Here is a comment that the Times won’t publish:
If Black people knew what is good for them they would have voted for Bernie last time over Hillary; and of course, vote for him in 2020.
It puzzles me why they do not do that which is so obvious. Even more obvious than why working class people should vote for Bernie (irrespective of color, gender and any other relevant factor).
So why don’t they?
They are afraid of the worse case scenario. They are much more risk averse then white folk. I probably would be too if My people were enslaved for the longest time; liberated when economics rather than ethics dictated the move; kept as second (or worse) class citizens in the back of buses, away from white folk’s schools and even latrines. Even their relative equality after MLK has had economic motivation. In the brilliant bio of James Baldwin, there are the commercials from several companies pitching their cars, household appliances and hygienic products to the up and coming Black middle-class. Now working in Motown and making enough to afford a Ford as that evil genius thought they would!
They are afraid that if they vote for “radical” change (like living wages, healthcare and public education for all — stuff taken for granted in the civilized world) they will bring back the slave drivers.
I understand that primal fear. Like most fears, it is irrational.
My fellow Americans who are black, take a chance and vote for Bernie. He is a mensch. And that is good for everyone.
3
Democrats are facing an evil person in Trump.
Some one who has no moral boundaries, trivializes Truth, terrorizes those who oppose or contradict him, is maliciously abusive and combative, never accepts wrongdoing, knows how to crush the opposition....and worse, employs all these tactics to drive his followers into a frenzy with "Hitler-like "rhetoric".
Unless the 20 + disparate Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential election get their act TOGETHER.. .the country will fall under the spell of Trump for 4 more yrs.
2
The arrogant fallacy that blacks are an automatic vote remains alive and well in the Democratic Party. As the Dems go further left on policies such as decriminalized border entry, the average black and white are more concerned about how those illegals may compete for scarce jobs. Dems somehow believe the far left climate change rhetoric dreamed up in cocktail parties somehow connects with a blue collar black and white worker barely making a living wage.
Whites in the same socio-economic group as many blacks were dismissed by Hillary as “deplorables” in 2016 and we know how that turned out. Poor whites throughout the swing states in Greater Appalachia have no set party and vote each election based on perception of respect, jobs and programs they value. I believe that blacks in the US are fundamentally no different than their white counterparts. Due to a similar lack of respect by Dem elites, a Candace Owens or other dynamic leader on the Rep side could easily cause blacks to begin a shift of allegiances from Dems as a group. If so, they will go their own way in every election like their white counterparts. The question is how can Dems address this arrogant disregard of issues important to this key voting group in time to stop Trump in 2020.
"No one should take Black Voters for granted". Very true; and that is because Black people (collective) is and and never has been a monolith.
While it is true that the gains and benefits derived from the civil rights struggle came, mostly from a national recognition and acceptance that Black people was indisputably America's victim. The victim card is no longer the only recourse available to the masses. In fact, although the field is still far from level, many Black people have seized the opportunities to elevate, both socially and economically. In 21st.century America there is clear diversity of thoughts, values and ethics in the Black community.
It may take much more time to shake the victim syndrome, and there will always be those who are convinced that the Tribe must always be on the mental reservation. No! No.
Blacks are not in lockstep. There is a lot of "woke" in there.
The problem for the Democratic Party is that have too many eggs in one basket. In the case of black voters Dems need massive black voter turnout because black voters are voting 90+% for Democratic candidates. Without black votes the Democrats cannot win the Presidency, or much else. The reality is that black voters disproportionately carry the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is completely dependent on black voter turnout in order to win elections.
Mean Household Income, US
White a $89,632
Hispanic or Latino $68,319
Black $58,985
If you struggle with every day expenses, you are not inclined towards a party embarking on economic experiments.
2
In this column the NYT allows Mr. Edsall to falsely assert that Medicare for All advocates are proposing to enroll everyone in a national health insurance program and “eliminate” private health insurance. In fact, no Medicare for All proponent supports banning private health insurance. For example, Bernie Sanders’ Senate bill — which is co-sponsored by other candidates like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren — bans private health coverage that duplicates the coverage offered by the government, because it would be rendered obsolete, and still allows for supplemental private coverage. Please stop misrepresenting Medicare For All.
Over 27.5 million Americans did not have health insurance in 2018 according to the latest Census Bureau report. Why is that acceptable to Mr. Edsall or anyone else at the NYT?
1
Black voters were always more centrist on many social issues advanced by Democrats. Racism was an exception to that. They were very aware of racism.
If black voters now have a more nuanced view of racism, perhaps that is because racism has become more nuanced. It is still there, I'm not suggesting it is a thing of the past.
However, it is changing, and the black voters are changing with that. They naturally know it best, as the direct targets.
I believe it was Edsell’s column from last week that spoke to the difference between the loudest segments of the parties. The loudest leftists are the college educated folks who haven’t done well in our economy(& who resent the ones who have done well). The loudest right wingers are the non college educated folks who have a skilled trade or a successful small business(& who think everyone else is a slacker). I looked around at my friends & acquaintances & found some great examples.
I think this is why unions are having a tough time selling the leftist options to their members...regardless of race.
3
Quite the dilemma for either party to reach this key group, and in coming years I suspect similar challenges with other voting blocks. Republicans have no core principals any longer that they can point to after backing Trump almost universally, and the Democrats promise the world and haven't aligned themselves with their interests. The only differentiation is the pre-election pandering, because after winning and being sworn in, after you sort through the rhetoric and the promises that seldom turn into action, in most cases the same special interests are buying both parties. The billion dollar question is do any of the blocs become either repulsed by both parties or get disenchanted enough to start sitting elections out where they know candidates from either party won't serve their interests.
The fact remains blacks won't switch parties. Even if black Democrats don't like the candidate or their platform they won't vote for Trump, they'll just stay home at worst. This is unfortunate and does weaken the party, but the fact remains it is less dangerous than large numbers of white voters switching to Trump, which is what happened in 2016. When black voters stay at home on election day, low turnout can cost Democrats the election, or make it very close. When whites switch parties, it guarantees the district goes red, and can flip the entire state. The consequences of whites switching run deep, it costs more than just one election.
So it's not a wonder the DNP is preoccupied with ensuring there are no defections in 2020. That's why they've been trying to unify their diverse constituency through opposition to Trump. Progressive policies most Americans would have found hard to swallow are enjoying a lot more support now that they are being defined as fighting back against Trump. The progressive policies will win many young people over, and the anti-Trump sentiment will more or less lock in the fickle white voters.
The problem is with constituencies like black Democrats, who have large centrist and conservative blocs, who will not be energized by this progressive wave, but for whom defecting was never an option. They are locked into either supporting issues they don't care for, or not voting.
1
African American support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 may have been affected by people’s memories of her 2008 nomination fight against Barack Obama, and, of course, like others, the Republicans’ decades long smear campaign against Mrs. Clinton.
1
@Kurt S
"Their theory of the case for 2020 is that radical progressive agenda will energize minority communities the way it does college students and Brooklynites. But it won't."
I don't believe the average black voter cannot be educated not to fear social democracy and Bernie. College student and Brooklynites could be seen voting against their class and personal interests just as black voters do.
I believe theirs is almost a primal fear that drives black voters towards non-radical solutions. Their history in this country is the cause. That history is a horror story for the most part. They want to make sure (instinctively at least in my opinion) not to cause a right-wing backlash that will punish them even more than they are punished now. It is the psychology of the oppressed people. It takes hundreds of years to take the ghettos and the plantations out of people's psyches.
The Times won't print this comment. I have sent another more elaborate one earlier. They don't like provocative statements even if they are rational and civil. They betray their upfront statement to the comment box almost daily with me. I don't like giving up just because the paper is now ran by people who are not progressives and fair. I read this paper for over 50 years daily. So, I can take a chance I be persistent.
3
@Blunt
I've been told that comments are actually chosen by algorithm, so there is no human(s) involved.
Of course programmers set parameters, which parameters are "infected" with the biases of the publishers, so yes, comments which do not always fit with the narrative may never see the light of day.
One reason I'm contemplating my own blog.
Anyway I agree with some of your thinking, which seems to postulate that long-term subjugation creates a culture of don't rock the boat thinking.
By the way this is why the Democratic Party has been able to get away with their status quo and incrementalism method of beggaring the poor and the middle-class for decades.
I'm a progressive, which I believe most Americans ultimately will become, and I believe either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Elizabeth Warren will be our 46th President.
3
Thank you for your response. If it is an algorithm it seems to be affected by language that questions the fairness of the process and change its decision. My last paragraph made the comment acceptable. The previous comment that did not have that meta-paragraph was not printed. Let’s see if this one makes it :-)
L’Chaim to Bernie (and/or Warren)
3
The authors and the studies they quote seem confuse correlation with causation. They miss the economic differences in aggregate between black and white voters. The income and wealth disparity is significant and better explains the differences in their answers. Blacks in the USA have adapted to be much more practical and incremental because they have been terrorized and killed when they pushed hard for justice, both socially and economically. If the studies controlled for this disparity it was not reported.
NYT is now a proponent of the "keep to the center" drumbeat, perhaps to reduce the chance that a true progressive takes office and reverses tax benefits to large corporations. Regardless, 2016 showed that pandering to the muddled middle loses net votes by reducing progressive base voting. 2018 confirmed that true progressives can win even in red districts. That in a nutshell is why Hillary failed to get a sufficient number of votes to counter the vote theft by Russia and their GOP/NRA/Donor co-conspirators. Bernie would have trounced Trump but the DNC never gave him a fair shot.
6
Democrats should focus on three universally approved topics, and contrast their plans with the Republican coddling of the 1%.
ANYTHING MORE DILUTES THE MESSAGE
1. Economic fairness and security
Elizabeth Warren's main message of economic fairness and security for the working class is the foundation which brings together all varied constituencies of the Democratic Party, and even voters in red States who have been hurt economically by Trump's policies.
2.Protection of healthcare as a human right
Democrats should highlight their real protection of healthcare, (whether by enhancing Obamacare or by implementing medicare-for-all.) They should highlight the many, many Republican attempts to undermine or take their healthcare away.
3. Gun safety laws
A high percentage of the country agrees upon implementing Universal background checks, red flag laws, and possibly even assault rifle bans. Republicans are owned by the NRA.
2
The African-American vote is not monolithic and neither political party should take their interests for granted.
Southern African-American women handed Hillary the nomination with multiple southern states the Democrats had no hope of carrying in the general election and Biden is hoping he can play the same card. We all know how well that worked out.
In order to win, Democrats need a candidate that will energize the base and independent voters like myself that tend to vote for Democrats over Republicans. I am not a “vote for blue no matter who”, however. Joe Biden will not get my vote regardless of what the alternative is. I am tired of corporate Democrats- “centrist” in NYT speak. After almost 40 years of Democrats backing up and trying to placate Republicans by only gutting the New Deal an inch at a time, we need someone who will punch back, reach out to voters and say enough.
5
Sorry, polling from 15 years ago is not relevant.
2
Indeed, don't take any voters for granted. But even if that advice is heeded, the election may still be rigged, thanks to disenfranchisement such as this:
"More than 1,000 US Polling Sites Closed Since Supreme Court Ruling, Report Finds
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/11/us-polling-sites-closed-report-supreme-court-ruling
1
Democrats have taken African-Americans for granted for decades, while Republicans have barely paid any attention to them, at best, for just as long. Funny how that happens, especially when you consider that Trump can win without the African-American vote and Democrats can't win without it. When you factor in the newer and growing Hispanic and Latino influences in election politics, things get even more confusing as well as even more important.
3
It appears to me that the Democratic Party is relying on people of color believeing one of your closing lines: "...as Trump and his Republican Party whip up fear and demonize gays, lesbians, feminists, immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East, and people of color generally." Indeed I would argue that not only has that question not been asked as to its belief by people of color, but that it is part of the new Alt Left Orthodoxy to be believed as gospel rather than discussed, nuanced and more honestly parsed. It is in short one of those far left take it for granted quasi policy of the Democratic Party that a lot of very intelligent people of color may seriously disagree with much as the other policies you describe. The danger is painting with such a very broad and dismissive brush.
4
When the polls show that some Blacks against “Government handouts” I hope they are referring to the handouts to Businesses and the wealthy are what they are talking about not social safety nets.
There is more given to businesses and the wealthy through tax loopholes and incentives for businesses and the wealthy than ever will be given to every day citizens.
The only way this can be rectified is to vote every Republican holding either a House Seat or Senate seat to be voted out of office. They have proven over and over that they do not care about anyone except their donors. Moreover the same has to happen at the State level.
I don’t care what color we are, but it has been proven over and over that economically dis-advantaged citizens are the losers when Republicans hold the power.
This is no time to worry about pro-choice or Pro-life, anti LBGT or pro LBGT, pro Immigration or Anti Immigration. At the rate we are going under the Republicans we won’t have any choices.
1
In SC, as I understand it, many black voters are socially conservative in terms of issues like a woman's right to choose, but fiercely liberal in terms of race, education, economics and some other issues. Some party operatives are still angry about the long oppression of black people in this state.
On the other hand, a good number of retired, educated black people have moved to SC in the last 10-15 years. That gives me hope that social inequities are not as bad as they once were and that they will improve further as whites get to know blacks who are quite different from those of 50 years ago.
We need to be talking, we whites and blacks, so that we can move ourselves into political office and achieve our agenda.
My explanation for this is that the Democrats have largely lost the white working class to the Republicans, but they retain the black working class. This means that when you divide Democratic voters by race, the black group will reflect more working class attitudes than the white group. This will tend to make them more conservative than white Democrats on many social issues. Comparing the white working class (heavily Republican) with the black working class (heavily Democratic), the primary difference is that the white working class is much more cynical about government social programs and civil rights initiatives and much more positive about the government's police powers. The black working class flips those attitudes and is in this way much more like other Democrats. A lot of the white working class cynicism about government stems of course from the perception that government helps blacks and disadvantages whites—with racial resentment being a large factor in the white working class's switch from Democrat to Republican.
35
@617to416
You make a good point, but it's a little too neat for me. I think you also have to factor in a more enduring religious tradition among Blacks, and an impatience with fashionable cultural issues that detract from the core economic issues they care most about.
5
If those voters who elected Obama stand up again they will defeat Trump. If not they will deserve the alternative.
41
Ah yes, let’s make it about Trump.
The point of this article is that a broad swath of the voters want a moderate. We don’t want Warren, or Trump. Biden, Yang are the voices of reason in the Democratic Party. I would happily vote for either.
