations around the world that don’t view Israel negatively, and Evangelicals are big part of the reason why. Thus, Republicans courting Evangelical voters often try to out-pro-Israel their Republican primary and Democratic general election rivals, and the GOP is markedly less critical of Israeli government policy than today’s Democratic Party. So Trump announcing that he was taking a bold step in being alone in the world in recognizing Jerusalem (no qualifiers, not just West Jerusalem, as Russia and only Russia has done) as Israel’s capital is a move that will be extremely popular with white Evangelical Christians in America.

Nationally, 46.1% of all voters supported Trump and 48.2% Clinton, with 26% of all voters in the 2016 presidential election being white self-identified Evangelical or “born again” Christians, with 80% of them voting for Trump and just 16% for Clinton (the highest margin of Evangelicals ever recorded, even more than George W. Bush, who was himself an Evangelical). 

Alabama is nowhere near the average for American politics, though: 62.7% voted for Trump, 34.7% for Clinton, 16.6% higher than the national average for Trump and 13.5% lower for Clinton. It is the state with second-most self-identified conservatives in the nation, only behind neighboring Mississippi. Only five states had a higher percentage of voters who voted for Trump, only seven had a larger gap between Trump and Clinton, and only ten states had a lower percentage of Clinton voters (to put this into perspective, by the 2010 Census numbers, Alabama has the sixth-highest percentage of African Americans—both alone and alone combined with mixed-race individuals—and African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Clinton over Trump, 89%-8%, yet the state still had those lopsided numbers for Trump). 

There were no exit polls conducted for last November’s presidential race in Alabama, but we can be sure that white Evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Trump: they voted 88% for Bush in 2004 to Kerry’s 12%, while against Obama, 92% voted for McCain and 90% for Romney and we know Trump outperformed all three with Evangelicals nationally.

White Evangelical voters sure surprised many analysts by favoring Trump in the Republican nomination contests compared with other candidates: Governors. Mike Huckabee (who dominated Evangelicals in the 2008 Republican primaries), Jeb Bush, and Rick Perry, Sens. Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum (who dominated Evangelicals in the 2012 Republican primaries), and Dr. Ben Carson, who had all been popular with Evangelicals for years. Nationally, Evangelicals make up 25.4% of the vote, with 76% of those being white (making up 19.3 of all voters nationally), while during the 2016 Republican primaries, white Evangelicals amounted to roughly half the participants, with about 40% supporting Trump, 34% supporting Cruz, and third and fourth-place spots barely breaking into double-digits. And we know that, once Trump got the nomination, white Evangelicals had few qualms about uniting behind him.

Evangelicals are a particularly key voting bloc in Alabama, forming 49% of the state’s entire population (tying for the second-highest portion of any state), with over 41% of the state being white Evangelicals. Evangelicals in the state loved Trump in the 2016 Republican primary: in a five-way race, Trump won with 43.4% of the vote: more than the totals for second-place Ted Cruz and third-place Marco Rubio combined. Some 77% of Alabama Republican primary voters identified as Evangelical/born-again Christians, with 43% voting for Trump, and 68% of GOP primary voters were whites who identified as Evangelicals/born-again Christians, also with 43% voting for Trump, but keep in mind that that was with two other candidates in the race who were intensely popular with Evangelicals: Ted Cruz and Dr. Ben Carson (the latter now being Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development).

Obviously, Evangelical Christians are pretty conservative and uptight when it comes to sex, and theocratic Roy Moore’s very troubling, more-than-just a few credible allegations that he dated or molested teenage girls (one as young as 14) when he was in his early thirties and a state official (he was banned from an Alabama mall for preying on girls there) have certainly offended the sensibilities of many a serious Christian in Alabama, let alone the particularly devout Evangelicals. Though Moore was a terrible candidate for other reasons long before these disturbing allegations, there is no question that his alleged sexual behavior has cost him support and is a major explanation for why an Alabama U.S. Senate race that would normally be a Republican blowout is now too close to call. An unweighted polling average has Moore with a clear but small advantage over his Democratic opponent Doug Jones, but there is a strange and wide variation among the polls, with each candidate up by a healthy margin in different individual polls.

All this context makes Donald Trump’s Jerusalem announcement, just six days before this election, pretty easy to understand. Trump could have given Middle East parties to the conflict notice well in advance rather than suddenly and surprisingly making an announcement. He still ended up signing another of the six-month waivers in order to keep the Embassy move from being immediate, so why was the announcement made so suddenly, catching all parties by surprise?

