Identity Politics Social Justice Hypocrisy

Senator Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, in front of the Supreme Court spoke to pro-abortion protesters on Wednesday saying

"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

This is over the top in political discourse and his later claims that he only meant that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would pay the price that the Democratic Party would take over the Senate is a bucket blasted with two 12-gauge shotgun loads of 00 buckshot.  This event and Sen. Schumer's ridiculous later claims have been much discussed and I will not discuss it further here.

However, this kerfuffle led to some claims that President Trump was also guilty of threats to judges.  One such claim was based on his saying that Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg should recluse themselves from cases involving the Trump administration because of highly biased remarks they have made about Trump.  Stating judges should recluse themselves hardly sounds like releasing a whirlwind and a threat to make them pay the price of their decisions.

There were also references comparing Trump's statements to Schumer's to presidential candidate Trump's claim that a Mexican heritage judge should recluse himself from judging a case against Trump that involved Trump University.  Trump had implied that the judge, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an Obama appointee, may have been biased.

Trump should not have said this at the time, at least not unless he had specific solid reason for claiming such bias.  However, Trump was adopting the identity politics of the Democratic Party.  The howls of outrage after the criticism of Schumer from those who hold with identity politics against Trump's assumption that an Obama appointee with a Mexican heritage might be biased against him are based on sheer hypocrisy.

Just think of all the times Democrats have claimed that those who do not think like other members of some identity group the Democrats have assigned them to are traitors to their identity group.  Justice Clarence Thomas is an outrage they claim because he does not think like and make decisions like a proper black man is supposed to.  Over and over they have claimed he is a traitor to his racial group.  The Democrats try very hard to put pressure on those shoved into some identity group of their formulation to all act and think alike.  To a surprising degree, they are often successful in getting this result.  Many blacks comply with this uniformity.  Many, though not quite so many, Latinos comply.  Many women also comply.

In fact, the Democratic Party is primarily based on the women's vote, with the Black, Latino, Jewish, Muslim, and LGBTQ identity group votes added in.  The Democratic Party as a whole also has a bias against that identity group they created for white males.  In fact, that bias against white males has been very evident in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's claim that she has been denied the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency because she is a woman.  Oops, but how can it be that the Democratic Party with its endorsement of group identity politics and a heavy majority of women supporters is biased against a woman presidential candidate?  Nonetheless, many of the media joined Warren in her claims that there was bias against her and in effect rebuking the women of the Democratic Party for not uniting behind her.  Those who did not are traitors.

So let us return to Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was appointed by Obama.  Now Obama certainly believed in identity politics.  Obama absolutely would not appoint a federal judge who would betray his ethnic heritage, at least not one the Democratic Party counts on to hold firm in its belief in the Democratic Party, thereby being true to its identity.  Presidential candidate Trump was to be judged by an Obama identity group appointee in a case even as the Obama administration is spying on his presidential campaign using FBI and CIA assets to do so in collaboration with the Democratic National Committee.  Is it so unreasonable that Trump might think this federal judge might be biased?

As I said earlier, Trump should not have raised the question without more supporting evidence of bias at the time.  But looking back with all we know about the many dirty tricks of the Obama administration in biasing the 2016 election results, in subverting the Department of Justice in doing so, given their strong assertion and dependence upon group identity politics, and in the way Obama appointed judges who have thwarted so many of the actions of the duly elected Trump administration ever since he took office, Trump would have been very justified in saying Judge Curiel might be biased had he then known all we know now.

This goes to show that if you support group identity politics, then there is no way that anyone assigned to a group identity that is supposed to oppose those assigned to other group identities can expect justice in our justice system.  If the judge is in an allied identity group to a defendant, the judge will be biased in favor of him.  If the judge is in an opposing identity group, he will be biased against the defendant.  Female judges will be biased against males, as male judges will be biased against females.  Latino judges will be biased against white males and white male judges will be biased against Latinos.  Black judges will be biased against white males.  Women, Black, and Latino judges will be biased in favor of more government and a living Constitution.  White males will want less government and the Rule of Law.  This is expected as a necessary outcome of a belief in identity politics.

