American political convention season has now come to a close. It's now that we can all take a deep breath and enjoy our news programs focusing on things that matter.
I can't be the only one that got a tad sick of the constant broadcasting and commentating of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions these past few weeks. Lets be real, if CNN and Fox News covered the convention season like C-SPAN covers legislative sessions, about 6 people would have watched. However, I guess it's enjoyable to listen to political commentators act like somehow the conventions are the most important political event of the last four years (Hint: I think the bills passed in congress have much more of an impact but I guess that's just me).
One thing overall did in fact stand out to me as important while watching the convention speeches and I figured it was worth writing about.
After Mitt Romney's loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, the GOP produced an 'autopsy' of their own party in regards to minority groups and their outreach to people of color. They knew that if they were to have success in the next following general presidential elections they were going to have to produce some more appeal to voters who are minorities.
It seems that this project must have gotten abandoned, thrown out the window and set on fire because this recent Republican National Convention was whiter than the last snow storm we had. At the convention 2,740 delegates were represented on the floor. Of those 2,740, a whopping 18 were African-Americans. 18. In total, 6% of the delegates were people of color. It couldn't have been less representative of the America we see today.
The first night of both conventions featured roughly the same number of speakers addressing the delegates. Around 50 people addressed the Democrats on the first night with half being people of minority groups. That number was 6 for the Republicans. Of the total number of speakers that took the stage in Philadelphia there were 36 Blacks, 19 Latinos, 3 Asians, a Native American and a woman with Cerebral Palsy. The RNC had a lot of Trumps.
Stuart Stevens, a chief strategist for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, said it best when he proclaimed about the RNC that "There were more Trumps who spoke than Hispanics".
The DNC showed its diverse voting base with over half their delegates being minorities. In addition, 633 of the 4,766 delegates were members of the LGBT community.
This election may have the most minority voters of any election in our history and it is going to be a party with half their delegates members of these groups against a party with a nominee that insults just about every disparaged group imaginable.
Donald Trump loves to scapegoat people that don't look like him for our nation's problems. The gun problem is because of Muslims, the crime comes from Hispanics, and police brutality? Oh that's got to be because of the Blacks.
The Republicans may want to preform another autopsy to avoid a 50 state blowout in November. And with Donald Trump as their nominee, I tell them good fuckin' luck.