Frankly, I’d be shocked if Moore loses. I am thinking he will win and win by more than the polling average suggests, and if he does win or win with more support than expected, that will be in no small part because Trump gave his loyal white Evangelical base something about which to be ecstatically excited, which too many were unable to be when it came to Moore for obvious reasons, making the race as close as it is. With the Jerusalem move, Trump is hoping that enough Evangelicals will come home to him (he has heartily endorsed Moore even over the objections of his own daughter, Ivanka) and the Republican party in this election with a new reason to be enthused when their troubled candidate made enthusiasm among too many Evangelicals too lacking for Trump’s and the GOP’s comfort.

The road to victory in Alabama may indeed run through Jerusalem.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

See related article by same author: Trump’s Jerusalem Jeopardy: A Hackneyed “Holy” Hot Mess

See author’s Amazon eBooks here!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 16, 2016

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 16th, 2016 Updated December 3rd w/ additional exit poll data

Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

AMMAN — Many people are perplexed as to how white people who apparently voted for Obama in recent elections voted for Trump in this one (Update 12/3: Clinton apparently mostly turned off these white voters to stay home or vote third-party, much less than to switch their vote to Trump; the below analysis still makes sense in that even the movement away from her supports its conclusions about race). Others say this proves those people can’t be racist, since they voted for a black president. The first issue is actually easy to explain, and the second assertion is easy to refute; both points lie in the same understanding of what happened in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Why Obama Was Acceptable to Some Whites, but Not Clinton

When Obama ran in 2008, he didn’t frame himself heavily as the first African-American president, and he didn’t frame his campaign as one what would give any special attention or cater to African-Americans, Hispanics, or other minorities. In fact, he engaged in what was mainly a post-racial, race-neutral campaign that many white voters found to be a welcome and inspirational message; many of them thought how nice it would be to move beyond the past and the issue of racism, in general, leaving conversations on the issue to history. In 2012, Obama stuck to not campaigning explicitly as a black president and to not paying any significant particular attention to the issues and needs of minority communities; his was a broad message, except in one sense: he certainly campaigned in a way that catered to the needs of women. But women aren’t a minority. And, again, a black man with liberal inclinations easily won minorities in roughly sharing their skin complexion and more or less sharing their general politics, and won well more than enough votes among whites with an uplifting message that, once again, avoided any focus on specific racial or ethnic minorities. And in his two terms as president, he did little to focus on minority issues apart apart from some action on immigration (blocked in the Supreme Court) and some fine speeches—as opposed to action—on race relations; the nation’s first black president did not even nominate a black person for the Supreme Court, instead nominating a Latina, a white woman, and a white man (the last almost certain not to be appointed).

We know that in 2016, Hillary Clinton, a white woman, ran a campaign that definitely catered to specific needs and issues of minority voters—even explicitly pushing white Americans to open their minds, eyes, and ears to the plight of people of color—and also basically ran to continue many of Obama’s policies that voters had validated in 2012; she practically launched her campaign with an amazing speech on race, boldly challenging America to do better by its communities of color, and made this one of her major issues throughout the campaign. She performed very well with African-Americans, although not quite as high as Barack Obama (which was never going to happen since she was not the first African-American major-party nominee, and this may have in part been due to a massive long-term GOP effort towards voter suppression in the first presidential campaign since key parts of the Voting Rights Act protecting minorities were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013), and did better with Latinos than any candidate ever better analysis is examined than exit polls, which are relatively poor at measuring Latinos.

The New York Times

Her white support fell and Trump’s went up, falling for her and rising for him sharply in key geographic areas in the Rust Belt: whites who had supported Obama stayed home and/or different whites that were motivated positively by Trump and negatively by Clinton came out and voted (obviously, a combination of these). Trump beat Clinton by 21 points (58%-37%) among whites, while Romney had beaten Obama with whites by 20 points (59%-39%), a 1 point decline for Trump but a 2 point decline for Clinton, not insignificant considering whites are 70% of the electorate. Trump’s victory included beating her by 32 points with white men (63%-21%), even beating her by 10 points with white women (53%-43%), and even beating her with college-educated whites by 4 points (49%-45%), including 45% of college-educated white women to Clinton’s 51%. Even though Clinton is on pace to receive at least the second-most votes in history of any candidate after Obama and has already now come in at least 1 million votes ahead of Trump, with millions more to be counted, the difference among white voters in key counties in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa gave Trump the electoral math he needed to triumph in the Electoral College and win the presidency.

