David Axelrod was Right about Racism and Sexism in the 2024 Presidential Campaign
There were appeals to racism in this campaign and there is racial bias … and sexism … in this country … Anybody who thinks that that did not … impact … this race is wrong. …. Let’s not confuse what this was and wasn‘t. Let‘s be very clear-eyed about it.
Former Senior Advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod, election night after Trump victory, 11/5/24
Former President Barak Obama, 10/11/24
There is a license [Trump] had to be a fool [and] obnoxious … [N]obody who doesn‘t have that phenotype feels that free. What I am hearing is, ‘What do … women of colour [have to do] to be acceptable? Harris is … a respectable woman … who served in all three branches, the courts, the legislature [and] the executive branch, local, state, federal. She should have been qualified enough to be able to not have this sort of outcome.
Van Jones, election night after Trump victory, 11/5/24
White women voters did not [support Harris even though] women lost their reproductive rights [and even though] there was a very heavy push to get women to not … [support the person] responsible for taking those rights away. … But that message obviously was not enough to get enough white women to vote for a fellow woman. … This [being] the second opportunity [after the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign] that white women in this country have to change [emphasis added] the way they interact with the patriarchy.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid, 11/6/24
[Black women have] resigned [from efforts to] save America [after] the 2024 presidential election. White progressive women planning to protest against Trump need not invite Black women. … I’m pretty sure Black women have resigned from the ‘save America’ coalition, ‘save democracy’ coalition [or] ‘save the Democratic Party’ coalition. [White women should keep any invites] among their own friends. I think Black women are now on the ‘save Black women,’ ‘prioritize Black men’, ‘Black communities, Black businesses’ and Black spaces. But [not] ‘save America’ [or] ‘save the Democratic Party’.
Joy Reid, 11/13/24
I want to talk real … [T]he mainstream has become fringe and the fringe has become mainstream. There are platforms … out there getting 14 million streams, and [our] cable news getting 1 or 2 million. … [Many laughed at the Trump campaign’s unorthodox tactics focusing on internet influencers. They aren’t laughing anymore.] I hate to agree with Kellyanne Conway but I do a lot. Trump understood that and we didn’t. Not just Democrats. [T]he entire political class is way off …
Van Jones, 12/13/24
[Why are black men] being lectured to [and] belittled [like] no other group is? [I have] a lot of love for Obama, but for him to single out black men is wrong.
Former Bernie Sanders surrogate now Democrat Nina Turner, 10/11/24
[It’s hard to believe that NBC-owned MSNBC allows Joy Reid to] spew this racist hate … that [Trump] is going to … deport brown people [that are in the US] legally.
Former Fox and MSNBC host, Megyn Kelly (University of Buffalo, J.D.), 11/12/24
People [like Joy Reid] who say this is the fault of white women or Latinos … That’s not how democracy works. People decide who they want to vote for based on who they think best represents [them]. … [Harris’] message was not enough to get enough white women to vote for [her].
Former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki, 11/15/24
Axelrod was right that there was racism and sexism in the 2024 presidential election. He’s right that we might be “clear eyed about it.” He just wasn’t right about where it resided.
It was present in Obama’s instructions to “the brothers”, one of which he is not, how they should vote. Obama’s mother was white and his father was Kenyan, neither of which suffered from US slavery. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, not traditional black America. Perhaps that is why he now lives in mostly white decidedly Venezuelan-free Martha’s Vineyard. If you ask black male Trump-supporters they will not tell you they oppose a brown woman but that Biden-Harris significantly damaged their lives. As Democrat Nina Turner points out, black men are now free to think for themselves. Finally, Obama is wrong that Harris “grew up” like “the brothers”. She grew up the privileged predominately Indian daughter of two celebrated Stanford and Berkeley academics. Good Lord! At least try to tell the truth!
It is present in Van Jones’ assumption that Trump’s behaviour is rooted in his “phenotype” (skin colour). There are plenty of non-white Americans that “feel” free to say absurd things, e.g., Van Jones’ own silly view that because Harris is a “respectable person” that has acquired number of pieces of paper she should have been elected president. It has nothing to do with being “acceptable”. That is emotion talking, not reason. Van Jones himself, in a less emotional moment weeks later gives one major non-racial explanation why people, including many minorities, voted for Trump. He admits that Trump just outsmarted them again by his superior grasp of the new media!
It was present in Joy Reid’s attitude that people must vote a certain way because of their race and/or gender. It is present in her absurd authoritarian racist instruction to white women that they “have to change” the way they vote, in her silly racist sexist assumption that she speaks for all black women and in her racist sexist instruction to white women that they will not be invited to protest with black women.
It is long overdue for Americans to be “clear eyed” that the transparently racist and sexist Left needs to grasp that Americans are no slaves to their phenotype, their race or gender. Slavery ended in America 150 years ago. Instead of navel-gazing while they play their usual racist and sexist con-games, most Democrats need to start listening to the American people for a change. They can start by listening to them about the illegal immigration disaster the Biden-Harris administration deliberately and perversely inflicted on the country.
The Hill (9/18/24):More than half of all Americans, including a quarter of Democrats, support the mass deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally.
Despite her massive privileges and protection by what’s left of the “news” media, Harris lost because she was a uniquely terrible candidate. Ask former Democrat Ana Kasparian! She would not and could not answer questions. She renounced all her long-held far left views without explanation. She seemed totally inauthentic. It had nothing to do with her race or gender. Pick someone who can stop giggling long enough to articulate and defend a coherent common sense policy next time.
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