27
@ndbza. You must know why they voted for Obama. It had nothing to do with his policies.
3
@Bill(R) Yang, with his UBI proposal, wants to give away trillions of dollars with no hint at all of how to pay for it. That doesn't sound like a voice of reason.
1
I can only hope that radicalized progressives read this and take it to heart. Their theory of the case for 2020 is that radical progressive agenda will energize minority communities the way it does college students and Brooklynites. But it won't. The Obama surge in turnout was a one-off cultural and historical event. It will not be duplicated by running a white Harvard professor or a Debs-inspired socialist. Remember that both Warren and Sanders represent very-white New England. They have almost no traction with blacks outside that region.
This article is but one of one of the many warning signs that the Dems are ignoring but that history will recall when pundits are analyzing why the Dems lost a winnable race in 2020.
3
@Kurt S
"Their theory of the case for 2020 is that radical progressive agenda will energize minority communities the way it does college students and Brooklynites. But it won't."
I don't believe the average black voter cannot be educated not to fear social democracy and Bernie. College student and Brooklynites could be seen voting against their class and personal interests just as black voters do.
I believe theirs is almost a primal fear that drives black voters towards non-radical solutions. Their history in this country is the cause. That history is a horror story for the most part. They want to make sure (instinctively at least in my opinion) not to cause a right-wing backlash that will punish them even more than they are punished now. It is the psychology of the oppressed people. It takes hundreds of years to take the ghettos and the plantations out of people's psyches.
The Times won't print this comment. I have sent another more elaborate one earlier. They don't like provocative statements even if they are rational and civil. They betray their upfront statement to the comment box almost daily with me. I don't like giving up just because the paper is now ran by people who are not progressives and fair. I read this paper for over 50 years daily. So, I can take a chance I be persistent.
2
@Kurt S I will never ever ever understand why minorities or women can vote Republican, much less for the current monster in the White House. Sad.
Simply put, the Dems are on a collision course for disaster in 2020.
The current crop of high pollers, Biden, gaffe a moment, eye exploding live with blood, Bernie, the proud Socialist who honeymooned in Russia and refuses to register as a Dem, and his twin sister, Warren, who promises that she will gleefully take away our private health insurance, are on track to be the nominee picks.
Trump is salivating.
5
I hope Warren takes my private health insurance!! I pay out the wazoo for crud.
To paraphrase an arch-progressive, "Whenever I hear the words 'studies by prominent African-American scholars' I reach for my skepticism." There are exceptions (as always), but the humanities in American universities have been firmly colonized by prog-thot.
As Mr. Edsall's Readers-Digest cherry-pick of academic papers shows, there are many ways for profs to wrench, massage, and insinuate data (polls, notoriously inaccurate; see "Hillary Will Win," circa 2016) into neat bins of belief.
2
At the end of the day, the bigger issue is why do 1/3 of Hispanics vote Republican?
1
@JoeG I would guess there are two reasons: one is cultural conservatism; two would be that they tend to be entrepreneurial and the Dems do everything they can to throw roadblocks in front of small businesses.
2
"Without an ingenious campaign, even widespread hatred of Trump will not be sufficient to dislodge him from the White House."
We have much more than an "ingenious" campaign occurring; the number of candidates still debating and running is the best thing we could hope for, a year away from dumping the Narcissist In-Chief.
The pure unbridled disgust he has created, and nurtures in tens of millions of Americans represents most of the reason he will become history election night 2020.
Getting back to the candidates; the American people are getting to hear all kinds of ideas on all of the things we should be focused on, from climate change to Medicare for All, and more importantly, how the candidates intend to deliver the results we need to make America the best it can be for all Americans, leaving no one behind.
The Pelosi Schumer democrats, aka the Republican-Lite party, have annointed Joe Biden as their candidate, and they will do absolutely everything to insure their champion will win, returning them to power so they can continue their brand of maintenance of the status quo and incrementalism, the very same agenda which lost Hillary the White House and helped beggar the poor and the middle-class.
Thankfully their dream will remain just that, a dream, and the people, fed up to distraction with the never-ending corruption, are impatiently waiting to deliver an historic blow to these charlatans, by electing either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as our 46th President.
4
@Mel Farrell
Other than wanting it to be so, what data do you have to support such your assertion?
7
It sounds to me like a great campaign slogan Democrats running for office could use to emphasize our broad-based community would be, "Not Me, Us."
If only we had a candidate using that slogan already! *Bernie*
We really need that kind of slogan! *Bernie*
When will a politician use a uniting slogan like that? *Look at Bernie*
1
@Jacob Sommer "Bernie" is a big part of why Trump is in the WH.
1
Can we avoid doing the opposite, too? Please don't run with the walking point that black democrats are all conservative, now. I'm black and my family is very progressive and strongly supports medicare for all. Please do not use us as an excuse to not support programs that would help the country.
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@Marcus
My theory after listening to the political opinions of black people from various social classes is that the reason black Democrats seem more conservative than white Democrats is because the Democrats have retained black working class voters while losing white working class voters to the Republicans. Working class voters of all races tend to have more conservative social views. Among whites, the Democrats have held on mostly to people from the educated professional classes who tend to be liberal, while losing a very large percentage of the working class that tends to be more moderate to conservative. Among blacks, the Democrats have held on to both educated professionals and working class voters, thereby retaining a more diverse mixture of liberal, moderate, and conservative blacks.
15
Excellent point.
1
@Marcus Yes, you hit the nail on the head - what will actually help the country as opposed to what political advantage can a candidate get by making promises. You can take either side of the issue to debate, Medicare or Obamacare etc but no excuses, serve the public not the party, and not yourself. As you say, no more excuses!!
Black voters are not a monolith and many aren't on board with the left's traditional ideas. For example, I've known several black colleagues who resent affirmative action policies because they feel that it casts a cloud of doubt over whether they are truly qualified for their position in school or the workplace. These colleagues find affirmative action to be patronizing and condescending, not a righteous act of reparations.
53
@Sarah Johnson
Sounds good. But the fact remains that if there really were an "equal playing field" -- programs like Affirmative Action wouldn't be needed.
6
@Sarah Johnson
Those Colleagues are wrong. If it weren’t for Affirmative Action we Women would never been able to progress economically. And that is true of all who have benefitted.
I never would have been promoted to Management if Affirmative Action did not place quotas on Businesses
I knew I was better at my job than all of the men in my company. I never felt “less than” because of Affirmative Action. I proved that it was not only a wise move but a financially better move for the company.
Your Colleagues need to have more confidence in themselves.
5
I am exactly who the writer is speaking of, an African American woman who votes and holds deep respect for the sacrifices that brought victories in the civil rights movement. I find the reference "activate liberal card on one issue...." to be right on point. I am viewing the party's leftward movement as reactionary, not well thought out and, in no small part, a contributing factor to the failure of immigration reform which brings us to where we are today. And then to add insult to injury, the far Left's trafficking in indignation and fake moral superiority is more than alienating, it is poised to cost Democrats the 2020 election.
110
@Felice Robinson The Left didn't fail on immigration reform, the center and Republicans did.The leftward movement you describe is actually just left of center. Most of what the "left" wants is supported by most of the people who identify as moderate (even among many Republicans on some of these issues like climate, equality, education and women's right). You would have to be specific about what exactly is reactionary. If indignation at the failure to face climate change, taking away a women's right to choose, loosening restrictions on protecting consumers/the environment, attacking minorities and taking away healthcare is "fake moral superiority" then there's not much hope if you represent a large number of voters in 2020...
6
@Felice Robinson In terms of moral superiority - anyone is head and shoulders above the GOP
3
@Aspen
That’s all good stuff you mention, but @Felice Robinson is correct. On the left, there is a smug superiority, a moral certainty. If the working class resists having all that good stuff pushed down their throats all at once, they are dismissed as racist or stupid. Thus, they can be safely ignored, without guilt.
3
Our president is a racist, His cabinet is
Full of inexperienced grifters, and people are still saying they need a reason to vote? Really?
How about if republicans are re-elected they are coming after your social security and Medicare and Medicaid
Not enough? How about if republicans are reflected they will continue the war on 98 pct of Americans through pay day lenders and medical bankruptcy and education debt?
Not enough? How about if republicans are re-elected they will spend billions to keep out asylum seekers and not fix
Your infrastructure and leaded water?
Any of the dems are better than what we have today.
2
I suspect that not a negligible part of any disparity between White and Black Democratic voters, and even more so, between White and Black Democratic primary voters, might be explained if these studies examined age cohort demographics between White and Black voters in these groups.
I'd like to know if White and Black Democratic, and particularly primary, voters skew in terms of what age groups might dominate the voters examined. I suspect that older voters, White or Black, will skew more moderate or conservative than will younger White or Black voters.
If age skewing doesn't explain that much of the difference, then I'd suspect religion, or secularism, might play a role.
But one way or another, whether one is looking from a cold-blooded political calculation, or from a sincere interest in small d democracy, we all should be paying more attention to what matters to all voters of color. For that matter, I doubt we're paying attention to the real interests of most White voters, either. If one judges by where the electorate is on the key issues, I believe that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are in fact more centrist than other candidates. In fact, there's apparently a significant overlap of potential Sanders and Trump voters. No surprise, really. This was in fact true in 2016. Another reason why the DNC tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton was likely such a consequential mistake.
1
I wonder about surveys where people self identify as liberal or very liberal, conservative or very conservative. It seems to me that people are often reacting to their view of Trump. Those opposed suddenly become very liberal and those in support become very conservative.
As a white baby boomer democrat most of my friends would like better health care for all but are willing to support more Obamacare ideas rather than give a campaign advantage to Trump who can and does claim that Bernie wants to “take away your company health insurance and drive us into socialism”. They want a better environment and would support a carbon tax and many others changes.
You can be liberal and want continued gradual improvements and still win elections— which is what counts, not coming up with biggest dollar amount for new plans.
3
Your penultimate paragraph omits an important obstacle to the Democratic Party’s success: overcoming systematic voter suppression by the Republican Party.
This is all very interesting and nuanced, but with a White supremacist in the White House, is it not an imperative for all black voters to come out in November 2020 to oust him?
Does a black candidate, or a particularly black-friendly candidate, need to be on the ballot for the black community to understand the urgency?
4
@R.S.
You comment as though Trump is the first white supremacist to be in the Oval Office. He is not. Black people have always experienced racist policies, laws, and even language from politicians (including Obama). A Trump-type politician is not new to us. What is new are the attacks from the Oval Office on whites and policies that do not benefit whites. So any "urgency" is felt largely by whites, not by blacks. The thing is white people (63% of men, 52% of women) put Trump in the WH. Odd how that works.
1
The Black side of my family is not too keen on nontraditional sexual arrangements- to say the least!
How will Democrats align their support of LGBT, with the conservative social morals of many, many Blacks who vote?
6
Isn’t it inherently racist to assume understanding ones political views based on the color of their skin??
9
@Mary
No, that's prejudice. Racism is white supremacy, and white supremacy is racism institutionalized. Anything else is just prejudice. White supremacists defended slavery (including those outside the US), and Jim Crow, etc., by supporting the belief people with darker skin color are less than people with lighter skin color.
1
@Damon Mitchell
You might consult a dictionary:
noun
noun: racism
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
white supremacists are racists.
so too are black people who label racism as an inherently white issue.
5
@Mary
You'd be surprised by the amount of (white) people who think Blacks voted for Obama ONLY because he's Black.
Think not?
Scroll through some of these comments.
1
I see the white 'theorists" are out in force here. Isn't that how you got into trouble in the first place? There's no generic black voter.
6
Is there a disparity in average income levels among Democratic white and African-American voters? If so it would be interesting to see whether some of the differences reported in this column can be explained by economic status. For example, black Democrats assign higher importance to jobs and wages than do white democrats, but if the polling results were stratified by income level, would those differences disappear? Are views on other issues, such as abortion and protecting immigrants, better explained by income level than by race? I don't think this would substantially change the broad recommendations to Democrats at the end of the column, but it never hurts to understand your electorate better.
2
Canadians officially began a general election campaign today. The actual election day is Oct. 21, slightly more than 5 weeks away.
Justin Trudeau, leader of Canada's Liberal party, who are considered moderate, is running for re-election against 3 other party leaders.
Trudeau's Liberals lead in the polls, slightly. But fear of the Trump monster residing south of the border, which is 40 miles away from where most Canadians live, has a lot to do with voter reluctance to take a chance on Canada's conservatives. Despite Trudeau having some domestic problems and the conservatives winning some provincial (state) elections. Canadians are watching what's happening in the US & UK and many don't want to go down that road. But it's going to be close.
My point is, the stakes are too high for anyone to be taking their own vote for granted. These days elections are as serious as a heart attack. The wrong decision can put people in a world of hurt.
BTW, the difference in Canada is they split the process of picking a party leader and holding an election. There's no primary season. They pick their party leaders by contested convention. Then the party leader sits in parliament (congress) until the election is called.
I'm not sure it's a better way to pick a party leader. If you're not at the covention you don't get to vote on it. The benefit is, govs are less likely to stagnate because they're not spending half their term in campaign mode. Sort of like the midterms in the US.
Here's the bottom line. The Republican president of the United States is a blatant racist, who called Neo-Nazi's and Ku Klux Klan marchers in Charlottesville "very fine people," and has since refused to deny that sentiment. The GOP is strenuously engaged in a nationwide effort to stop Black people from voting everywhere they can, including racist photo ID laws in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and North Carolina, voter purges in Georgia and Florida, and gerrymandering in every congressional district they can in an attempt to minimize the impact of Black voters.
So this essay purporting to slice and dice Black political sentiments misses the central fact of American political life: Black voters are welcomed in the Democratic Party; Black voters are suppressed by the mostly White Republican Party.
All the rest is noise.
4
@Sean
I Agree. But you forgot to mention not only did this Republican President of the United States call Neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan marchers in Charlottesville "very fine people" -- BUT as a presidential candidate, he was also publicly endorsed by the Klan and other white supremacist groups.
Another fun fact.
Several states across the South have closed nearly 1,200 polling places since the Supreme Court weakened a landmark voting discrimination law.
Evidently the Southern Strategy is alive and well in America.
