The Democrats’ ill-thought-out effort to start a race war of Hispanics against whites

Steve Sailer at Vdare looks at three current incidents that show the liberal elite breaking down as a result of holding a belief system that runs so counter to reality: their egging on of Hispanics against whites over Arizona SB1070; Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman” remark; and the upheaval at Harvard Law over a private email written by a student expressing her doubts about racial equality of intelligence. Re the first item, he says:

Back in the spring of 2006, pundits predicted that after the massive marches by illegal aliens that Hispanics would rush to the ballot box in November. Yet, according to the Census Bureau survey, the Hispanic share of the vote fell—from 6.0 percent in 2004 to 5.9 percent in 2006.

The simple reality, of course, is that illegal aliens aren’t supposed to vote, while Hispanic-American citizens have sensibly ambivalent views about their impact on America.

More importantly, egging on a Hispanic v. white racial struggle is a losing proposition for the Democrats at the ballot box in 2010 because there are still more white voters.

That last point hasn’t occurred to the Democrats. They think that by denouncing all whites who are opposed to illegal immigration as anti-Hispanic racists, they will help spark a huge Hispanic groundswell for the Democratic Party. They miss the simple fact—which Sailer has pointed to over and over in somewhat different terms in a different context, namely that of Republican efforts to win over Hispanics—that even if there were a huge outpouring of Democratic Hispanic voters, there are a lot more white voters, a good number of whom will be turned off by being called racists for wanting to stop illegal immigration. Setting Hispanics against whites may win a few Hispanics, but will lose many more whites.

Why do the Democrats miss this obvious likelihood? I think it’s because, viewing white opponents of illegal immigration as simply evil, they are unwilling or unable to include the thoughts and likely actions of such whites in their political calculations. Like all bigots, the Democrats refuse to acknowledge the subjective reality of the people they hate.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 06, 2010 08:54 AM | Send