December 29, 2009

Media a lagging indicator

From the New York Times:
For First Time, Minority Vote Was a Majority
By SAM ROBERTS

Much of the focus on the results of last month’s New York City elections was on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s small victory margin, despite the more than $102 million he spent to secure a third term. But the elections also produced a seismic political shift that so far has gone largely unnoticed: Black, Hispanic and Asian residents made up a majority of voters in a citywide race for the first time.

But, surely, that demographics are changing faster among voters than among journalists helps explain why the news media was so shocked that their beloved billionaire-mayor, the eighth richest man in America, barely squeezed through to a third term. Everybody they knew adored Bloomberg (who might be the only man in America hiring journalists). Bloomberg is their kind of guy.

But the new majority of voters didn't find him their kind of guy.

27 comments:

Jim O said...

In the weeks before the election, everyone here in New York was asking why Bloomberg was spending all that money on that constant barrage of negative ads against the seemingly innocuous Bill Thompson. We found out on election night. Bloomberg's pollsters knew more about demographics than the MSM.

Anonymous said...

Well, what was there to like about him anyway? On a list of things one "likes", I'm sure he would rank higher than chicken pox or a broken leg, but adoration? Whenever most people vote they have to hold their nose to do the deed.

Anonymous said...

1) What is the "Asian" vote in NYC? Is it primarily Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese? Or is it primarily Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Indian Muslim [like in Toronto]?

2) How did this NYC "Asian" vote play out w.r.t. the Bloomberg campaign?

Anonymous said...

Everybody they knew adored Bloomberg (who might be the only man in America hiring journalists). Bloomberg is their kind of guy.

Hey, cheer up, Steve - in ten years, you'll be able to point out that the New York Times had to go bankrupt because the town of New York could no longer support literacy.

Yeah, it's a Pyrrhic Victory, but, well, whatever...

Anonymous said...

actually the elite that runs new york need not worry. Marty Markowitz, who ran for brooklyn vp, simply knocked all the candidates off the ballot - something the machine can do quite easily here... then he just ran against a republican who had no chance.

the more arguing /clashing ethnic groups, the more chaos the better.

Whiskey said...

NYC is toast then. And that's the future for Yuppie playgrounds like San Francisco also. With a Black/Hispanic majority, the cities will look like Detroit mixed with Cleveland.

Without a strong White Middle Class presence, non-White majority cities turn into machine politics that are unsustainable.

ben tillman said...

What is the "Asian" vote in NYC? Is it primarily Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese? Or is it primarily Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Indian Muslim [like in Toronto]?

The former.

Anonymous said...

The former.

And how did it behave vis-a-vis Bloomberg's race [-er- candidacy]?

Anonymous said...

Without a strong White Middle Class presence
the Jewish elite in NY has been working like mad to eliminate them for years.. Bloomberg went after the NYPD and with the help of Bush FDNY..the last white civil service strongholds.

Anonymous said...

"Well, what was there to like about him anyway? On a list of things one "likes", I'm sure he would rank higher than chicken pox or a broken leg, but adoration? Whenever most people vote they have to hold their nose to do the deed."

As repugnant as Bloomberg's social agenda might be, he runs a decent city compared to most other American large cities.

If some black Democrat takes over, it basically guarantees a return to 2,000 plus homicides a week, as the police force is gutted.

Anonymous said...

It looks like New York City is doing quite well with its dwindling white population. Crime -- murder in particular is at all time low. It is the safest big city in the country! I guess the liberals there are doing something right. Maybe gun control has something to do with it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/nyregion/29murder.html

Anonymous said...

Some of you nuts probably want Ron Paul elected in New York or something, but that isn't going to happen. You need to get out of the redneck backwoods and the Freep.

Anonymous said...

It looks like New York City is doing quite well with its dwindling white population. Crime -- murder in particular is at all time low.
umm no. You obviously don't live here or have any idea about how the NYPD fudges those stats. Nicholas Styx who often writes on VDARE documents it pretty well.

Anonymous said...

err.. 2000 homicides a year I meant.

Anonymous said...

It is the safest big city in the country! I guess the liberals there are doing something right. Maybe gun control has something to do with it.




Gentrification. You don't see a lot of crime in what is basically a large gated community. The cost of living in NYC forces the criminal element (the non Bernie Madoff criminal element) to move elsewhere.

NYC is the liberal dream made flesh and concrete - a pure top-down oligarchy. It's only fitting that it have a multi-billionaire as its mayor.