Let’s get real. Blacks were entirely responsible for the absurd election of Trump because they caused the Dems to lose the Rust Belt in two disastrous ways. First, they were entirely responsible fir the nomination of the most hated nominee in party history, Hillary. Needless to say, Bernie won the white Dem primary vote. And general election exit polls in the Rust Belt proved incontrovertibly that workers would have elected him over Trump if blacks had not foisted Hillary on them. Second, having foolishly nominated the worst candidate for the Rust Belt, blacks shot the Dems in the foot again by failing to turn out to vote for the hated candidate they themselves had forced on the party! Obama appeared over and over again to urge them to vote, yet far too many blew it and gave us Trump! If blacks actually care about economic justice, they’d better stop once again backing Wall St’s candidate, Biden, and start supporting either Warren or Sanders. And they can’t give us the ‘electability” argument to defend backing Wall St’s candidate, since even with all his black support in polls, Biden only beats Trump slightly more than Sanders,
2
@Fred White
Blame the blacks! With no evidence presented... How exactly did "Blacks???" force Hillary on the party?
6
@Fred White
"Black were entirely responsible for the absurd election of Trump..."
Care to explain just how AND present facts, or are we just supposed to take your word for it???
Another NY Times Op-Ed piece about why we should support so-called "moderates" like Joe Biden, who is to the right of Richard Nixon?
1
Not sure if Biden is the best Democrat to be President.
But I would rather win with Joe than lose to Trump with someone who the Democrats “like” better.,
1
Conversely, if the Republicans stop their stupid, counter-productive effort at restricting the vote, and instead choose to emphasize what black communities will potentially lose in higher taxes, second amendment restrictions (which effect racial minorities more than the majority) and cultural laxness if one of the more leftist candidates gets nominated and elected, they just might switch enough minority voters to reelect Trump and hold the Senate.
1
I will make the analysis simple. Keep supporting illegal immigration and crazy far left positions like open borders and its game over for the Dems in 2020. The biggest winner in immigration enforcement? African Americans. Say what you want about “racist” Trump but he has delivered the lowest African American unemployment in recorded history.
11
Recently, there was a skit on SNL, might have been Black Jeopardy, where the prize money was distributed in time payments. That joke says it all. There is no money. Paychecks don't last two weeks. People don't have cash in the bank. Even contest winners can't get a lump sum payout. They have to accept time payments.
This is what black people want. They want enough money so life isn't restricted to time payments. That's why this research emphasises jobs and wages.
Safety. Of course. With the violence in many urban areas that many black people live with daily, they crave safety. Any question that implies increased safety will initiate a positive response.
Government programs? The primary interaction with the government is the criminal justice system locking up much of an entire generation of black males. Then we have the far too common murder by cop and assault by cop which rarely goes punished. This creates great distrust of the government.
So what do they have? Family. They have each other. Family is king. This causes black people to be more socially conservative and back more traditional positions. Many whites may think that blacks don't respect traditional family values because of out of marriage childbirth. Not true. Those kids are family, 100%.
The study did get this right. The Democratic Party has always taken black voters for granted. And the Republicans have done everything they can to marginalize, reject and isolate black people.
2
And yet in the final analysis with a president who displays animus towards all people of color, even to the point of calling innocent Bahamians suffering from hurricane Dorian's destruction BAD people one has to ask...can African Americans afford 4 more years of a white nationalist? Anyone but Trump becomes the clear choice moderate or not.
I am convinced that, should Trump lose in 2020, he will declare the election void, due to (insert various paranoiac ravings here).
No doubt Putin will be a willing participant in seeing our democracy destroyed so his puppet will continue to do his bidding.
When I think of my friends who happen to descendants of people from Africa I think of them as my friends. Not my black friends.
And I hate to break to everyone, they all have different backgrounds and different points of view, just like friends from other descendants of the world.
So at what point do we stop calling people “black voters” and just “voters”?
7
Not just moving center, we are moving right of center. And you can thank outrage culture and the left's embrace of Antifa for that.
5
Antifa.... an unorganized group of about a dozen dudes that fight white supremacists at parades?
While blacks are not a monolith, we do all share the real risk of being targeted for mistreatment based solely on our skin color. No amount of education, income or pulling up by bootstraps eliminates that risk. We are a unique group in this country because of our history and its legacy.
Black people used to rely on Democrats to keep the wolf from the door, so to speak. Democrats have turned their collective backs on us at a time of increasing white nationalist violence, an eroding of the Voting Rights Act, and an expansion of the civil rights laws (originally designed to protect blacks) to protect other groups who face nowhere near what black people face. If everyone is a protected class, no one is. I have no problem with providing protections for other groups but don’t do it at my expense.
Black people have learned that a “black” president means nothing and “vote for Democrats or else” means only that we have to protect ourselves. The Democrats’ extreme positions on illegal aliens are also a nonstarter. Perhaps things will improve when the field narrows and there are two or three candidates but I am not hopeful.
6
Great column, very insightful.
2
Ugh, the white-splaining! I've got a headache. Also, it's clear none of the white letter writers here really know any black people, but neither does Mr Edsall. I pray for the day when my people will be people and not subjects of (myth-making) social scientific inquiry.
4
This analysis is all well and good. But the fact remains that the GOP is a blatantly white supremacist party. Whatever they do in the primaries, few blacks will vote for racists in the general election. They will either vote Democratic or stay home, as they did in 2016. What the Democrats must do is find candidates who inspire blacks to come out and vote while not alienating white progressives, who will not vote for big money Democrats. The decision of the Democratic establishment to go with the status quo, cozying up to Wall Street, is what brought us Trump.,
In the US, it is evidently "conservative" to believe that a projected perfected immortal personality called "God" created and continues to guide the US, and "liberal" to believe the US was created and continues to be controlled by interest-conflicted people.
1
Assuming any group is monolithic, but also assuming that any one issue is going to shift the voting patterns is another story. It doesn't surprise me, for example, that blacks are more against the loss of private health insurance than whites, given the black experience with government programs and the way they often have been treated, not surprising. On the other hand, they aren't stupid, and they realize that the GOP's alternative to Medicare for all is no health insurance, there are a lot of black folks who don't have health insurance, but also thing that something more akin to ACA would help them.
And like any voters, there are also the contradictions, the hypocrisy. White working class voters who shifted to the GOP are often rabidly anti union, yet they bemoan the loss of pay and benefits the white working class once enjoyed, that by any measure is at least in some significant part the decline of private sector unions. Blacks are all big on traditional moral values and the family, yet there is the elephant in the room with the problems around black families, blacks are still strongly anti same sex marriage, a significant portion are against sex ed in the schools, while having trouble in their own communities with these issues.
1
Not a few so-called conservatives, apparently uncomfortable in one way or another about accusations of racism, should be reading this.
I'd suggest that perhaps if there were more Black conservatives being featured proportionately, and more prominently, these might go some distance in decreasing criticisms of conservatives as racist.
But even more so, I'd suggest that White conservatives make a concerted commitment to listen to and learn from "rank-and-file" Black conservatives (I'm not talking about Tom Sowell or Clarence Thomas or Ben Carson), to perhaps understand where any underlying and substantive racism within White conservatism might be, examine critically reasoned assertions of White racism within conservatism, and address those issues.
1
I read this with a feeling of deja vu. See:
Thomas B. Edsall, The Democratic Party Is Actually Three Parties
They have different constituents and prefer different policies. Satisfying them all will not be easy, June 24, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/opinion/2020-progressive-candidates.html
Re the analysis of black Democrats and more, the two op-eds seem very very similar.
Was there a reason for the repeated theme?
2
Trump's invocations of God at today's 9/11 commemoration were yet another grotesque violation of separation of church and state. The notion that the dead watch the living on their TVs in Heaven just piles on more insult to intelligence.
1
Actually you are wrong re your headline.
Who are blacks and the left gonna vote for, Trump?
The group the democrats can't take for granted are middle America moderate progressive independents in swing states that elect presidents.
Hillary. made the lethal mistake of taking app. 60k of them for granted in Pa., Wisc, and Mich.
1
Something doesn't seem right here.
Yes, African-Americans have always been relatively conservative vis-a-vis abortion, same-sex marriage, and the like.
But have they really given up on social progressivism? For all the angst it caused, busing worked. Affirmative action worked. The civil rights and voting rights acts worked.
If the conclusions cited here are correct, African-Americans would have voted en masse for Mr. Sanders who focused on economic progressivism and ignored social progressivism.
There are mixed messages here that might explain this, I suppose. For instance, in general African-Americans are opposed to anything that bears the label "progressive" or "socialist."
However, are African-Americans really and truly following the Republicans down into that dark and bottomless hole of limitless and unbridled individualism?
According to that line of thinking, these society wide un-individual things don't exist: white supremacy, misogyny, the Holocaust, Jim Crow laws, etc.
Individual responsibility is good, all other things the same. Systemic barriers do still exist, which constrain the potential of individual responsibility.
These two beliefs, which we all must simultaneously comprehend and embrace, are not contradictory.
The Republicans have become the political party of explicit white supremacy. That is their only consistent theme. It would be astonishingly self destructive were African-Americans to vote Republican.
1
@Robert so we're dead if we do, and dead if we don't. Thanks for that advise, if only I hadn't heard it a million times before......
@Harley
"... so we're dead if we do, and dead if we don't. "
I don't think that is what I said. I said both notions can and should coexist. Individual responsibility and the rectification of systemic barriers.
1
I agree no one should take black votes for granted, but as with whites, the poor, or any demographic, in a nation where only half of the population votes, it really comes down to whether or not individuals in these groups are motivated and organized to vote.
Take Mississippi, one of the reddest states in the nation. We know that blacks tend to vote something like 89% of the time for Democrats, and we know Mississippi's population is 37% black. It's absurd that state isn't blue. If the entire black population voted 89% Dem and the entire non-black population voted 70% Republican, the state would still turn blue. Instead in 2016, Trump beat Hillary 58% to 40%! 18% swing to the GOP?! That's insane.
Likewise for the Democratic Primary in Mississippi where Hillary got 82.5% of the vote to Sanders' 16.6%. Black Dems are certainly more liberal than white Dems, but the votes don't show it because the participation just isn't there.
Democratic leadership needs more outreach into rural areas in general. After all, the real divide isn't north/south so much as it is urban/rural. Even so, people have to help themselves and stop taking our democracy for granted. Blacks in southern states like Old Miss should and could have a lot more political power if they simply exercised their power to vote.
source: ballotpedia
The number of actual black voters in the general election is not large enough to require a change in Democrat priorities. Black voters can choose between Democratic progressive candidates and Republican racist candidates. If they don't see which are in their best interest, they are deserving of the result.
2
@Jack Edwards It was literally the difference in 2016....
1
I applaud Mr. Edsall for his informative article. I have similar, frequent debates with my friends about the black voter. I am a 49 year-old college-educated black male who grew up in small-town MS. I would describe myself as a lifelong Democrat, but a conservative one.
Black people, particularly those that grew up in the Deep South in the 80's & 90's are socially conservative. I am pro-abortion mainly because I saw too many cases of unwanted pregnancies at too early of an age and the poverty that ensued. I'm for a free society, but I define marriage exclusively between a man and a woman. I am NOT for decriminalizing illegal border crossers. The problem as I see it is Blacks are the Democratic base but we are not the donors. Hollywood gays are, so Democrats do take us for granted. I continue to be amazed that Republicans do ABSOLUTELY nothing to court the southern, conservative Black vote. Blacks attend church more often than any other racial/ethnic group in America and our military service numbers are disproportionately higher than our 13% share of the population, but nobody likes to tout those stats.
This nation is incredibly polarized, and Trump is a con-man who is completely unfit to be President. He is a threat to this Democracy along with his Confederate general, Mitch McConnell. They need to be stopped at all costs!. Democrats need to focus on bringing out the black vote. To Edsall's point, if they don't energize Blacks to 62%+ turnout, they will lose in 2020!
2
"African-Americans, she argued, 'hold two beliefs simultaneously — the belief that blacks should take responsibility for their own success but also that there still are systemic barriers to doing so.'”
African-Americans are CORRECT in holding these two beliefs simultaneously.
3
Low voter turnout is the product of hopelessness.
3
I think about 12 black voters favored trump in the last election. Hope they're changed their minds by now.
The current "progressive" against "nationalist" narrative reminds me of the "communist" against "fascist" in the 1930s.
We need more classical liberal centrists as a viable alternative. Don't force people to choose between two "evils".
2
Democrats (whites and blacks) tend to see economics as the handmaiden of politics. Republicans (mostly white) see politics as a natural, inevitable outgrowth of economic necessity and opportunity. If you look at the leadership of businesses, especially new, cutting edge businesses, it's almost entirely white. when we start seeing blacks at the head of new innovative startups that'll signal in important cultural shift; then we'll start seeing black Republicans.
A former New Yorker, I live in NC but I find the Republican NC state legislature appalling but yet when I hear about what is happening in the partisan legislatures of Ca. or even NY, and the ultra liberalism, it makes me cringe.
This article could very well serve as a college course in cultural politics.
It was with deep hurt and despair that I, a black woman left the Democratic Party; I lost my identity; there is no free lunch; every one pays somehow if you come to the luncheon.
Democratic Part is selling a false agenda of Oprahism.
To say that the Democratic Party has been fully overtaken by liberal, white, privileged angry entitled who espouse open borders, abortion up to day of delivery is not false.
Our leaders have failed the people, once again.
3
Yes the African-American vote is very important role but it is hard sometimes wear their votes cast it out or toss away by white Republicans that are in charge of some of the state voting registrar office and some of the red states like Alabama , Georgia, Florida and a list goes on. Why does this still happen bigotry and hate and racism all rolled up in one. It seems this has gone on for the last 50 years why do we wake up , these offenses are criminal but the Justice Department have not indicted any these Republicans in charge of the voting registration that's hypocrisy there.
I remember in the 2000 race chats but the person in charge of the voting registration was Miss Harris known Republican , of Florida she supported George Bush Junior and for the election it was in the Chad debt did it in for VP Gore , it was Ms. Harris the wrong way the votes minorities in the swamps and the Supreme Court justices the handed the presidency to George Bush Junior but they should've accuse themselves from the core three of the justices had families working for George Bush Junior reelection as why the Supreme Court should change to more seats, all Americans should stop the practice what is keeps on going with a blind eye.
This is a mainly good piece, discussing black perceptions for a change. Unfortunately the article then buries that in a so-called larger discussion of Democratic Party prospects. The topic of black perceptions is not subservient to Democratic prospects, except to (some?) white people.
2
It can be taken for granted that when blacks vote, they vote Democratic. Whatever the policy preferences of Democratic candidates, the choice between an authoritarian white nationalist party and an egalitarian party that sees people of color as actual human beings deserving equal rights under the law is not a difficult one for 95% of people of color to make.
