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Barone: the blue and red divide could hurt Democrats

By Michael Barone

Give Politico's chief Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, some credit. After Michelle Obama's speech capping the first night of the Democrats' virtual convention, he tweeted: "Story of an era in two convention speeches: Barack 04: 'There's not a black America and white America . ... there's the United States of America.' Michelle 20: 'My message won't be heard by some people' because 'we live in a nation that is deeply divided.'"

But who's to blame? Democrats like to load all the blame on President Donald Trump, and despite their continued failure to cite evidence for his "racism," there's no denying his coarse insults have contributed to national division.

Balance that off, however - at least a bit - by recognizing that bipartisan electoral politics inevitably divide a citizenry, as it has ours since former President James Monroe was reelected without opposition in 1820.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama's 2004 speech made an Illinois state legislator into a plausible presidential candidate, an African American whose election promised to smooth over racial divisions. Such hopes buoyed Obama's rapturous crowds from Denver's Mile High Stadium to Berlin's Tiergarten to Chicago's Grant Park.

The letdown came well before Trump. Gallup showed the percentage of Americans rating black-white relations as very or somewhat good plunging in Obama's second term, from 70% in 2013 to 51% in 2015. The 2014 exit poll showed 38% of voters believing "race relations in this country" had "gotten worse."

Plainly, there was a sense of disappointment, of perhaps unrealistic expectations being unmet. Comments by the president and his appointees about incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere probably contributed to this. But it surely also reflected continuing poor conditions and relatively high crime rates in many (not all) predominantly black neighborhoods.

Politically, the Obama presidency left us in an America very sharply divided into two countries. Responses to COVID-19 have widened the sharp partisan differences between big cities and the countryside. Democrats have vastly overestimated the virus' death rate. Republicans' estimates have been closer to reality.

Partisan media (and Democratic convention scriptwriters) have hailed Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, despite his persistence in sending infected patients to senior citizen homes and the resulting high death rates. They've denigrated Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though his 450 COVID-19 deaths per million is a fraction of New York's 1,690.

There's also a vivid contrast between the "mostly peaceful" (translated into English: often violent) demonstrations in hip Portland and Seattle; and the relatively calm and intact exurbs and small towns.

Democratic convention speakers are blaming Trump for not stamping out the virus, for the lockdowns' economic devastation and for intensified partisan rancor. He's made mistakes and missteps, but the charges are over the top. Maybe they're an attempt to cover up the differences between red and blue America, which don't work to Democrats' advantage.

© 2020, Creators

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