In Iowa and New Hampshire, Republicans quietly court their angry white majority

Iowa perfectly represents the white face of the 2024 Republican electorate.

The condition is 89% white According to the 2020 Census.it is Pew Research Center findings As of 2022, 85 percent of Republican voters are white.

And that's because Donald Trump won In the 2020 presidential election, white voters accounted for 57%. President Joe Biden won the election, but with only 42% of the white vote.

Mr. Biden overcame his disadvantage with white voters in the following ways. win 87 percent of the black vote and 66 percent of the Hispanic vote.

These large margins among minorities helped Biden win the national popular vote and the Electoral College to take the White House.Trump has since suggested the election was stolen, but still claims there was voter fraud. In areas where minorities voted.

Most Republicans, mostly white, have told pollsters that they support President Trump's lies based on the belief that minority voters cheated.

A week from today, the Iowa caucuses will be held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a time when the country will look less and less like Iowa.

according to census bureauCurrently, the United States is 19% Latino, 14% black, and 6% Asian. Iowa's white population, about 90 percent, is significantly higher than the 59 percent of all Americans who identify only as white.

That's why Republican candidates campaigning in the state are speaking carefully to white Iowa voters.

But even as they try their best to navigate the politics of white racial anger, the risks exist.

Nikki Haley stumbled when she tried to remind white voters of the simple fact that the cause of the Civil War was Southern whites asserting their right to keep blacks as slaves.

She was tongue-tied while campaigning in New Hampshire. 92% white.

Haley said she expected white voters to be upset in a year when front-runner Trump spoke openly about non-white immigrants “tainting the blood of our country,” an appeal to racist ideas. I was afraid. popular Written by Adolf Hitler.

Trump also has a long and ugly history on racial issues.

As a presidential candidate, Trump had argued that this was because the judge hearing one of the many civil cases against him is “Mexican.” cannot give him a fair trial. Given the opportunity to retract this crude racist comment about Indiana-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel in an interview with CNN, he doubled instead.

As president, Trump spoke disparagingly of immigrants from “.”shitty country” he Said The debate over the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue had “very fine people on both sides,” but the debate exploded at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Immediately after the outbreak, anti-Semitic slogans such as “This is what Jews do'' were raised. Don't replace us! ”

Check out my book, What the hell do you have to lose? Trump's Civil Rights War'' for a comprehensive review.

Haley's main rival for second place in Iowa to Trump is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is also tailoring his campaign to appeal to conservative white voters. His campaign records include: Ended along with implementing an Advanced Placement African American history curriculum in his state's schools. Some black people teach what they learned skills They were held as slaves, which later brought them profit.

He also lured using national money A Venezuelan immigrant who recently arrived on the streets of San Antonio, Texas, far from Florida, arrived in Massachusetts on a commercial flight paid for with Florida funds.

His political objective was to appeal to white Republicans in states such as Iowa. The Americans most concerned about the rising share of nonwhites in the country are white Republicans.

Mr. DeSantis in particular wants to make frayed immigration laws, which have long needed legislative action, a political issue for Democrats, especially President Biden.

Mr. DeSantis and House Republicans have called the recent surge in migrants illegally crossing the border a crisis. But there was a spike before and during President Trump's term. And even when Republicans had complete control of Congress and Republicans failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform. They also failed to keep President Trump's promise to build a wall on the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it.

While Republicans have focused on white resentment and anger this year, Democrats have decided to shift the start of their primary election calendar from Iowa and New Hampshire.

President Biden is not on the ballot in these states. Instead, the Democratic National Committee plans to open voting in more racially diverse states.

South Carolina, Nevada, and Michigan are mostly white states. 69 percent in South Carolina, 72 percent in Nevada and 79 percent in Michigan — but is close to the national average in terms of minority population.

“For decades, black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party, but they have been left on the back burner in early primaries…” In a December 2022 letter to the DNC, Biden wrote:. “It's time to stop taking these voters for granted and give them a louder voice in the process, sooner.”

After Biden lost Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020, it was South Carolina's Black Democratic vote that gave him the nomination.

Biden had to appeal to Black and Latino voters during the campaign, fulfilling a promise he made as president. He elected the first black female vice president. She appointed the first black female judge to the Supreme Court. And he nominated the first black Secretary of Defense.

The declining importance of the Iowa caucuses is partly the result of demographic changes. But Iowa now holds a mirror to President Trump's exclusive reliance on exploiting white racial grievances.

Juan Williams is a writer and political analyst for Fox News Channel and the author of “.What do you have to lose?? ”