Opinion: What happened to Black Lives Matter?

Black Lives Matter forgot that white voters matter. White Americans may not have been Black Lives Matter’s target audience, but by demonizing white America, they erased their only path to victory.

After the Febuary 26, 2013 shooting of Trayvon Matin, Black Lives Matter became an incredible force in American politics. They staged protests across the United States, forced control of political events and waged an ideological war on the police. A day couldn’t go by without the group making it into the headlines.

Now, they’re almost completely irrelevant. According to Google Trends, internet interest in the organization has dropped a whopping 96% in the last year.

So what happened?

In short, they never escaped their anti-white image, so they were never able to gain support from the nation’s largest racial group. This was a problem not only for the organization, but for the political party they leaned on for policy wins.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Democrats stood hand-in-hand with Black Lives Matter. During their national convention, the party promised a “push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter” in their party platform.

The reason behind the Democrats’ embrace of Black Lives Matter was clear. The “Reagan coalition” — a collection of white voters once thought necessary to win elections — was presumed dead. Minorities were now the must-win group of voters, so the left embraced an identity politics-driven campaign meant to appeal to the non-white voting public.

It was a miscalculation of epic proportions. On November 9, 2016, the presumed-dead Reagan coalition sent Donald Trump to the White House.

The reemergence of the Reagan coalition is likely a direct result of Black Lives Matter and the larger identity-driven campaign embraced by the left.

Unlike other races, white voters have not historically voted in blocs. While they traditionally lean Republican, the margins are generally much smaller than those of minority groups.

The lack of consensus among white voters is largely due to their relative lack of community — or “shared fate.” White voters tend to think individually. As such, their voting patterns are far less uniform than that of Hispanics, blacks and Asians, who generally do subscribe to a sense of shared fate.

But in 2016, white voters were finally given reason to adopt a sense of shared identity. Black Lives Matter – and their allies on the left – started a well-publicized demonization of white America that rapidly grew in size and scope. Radical leftists began demanding that white Americans apologize for their “whiteness.” The “privilege” of being white was widely condemned and anti-white bigotry became an acceptable form of political expression. “All lives matter,” which many whites thought would be inclusive, was deemed racist by the organization.

These attacks – whether perceived or real – gave cause to the sense of “shared identity” that the white community traditionally lacked. It also doomed Black Lives Matter for good.

The evidence comes from the voting booths. Trump over-performed Romney by one percent among whites, but the margins of Trump’s victory soared among marginalized segments of the white community.

In 2012, whites without a college degree broke for Romney by a margin of 25 points. In 2016, Trump increased that lead to 40. As a result of identity politics, Trump’s margins among non-college educated whites now closely resemble that of minority groups. And the rapid rate of change suggests that those numbers should move even higher in upcoming elections. It’s a death scenario for any Democrat hoping to win with a minority-driven campaign message.

The Democrats’ collapse, thanks in part to Black Lives Matter, meant a larger collapse for the Black Lives matter platform. Gone are their hopes for reparations, de-militarization of police and mandatory minority representation in government.

They were once the most talked about group in politics. Now, they barely get a mention.

That’s because, by focusing on minorities, they forgot about white voters — still the most powerful bloc in American politics.