Anonymous said...

Well into next century there will be pockets of white christians spread throughout the country. Little places out in nowhere will still be predominantly white. The Jews on the other hand, tend to live in california, ny, and florida; all places which will be inundated with latinos and coloreds. they will be in tight little ghettos still pretending to actually like negros while trying not to have anything to do with 99% of the population that surrounds them.

Chris said...

Crime -- murder in particular is at all time low. It is the safest big city in the country! I guess the liberals there are doing something right.

The liberals appear to be getting blacks to leave NYC for the first time in 150 years. Seeing as blacks commit around 61% of the murders in the city, this probably explains entirely the drop in the murder rate.

Anonymous said...

It looks like New York City is doing quite well with its dwindling white population. Crime -- murder in particular is at all time low. It is the safest big city in the country!

And how does it achieve such rates? Through expensive policies like paying large numbers of blacks high salaries at the transit authority, etc. to stand around and do pretty much nothing, and through turning the City into Big Brother: "Crime in New York has been falling for several years in a decline widely attributed to a 'broken windows' strategy of no tolerance for even the smallest infraction and the system of identifying and addressing problem areas."

Crime in white and Asian areas is naturally low. Low crime in black & Hispanic areas is only achieved via an intrusive police state.

Anonymous said...

It's not just the decline in black population, but changes of the black population itself. It's now significantly foreign born blacks, which have far lower crime rates than native born blacks.

Similar could be said with the Hispanics... the native Puerto Rican areas are very high crime, but many areas with a lot of Hispanic immigrants are very low in crime. Immigrants tend to have low crime rates in general, even if their native born children become criminals.

But it's patterns of crime rates dropping is pretty much mirrored by national crime rate changes. The only explanation that has made sense to me is the banning of lead paint and gasoline. These regulations took stricter and earlier effect in NYC than nationwide, and the crime plummeted just before the national rate began to. The correlations of childhood lead exposure and future crime rates are tied strongly in the changes of crime rates in multiple countries over the last 50 years. This goes along with the studies that show children exposed to lead are much more likely to end up impulsive and violent, even when controlling for socioeconomic status (even comparing kids in the same neighborhood)

The crime rate in NYC dropped far too quickly for it to be caused by a demographic change. Even in neighborhoods that remain high poverty black ghettos, the crime rate is a fraction of what it was 20 years ago.

Places like Detroit, New Orleans, and Philadelphia are full of decaying housing that are still lead exposure hazards, so the crime rate isn't going to be dropping so much in these places unless blacks are priced out.

Middletown Girl said...

"Crime in white and Asian areas is naturally low. Low crime in black & Hispanic areas is only achieved via an intrusive police state."

Then intrusive police statism in black and brown communities is what we need. If that's what liberalism is about, it aint half-bad.

John Seiler said...

The Left media also love it that he raised taxes and wants to ban smoking in parks and on beaches.

Whiskey said...

Yes, let's always blame the Jews. Mayor Lindsay, the East Side Glitterati, the entire Great Society, all a "Jewish Plot." A lot of people had their hand in it, including Kennedys, and so on.

Dahinda said...

This is the first time that whites weren't a majority in New York?

Anonymous said...

It's not just the decline in black population, but changes of the black population itself. It's now significantly foreign born blacks, which have far lower crime rates than native born blacks.

Similar could be said with the Hispanics... the native Puerto Rican areas are very high crime, but many areas with a lot of Hispanic immigrants are very low in crime. Immigrants tend to have low crime rates in general, even if their native born children become criminals...

The crime rate in NYC dropped far too quickly for it to be caused by a demographic change.


Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 2 both describe [rather profound] demographic changes.

Then after Paragraph 3 veers off into the topic of Pb, Paragraph 4 turns on a head and asserts that it can't be demographic changes.

Appalachian Brew said...

Yes, let's always blame the Jews.
Me, I blame Bush and those darned Scots-Irish!

Anonymous said...

> Then intrusive police statism in black and brown communities is what we need. If that's what liberalism is about, it aint half-bad. <

Liberalism is about invoking the Equal Protection Clause to extend prison-grade government control to all neighborhoods equally, except where there are sufficient bribes for officialdom.

MLK-venerating conservatism is about exactly the same thing, with a side of grouse about "culture."

Anonymous said...

Me, I blame Bush and those darned Scots-Irish!

The weird thing is that New York was a Scottish/Scots Irish state for much [or most] of the 19th Century.