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<\/a><\/p>\nAre you sick of politics?\u00a0 I am, to be honest.\u00a0 We will return to other topics, never fear.\u00a0 But please bear with me in a final election-related Monday Miscellany.\u00a0 After today, no more political topics for the rest of week.\u00a0 So now we address the following topics:<\/p>\n
What did NOT influence the election; the most pro-Trump racial group; and Catholics elected Trump.<\/p>\n
What Did NOT Influence the Election<\/h4>\n
In understanding the news, it helps to reflect not only on what happened but what did not<\/em> happen.\u00a0 The recent election was surprising not only for its results, but for its overturning of assumptions.<\/p>\n Money had little impact<\/strong>.\u00a0 \u00a0Kamala Harris raised<\/a> $997.2 million, whereas Donald Trump raised<\/a> $388 million.\u00a0 Trump had far less than half as much to spend (39%) as Harris, and yet he won.\u00a0 In the words<\/a> of a former Biden staffer, deleting the expletive, complaining about Harris\u2019s campaign, \u201cHow did you spend $1 billion and not win?\u201d\u00a0 Money and contributions from big donors are evidently not the factor they are cracked up to be.<\/p>\n The major news media propagandized in vain.<\/strong>\u00a0 Journalists in big media were unashamedly biased against Trump.\u00a0 Some of them openly called for pausing the usual objective standards of their profession and giving both sides<\/a> of controversial issues in covering Trump, such was his \u201cexistential threat\u201d to America.\u00a0 Their water carrying for Kamala Harris was almost embarrassing.\u00a0 Nevertheless, despite all of this free political advertisement, to add to what the Democrats paid a billion-dollars for, most of the public was seemingly unfazed, electing Trump anyway.<\/p>\n Demonizing Trump had little effect<\/strong>.\u00a0 The Democrats\u2019 main strategy was to demonize Trump.\u00a0 Instead of offering distinctly Democratic solutions to the electorates\u2019 problem, they tried to co-opt the Republican positions (we\u2019re for lower taxes too!\u00a0 we also\u00a0 support fracking!\u00a0 we\u2019ll build a wall!).\u00a0 Instead, they tried to scare voters with claims that Trump is an \u201cexistential threat\u201d (there is that term again) to Democracy, that he will take away your freedoms, that he will impose a dictatorship, that he is a Fascist!<\/p>\n Trump has a lot of baggage, but most of the voting public is not afraid<\/em> of him.\u00a0 After all, we survived his first term quite well.\u00a0 What\u2019s more scary to most Americans is the spectacle of federal agents descending on your home and trying to put you in jail for bogus crimes.\u00a0 And people ginning up such hostility against you that you become the target of assassination attempts.\u00a0 Demonizing Trump to such an extent may have had the effect of making him sympathetic.<\/p>\n Abortion didn\u2019t mobilize women to vote for Harris<\/strong>.\u00a0 The other issue the Democrats were counting on was promoting abortion at the top of their lungs, which was thought would turn out legions of women to vote for Harris.\u00a0 But Trump ended up winning<\/a> 45% of the women\u2019s vote, and more than half of white women (53%) voted for him.\u00a0 It turns out, not all women are in favor of abortion.\u00a0 And though it looks like most Americans are, overall, they did not believe that Trump would take that \u201cright\u201d away from them, since he himself was the one who sidelined pro-lifers.\u00a0 But if abortion is not the issue that both sides assumed that it would be, that should give pro-lifers some hope.<\/p>\n Progressives have put great store by identity politics, working hard to mobilize victim groups against their oppressors.\u00a0 Their attention has been primarily focused on sex (women oppressed by men), sexual orientation (LGBTQs oppressed by heterosexuals), and race (racial minorities oppressed by whites).<\/p>\n Imagine the shock on the part of racial reductionists to learn that the racial group most supportive of Donald Trump was American Indians<\/a>!\u00a0 Nearly two-thirds of Native Americans (65%) voted for Trump.\u00a0 That is a bigger percentage than that of white people who voted for him (57%).<\/p>\n How could that be? If any group has a right to complain about oppression at the hands of white people, indigenous people being driven out by colonization, environmental degradation, poverty, and other tenets of progressive grievances, it would surely be Native Americans.\u00a0 And yet, they overwhelmingly voted for the nemesis of progressives.<\/p>\n Tribal people do complain about all of those things.\u00a0 But their need to hold onto their cultural heritage is the very definition of conservatism.\u00a0 And they chafe against the government bureaucracies that control what they are allowed to do on their own lands, despite the legal \u201csovereignty\u201d that the government supposedly recognizes.\u00a0 The tribes are also trying to work their way out of crushing poverty, but the federal government often thwarts that.