October 2018.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch often prints syndicated columns by Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.  I began to read some of his political opinions after the election from a commitment to peruse more right-leaning commentary to see how the election of Donald of Queens was being processed in those circles.  His editorials seemed consistently dubious factually.  When, in a single piece, he misleadingly asserted both that His Loathsomeness was making great strides with the Black electorate and that economic growth was substantially higher than under the Obama administration, a response was warranted.  I took a dive into the data, my suspicions regarding Mr. Hanson’s factual claims were confirmed, and a letter was sent.  The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t print the bit, but that didn’t alter a conviction I had formed.  Mr. Hanson’s apparently willful, calculated distortions merited a rebuttal.

Here’s Victor Davis Hanson’s editorial:

Victor Davis Hanson, “Trump Reaches Out for Black Voters,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19 October 2018, A11; “Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the African American Vote in 2020?” The Providence Journal, 20 October 2018 (www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20181020/my-turn-victor-davis-hanson-could-trump-win-20-percent-of-african-american-vote-in-2020).  If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it.  The link above is to the version that appeared the The Providence Journal.

Here’s the unpublished letter:

     Victor Davis Hanson engages in statistical sleight of hand to buttress his claim of burgeoning African-American support for President Trump.

     An approval rating of 20% among African Americans in “some” unnamed polls provides grist for Hanson’s mill.  He presumably relies on an August NAACP survey placing Trump’s rating at 21%; however, he neglects contemporaneous polls with lower figures (Gallup, Reuters, and YouGov/Economist, all 13%; Quinnipiac, 9%).[1]  He ignores 3% approval and 93% disapproval found by Washington Post-ABC News [2] and does not trouble himself with the NAACP poll’s 79% disapproval.[3]  Sober reading of the evidence places African-American support for Democrats somewhere between 85 and 90%, a range Hanson identifies as “usual.”  His phenomenon is illusory.

     Hanson’s assessment of the economic conditions undergirding his notional surge in African-American affection for Trump is likewise problematic.  He cites a decline in African-American youth unemployment to 19.3% – a welcome development – but chooses for his comparative benchmark the highest figure from President Obama’s tenure, 48.9% in 2010, its Great Recession zenith, while forgetting that it fell as low as 23.2% (November 2015).  A rate surpassing this Obama-era low has occurred nine times under Trump and was 29% this past April [4].  Hanson also plays fast and loose with measures of the nation’s overall economic performance when he places growth at “nearly 4 percent per year.”[5]  Two facts emerge:  Economic indices can fluctuate widely across short periods and Trump’s main economic accomplishment has been his inability to derail economic improvement that began years before his election.

     One must ponder the reasons for Hanson’s unscholarly reading of evidence.  Is he enlisted in Trump’s post-truth cadres?  Is he endeavoring to manufacture a self-fulfilling prophecy through statistical obfuscation?  If the GOP believes its prospects with the African-American electorate are sunny, then why the efforts, especially in Georgia [6], to suppress votes?

[1] Ramsey Touchberry, “Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Among Black Americans Is Actually Too Good To Be True,” Newsweek 17 August 2018 (www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-black-americans-1078598 [accessed 19 October 2018]).

[2] Washington Post-ABC News Poll, Aug. 26-29, 2018, published 4 September 2018 (https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-aug-26-29-2018/2324/ [accessed 21 October 2018]).

[3] Paul Bedard, “Blacks’ Approval of Trump Reaches a High of 21% and NAACP Charges ‘Racism,’” The Washington Examiner, 7 August 2018 (www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/blacks-approval-of-trump-reaches-a-high-of-21-and-naacp-charges-racism [accessed 19 October 2018]).

[4] The rate under Trump was 24.8, 24.6, 28.7, and 26.5%, February-May 2017; 25.5%, November 2017; and 24.3, 27.2, and 2.78%, January-March 2018.  “Unemployment Rate:  16 to 19 Years, Black or African American, Percent Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted,” Federal Reserve Economic Data, Economic Research Division, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000018 [accessed 19 October 2018]).

[5] GDP did rise 4.2% in the second quarter but was 2.8, 2.3, and 2.2 percent in the preceding three.  Hanson’s math is fuzzy.  By his reasoning, Obama could have trumpeted similar growth in 2014 from second and third quarter rates of 5.1 and 4.9% despite bookending figures of -1.0 and 1.9%.  Bureau of Economic Analysis New Release, “Gross Domestic Product:  Second Quarter 2018 (Third Estimate); Corporate Profit:  Second Quarter 2018 (Revised Estimate,” 27 September 2018, p. 7 (www.bea.gov/system/files/2018-09/gdp2q18_3rd_3.pdf [accessed 19 October 2018]).  “Quarterly Growth of the Real GDP in the United States from 2011 to 2018,” Statista (www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-chance-from-preceding-period-in-real-gdp-in-the-us/ [accessed 21 October 2018]).

[6] Astead W. Herndon, “Accusations of Voter Suppression as Some in Georgia Begin to Cast Their Ballots,” The New York Times, 20 October 2018, A15 (www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/politics/georgia-voter-suppression.html [accessed 21 October 2018]).