What can't be taken for granted is black turnout. Turnout is driven by charismatic candidates. Obama was charismatic, and black turnout soared. Hillary Clinton was not charismatic, and black turnout fell. The result was predictable by those of us who pay attention, including me in February of 2016, 9 months before the election.
Edsall's focus on policy preferences of black versus white Democrats posits that Obama's policy positions appealed to blacks, but Hillary Clinton's did not. Does ANYONE agree with that? I certainly don't; there's not a dime's worth of difference between their policy preferences. It's all charisma.
The question for Democrats this cycle is: who will charismatically move unreliable Democratic voters to actually vote? The jury is still out.
1
@Sam I Am
I would think that turnout is based on the "party that sees people of color as actual human beings", rather than any notion of charisma. Turning out based on "charisma" is juvenile and superficial.
1
"If the [Democratic] party and its nominee adopt these particular policies, black voters are not going to shift en masse to Trump, but their wariness could signal that there is a risk of lower turnout..."
This is precisely what Republicans understand: It is not necessary for them to court the black vote, it is only necessary for them to depress black voter turnout. In this effort they have an unwitting co-conspirator in the Democratic Party. Trump himself has said he likes nothing better than listening to radical, socialist Democratic candidates prattle on about Medicare For All and the New Green Deal. Combine this with gerrymandering, the electoral college, and deliberate Republican state efforts to restrict voting and Trump has all the headroom he needs to win re-election.
This election cannot be about which progressive policy is better or worse. It can only be about defeating Donald Trump. Unfortunate as it may be, we have spiraled down into a rabbit hole of fear, hatred, racism, misogyny and general destruction of the American model of democracy and rule of law. No "policy" agenda is going to retrieve us from that hole; we simply have to stop digging, defeat Trump at the polls, and THEN begin the rebuilding process with policy.
To this end, the Democratic party must stop trying to figure out which policies will win the election, and it must begin constructing the political calculus that unseats Donald Trump. The most important element of this calculus is voter turnout.
1
As an immigrant I recall a story told by a fellow immigrant who opened a store in a small German town only to be told by customers that they prefer to shop at a nearby store that was in the local German family for four centuries.
My point is that we do not lend enough historical importance to the deep scars centuries of slavery etched in the psyche of both whites and black, masters and slaves, bonded by the wickedness of chattel slavery. That many old blacks have lived to directly experience segregation and that the detritus and scars of slavery relegated many blacks to economic destitution and social awkwardness that render them politically inefficient is clear as daylight.
In the absence of economic and social comfort, in the absence of being sufficiently well educated, black will either not recognize what policies are good for them, or will act overly religious - thus conservative - which plays in favor of conservative whites, or shy away from politics, therefore meeting a conclusion of this article that without the black vote Democrats will not win.
In conclusion, the national narrative must constantly include the centuries of slavery that have left unmitigated psychological traumas on both the former masters and former slaves, which continues to play on the political scene - to the great disadvantage of blacks as well as progressive national policies brought by Democrats that can help US become more healthy and prosperous, happy, and yes...civilized!!
Inequality divides us. Separating black votes and white votes divides us. Let's try looking at all people as Americans, the Republicans are trying to divide us enough as it is by inequality.
2
Maybe next time, Mr. Edsall should query people in the corporate HR departments, where from everything I hear there is very strong discrimination against white men. It's not even subtle, and basically amounts to quotas. I would not be surprised if we start to get lawsuits pretty soon. I am led to understand that this has become particularly pronounced, when it comes to hiring outside counsel, where the companies demand way more 'diversity' than the market can supply. I just find it close to deranged that we are constantly hearing about discrimination against blacks, since everybody knows that when it comes to academics, there is massive discrimination for blacks. This cognitive dissonance is just gobsmacking.
3
It's fairly clear that African American Democrats are more conservative than white Democrats, because black people are just as likely to be conservative as white people, but black conservatives don't have a home in the Republican Party (conservatives of different races don't seem to care for each other that much, and the GOP has thrown its lot with white conservatives since there are so many more white people than people of color in this country).
The polling figures on various issues where liberals and conservatives disagree seem to demonstrate this. Black Democrats are a coalition of black liberals and black conservatives, while white people split party based on ideological differences. And African Americans seem to coexist with ideological foes of the same race more than their white counterparts.
2
In my state, in 2008, Obama declined to aggressively defend my gay son’s civil rights and oppose Prop 8 for fear the religious African American vote would stay home, even when presented with their first viable presidential candidate of color. Let them stay home because they feel disrespected. I’m sure Trump 2.0 with at least 2 more conservative SCOTUS spots will really advance racial equality. Hoping the Court doesn’t reverse same sex marriage rights because, thanks to Obama and his coterie of conservative and selfish African American voters in CA, same sex marriage is still illegal under our constitution.
1
@Becky Beech please don't blame us, we were also Bamboozled into voting for him, he's not DoACS and he did more harm to us then even trying to help. Also he's mixed, not. Black, the One drop rule is over!
I absolutely love Edsall's statistical analysis and never miss reading anyone of them. Please keep them coming. they are very informative for a statistical wonk like me.
I am so glad that people of color identify with the Democratic party because, as any trump rally will show, the Trump-GOP is a white tent with chants of "lock them up" and "send them back". You know that the "them" are not white people. There is no doubt in my mind that the low turnout in the 2016 elections of people of color was the reason for a Trump takeover. I seriously hope and pray that my fellow colored people do show up at the polls in 2020 and set the record straight. Vote for your best interest. Every vote counts and the lives for our future and our planet are at stake in 2020!
1
Only one of the two major parties in the US actively pursues a policy of suppressing the African-American vote. Black Americans all know which party it is. Even those who label themselves "conservative. "
1
Not being presumptuous enough to comment on African-American positions taken by the electorate, I will however question why in the world white Democrats rate job creation so low in the spectrum.
Can it be that the alleged "elite" are so well entrenched they have little worry other than a depressed real estate market for second & third homes due to global economic uncertainty? Just what is a centrist?
4
Democrats were the party of Jim Crow and segregation. Why blacks continue to vote against their own self interests is beyond me. The Democrats are like wolves in sheep's clothing.
3
It would be nice to know what part of the difference in opinion is due to the different incomes of black and white Americans: at the same income level how much more liberal/conservative are black democrats than white democrats.
1
Black voters should not take Democracy for granted. Vote! because your life depends on it.
I feel that Dems spend too many valuable TV cable hours reacting to Trump on race, immigration, guns, all Liberal hot buttons. Trump still is aware that most voters want to hear about fair taxes, health care, real job opportunities, farm belt trade, and trust o f our allies.
This is why I like Biden.
6
In reading the results of these polls, we can see where the respondents stand on each individual issue, but not the ranked importance of these issues.
Seems like that information could be key to understanding what voters actually want.
2
@Chickpea
..Sorry, but if these candidates need some poll to know what "voters actually want".. Then they really don't have much to offer, do they..
2
Interesting, and well-written as always.
Was anyone else amused that one of Philpott's key findings was that self-identified conservatives hold conservative positions on 3 key issues? I hope there wasn't a lot of money spent on this portion of the research...
1
This should not be a surprise to anyone that's paid attention to people outside their little group. Black voters haven't changed their opinions as much as white voters. They have always had a diverse range of opinions, and for a long time they've had only one party that could represent them: the Democrats, who often treat them as a captive audience.
The Democrats neglected their old base of working-class whites, let unions go bust, encouraged manufacturing to leave the country, etc., and those voters switched parties. Meanwhile, affluent, bourgeois whites went the opposite way and took over the Democratic Party and the notion of what it meant to be liberal or left. For them, that's always cultural and social, and rarely economic, at least in a way that promotes the empowerment of workers and the lower classes.
For most blacks, it's the opposite. But black people don't have the luxury of voting Republican, so conservative, moderate, and liberal African-Americans are by and large all under the Democratic tent. If you're a white person who opposes abortion or gun control or gay rights, you can vote GOP. But since it's a whites-only party, black voters, and increasingly Latino voters who oppose those things can't.
2
@Chris Gray
You hit the nail on the head. The GOP has a placard outside its "big tent" which reads, "non-whites not invited." The more traditionally minded black or Latino American has no other place to go than to the Democrats.
And those white, well-off, college educated progressives who have taken over the Democratic Party have had the luxury of making fashionably left social issue orthodoxy central to the party platform, rather than economic ones.
My sister is a conservative Catholic woman who struggles like most Americans economically. She knows Democrats are offering the better deal. But she would no more vote for the Democrats as a black man would have voted for Bull Connor because he offered an better after school program.
Democrats have placed a placard outside their tent which reads, "Votes of white, traditionally minded people not wanted here."
I am always fascinated by polls and their analysis. Almost 50 million self-identifying black Americans reside in the U.S. Who are the ones taking these polls? What geographical regions outside of Southern states are polled? I am in my 60's and have never received a poll asking me about my feelings/perceptions.
8
The opinions of voters do not necessarily point to what's best for the country. Criticism of Democrats leaning too far left should include reasons why the policies are not good instead of simply saying there are too many voters opposed to the ideas. Who wants politicians that pander? We all should spend more time concerning ourselves with the real substance of the issues.
2
Democrats of the 20th Century hardly all got along or liked each other. They were at least as diverse and disparate in their identities, values and world views as today's Democrats.
What held them together? The New Deal, Social Security, GI Bill, the Great Society, Medicare. An activist government which focused like a laser beam on economic security and opportunity *above everything else.*
Yoking together working and middle class Americans by their economic interests subsumed competing world views and identities, and eventually created the bedrock upon which to work towards civil rights, affirmative action, protections for LBGTQ, women and so on. By downplaying, even ignoring, the many varieties of Americans, Democrats built a coalition that could get somewhere.
Today's Democrats have it backwards. They are the bouncer at an exclusive club who demands that you first ostentatiously celebrate every possible type and sub-type of American (except the dreaded straight white male) salute every bit of their up-to-date social justice orthodoxy, before you're allowed in to vote for their economic policies.
"Diversity is our strength" is baby talk. It's nonsense. It's how Democrats continue to lose. "Goals we share in common even though we agree to disagree on a lot of big issues is our strength" may not have the same ring to it, but it's how Democrats may start winning again.
18
@Livonian
To be fair, blacks were excluded from The New Deal, Social Security and the GI Bill when these measures were first introduced.
Another excellent, important, and sobering essay from Mr. Edsall. It highlights the need to avoid oversimplification in our very complcated society. We suffer from a propensity to rush to judgment on these kinds of issues and we do so at our peril. This is a reflection of the larger dynamic which integrates reinventing the wheel and embracing the newest next best thing.
2
" There has been a decline among blacks since the 1990s in the perception that discrimination is a cause of racial economic disparities and a rise in the percentage of blacks faulting cultural shortcomings for these disparities."
This... is a very positive sign, and the only way forward.
12
@Kai And what exactly are those "cultural shortcomings" you mention.
1
Interesting analysis. I do not believe, however, that mobilizing the democratic party's broad coalition will be as difficult as Mr. Edsall believes: I think Donald Trump's actions as President sequentially motivate every segment of that coalition. And, that alone may enough for a DEM to win so long as our candidate is palatable to the center. And, even the ideas that are now viewed as centrist with the DEM party -- the public option (Medicare for all that want it), governmental power to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices, free college for those who academically qualify and who are not wealthy, a path to citizenship in the context of a border where illegal entry is still a crime, and a robust response to Climate change -- effectively pursue strong progressive goals.
3
Medicare for All is something I’ve waited for all my life in this country. It should be the minimum starting point for raising the country up to basic civilized standards. I will not vote for a candidate who doesn’t support it.
5
@Eugene Debs The refusal of the Sanders liberals to vote for a Democratic candidate without a Perfect adherence to the Sanders position is exactly why Hillary lost in 2016 it’s gonna happen again unless Sanders and Warren miraculously abandon unpopular positions now
12
@Eugene Debs
Interesting. I paid into Medicare my entire 45+ year worklife and now I'm using it. Probably won't use all of it, so someone else will. If Medicare for All is inaugurated, will I get reimbursed?
7
@Eugene Debs
I guess we cancel each other out then because Medicare for all is something I will always oppose and I (a registered Independent) will not vote for a Democratic candidate that supports it. I do not need or want the Government to take away my private health insurance. I'd be happy to consider opting in to a government funded option, but don't ever tread on my right to choose. The good news is that only 41% of Americans support single payer, so it is unlikely to happen any time soon.
8
I've said this time and time again. If Democrats at least stop talking about social issues for an election cycle and focus solely on economic issues such as stronger worker protections, higher minimum wage, debt forgiveness, and better healthcare even if it falls a bit short of M4A, they will win in a landslide. They have no idea just how many Republican voters are out there who only vote GOP due to religious convictions on things like abortion.
32
@T. Warren @T. Warren "If Democrats at least stop talking about social issues for an election cycle and focus solely on economic issues such as stronger worker protections, higher minimum wage, debt forgiveness, and better healthcare even if it falls a bit short of M4A, they will win in a landslide."
Why do Democrats need to stop talking about social issues? If you believe in those issues, talk about them. As far as the economy, maybe Democrats should tone that down. Do you really want to debate Trump on the economy?
1
@Mike Yes, we do want to debate Trump on the economy and economic issues. On the economy, he has simply benefited from what Obama put in place. He is like a pinch runner for a guy on third doing a home run trot as he scores on a single.
Moreover, Dems should take him and all republicans on on any economic issues that pit the interests of workers and consumers against corporations. Show where they get their money. Talk about this stuff way more than about social issues.
4
@Mike
"Why do Democrats need to stop talking about social issues?"
Because when they do, they lose. Because when they do they are smug, condescending, self-righteous, intellectually dishonest, haranguing, scolding, ungracious, mean-spirited and alienate a lot of people of good will, including many who would eagerly vote for Democrats if not for their social justice preaching.
That's why.
Remember, the point is to win elections in order to wield legislative power in order to work on all sorts of things, including social issues. But first you need to win elections.
18
As a New Hampshire voter it is CLEAR that I NEED to vote for Bernie UNLESS he is far behind in the polls and Elizabeth is within the margin of error of beating Biden.
If Biden wins the nomination, we NEED to push him toward a REAL GREEN NEW DEAL while acknowledging that he (and we) can do ANYTHING, but we can’t do EVERYTHING using such excellent research as a guide toward sane prioritizing.
