But the Suburbs Have No Charms to Soothe

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights

Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

- "Subdivisions" Rush

Okay, to be honest, this quick little rant about donald "Fearmongering Shitgibbon" trump trying to scare White Suburbanites into fleeing from Biden and Democrats is mostly so I can quote from a song I grew up to since the 1980s.

Which is kind of a thing for me, being a Generation Xer who grew up in the suburbs, in the north Pinellas County region of Tampa Bay Florida where I literally watched entire neighborhoods spring up from the paved remnants of orange groves and dirt hills. Florida's population boom of the Eighties? I was there, and it was all 3-4 bedrooms houses with manicured lawns and pink (excuse me, that color is CORAL, thank you very much) painted exteriors.

So if anything I speak from experience. So with this, I question trump's attempt to appeal to what he called the Suburban Lifestyle Dream.

He's attempting to appeal to those who, when the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s gave Blacks more political freedom (but not economic equality), fled from places due to be desegregated - cities - outward to planned and deed-restricted neighborhoods where the obsessions over property values would encourage segregation in ways that couldn't be called out. It was called White Flight and you shouldn't be surprised to meet a lot of White folk who won't talk about it or claim it never happened that way. (Ask White folk about Redlining and watch their heads explode)

trump's appeal is based on the view of the suburbs being traditionally White Conservative enclaves, home to thousands of middle-class workers who habitually vote in favor of the world of Ronald Reagan's Eagleland, a place where people work hard play hard obey the traffic laws and worship an Evangelical-approved Deity every Sunday.

There's a problem with that image of Suburbia. It's a little out of date.

A lot has changed since the 1980s. The economic makeup of suburban communities have shifted away from the Blue Collar manufacturing conservatism that made up the neighborhoods from the Sixties through the Eighties. If anything - and from what I've seen - the suburbs has seen a rise in White Collar professionals - due to the loss of manufacturing jobs since the Seventies - made up of technology, health care, education, office-oriented work forces... which have more diverse and more educated demographics.

The racial shift of the suburbs has also taken place since the Nineties. Hispanic population growth in various states - not just in the South - has filled in a void where White residents kept fleeing from encroaching metropolitan politics. Another element has been "Black Flight" where the rise of educated White Collar workers in that demographic allowed them to flee cities much the way Whites fled decades earlier. (Yeah, we uh don't talk about that either, except for the part where hip young White couples are moving back into the cities to gentrify everything... ugh another Starbucks?)

As a result, it's not that the suburbs are now White enclaves... it's that the suburbs are now White Collar enclaves, filled with professional-level, college-educated home owners of varying ethnicity. And all of them eager to enforce that NO SOLICITING sign in front of the main entrance to their walled-off subdivisions.

We're talking teachers, doctors and nurses, computer/technology workers, lawyers, public service (city/county) employees, financial experts, store managers, warehouse supervisors, anything that requires a 4-year degree minimum. All of them living the Suburban Lifestyle Dream.

Supposedly.

Because there's also another thing that trump is overlooking about the suburbs: Those neighborhoods are getting hit HARD during trump's own regime, especially in trump's failure to handle the Conoravirus pandemic. I just listed the professions above, nearly every one of them affected negatively - especially those in the medical/health care fields - by trump's continued inability to answer the challenges of leadership needed to keep the nation quarantined and reducing the risks of infection. As a result, it's also affecting those professionals in businesses and workplaces that are being forced to exposure, especially the teachers and educators facing the risks of COVID exposure at school.

As a result, I am not imaging a high number of suburbanites who view trump with any level of favorability or support. trump had been bleeding off suburban types throughout his tenure, especially among women, but lately that leak has turned into a gusher. And the polls are backing me up on this.

trump can't appeal to a broad range of educated, ethnically-diverse Americans. he's been too busy appealing to racist Whites to keep his voting base happy.

and trump can't comprehend how his ineptitude and failures have turned the Suburban Lifestyle Dream into a nightmare. Which is why he's going to make things worse for American suburbanites.

For the LOVE OF GOD, Suburban America, wake up and vote trump out.

 

On Polling: What Should We Be Looking For?

Now that we're past both nominating conventions and that we're going to be getting away from the post-con bounces both Presidential nominees get, what should we be looking for among the polls - check here, check here, and follow up with Sober Nate Silver there - during the months of August and September?

1) Keep an eye on women. Where most polling focused during previous election cycles on ethnic blocs - White, Black, Hispanic, Asian and Other - the real split this 2016 is happening with the Men-Women vote.

As noted earlier, Silver and his fellow stat checkers at 538.com documented the severe hatred women have towards Trump. This is a key demographic as A) more women historically show up to vote than men and B) we're talking about ALL women including White voters who would normally be voting Republican.

White voters in 2012 voted around 60 percent for Romney (R), which had to include a high number of women among men. This HuffPo poll from 2012 results showed Romney won White Women voters 56 percent. Even with that number - considering Whites vote in greater overall numbers than all other ethnic groups combined - Romney still LOST. Trump in 2016 has to perform higher than that... but if White Women break away from White Men, Trump can't do that.

According to this 2016 Pew Research poll, Trump is only polling 35 percent to Clinton's 53 percent with Women overall. Among White Women Trump is getting 42 percent. Note the difference between 56 percent White Women in 2012 for Mitt to 42 percent White Women currently for Trump. That's a minus-14 point drop. Trump is not getting 60 percent of overall White voters this year, he just isn't...

2) Remember that the non-White voting blocs are so currently opposed to the Republican Party and so opposed to Trump that those groups are not going to flip to the GOP in significant numbers to help Republicans.

Black voters are likely to stay near 95-98 percent in favor of the Democrats. Hispanic voters are likely to be above 80 percent in favor of Dems by Election Day. Asian voters are reportedly getting close to being close to 80 percent for Dems as well.

While the total number of each voting bloc can't equal White Voters overall, the advantage to the Democrats having minority voters entirely with their party is that it reduces the odds of Blue and battleground states from flipping to Red/Republican. Consider them a firewall.

These are no longer elections fought by issues or ideology. We are now in elections fought over demographics (which explains why Republicans are so desperate to suppress voting rights for minorities).

3) Hispanic voters are the wild card this election cycle.

It's because polling for Hispanic voters is harder to do than for the other voting blocs, over communication - few polling units use Spanish-language surveys - and overall unwillingness to answer those surveys. So there's little idea how the turnout of that group - which is close to surpassing registration numbers for Black voters - is actually going to happen.

There's solid evidence Hispanic voters are registering in larger numbers than before, and they've got a good incentive to vote this time as Trump's illegal immigration policies are a direct threat to themselves (even as legal citizens, Hispanic-Americans know exactly what can happen in a mass round-up of anyone even looking remotely Latino). The problem - as always - remains turnout. If overall turnout of Hispanic voters gets above 50 percent - and remains around 80 percent Democrat - that will be good news for Hillary's camp.

Is there anything else we should be looking for?

Oh, right.

GET THE VOTE OUT, PEOPLE. Polling may be one thing but what MATTERS is the actual DAMN TURNOUT!