Who Divided America?
GIVE Politico’s chief Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, some credit. After Michelle Obama’s speech capping the first night of the Democrats’ virtual convention, he tweeted: “Story of an era in two convention speeches: Barack 04: ‘There’s not a black America and white America . . . there’s the United States of America.’ Michelle 20: ‘my message won’t be heard by some people’ because ‘we live in a nation that is deeply divided.’ ”
But who’s to blame? Democrats like to load all the blame on President Trump and, despite their continued failure to cite evidence for his “racism,” there’s no denying his coarse insults have contributed to an increasing sense of national division.
Balance that off by recognizing that bipartisan electoral politics inevitably divides a citizenry, as it has ours since President James Monroe was reelected without opposition in 1820. That Era of Good Feelings ended four years later when a four-candidate deadlock made the House decide the election. It’s been division ever since.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2004 speech made an Illinois state legislator into a plausible presidential candidate, an African American whose election promised to smooth over racial divisions as the election of John Kennedy in 1960 smoothed over Catholic-Protestant divisions.
The letdown came well before Trump descended that escalator in June 2015. Gallup showed the percentage of Americans rating blackwhite relations as very or somewhat good plunging in Obama’s second term, from 70 percent in 2013 to 51 percent in 2015. The 2014 exit poll showed 38 percent of voters believing “race relations in this country” had “gotten worse” in the last few years, versus 20 percent saying they’d “gotten better.”
Plainly, there was a sense of disappointment, of expectations being unmet. Comments by the president and his appointees about incidents in Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere probably contributed to this.
It surely also reflected continuing poor conditions and relatively high crime rates in many predominantly black neighborhoods.
Politically, the Obama presidency left us an America very sharply divided into two countries. Responses to COVID-19 have widened the already-sharp partisan differences between big cities and the countryside.
Democrats have vastly overestimated the virus’ death rate and its danger to people under 75 and have embraced stringent lockdowns and mandatory masking and social distancing. Republicans’ estimates have been closer to reality.
Partisan media have hailed Democratic Gov. Cuomo, despite his persistence in sending infected patients to senior citizen homes and the resulting high death rates. They’ve denigrated
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though his 450 COVID-19 deaths per million is a fraction of New York’s 1,690.
There’s also a vivid contrast between the “mostly peaceful” (translated into English: often violent) demonstrations in Portland and Seattle and the criminal mobs in Minneapolis and Chicago, and the relatively calm and intact exurbs and small towns.
You could argue that Democrats’ extreme risk aversion and the resulting lockdowns have imposed hideous damage on Democratic turf. “New York City Is Dead Forever,” read a headline by Manhattan comedy club owner James Altucher.
With restaurants, bars, museums and clubs closed down; storefronts up and down the avenues boarded up; and giant office buildings near empty, a de-policed Manhattan has been transformed from a garden into a combat zone.
Teachers’ union members’ refusals to return to school, despite overwhelming evidence that kids don’t get and don’t transmit the virus, may end up promoting school choice. Colleges and universities going virtual may demonstrate their dispensability.
Democratic convention speakers blamed Trump for not stamping out the virus, for the lockdowns’ economic devastation and for intensified partisan rancor. He’s made mistakes and missteps, but the charges are over the top. Maybe they’re an attempt to cover up the differences between red and blue America, which don’t work to Democrats’ advantage.