If Elizabeth is the democratic standard bearer, we will benefit from the pent up passion of female voters, many of whom have been waist deep in the practicalities of compromise and organization since the 1960s.
If Bernie is the nominee, the revolution begins with organizing, compromise, and movement building—as we educate and experience ourselves into understanding the fullness of our potentials and our limits.
2
I am weary of fretting over the notion that I must somehow figure out for other people where their own best interests lie, lest they do something awful. If they can't do so at this late date, I wish them good luck and good night.
7
Joe Biden's moderation might attract the pragmatic, but he's otherwise a gaffe-prone bore who would only win if many of Trump's supporters at least stay home. That won't happen.
I'm black, and my first choice for president remains Elizabeth Warren. But this column seems to points to private-equity loving Cory Booker as giving the Democrats the best opportunity to win the presidency.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/14/14262732/cory-booker-senate-democrats
4
@JAM
I'm white and share with you Warren as my first choice for the top spot on the ticket. However, I like the idea of Cory Booker as VP as I think his personality will appeal to more moderate working class voters (both black and white).
6
@617to416
Really Mr. Booker was a failed mayor in Newark, that water issue happened under his watch and he is in bed with hedge fund managers. Booker lied about turning Newark into a green city and he did nothing to provide jobs for the residents. He destroyed public education in Newark and was on TV with Mr. steal your privacy Facebook CEO on Oprah and has always wanted to be a celebrity. He is no President Obama
I am sorry we have had enough of do nothing politicians and politicians who play only to the camera. Booker had Stop and Frisk in Newark, he didnt care about justice then. Just like Ms. Harris trust her when she locked up plenty of minorities and she could of fixed the system from the inside but didnt.
If the democratic party thinks that Booker should be on the ticket then we have serious problems in the direction WE need to be going. If your not willing to do the hard work to run for president you dont get the second prize of VP. There is a reason why he is at 2% or 5% its because what he is selling no one is believing.
Non-identity politics asserts that we all share the same senses and emotions underneath a variety of superficial differences rooted in environmental adaptations.
11
@Steve Bolger
Yes. Well said.
"The reality is that without exceptionally high African-American turnout, the Democratic Party is unlikely to win any presidential election. "
Well, yes and no.
Turnout, wether Black or White is irrelevant in all the solidly Red or Blue states, which account for 35 to 40 states. For example, whatever the turnout, CA will vote blue and TX will vote red. Dems need to get out the vote massively in all swing States. If they do, they can't lose. And of course, the Black vote is hit hard by the voter suppression efforts in most GOP controlled States. The Dems knew that in 2016, but they nevertheless succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
So, we'll have to wait and see if history repeats itself in 2020.
13
@William Dufort All that you say is true, but the key states will be places like Wisconsion, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina - all of which have sizable populations of black voters. I still vividly remember election night 2016 as Wisconsin, and the election, was just about to tip to Trump, how many of the Democratic pundits on TV were sort of desperately talking about "...still waiting for results from some precincts in Milwaukee to come in..." which was obviously some kind of Hail Mary about being saved by additional levels of black voter turnout. So I still think that the article makes a good point.
13
@Rex Nemorensis
The article does make a good point, but it puts too much emphasis on issues. Some 90% of Black voters vote D so the problem is not with healthcare or taxes or anything else. It's about convincing them that voting matters and that not voting hurts each and all of them. Because they do have a lot to lose, in spite of what Trump said in 2016.
13
@William Dufort
...and it is not just voting in the presidential election but, voting in every election at the local, state and federal level. Unless there is some balance in governing groups, not much will happen, as represented most viciously by McConnell content to sit on and let events pass. And half of Congress, too.
A president needs a Congress that will work. We need the push and pull of the two parties, whatever those parties may be. We, the people, require governance, with debate and the sweat of energy in getting legislation that is good for all.
1
You have to differentiate between ultra-conservative Republicans (the extremely rich and the ideologically right-wing) and those who think the Democrats are somehow too left-wing (which many of us here in Europe see as a bad joke). The first group is unlikely to change anytime soon, but Democrat politicians could do something to change the attitudes of the second group. The latter might be taught to see how reducing poverty and social injustice does everybody a favour (except of course the very rich, who have everything to gain from maintaining a social under-class). Somebody with the charisma of a Trump but the brains of a Nancy Pelosi?
6
As a part of the middle class, I've come to realize that there are not enough billionaires out there to provide taxes for Democrats' socialist projects. The rest of the money will come from the middle class working folks, and I'm not OK with that. My taxes are fine where they are now (or lower).
15
@Bill George
On the absurdity of seeing Democrats as too left wing, when I first moved to Canada, someone explained to me that "The Canadian Conservatives are like your Democrats, only more liberal."
That may have changed somewhat recently, but it was both funny and true a decade ago.
3
@John
I'm part of the upper middle class (in the highest Canadian tax bracket). When I moved to Canada from the US, my taxes went up (though a significant portion of the rise was offset by lower health care costs), but so did my overall quality of life. I'd never come back the US. Lower taxes mean lower quality of service. Canada is a much better run country with much better government services and a much happier society. You really do get what you pay for and the extra taxes are, in my opinion, well worth it.
6
I see nothing here that proves that black Democratic voter turnout is influenced by general attitudes to social and economic issues, or by what Democratic candidates talk about in their campaigns. That black voter turnout decreased from 2012 (when a black man was running for President) and 2016 ( only white candidates) is most likely due to the usual pattern of black voters being more engaged when they see a black candidate. Does the fact that black voter turnout increased from 2004 to 2008 mean that the Democratic platform was more socially conservative in 2008? No, it increased because a black man was running. Why is it solely the resposibility of Democratic candidates to tailor their campaign speeches specifically to black voters? Why can’t those voters see for themselves that their best interests lie in having Democrats in power?
7
@Renee Margolin I think many people have given up on both parties and only respond to a novel candidate. Obama was black, Trump was the only one voicing concerns about immigration. Hillary could have won as a novelty, but the oomph just wasn't there.
5
@Renee Margolin
"Why is it solely the resposibility of Democratic candidates to tailor their campaign speeches specifically to black voters? Why can’t those voters see for themselves that their best interests lie in having Democrats in power?"
It is the responsibility of the entire Democrat Party to help educate these people. Educate not just black voters, but all voters. For too many years the Democrats have sought to keep the less affluent voters dependent on government (read: Democrat) handouts. These individuals are US citizens like the rest of us. They are trying to raise and support a family just like we are. They need a better education system, for both children and adults!
Yet the Democrats prefer to suppress these individuals' educational opportunities in the hope that the voters will remain dependent upon the Democrat party. Let's provide these individuals with a chance to learn. Then let the individuals decide what type of government they need, and let them go out and vote for that government.
We need a better informed electorate, not handouts!
1
Let me clue you in; don't take anyone "for granted". For that matter, don't take anything "for granted", simpley because everything you "have" can be taken away in an instant. I promise you, there are thousands and thousands of people in the USA alone who would attest to this; myself included.
13
As long as the assignment to "left" or"right" by political scientists is as strikingly flat as it is here, as long as "left" and "right" isn´t defined clearly enough to give reliable information what is meant in practise, as long as both terms are used on a different understanding in US, Europe and Asia and are even depending on different areas of the region - a "Texan rightist" is pretty different to a "New England rightist " - as long as each individual political scientist is playing his "connotation game" on the base of an undifferentiated personal summary of an unlimited uncoherent multitude of completely different topics that have nothing to do with each other in substance - in short: as long as the left/right game is played as it is played as present - such findings are going to be more or less arbitrary. Such statements are neither meaningful nor significant as they are not reliable in practise.
It´s an untenable situation when the assignment to left and right can only be understood by knowing the list of criteria of the respective scientist and how these are applied and wieghted in his individual understanding. Then it´s not "left" but left, according to Prof Smith or Brown or McDonnell - or to FOX or the NRA. Even in racially homogeneous groups this weird approch will lead to assessments noboby can base anything on. This doesn´t depend on black, brown, yellow or white. The open cultural differences this article is referring to made it never more obvious than ever.
3
@ws: Well-educated people understand that politics is a Hilbert space, with as many polarities as there are issues.
@Steve Bolger
How do you assess those who argue about being "too left to win" for months?
Beside this: The majority of voters might not belong to the educated people you have mentioned. Even political Pundits often don't behave really educated when they discuss this twisted left/right issue instead of talking about substantial political topics that have to be fixed.
Republicans have not been successful because they moved toward the center. On the contrary, their success has been in moving rightward and energizing their base to vote. I am not sure why so many people are therefore arguing the Democrats should do the opposite.
5
@April: The Republican Party has collected a motley plurality of single-issue voters.
12
@April their success was not moving to the extreme right, it was that they had a celebrity as a nominee. Trump was a lifelong democrat, he knew he could manipulate the right using his star power and he did and continues to do so.
2
@April
It seems that a strong move to the left on economic issues - thought not too far too fast - is the correct move. It seems most Americans are ready for big adjustments.
But this gets tangled up with Democrats' lurch to the left on social issues, which alienates a large swathe of voters who would otherwise be happy to vote for the Democrats' liberal economic platform.
It's really not all that hard to figure out, but the Democrats just can't keep from sounding like Oberlin College social justice warriors.
3
The corollary to these findings is that if the GOP ever stops being completely terrible, there will be significant movement of black voters from the Democrats to the GOP.
I, for one, will defect along with them. I'm a white man, and I'm so tired of having no better alternative than a party that claims I'm the reason for all of the injustice in the world.
Democrats need to stop being so short-sighted; identity politics is an ever-tightening spiral that is constantly turning on itself.
69
@Patrick Very good point, however, the GOP has a long way to go. The only principles they have kept have been the social ones- anti abortion,anti gay marriage pro gun and anything not "real American" by their definition. As long as it is easy for them to get votes by doing all of these things they won't change.
Common sense government and fiscal responsibility are long gone from the Republicans- maybe the Democrats can steal it from them? Plus the Republicans are setting new standards for corruption which is hard to reel in as well.
11
@Patrick
It is disappointing that you would "defect' from a party that identifies (correctly) that wealthy white men have been largely responsible for building systems of injustice in this country, merely out of personal pique. I would like to think that our political convictions are based on our beliefs about what is right and just, not which party we perceive as being nice to us.
12
@Patrick
I must have missed where the Democrats said that you were personally responsible for any problem at all.
14
The Twitterati are pulling many of the Democratic candidates to the left. But it is not the young, radical Twitterati who vote in primaries; it is older, moderate Americans and Black Americans. It is not the Twitterati who will decide the Electoral College; it is older, moderate Americans and Black Americans in a handful of battleground states. A big turnout by young Twitter Democrats in reliably blue or reliably red states will have no effect on the EC outcome.
So what are these Democratic candidates thinking, especially Elizabeth Warren who is nothing if not a pragmatist? They are certainly not thinking strategically. They seem to be captured by the zeitgeist. They probably believe they can modify or soften their radical positions in the general election, as is the tradition. But this time around, in this age of Twitter, I doubt whether either their supporters or opponents will let them do that.
That’s why I support Joe Biden. I believe he's our only hope of beating Trump. My bet is he can do it even without the Twitterati vote, if as I expect, many of them stay home or vote for the Green Party in protest against his candidacy.
21
@Ron Cohen
This isn't a matter of a minority of "Twitterati" making a lot of noise while the real majorities are more moderate. That's a fiction.
The fact is, the stances of Democratic Leaders and politicians are significantly to the right of what actual Democrats wants. The polls clearly show this. For example, polls show that a majority of Americans want Medicare for All (depending on how funding is explained), campaign finance reform, more taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation for wall street and big banks, tuition reform, a reduction in military spending, marijuana decriminalization, stricter gun laws, and stronger action on climate change, just to name a few...
Again, these are polls of all Americans, not just Dems. When you focus on just Dems, the majority is much stronger.
The real path to victory is voter turnout and the key to voter turnout is running on the side of issues that enjoy majority support among the majority of the population (many of which I listed above). That's not liberal. That's not even Democrat. That's just lowe case democracy. You have to ask yourself why even Democratic leaders can't get on board with majority support for liberal issues... Try a youtube search "congress doesn't care what you think" for a Princeton study that helps provide the answer.
3
@Tim L.
Your arguments are not only wrong; by what you choose to leave out, they are disengenuous as well.
Yes, there is broad agreement on economic issues, health care, environment and, increasingly, on stricter gun laws. What you don’t mention, and what polls clearly show, are that big majorities are opposed to decriminalization of unauthorized border crossings, free health care for undocumented immigrants, an end to private health insurance, reparations for minority groups, and a "command" economy as posited by the Green New Deal. In other words, the devil is in the details.
According to Gallup, 40% of Americans regard themselves as independents. There is, in fact, a vast, moderate middle in this country, but most Twitter Democrats are in denial of this fact. They are a noisy minority, intolerant of majority views, who seem intent on giving Trump another four years.
1
@Ron Cohen
The only argument I made was that when a candidate takes a stance on an issue that the majority agree with, it will tend to push voter turn out. Care to tell me why you think that's a "wrong" argument?
As for your insulting claim, I also failed to mention the price of tea in china, but that doesn't make my other points disingenuous. "Reparations" isn't an issue that has majority support which is why I didn't list it, (and BTW, I maybe a liberal but I'm against Repartions). My point was only that many so-called "liberal" issues are in fact mainstream and enjoy majority support not only among Democrats, but among the general population which includes not only your 40% independents, but Republicans as well. And yet these issues I mentioned are opposed by the Republican party and some "moderate" Dems candidates who are more interested in representing something other than Democrats.
I'm not saying you don't have a point about social justice warrior types, but on the other hand, it's unfair to put all the blame on Democratic voters who are disillusioned with Democratic candidates who can't bring themselves to side with MAJORITY DEMOCRAT opinion on the issues. Youtube "congress doesn't care what you think".
African Americans have not been well served by Democrats promising free stuff and playing politics of division. Many understand job gains since '16 will be erased if progressives win in '20 dragging down everyone economically. Wouldn't be surprised if a significant number 'walk away' and vote Republican.
13
Black people are the most reliably progressive voters. Read far enough into the article and that is stated. Bernie and supporters should pay attention.
This opinion piece opens with a 2014 research article - before the current occupant of the white house was elected. It does not matter where you stand on this issue or that issue, we are united in one goal.
Plus Black people holding moderate or conservative views is nothing new. The truest thing outlined in this article is we can hold moderate or even conservative views on multiple topics and still vote for a liberal or progressive candidate.