\u00a0 Yes, tribes sometimes object to industrial development of their sacred sites, but probably more often they want<\/em> to take advantage of the mineral wealth their lands could produce, but the government doesn\u2019t let them.\u00a0 Jim Geraghty<\/a> explains:<\/p>\n Why did American Indians break so heavily in favor of Trump? Democrats may begin a lot of events and statements with \u201cland acknowledgements<\/a>,\u201d but they\u2019re not so supportive of letting America Indians do what they want on their own land. The Biden administration repeatedly put up regulatory roadblocks to American Indian tribes that rely on fossil-fuel production for revenues. Tribes facing some of the worst poverty in the country \u2014 lacking indoor plumbing and electricity \u2014 are residing on land with fortunes worth of\u00a0oil and natural gas, coal reserves, uranium<\/a>, as well as solar and wind. Not only is the Biden administration blocking development of fossil fuels on Indian land, it\u2019s ironically\u00a0trying to ram through wind and solar projects over some objections from the American Indian community.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can confirm this from my experience in my home state of Oklahoma<\/a>, which has the second highest percentage of Native Americans (13.37%) after Alaska (20.29%) and the second highest number (546,565) after California (1,009,450).\u00a0 A good number of the cars with tribal license plates, which registered members can have because of their tribe\u2019s legal sovereignty, will have Trump bumper stickers.<\/p>\n Native Americans also tend to oppose illegal immigration.\u00a0 Raise the issue with them and you will often get a bitter comment about the problems Indians have had with immigrants pouring into America ever since 1492.<\/p>\n In 2016, about 80% of evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, which was highly instrumental in the close election that put him in office.\u00a0 In 2020, about the same number voted for him again, but that was not enough to elect him.\u00a0 This time, once again, 8 in 10 evangelicals voted for Trump.\u00a0 No more than in 2020.<\/p>\n The big change, which may have produced Trump\u2019s margin of victory, was the Catholic vote.\u00a0 In 2020, 52% of Catholics<\/a> voted for their co-religionist Joe Biden, with Trump getting 47%.\u00a0 In 2024, 58% of Catholics<\/a> voted for Trump, an 11% improvement, with only 40% voting for Kamala Harris.\u00a0 Among white Catholics, the difference was even greater:\u00a0 61% for Trump<\/a> and 35% for Harris.\u00a0 A good number of these Catholics who voted for Trump live in the crucial swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Philadelphia.<\/p>\n So notes Newsweek<\/a>.\u00a0 Paul Kengor of the National Catholic Register delves into the election and concludes in his article with this title, Donald Trump Can Thank Catholics for His Big Win<\/a>.\u00a0 See also Mary Eberstadt\u2019s First Things<\/em> article Why Catholics Voted for Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n Commentators cite what comes across as Harris\u2019s overt anti-Catholicism, as in her inquisition of a judicial nominee for belonging to the Knights of Columbus and her snub of the traditional bi-partisan Al Smith dinner, a benefit for Catholic charities.<\/p>\n More deeply, though, was her extreme advocacy and even celebration of abortion.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it puts it too strongly to say that Harris persecuted<\/em> pro-life activists when she was the Attorney General of California, requiring pro-life pregnancy clinics to post advertisements for abortion providers and prosecuting the undercover journalist who recorded Planned Parenthood employees discussing their illegal sale of body parts from unborn children they killed.\u00a0 And as Senator and Vice-President she has been advocating removing the conscience clause that allows pro-life medical professionals to opt out of performing abortions on the basis of their religion or moral convictions.\u00a0 She wants to force pro-lifers to perform abortions!<\/p>\n I know that a majority of American Catholics (56%)<\/a> believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, in flat out contradiction to what their church teaches.\u00a0 That\u2019s not much different from the 63% of all Americans<\/a> who believe that.<\/p>\n I would argue, though, that many of these Catholics\u2013as well as many other Americans who support legal abortion\u2013feel a certain cognitive dissonance on the issue.\u00a0 The supposedly devout Catholic Joe Biden has probably done more to promote abortion than any other president, but it is said that he hates to hear the word \u201cabortion,\u201d which is why he insists on framing it as \u201cwomen\u2019s reproductive health care.\u201d\u00a0 Biden used to be pro-life, as most Catholic Democrats were, until his party turned in the other direction and began to ban dissenters on the issue.\u00a0 I am sure that his having sold out his beliefs troubles his conscience when he considers meeting his Maker.\u00a0 But Harris\u2019s pro-abortion extremism, I suspect, made even pro-abortion Catholics uneasy.<\/p>\nThe Most Pro-Trump Racial Group<\/h4>\n
Catholics Elected Trump<\/h4>\n