Either way, the lesson is clear: in 2008 and 2012, racism in America had evolved so that enough whites out there were willing to vote for a black candidate. But in 2016, there were not enough whites willing to support a white woman who promised to give some special attention and resourcing to people of color. So, a black candidate is fine as long as that candidate isn’t asking white America to accept any responsibility, special attention, or resourcing for disadvantaged persons of color, to sacrifice anything for them or even to admit through any substantive action that people of color have it worse and deserve special attention; a white candidate that speaks “hard truth” about race and the need for special attention to groups of color who have been especially discriminated against by white people is a bridge too far for millions of white people in 2016.

As a white woman, Clinton could not take minority support for granted; she absolutely needed to court, and cater, to minorities’ needs and concerns in order to earn their support. As a black man, Obama did not need to to this, and could, more or less, take their support for granted; it was white America that he needed to aggressively court, on which his candidacy would rise or fall. In the end, Clinton’s gamble was that enough white voters would accept a white candidate who gave such special focus and attention to minorities; in the end, they did not, and she lost.

In other words, there are enough whites comfortable enough voting for a black president as long as that president doesn’t emphasize his blackness to them, doesn’t ask them to come down from their perch from which they can look down on minorities, or doesn’t suggest he will apply any particular energy to helping people of color.

*****

The New Racism

This is the new, modern form of racism; there’s plenty of the old, more obvious and outward racism, but the new racism is accepting of people of color so long as they don’t ask for justice and accept their place without seeking any government redress or leadership to help them with their problems. The new racism is pretending that those problems aren’t any worse than those, on average, faced by white people. The new racism is being willfully ignorant of how history, policy, and politics are front and center in the disproportionate suffering of people of color. The new racism is a total denial of white responsibility or agency in the suffering of people of color. 

Those espousing the new racism, some of them could support the black guy who sounded white and didn’t talk about black people much, but they deserted a white woman who wanted to continue the black guy’s policies because, in their view, she talked too much about people of color and wanted the nation as a whole to address their plight directly. 

The old racists—those who would burn crosses if that was still a thing and who hurl epithets in private and sometimes public—exist, and there are plenty of them. And the new racists and the old racists united, especially in key places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan, and Florida; that is a major reason why Trump won, is probably the main reason why Clinton’s support among whites fell.

In case this is not obvious, they fled her to vote for a candidate who, if not openly espousing racism (and that itself would be a controversial assertion), openly played with racism, racial resentment, and undercurrents of racism and hired an outward racist to be one of the two most powerful people in his campaign in the closing months of the campaign, and has now named this person—Steve Bannon of the racist, despicable Breitbart News—as one of his two most powerful White House advisors.

In case it’s still not obvious, after Trump was elected, there was and still is open wave of hateful racism and bigotry hurled by white Trump supporters at various minorities, often graffiti and words, but also including some violent incidents, as if Trump’s election somehow validated such behavior: over 400 incidents in less than 6 days from Wednesday, the day after the election, through Monday morning alone.

Still not convinced? People of color overwhelmingly rejected Bernie Sanders and his unrealistic ideology and delusional proposals, though the younger people were, the more support he had with them. Sanders’ message was clear, consistent and extremely narrow: the political revolution, focusing on income inequality and punishing the wealthy and corporations, would bring about success for all, and Sanders repeatedly refused to articulate a message that allowed for specific programs for people of color, or that they were a special group that had suffered more than the white majority; rather, all were equal victims of the rigged system and the wealthy elites who ran it (on a side note, this system for him included the media, and Sanders and his apostles absurdly claimed that if only he and they could educate the masses and bypass media propaganda, they would unite and rise up, regardless of race or religion, and unite in supporting Sanders and his political democratic socialist revolution; this utter nonsense has been dispelled in so many ways, but perhaps most notably by the fact that the United States just elected a man who epitomizes everything Sanders campaigned against).

As was the case with Obama, white liberals loved this race-neutral message, language, and policy program, and flocked to Sanders by huge margins, preferring his one-size-fits-all approach that gave no special consideration to people of color and their special circumstances, and people of color were, conversely, repelled by this. In fact, when Sanders was peaking after New Hampshire, he was pressed by some of his supporters of color and black and Latino activists to make room for special consideration for minorities in his economic message; he adamantly refused, and thus he himself destroyed his own chance of winning the nomination by not adjusting this message before heading into the diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina and other diverse states of the first Super Tuesday, exposing Sanders’ narrow appeal and narrow constituencies for what they were: something that could win about 40% of participants in the Democratic nomination contests but that was incapable of winning that nomination or a general election.

