I know there are a number of you who are not happy with the election results. I dealt with several of you a week or so ago as you protested downtown. You marched, yelled and screamed and, at the end of the day, didn’t change a damn thing. There were also a number of you who took to the airwaves to say how Donald Trump and Mike Pence are the first sign of the apocalypse; one person even went so far to tie their electoral victory to the book of Revelation. No offense, but every intelligent person knows Trump’s victory was not the sign of the end of the world; it was the Cub’s winning the World Series. But seriously folks, you all need to take a step back from the hyperbole, the histrionics and the hyperventilating. It’s getting real old, real quick.
First off all, if anyone is responsible for Trump winning the presidency, it’s you; or at least those of you who didn’t vote. According to the post-election data, nearly two million African-American voters who came out for Barack Obama in 2012 did not show up for Hillary Clinton. Overall, Black turnout for Clinton was down about 11 percent this year. A couple more direct examples are Michigan and Wisconsin. In Michigan, Clinton lost by about 10,000 votes. That could have been mitigated if the 75,000 Detroit voters who supported Obama in the last election had shown up. In Wisconsin, Trump did not win any new voters; the most recent analysis shows about 230,000 Obama votes in 2012 did not show up for Clinton. And if Black turnout was the same in North Carolina as in 2012, Clinton would have won that, too.
Locally, the whining was ever louder over the Republican sweep of the statewide offices. Well, here’s another newsflash for you. Allow me to present a breakdown of the vote totals of the statewide candidates:
- Curtis Hill — 1,642,555
- Donald Trump — 1,556,122
- Todd Young — 1,422,962
- Jennifer McCormick — 1,420,075
- Eric Holcomb — 1,396,409
- Glenda Ritz — 1,238,685
- John Gregg — 1,234,500
- Evan Bayh — 1,157,645
- Hillary Clinton — 1,036,426
- Lorenzo Arrendondo — 993,183
I think it says quite a bit that Hill, an African-American, was the highest vote-getter, but according to our research, he got more votes than anyone else in Indiana history. I guess trying to play the race card might not work as well as some folks thought. I think it also says quite a bit that Clinton only got 43,000 more votes than Judge Arrendondo, and Ritz actually outperformed Bayh and Gregg.
And once again, the story of voter turnout in Indiana was just like the rest of the country. Here in Marion County, voter turnout was less than 52 percent. It was 56 percent in 2012. In Lake County, voter turnout out was 56 percent. However, in Republican strongholds of Hamilton, Hendricks and Boone counties, voter turnout was easily north of 60 percent. The first rule of politics is to get your people to show up and vote. If you don’t, and the other guy or gal does, they win. This isn’t Euclidian geometry, folks; it’s pretty simple binary math.
Oh, and I would be completely remiss if I talked about the election without mentioning the OurIPS crowd whose candidates got beat like baby seals. And to add even more insult to injury, the only challenger who won an IPS seat was Elizabeth Gore, who got no backing from the OurIPS crowd or the “Concerned” Clergy. I guess most IPS voters are concerned about their children getting a quality education as opposed to turning a school district into an employment agency for adults who can’t get jobs elsewhere.
So instead of sitting around wailing and gnashing your teeth, maybe you people should, first, actually show up and vote; secondly, field candidates that people will actually vote for; and third, take solace in the fact that there’s another election in 2018, so you have a chance to make the exact same mistakes you did a couple weeks ago.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