7
It is naive to use surveys--especially by researchers in rarefied surroundings like Harvard and to some extent the NYT--to extrapolate black stereotypes. It is also unwise to treat campaign positions as future reality.
Obama was definitive as a candidate on health care reform, closing Guantanamo, and ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACA is a major step in the right direction but with a public option compromised out. The other stances barely budged over 8 years, plus 3 more.
7
National Polls among all voters on issues:
63% Pro choice
61% Govt funding Planned Parenthood
70% Tax credits for alternative energy
86% Insurance can not deny coverage for Pre existing conditions
And this list goes on. Please stop telling Dems they need to be more moderate. I am sure the bloc you mention in the "recent research" has many Dems who share the above popular views. Too many op-eds fail to mention how far to the right the GOP has gone. It is time to re-center our politics by pointing out how far off the rails the GOP has taken us.
Yes, we are a divided electorate but the GOP in power does not act that way. They refuse to find common ground on anything and when the Dems make compromises they look like fools. It is time to stop this nonsense. Fight for the center but do it as a leftist. It is a winning strategy.
5
@PJ1304
Absolutely! Democrats and Democratic policies have broad support. And if we want to land at the center, we need to negotiate from the left, rather the negotiating from the center and landing on the right. .
1
@PJ1304
Well said. Really, the problem isn't that the liberals are demanding the Democratic party be more liberal that it is. The real problem is that the Democratic hasn't shown much interest in representing Democrats or even Americans at large even when majorities among them support so called "left of center" ideas.
Try an experiment on your own googling on polling data. Polls show that a majority of Americans want Medicare for All (depending on how funding is explained), campaign finance reform, more taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation for wall street and big banks, tuition reform, a reduction in military spending, marijuana decriminalization, stricter gun laws, and stronger action on climate change, just to name a few...
Again, these are polls of all Americans, not just Dems. There's something wrong going on her and it's got deeper roots. Try a youtube/google on "Congress doesn't care what you think" for a video based on a Princeton study.
2
The biggest issue for African Americans shouldn’t be either economic or social issues.
The biggest issue for them should be protecting their right to vote. Because if it’s negated through closing polling stations, extreme gerrymandering, purging voter rolls, etc then what they actually vote for will be rendered meaningless.
9
Scott, the right to vote, i.e. vote Democrat, is granted to mean whatever white Democrats want should be supported by black people.
Obviously black people have not benefited from voting Democratic; just look at the cities where black people live; Democrats expect our vote but give us nothing, just as Republicans; no party benefits black folks.
Rich white folks as well as poor black folks live in cities but the difference is stark.
1
My family has all kinds, black, white, brown and very small quantitites of neanderthal genetic strands. They vary gay and straight.
And they differ greatly as to how their lives are going and have evolved. Their trajectories vary greatly and those skin tones or pronoun preferences have the least to do with that evolution.
So Mr. Edsall's pointing out that one can't count of the differences we might have but need ways of appealing to what binds us as Americans. Each of my family has had the liberty of choosing pathways and the energy they bring to their tasks. With liberty and opportunity, one can choose the many pathways each has.
7
It annoys me that politicians take anyone for granted and adjust their policies accordingly in order to get power. Where is the integrity of politicians to follow their heart and stand up for what they think is right and then the country shall have to vote for whomever they think have the best idea setup. How hard is it?
But it seems like this is just a different kind of sports where the wealthy and the powerful use everyday people as pawns only to let them down.
7
@Sten Moeller
There are people who run for office and stick to positions that they think are right but they don't get elected. In a democratic society, successful politicians adjust their positions to what voters want. That is how they get elected. While that may sound abhorrent to you that is the way democratic politics works.
1
My observations based upon my life experience living in diverse communities in the Deep South: There is a lot more misogyny and homophobia among African-Americans in the South, particularly among male African-Americans in the South (but not exclusively among them), than among whites, even working-class evangelical whites. Prior to the last presidential election, I often overheard black men sympathizing with Trump's "women troubles." I also heard more than one black woman say she was voting for Trump because she didn't believe a woman could do the job. As for the homophobia, there's a reason why the "down low" thing is a thing. So, yeah, there are a lot of misconceptions at the national level about what black Americans think about a lot of things.
39
After their turnout in 2016, why would anyone take them for granted?
3
No voters should be taken for granted. This includes the entire state of California which is totally ignored by Dems and Reps alike - except as a source of money.
11
@David": This broken system arbitrarily makes voters count or not based solely on where they live.
Black Americans are not so different from White Americans. That should not surprise anyone. We are all Americans. We all have the same basic needs. We all want our children to live in a safe environment. We all want them to have the opportunity to learn, work and build a better society built on liberty and justice for all. That may be obvious but it needs to be affirmed.
That does not mean that Black Americans and White Americans share the same life experience. Black Americans suffer from both economic inequality and racial inequality.
The Black experience with government has differed from the White experience. Blacks do not need to be reminded that political promises can prove illusory. Black Americans fought for civil rights in the 60's. The civil rights legislation and early judicial decisions offered promise on voting rights, equal educational opportunity, equal economic opportunity and an end to segregation. Black Americans have not seen the progress they had hoped for. The Roberts Court has ended federal enforcement of voting rights. Educational opportunity has suffered from ineffective enforcement and systemic racism. Governmental support for desegregation has proved to be illusory and segregation remains as widespread as ever. The Social Security and Medicare programs provide better benefits to Whites in large part because of the way they have been structured and administered.
Blacks realize that self reliance and unity mean progress.
19
I certainly don't like to think of any traditionally marginalized, and disenfranchised group, sitting on the fence of moderation. Nothing ever changes when you sit on a fence. Nothing good ever came from apathy, complacency, and going along to get along. Nothing good ever came from failing to stake a firm stand, no matter what. Grandparents, and great grandparents, who made so many sacrifices for future generations, would be extremely shocked by this point of view, and lack of respect.
10
@ChesBay The 'centrists are not taking a stand' trope is is wrong. People are taking very firm positions, that just happen to be near the middle of the political spectrum. Is it so hard to check your ego-centrism and realize that not every informed person shares your opinion?
14
I have no doubt that there are white people on the far left. I just don't know where they are. I support the political shift described in the article. I don't take the black vote for granted. I do think that black people face different challenges regionally. It is unlikely that nationality elected officials will solve the regional issues.
8
The reason why the white liberal Democratic Party wing has become proportionally larger is that since the mid to late 1970’s the conservative and moderate-centrist wings of the Democratic Party have left the Party in greater proportion than the left wings. Most of them are now independents, but still generally vote Democrat. Hence, the strong emergence of Sanders, Warren and even AOC, and the lack of strong centrist Democratic leaders.
So, this creates a conundrum for black socially conservative voters, especially. For example, while many black voters are pro-life, those same voters are also pro Affirmative Action, and most blacks correctly see Charlottesville as white nationalism gaining strength in the GOP. In that light it would appear that black conservative voters are stuck voting for a more liberal than preferred party. The biggest fear for Democrats is that these voters stay home, not that they will vote Republican.
6
Thomas Edsall always provides well researched and interesting columns. If one were to look at images of Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg or Harris rallies and supporters, one would see predominantly white, educated middle/upper middle class people. These are same people who populate elite colleges, environmental protests, Women March, pro-choice rallies, Democratic Socialist meetings and dozens of other trendy one issue groups. It’s no surprise that Biden has a lock in the African American vote.
12
@Padraig Lewis
Interesting... that when people describe ANY republican rally (not just Trump) whatsoever and see a sea of white then they’re called.... you guessed it! Racist, White Supremacist ect, ect.al....
1
Voter suppression! That will play a significant role in African-American turnout in red states. Mr. Edsall never discusses it. Those of you in blue states are oblivious it. Here in NC it is alive and well. Blacks in my state are well aware of it. For them it is just part of the continuing battle for full citizenship. The civil rights struggle goes on in red states. Need a birth certificate to get your photo ID in NC. That will be $24 please. Costs more than the poll tax I paid as a young man in VIrginia.
Republican sponsored voter suppression, I believe, along with continued job and rental discrimination and a dozen other barriers explains much of the cohesiveness of the black vote.
Moreover, watch the political scientists write learned papers on lower black turnout in old Dixie while ignoring the role that voter suppression plays in reduced turnout.
7
Actually it’s $10. So the “suppressed” people will consist of those who can’t scrape together $10 every 8 years, and people who don’t already have a drivers license (which is an acceptable voter ID), and also can’t locate their birth certificate. Doesn’t sound like a large segment of the population.
9
@Max
Are those who can't scrape together $10 every 8 years unworthy of the vote? It doesn't matter if these laws affect a small number of people; the right to vote is the right all our freedoms depend on, and it should never be removed except under very serious circumstances.
1
@Max
According to North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the cost is $24. The cost increases for in-person, same day processing or for expedited processing online through Vitalchek. Please inform us where we can obtain an official copy of a birth certificate for $10.
4
Mr. Edsall's column is so cogent and grounded in facts that I sometimes wonder why the Times even runs it. In this case, he is giving us some great news. The Democrats can run a campaign that appeals to the majority of both White and Black voters in the rust belt. Contrary to what I had thought, we don't have to give up on the White blue collar voters to attract the Black voters. The path to victory runs down the center.
Given that there is one viable moderate candidate, it should be clear to anybody not committed to glorious and politically pure oblivion that if we want to get rid of Trump we need to go with Joe. On the other hand, if howling in the wilderness is your thing, Bernie and Marianne are great choices.
Warren is a wonderful senator, and I'm hoping that after she has lost a couple of primaries she will throw her support to Joe and then he will make her Secretary of the Treasury. She would make a fine president, but socially conservative Black voters are not going to get excited by a White woman. At the same time, we now know that people just don't like Harris.
My own view (I know you were dying to hear it) is that to beat Trump we need the most likable, relatable candidate available. Issues are actually not that important. Joe is the right guy. Even his mistakes make people feel like he is one of them. Edsall's column shows that most of the Black primary voters will go for Joe, and that's all she wrote.
20
@Ken
I have never seen anyone argue that we should vote for Biden for his policies or leadership. We're just supposed to vote for him "because he can beat Trump." Sorry, but I want to vote for a candidate who stands for something besides, "vote for me or you'll get something worse" (which, come to think of it, very much echoes Trump's "like me or hate me, you have to vote for me because of the economy").
2
@Ken Right On!
1
@Ken
I think both Joe and his supporters understand that the country needs a period of healing before it can embark on any big, new initiatives. That is another reason to vote for him.
The key advantage of the Republican party is that while they represent a minority of Americans, it is a coherent minority. The Democratic party is an ungainly, disjointed alliance of blacks, recent immigrants, whites with university degrees, and progressives. While the educated progressives are the loudest (particularly on social media), richest, and most likely to vote in the primaries, to win the election in 2020 the presidential nominee must present a broad vision that will appeal to a broad coalition, in essence to all Americans. Hilary Clinton and her political team tried to slice and dice the coalition and provide a little something for every interest group. This was correctly seen as cynical politics. Republicans can afford to appeal to only half of America. Democrats need to appeal to all Americans, because the non-Republicans are such a broad group. They are not all liberal on social issues, they are not all in favor of massive government programs. They are mostly united only in disliking the Republicans. A long list of litmus tests, favored by the progressive left, is toxic to the party in the general election. Some will stay home if Democrats pursue a campaign that only appeals to educated liberal whites. That approach might win the nomination, but will not win the election.
11
A very sobering piece. Edsall's analysis bodes poorly for the Democrats, suggesting 4 more years of Trump. Especially noteworthy is his statement:
"...Democrats will need an overarching message broad enough to bring together its entire coalition in a political uprising against Trump’s presidency..."
Clearly, the candidates have yet to provide an overarching message to bring together the entire coalition. Some of them barely mention Trump. We are likely to again see disgruntled Democrats stay home on election day or break away for fringe candidates on the ballot. Democrats will have none to blame than themselves for losing again and will have betrayed the country by failing to provide a winning approach to rid us of Trump.
15
@blgreenie
"Democrats will have none to blame than themselves for losing again and will have betrayed the country by failing to provide a winning approach to rid us of Trump."
Really? I think we can put a TON of blame on party leadership. Try googling polling on so-called "liberal" issues. Polls show that a majority of Americans want Medicare for All (depending on how funding is explained), campaign finance reform, more taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation for wall street and big banks, tuition reform, a reduction in military spending, marijuana decriminalization, stricter gun laws, and stronger action on climate change, just to name a few...
Again, these are polls of ALL AMERICANS, not just Dems. When you focus on just Dems, the majority is much stronger.
It's not that you don't have a point, but the real problem is that Democratic leaders are NOT representing liberal or moderate Democrats. In fact, even when the American population at large offers majority support on liberal/Democratic issues, our Democratic leaders can't seem to find a way to represent us. Something is deeply wrong here. Google/youtube "Congress doesn't care what you think".
5
@blgreenie: Socialism is taxing everyone what they can afford to provide public institutions, processes, and infrastructure of benefit to all. Socialism moves money and creates employment when all else fails. The US is a backward nation because it lies to itself about what socialism is.
This isn't a big surprise to me, most of my black co-workers over the years never wanted giveaways and preferences, they wanted a hand up only if needed and a level playing field. Most were insulted if anyone even hinted that someone or some group that was polarizing represented them and they should get on board brother. The usual response was a glare or in one case of extreme pressure from an activist on a lower Manhattan street corner, " you aren't my brother, I never saw you sitting at my kitchen table". The more established in the their careers they were, the more the opinions they expressed mirrored the center of the group. Democrats can continue to pander to the twitterverse for now, but at the conclusion and the selection of a candidate I would speculate that their polling better have their message and positions completely aligned or this group plays the none of the above card and stays home on election day.
27
@Kevin
Sigh. Democrats don't stand for "giveaways and preferences", we stand for "a level playing field." Quit using Republican straw men.
1
It would be helpful to know the size, geographical, gender and age breakdown of the poll. Being that it’s generally an older segment of the AA population that vote it may turn out to be a good poll, but on paper I’m critical.
7
The end of this column makes it sound as if to win elections, Democrats uniquely have to thread a thousand needles with trembling hand.
I'll never forget the message I took from Doug Jones' victory in Alabama: The pivotal black vote turned out for him en masse because as a prosecutor, he had taken it upon himself to fight so hard on behalf of the dignity of four little girls lost to us fifty years ago; and by extension, for the dignity of their community; and by further extension, for the dignity of all Americans.