Impartial, objective justice is impossible if you believe in group identities as determiners of the group members viewpoints and beliefs.  Any claim of justice is outrageous hypocrisy.  Perhaps worst of all, there is no possible way to even aim for justice in a system that acknowledges identity groups and their powerful effect upon how reality is seen.

This issue is far more important than Sen. Chuck Schumer's rantings and ravings.  His defense should have drawn our attention to the hell created by group identity politics and culture.  Far from the claim that the Democrats are using group identity politics to achieve more social justice, they are actually making the very concept of a justice system impossible.  The result is a choice between anarchy and totalitarianism.

The Missing Voters, The Missing White Voters

In the 2008 Presidential election, the vote outcome was (ignoring minor parties):

Obama, 69,456,897
McCain, 59,934,814
Total, 129,391,711

In the 2012 Presidential election, the vote outcome was (ignoring minor parties):

Obama, 61,164,405
Romney, 58,159,408
Total, 119,323,813
Difference between the candidates, 3,004,997

There were 10,067,898 fewer votes cast for the two major party candidates in the 2012 election despite a growing population.  If the same proportion of the population had voted in 2012 as did in 2008, there should have been about 15.2 million more votes cast in 2012 than in 2008.

The difference in votes for the Democrat and Republican presidential candidates in 2012 compared to 2008 was:

Democrat, Obama, lost 8.29 million votes
Republican, lost 1.76 million votes
Total Lost Votes, 10.05 million votes

According to the CNN exit polls, the vote by race in 2012 was:

White, 72%, down from 74% in 2008
Black, 13%, same as in 2008
Latino, 10%, up from 9% in 2008
Asian, 3%, up from 2% in 2008

The number of white votes can be calculated for each year and we find that there were 9.84 million fewer white voters in 2012 than in 2008.

2008 White Vote:
Obama, 43%
McCain, 55%

2012 White Vote:
Obama, 39%
Romney, 59%

There was a 20% differential in this election of white voters for Romney.  If the 9.84 million white voters who stayed home had voted in the same percentages for Romney and Obama as those who voted did, then Romney would have had (0.20)(9.84 million) = 1.97 million more votes.  This would have only been two-thirds of the difference in the vote for Obama and Romney, but it would be very interesting to understand why nearly 10 million white voters stayed home.  In fact, while white voter numbers are not increasing as fast as are black and Latino numbers, they did increase somewhat, so this analysis understates the Republican problem with potential white voters.

Demographically, Republicans do have a serious need to win Latino votes.  But it is just as bad a problem that they could not motivate many white voters to come to the polls and vote and did even worse this time than they did with the very lackluster Senator John McCain.  Those who say that the Republican problem is simply that they only got 27% of the Latino vote are missing another critical part of the puzzle.  The 1% increase in the Latino voting percentage among about 10 million fewer voters, means there were only about 0.3 million more Latino votes.  Obama's 71% portion of that added vote gave him about 0.2 million more votes.  As a result, Obama's advantage due to more Latino voters was only about 0.1 times Romney's loss of votes due to not turning out white voters.

To have actually won the election, Romney would still have needed to get a significantly larger percentage of white and/or Latino votes.  The percentage of black voters stayed the same and given the lower number of total voters, the actual number of black voters decreased compared to their number in 2008.  The actual number was about 1.3 million fewer black voters.  Those black voters who voted, voted 91% for Obama.  Thus, a lower turnout of black voters may have cost him about 1.2 million votes.  So, Latino voters increased very slightly and white voters decreased hugely compared to 2008.

Summarizing the effects of voter turnout by race alone, and recognizing that using percentages only to the nearest 1% causes large errors, we have:

Obama's lost votes, 1.2 million black votes minus 0.2 million Latino votes = 1.0 million lost votes.

Romney's lost votes, 2.0 million white votes

So Romney nominally lost twice as many votes as Obama did due to the changes in numbers of voters choosing to vote, assuming each race voted in the same percentage as those of that race who turned up to vote.  Admittedly, that may very well not be a good assumption.  Nonetheless, it makes it clear that much more than just changing demographics is responsible for the sorry showing of Romney.