And those who would make the argument that Trump’s win was more about class or economics are making an argument that simply doesn’t hold up, and obviously doesn’t hold up, because, while “working class” whites overwhelmingly favored Trump, people of color—”working class” or otherwise—overwhelmingly rejected Trump. Furthermore, Clinton beat Trump by 11 points (52%-41%) among all voters who made less than $50,000 a year and even beat trump by 4 points (49%-45%) among all voters who made less than $100,000 annually (UPDATE 12/3: Further fuel to the argument that this was less about economics and more about race: among voters who said the economy was the most important issue, Clinton beat Trump by 11 points nationally and in every swing state that Trump won: she beat him among those voters by 4 points in Pennsylvania, by 3 points in Ohio, by 8 points in Michigan, by 11 points in Wisconsin, by 3 points in Florida, and by 7 points in North Carolina, and even by 2 points in Iowa and 2 points in Arizona).

A Win for White Nationalism &, Therefore, Racism

In elevating Trump to the Republican Party presidential nomination and then to the presidency, Americans basically validated white denial and the concept that white victimhood is the most glaring, most deserving of attention of all ethnic and racial victimhoods; in other words, Trump’s wins were victories for white exclusivist nationalism, in hindsight hardly surprising as a wave of ethno-centric nationalisms takes over democracies all over the world, from India and Israel to Turkey and Hungary to Poland and Bulgaria. In Trump’s America, white Americans—as they see themselves—are a racial group like any other racial group in that they are oppressed and need to unite and fight for their rights or suffer the consequences; such delusion and denial of white privilege, such zero-sum exclusivist thinking, is not only now mainstream, it is a unifying thread for the vast majority of Trump’s voters, whether conscious or unconscious.

Some may say that what was here termed the new racism isn’t really racism at all. And those people are wrong. To willfully deny that there is racism today and that certain groups of people suffer from it today still, to deny that historical racism is still affecting certain groups today because of persistent generational effects that a racist system and racist institutions inflicted upon them have a long half-life and don’t simply vanish at the passing of a law, to deny that it is harder to be black or brown in America than it is to be white, to deny that white people have huge advantages over people of color even if they are poor themselves (admittedly a hard sell but still absolutely, demonstrably, indisputably true regardless the poor socio-economic condition a good many whites), or to accept any of these but to simply say that nothing should be done to deal with these past and present realities—in essence saying a big “who cares, not my problem,” which is de facto saying those people should just accept their inferior status and that we as a nation owe them nothing despite such a long, brutal history of and continuing mistreatment—is clearly racism. Stubborn and willful ignorance is also racism because that perpetuates inaction, which perpetuates a system that discriminates people of color and keeps whites at an elevated status. Such beliefs outlined here clearly favor whites over people of color, and stubborn and willfully advocating inaction on injustice for entire groups of people of color is basically pushing for continued white favor, privilege, and superiority no matter how you frame such beliefs. If you refuse to accept reality that people of color do suffer absolutely and proportionately from racism in ways that whites do not, or if you refuse to accept that basic ethics and morality means that justice is owed and continues to be owed to such people until the effects of racism are obliterated, then this is actually active support for racism and a racist system. And when a person votes in such a way as to perpetuate either of these dual refusals, if means that vote goes towards actively perpetuating the social and economic superiority of white people over people of color, to at least maintain or perhaps even expand the benefits, advantages, and privileges that whites currently enjoy over their fellow citizens of color.

The New Racism Is the New Normal (Democratic Fascism?)

As I wrote earlier, this is utterly banal and such ethnic and racial and religious politics are common all over the world today; conservatives in America are particularly fond of claiming America and Americans are exceptional, but in this, they are depressingly normal. What is clear is that many white Americans were ok with a black candidate who avoided making race a centerpiece of his candidacy and presidency but were not OK with a white candidate who wanted to push white America to be more racially conscious and put racial justice and racial inequality at the center of hers; even worse, over her they chose Trump, who ran the most racist campaign since archsegregationist George Wallace and whose raises the disturbing question of “Is he really that racist, or just using racism to win?” Either way, Americans of color are terrified, and they have every right to be.

Welcome to racism in American in 2016: a terrifying mix of the old and new that could lead to what I call democratic fascism. But more on that another time…

A comment I posted in the comment section shortly after publication:
More analysis, this from FiveThirtyEight, backing up the idea that Clinton lost in part because voters stayed home, not so much switched parties.

See related article: Republic of Georgia Shows Trump & His Fans Depressingly Normal: Just Another Ethno-centric Nationalist Movement

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!