How about this for an overarching message: Each person has dignity and deserves to thrive and experience joy. Therefore, each person deserves to embody the idea of their own dignity and the attitudes and skills which help them thrive. Likewise, each person deserves broad social institutions which uplift their dignity and help them thrive. No dichotomy there.
I know these terms are all up for interrogation, but in the end this message is the bottom line for so many of us.
Can I point out that Trump sold himself, ironically, upon his capitalistic "thriving" and politically incorrect free-for-all "joy". But his "thriving" turned out to be a gold-plated toilet, and his "joy" the mendacity of caging children.
Where dignity and joy are present, they look effortless. Where they're absent, they can't be faked. Dignity and joy are needles Trump will never thread. In various ways, through our respective histories, Democrats will.
6
Will democracy die because of internal swings toward authoritarianism?
Or because the little folks become so disenchanted with being a mere millionth of a percentage point in a political scientist's spreadsheet? Of being lumped into a demographic they may or may not identify with? Of, year after year, having politicians who are less leaders and more chess masters?
Or maybe, the former is the symptom, while the latter is the underlying cause...
4
Has there been a study on relating black conservative cultural views to their level of education? This has often been studied when it comes to class divisions amongst whites. Since a large section of the black community is working class they have more concerns about jobs, but perhaps this is also reflected in their cultural viewpoint. Class and race needs to be studied in tandem. Both realities define people's beliefs and identity.
5
There are two long standing trends among black voters and both are in a state of transformation.
The first is black social conservatism, nurtured by the black church. This has resulted in big gaps between black and whites views on same sex marriage, abortion and gay rights.
It should also be noted that many of these views are reinforced by most black politicians.
But the second trend is the generally liberal approach to structural political issues like jobs and unemployment, taxes (the rich get the breaks but other see little change) and public safety. A clear progressive trend is emerging here.
Here our community suffers from the Obama effect. Blacks overwhelmingly supported our first black president, but got little for their effort.
What they did get was a heavy dose of symbolism but not much by way of real structural change. In fact Obama was the main cheerleader for the doctrine of individual effort and self help to solve structural problems in the black community.
For the nation as a whole (white) he stood for structural policies to bail out banks and big corporations. While his civil Rights Division did it's job, Obama never used the bully pulpit to advocate an end to mass incarceration.
Ferguson not only broke the conservative Obama mystique, but put radical structural reform front and center for black activists.
It's too soon to tell what impact that will have in voting, but young blacks are leaving behind their parents social and political conservatism.
10
@AACNY Trump has been gliding on economic trend lines that began under Obama, were the results of Obama administration policies. We agree Trump's "focus," such as it is, is "shaking up old paradigms." Which is a kind way of saying "creating chaos."
3
@AACNY I doubt Trump's shaking anything worth recording for posterity. Dubya made acts like his appointment of Condie Rice, Colin Powell seem natural and effortless unlike Trump's crass promotion of some AA individuals (Kanye, Diamond & Silk etc) as if they're strangers from another planet to prove a point about fake diversity.
The master marketeer Trump exploits the power of repetitive slogans. Like most of us, no leader ever felt the need to brag about their routine job before Trump came along. Everyone took it for granted that diplomacy is conducted everyday (wisely) without being 'trumpted'' . Latin American countries have always been visited by White House officials without fanfare. Skilled officials and civil servants have always given weather warnings without needing approval from the president
4
@Drspock EVERY generation leaves political conservatism behind when young. Welcome to history.
Edsall is correct that low voter turnout in November 2020 would mean Republican victory.
Trump's politics of hate, aided by Tsar Putin's Internet Research Agency of St. Petersburg, is still working to divide the good people of the US against each other and so make the racism Edsall describes here (and, some racism that is out of scope for this article) more important to Trump and more damaging to our democracy.
Edsall cites several sources that show African-Americans thinking less about racist oppression and more about individual effort and opportunity. I sure hope that's true, but from my perspective, that positive trend is at risk of being overwhelmed by racism and hate from racist activist African-American groups such as "Black Lives Matter!" and professional racists such as Ta-Nehisi Coates who demand reparations in terms both general and vague, because the idea is profitable for him in attention and selling books, but he knows that any specifics on such reparations would clearly show that it would never work on a national level.
Kamala Harris said in an interview that she is "running as black." That kind of overt racism may doom Democrats in the general election.
Edsall is right that no politician should take any voters for granted, but the racist division implicit in the title of this piece is part of what might predict success for the hateful, destructive, radical-right Republicans in 2020.
I fear for my country.
10
Doesn’t sound like good news for Democrats.
Blacks disagree with Democrats that racism is their biggest problem.
Blacks disagree with Democrat policies on immigration, health care and in fact most of the Democrats’ core positions.
Many Blacks are questioning and blaming the welfare state.
There are many outspoken, articulate and intelligent people like Candace Owens finally saying out loud what everyone else has been thinking.
I am sure a lot of Democrat politicians in places like Baltimore are hoping people don’t wake up enough to ask where all the money went.
31
@Ken Nice try, but Ms. Owens has not been saying what any intelligent, self-loving, politically and culturally aware black person I know is saying. You need to re-read this article without your conservative blinders - they're clouding reality.
2
Edsall seems surprised that all types of beliefs and objectives don't fall along the same partisan continuum. Obviously the Democratic party has to choose which things to emphasize to maximize its total vote, and there will be some conflicts, but there is one main subject which not only unites most Democrats but also most Independents and even many Republicans. This is the still growing economic inequality and lack of opportunity for all those in lower income brackets. According to Edsall blacks are even more interested than whites in job opportunities. The one group which has been over-represented in both Republican and Democratic politics is that consisting of big corporations, big banks and Wall Street. An electoral majority sufficient to carry out major reform will probably have to do without that group.
7
It is interesting that blacks are moving left economically, but center on social policy. It is symptomatic of American voters in general, unique in my experience. They will not endorse a party unless ALL of their requirements are met, and this unwillingness to compromise is why your system is so polarized. Voters in other countries have to decide what is more important to them in every election; not stay home in a tantrum. Sometimes in fact you might even have to vote against your own interests because, well, it's the right thing to do. It's not all about you.
13
@Terence - Golden. Some of the best comments I've seen from the NYTimes readership come from foreigners. When it comes to discussing American society, having a different perspective -- an outsider's point of view -- helps casts things in stark light. Cheers!
2
@AACNY
I know. I don’t understand why msm & the Democrats (one and the same) don’t realize that since Roe V Wade the number one issue to Evangelicals & Catholics is the Supreme Court full stop. Nothing is more important to them, nothing. So its 100% voting their interest & very rational.
1
Hillary Clinton sought to win the Presidency with an Obama -black Democratic turnout, but the difference, fatally for her campaign, was her attempt to “ramp” up her overarching feminist, fiscally conservative, conservationist, pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, pro-civil rights personas depending on her audience. A political changeling, Clinton was consistently a feminist and consistently nothing else. She did not appeal to a majority of young two-family voters in the critical states deciding the 2016 election, of either race, with strong personal security, health, employment and professional concerns. Democratic, feminist primary campaigners, Warren and Harris, following her example, also offer nothing to excite national voters, black or white, based on their records. And Buttigeig makes three. Publicity stunts eating ribs, fish fry dinners, and flipping hamburgers at political cookouts, along with endorsements from regional leaders with no national following, as your polls show, excite only the picnic crowd of voters there. Such events are like efforts to start a campfire with wet matches.
5
The Black vote is very important to the Democrats if they wish to win major elections. The trouble has always been turnout. The loses in the midterm elections compared to when Obama was on the ballot are striking. The question is whether they will show up if their group is not represented on the ticket.
Black churches were actually quite supportive of the early Gay Rights movement, but this changed with the onset of the AIDS epidemic. The revelations of how many of their members were on the "down low" changed attitudes.
I hope da Blasio gets to read the term "oppositional attitudes to school and learning." This undermines his complaints about tests being the cause minority educational failure.
11
The Democrats take the African American vote for granted look at the cities where they have been in control for decades Newark, Detroit, Baltimore, and many other examples we should start to wise up and give the Republicans a chance it could not get worse.
13
@EAH
There is an enormous difference between a Democratic mayor/city council and their power to effect fundamental change to the long entrenched, complex problems facing poor and/or minority communities and that of a Democratic president/congress. Are you really selling the idea that Baltimore would be a garden spot with a Republican mayor in charge? Sorry, I ain't buying.
5
I hope these findings make a big enough splash that Democrats take noice, and try to figure out the reasons behind the numbers.
Here's a possibility: black Democrats have a more balanced view of the promise of economic redistribution and social engineering and than white Democrats, because black Democrats have already experienced it. They've seen how Democratic administrations in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and elsewhere hold power for decades and fail to improve things.
Here's another possibility: black Democrats are allowed to criticize individual African Americans for failures of personal responsibility, while white Democrats are not. White Democrats then have to seize on abstract explanations for achievement gaps, requiring elaborate and, frankly, paternalistic justifications like systemic racism.
These findings are good news; let's hope the Democrats don't need another Trump win to take them seriously.
15
I'm a Black voter and I've been saying this all along.
And it's about time all those Democrats and impatient left/progressive types who think they know the answer, better start to think again because by and large the vast majority of Black voters tend to be more moderate in many aspects.
Why?
Because they have too much to lose economically, politically and socially otherwise.
That's why by and large, they tend to stick with "tried and true" candidates instead of taking a chance with the unknown.
That's also why Joe Biden is more appealing in many ways than some of the other candidates -- and why the most fatal mistake any candidate can make is to assume they know the minds of Black voters better than Black folks know for themselves.
We aren't talking about some monolithic mass incapable of making a decision here.
And I'm reminded of this every time I see Donald Trump try to sell himself to African-American voters, like he recently did at the National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference in Washington, D.C.
It's going to take a lot more than talk and promises to get our votes no matter if it's Democrat or Republican.
And make no mistake about it.
We are watching very closely.
Because we've got too much to lose.
17
@N. Smith
Biden’s positions on health care and immigration are important to my support for him. Nicely complimenting those policy positions is his support among black voters.
In my humble opinion, it is high time white progressives stopped trying to speak for black voters and started listening to them instead.
2
@N. Smith
"If we had world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime."
2020 is not the year to threaten not to show up if the
Democrats don't pander to you as much as you would like. If you play that game too well, you get Trump. Will that make you feel powerful?
@AACNY
Here's a question.
Have you listend to ANYTHING he's been saying about people of color ever since he's been in the White House -- or even before??
No.
I didn't think so.
3
I agree no one should take black voters for granted but i am still
Disturbed that had blacks in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pa. Ohio and florida, all lost by razor thin margins, had voted for Hillary in the same numbers they voted for Obama, Trump would not be president today.
10
Well, at least they will be paying more attention to income inequality than the rest of the uninformed citizenry and the corrupt plutocratic government and plutocratic mass media will.
5
This data should give Democrats pause before moving too far left, but it should also be massive cause for self-reflection for Republicans. Why do conservative minorities who have religious social values and want to cut taxes and the welfare state still vote overwhelmingly Democrat? It’s because the racism (and racism includes xenophobia) in the Republican Party is forcing these people into choosing between a party they disagree with on policy, and one that makes them feel like they don’t belong and have equal status in this country. If we get a far-left government, the racism of the Republican Party will be largely to blame.
20
@HO
The problem isn't Dems moving too far left. The problem is the Democratic party doesn't represent Democratic voters or really even care what they think.
Forget truly liberal outlier issues like Reparations and just look polling for so-called "liberal" issues which have been on the table for a long time. Polls show that a majority of Americans want Medicare for All (depending on how funding is explained), campaign finance reform, more taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation for wall street and big banks, tuition reform, a reduction in military spending, marijuana decriminalization, stricter gun laws, and stronger action on climate change, just to name a few... Yet decade after decade, no real representation on this issues... ever wonder why?
Again, these are polls of all Americans, not just Dems. When you focus on just Dems, the majority is much stronger. So why is it that even when majorities of the population at large support the "liberal" view on these issues, we see no action or change?
How about we just start with having a democracy that represents what majorities of citizens what? Google/youtube "Congress doesn't care what you think". It's a much deeper problem than boggie man concerns about a "far left" government.
11
@HO Agreed. The one issue voter is a block that actually votes based on issues. There is a similar issue that hurts Democrats. As one of the 3% of primary voting Democrats that make up its anti abortion wing (we are a very exclusive club), your reasoning applies to the abortion issue also. One reason for the recent NY state abortion rights law was the credible Republican threat to the existing rights on the national level. Unfortunately for Democrats, that legislation helps reinforce the false perception that Democrats condone late term abortion for any reason (what is the definition of "health"?). A position that at least 70% of Americans voters disagree with and many of those potential votes end up Republican for that reason.
2
@Tim L.
This is typical progressive spin. In the context of this article, you’re telling black voters what they want rather than listening to what they are saying . . . about candidates in particular.
I’m particularly irritated by the notion that all we need to do is explain medicare-for-all correctly. Did it occur to you that voters might already have considered the pros and cons on their own and made an informed decision?
Full disclosure: I think medicare-for-all would be fine, but know I’m inclined to jump the gun on pushing progressive policies, and I respect the opinions of those who think otherwise.
2
The Democrats have adopted some political tactics designed to increase Black voter turnout that in the long term damage all Americans but especially Black Americans.
These tactics include
1. Promoting racial animosity and divisiveness with narratives of slavery 150 years ago and claims of nearly universal racism
2. Depicting Black Americans , as a group, as separate and different than all other Americans
3. Portraying Black Americans, as a group, as victims incapable of success in education, work, and society.
These political tactics are part of the problem, not the solution.
The goal should be to portray Black Americans as Americans like all others.
80
The goal should be to portray us like everyone else. The goal should be to treat us like everyone else.
15
@jck
Excellent advice to treat all Americans as Americans. Does this also extend to Trump, who tells American women of color that should go back to their own country? Does it include his devotees's send-em-back chants (something I don't recall hearing at D rallies)? Or do they all get a pass because they're R's? Just asking.
4
@jck
Thank you for some concise critical points.
The Dems/liberals do no one a favor by pushing the separateness or identical politics trip amongst them. As humans we don't need to emphasize our special identities. It just causes problems.
5
So black Americans have a range of political opinions just like all Americans- should that be a surprise?
The best thing about being white is that we are mostly allowed to have a wide range of beliefs and opinions without having expectations put upon us from the outside. No one is telling me to get "my people" in line when say Timothy McVay blows up a building and kills 100's. Perhaps that same courtesy should be extended to everyone.
122
@Hugh G
So, we should acknowledge that people are more defined by the content of the character than the color of their skin?
What a concept.
26
@Hugh G
Seems to me we’re ALL forced to shoe-horn ourselves into ridiculous Democrat vs. Republican, Left vs. Right dichotomies that are framed mostly to exclude things the powers that be want to exclude: any serious discussion of inequality, antitrust enforcement, corruption, etc.
5
@Hugh G
You are probably not Jewish. Though most Jews are white, we too, just like blacks, are told to get "our people" in line in any number of situations.
3
Research also shows that black voters under the age of 40 don't even bother going to the polls because they're probably smarter & feel more than any other people that they live in a corporate dictatorship and not a constitutional republic or democracy and the false left-right paradigm that they're being fed wont change that.
1
@Michael Sorensen
If they are not going to vote, no need to pander to them. Suits me.
3
We can stop separating "Black Voters" from the working poor. Why must we use the term
"Black Voters" when it is really all the poor that are in that lower income of voters. When will we ever become a country of equals.
7
If there's one thing Dems know how to do, it's snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Leonhart's stats the other day were jaw dropping.
Some how we've ceded our advantage with all the radical rhetoric. Realistic, pragmatic, compassionate; it's not all that hard. Let the long arc bend on its own time.
12
While it is important to understand and appeal to black voters, it should not be done at the expense of other minority groups. I still remember Bill de Blasio's despicable attempts to cut the number of Asian students in elite high schools by half and quintuple the number of black students, despite the fact that the Asian students were mostly from low income backgrounds and were just as disadvantaged as the black students.
18
@Sarah Johnson
There-in lies the problem. We’re all broken up in piecemeal minority & special interest groups instead of just Americans, all of us ONE NATION! This is why multi-culturalism never works. Multi-ethnic societies have to have a unifying vision and a collective identity f not then they’ll be just small collectives fighting each other for a larger share of the pie. Ugh!!!
1
I am not sure I understand this article. Who exactly is taking black voters for granted? It is apparent that the opposite is true. I would go as far to say that Democratic candidates are shamelessly pandering to African American voters.
Elizabeth Warren and other candidates are supporting reparations for African Americans, though slavery concluded 150 years ago. Based on the polls, this is one of the least palatable policies in recent memory. It is borderline disastrous in a nation election, where independent voters hold much sway.
Meanwhile, Corey Booker speaks histrionically about criminal justice reform and the high incarceration rate of blacks. Same for Beto who loves acknowledging his white privilege.
Trust me, Democratic candidates want the black vote and have made no secret about it.
18
@Mark
Pandering? I don’t know about that.
But one thing I do know for a 100% certainty: life for black people is worse with the GOP I charge.
Only time will tell if the modern Democrat field is just saying what they think people want to hear, or if they’ll actually fight to enact their agenda.
2
@Mark
They just want to take it away from Biden, who has spent most of his life earning it.
The policies of the Democrats are hardly progressive by any measure. Only when the Republican propaganda machine sinks their teeth into them churning out slogans faster than a short order cook slings hash, do the moderate, 21st century solutions appear to signal some regression to early 20th century Marxism.
The Dems would be better served working on messaging that counters the Republican fear-mongering than their constant faux shock at Trump's amoral, intellectually empty, self enriching presidency. Give the voters a clear message, not of hope and change, but of purpose for a better future, and Trump, Mr Lock 'Em Up and King of Chaos, will be out on his ear in a year.
21
@MKKW
You forgot to say "in my opinion". Because clearly, what may be mainstream to you is progressive to others. For example, just because many European countries have single-payer healthcare systems does not mean that eliminating private health insurance in America is mainstream. To the contrary, it is, in my opinion, very much part of traditional socialist dogma. The fact that two of the three front runners for the Democratic nomination are supportive of single-payer also shows that it is part of the current Democratic platform.
It is far too easy to blame opposition and negative perception around ideas like single payer as a result of "Republican propaganda" than it is to acknowledge that these types of ideas may be unpopular because they are not good ideas or at the very least ideas that most Americans are ready to accept.
If we are ever going to be able to have people of different political persuasions work together again, we can't fall into this good vs evil trap that helps each side explain away the other without so much as a little bit of self reflection.
25
@John
Thanks to polling, majority opinion isn't a subjective argument based on your opinion or those of the articles author. The fact is, polling consistently shows that our leaders, even the Democratic ones, are creating policy that's significantly to the right of majority public opinion. Try a google/youtube search on "Congress doesn't care what you think."
Polls show that a majority of Americans want Medicare for All (depending on how funding is explained), campaign finance reform, more taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation for wall street and big banks, tuition reform, a reduction in military spending, marijuana decriminalization, stricter gun laws, and stronger action on climate change, just to name a few...
Again, these are polls of all Americans, not just Dems. When you focus on just Dems, the majority is much stronger.
4
I see the logic in this research, but, the problem with research is it ignores emotion---I can't believe that after three years of Trump's overt racism, that emotion is running high in black communities---almost at the level of President Obama's campaigns.
4
@Amanda Jones
I hope you are right!
Democrats repeatedly take Black voters for granted. They tease with reparations, then they throw that issue to the back of the bus in the general election. Black voters interested in jobs and wage growth may want to consider what will happen if a Democratic candidate wins their war against business. They may also want to consider the fortunes of Democrat run cities and states. If Democrats can continue to bait and switch Black voters, they may very well win in 2020.
16
@TL Guess who will pay the higher carbon taxes, to fund the Green New Deal. Those will be your reparations.
At some point, someone, besides me, will ask, when will we know we have stopped climate change?
1
It's true that many blacks are more conservative than white Democrats like myself.
One example is that black support of gay marriage has historically lagged behind white support of gay marriage....a bit shameful considering the historical struggles of African Americans.
But it also appears in this essay that African-American voters are able to keep their conservatism in perspective when casting a ballot in the voting booth and they are not duped into voting for God, Guns and Greed, preferring instead the sensible, boring Democratic public policy of fair taxation, public education, infrastructure, voting rights, civil rights, environmental protection and funding the government.
No one should take any voter for granted, but most Americans - including the overwhelming majority of black voters - know that a vote for Randian Republican Reverse Robin Hoodism is an act of self-mutilation.
November 3 2020 will be a massive Republican wipeout thanks to voters of all colors who recognize that God-Guns-and-Greed Over People is wretched public policy.
88
@Socrates, November 2020 will only be a "Republican wipeout" if minority register (now) and show up to vote.
In all likelihood, the election will be very, very close, and black voter turnout will be the difference between a new President (who is not a White supremacist) and four more years of Trump.
14
@Socrates
Democrats would win a lot more elections if they didn't label most white racists for their reluctance to embrace large government programs and high taxes, if they didn't label most blacks "shameful" for their opinions on social issues, and if they didn't imply that most Americans are stupid by claiming they are "duped into voting". The arrogance is astounding. Many people vote for Democrats not because they agree with Democratic policy planks, but because they want to keep Republicans out of power. Don't be deluded into thinking that a majority of Americans support the views of the educated white elite.
And that is why the "massive Republican wipeout" could turn into a triumph for Trump. He can't make it happen, but Democrats may do it for him.
4
@Socrates
Oh, really. So because a person has black skin you're surprised that they also can hold prejudices? How does that make sense?
1
Much to agree with in this analysis. Black Democrats are clearly more socially conservative than white Dems, for example on LBGTQ issues which seems curiously absent from the examples. However far more troubling to me is the missing class component. The dichotomy between racial discrimination and personal initiative as the two culprits in Blacks’ disadvantage just totally leaves unaddressed the fact that the vast majority of blacks are workers rather than owners. Where is the understanding that class plays a critical role in Black life prospects, just as it does for whites? Do authors of these studies presume that all would be okay in Black America if only there were no racial disparities or people without sufficient personal initiative? A look at the condition of white working classes who also suffer from low pay, gig economics, trade deals shifting jobs overseas, busted unions, opioid abuse, wealth and income inequality and so on should dispel that notion. Race and personal qualities are clearly factors, but the stark reality is that we live the in a country that produces haves and have nots, lately far more of the latter. Black and white political positioning across both parties has to be seen in that context.
7
This is, of course, what happens in a "big tent" party; not everyone in the tent is going to have the same views about everything, particularly as regards "social" issues.
What Edsall describes here is important, but hardly a new phenomenon; it has echoes in the 20th century of the difficulties with reconciling the views of economically liberal but socially conservative religious Catholics with other strains of Democrats.
Of course, that eventually resolved itself with a lot of those Catholics starting to vote Republican, even if their party affiliation lagged due to inertia. Obviously, one of the latent fears hinted at in Edsall's column is that African American voters might start doing the same, although it might not happen as quickly, given the obvious racism that emanates from a lot of Republicans. Still, it is a concern--which is why many believe the best strategy to keep the Democratic coalition together is to emphasize issues of economic fairness and unite around "de-rigging" the game.
One other note--it's important Edsall notes the lessened turnout among for Hillary among African American voters, compared to that for Barack, contributing to her defeat (especially among men in Midwest urban areas). All due respect voter suppression efforts and social media disinformation, there is still a lot about turnout that's tribal, and the DNC really needs to get outreach going for those voters, and put a lot of its effort there for 2020.
10
Thanks for giving us a much needed dose of reality.
The problem with the Democrats is that if they run too far to the so-called center they have the progressives vote for Jill Stein. If they go too far to the left they have the moderates stay home.
The best Democratic ticket would have a mixture of politics, gender and race. Unfortunately, the ticket has only two slots. But you could easily see a hypothetical mix of Joe Biden and Stacie Abrams pulling it off. Or Elizabeth Warren and Eric Holder.
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Agreed no one should take black voters for granted. But Democrats risk everything if they take swing voters for granted because they will decide this election. Swing voters ARE NOT decisively liberal, even radical, on economic issues. In fact, they are the exact opposite. Democrats have to address THEIR concerns first. Because if they don't the GOP surely will. If Democrats nominate a progressive candidate then all is lost. This is political suicide. There is no progressive majority in America & never will be. The numbers are simply not there. And there certainly is no progressive Electoral College coalition in America that could get to the needed 270 votes. This point can't be emphasized enough: almost every progressive candidate in whom Democrats invested tremendous time, money, & emotional energy in 2016— lost. Almost every progressive initiative on the ballot in this country was voted down. What progressives & their co-dependents will never understand is that far-left mobilizes it's opponents to an even greater degree. Anti-left” will always beat “anti-Trump” in most places in this country but especially in swing states like Ohio & Florida. Many pundits misread the midterms claiming the Dems the center of gravity has shifted. But to many voters, Progressivism means trigger warnings, vile college protests & obnoxious academics who posture as their will on earth. They hate these people to their very core. Our best chance for a 2020 victory is to run a moderate.
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@Bill Brown
True. And it appears that at lest for now, the only moderate with a shot at the nomination is Biden. As much as I like Joe Biden, I wish some younger moderate candidates had greater visibility. I think we do need a moderate to win, and if Joe Biden's gaffs start adding up to a real problem, we are sunk.
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@Bill Brown
You, like many, use "progressive" as a synonym for things like "trigger warnings, vile college protests & obnoxious academics..." and (correctly) state that Republicans and swing voters "...hate these people to their very core."
So how would you characterize someone like Sanders, who gives short (if any) shrift to such things, focusing instead on economic opportunity, adequate compensation and just treatment for working people, tax fairness, affordable education and health care?
The notion of a unitary "progressiveism" whereby one must embrace an entire laundry list of positions from the most questionable and parochial to the most substantive and universal is a false dichotomy, and so is the either/or characterization of people as "progressive" or "moderate".
In the midst of your obvious antipathy toward things like "trigger warnings" I'd encourage you not to discard the broadly relevant and vital economic justice baby with the more marginal socially "progressive" bath water.
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@Joe Runciter As a formerly enthusiastic Bernie supporter, I am now in the Biden camp. I don't care if he misspeaks and is less than sharp. He doesn't have to have the intellect of Obama. He can be a "caretaker" president, occupy the White House in lieu of another four years of Trump, and appoint competent people to carry out the work of repairing our image abroad and cleansing the government from corrupt Trump appointees.
Despite the attention that the NY Times, CNN and MSNBC have devoted to the squad - ex-bartender AOC and her merry band of narcissists - adopting their "brand of policy" will give us a two-term Trump and a conservative Supreme Court for decades to come.
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EDSALL Has produced a masterful report comparing opinion polls of African Americans and Caucasians, using percentage points as the basis for his inferences. That's all well and good as far as it goes. However, the question of shifting preferences related to ethnic group is complex, requiring, for validity, a more complex and sophisticated statistical model, showing, as suggested by the quote of one researcher, the covariance of factors. Using the model that employs multiple analysis of covariance (the acronym for which is MANCOVA), would show more about the interaction of all the factors considered, as well as showing individual factorial variances. Still, it has long been the case that African Americans hold more conservative views on social issues than those of other groups. For example, the acceptance of LGBTQ persons among African Americans seems to be less than that of other groups. From firsthand observations, it seems that child rearing practices have long been more conservative among African Americans than other groups, due to the prevalence of the Spare-the-Rod-Spoil-the-Child beliefs and practices among African Americans. Still the number of African Americans whom I know personally, who support Trump and the GOPpers seems to be diminishingly small.
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Fascinating analysis from Mr. Edsall on a critical voting bloc within the Democratic party. This helps explain why Black voters seem to prefer Joe Biden to all of the other front runners, since Biden represents not just a tether to Obama, but also a return to center-left politics. I think Elizabeth Warren, in particular, will have a hard time convincing Black voters to support her in the primary. Her academic lecture style although comprehensive and thorough, may not play well with an audience whose politics are more centrist.
Even more interesting is the implicit dig at white Democrats who have moved much farther left, in part, due to issues like discrimination and racism, which disproportionately impact POC. It will be fascinating to see how the Democrats try to reconcile their differences on issues like illegal immigration. Per the NYT, at least 67% of Americans oppose the abolition of ICE, decriminalizing border crossings, etc, yet many of the candidates support just the opposite.
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@John
Romneycare, low interest rates, high prison rates, expensive medical care, kowtowing to the rich are what comprise center LEFT?? politics. What should be considered Center politics? Right politics?
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I think it's safe to say that Republicans do take Black voters for granted at least to the extent that there may be enough Black votes to swing an election toward the Democrats. Evidence for that is overwhelming by the attempts Republicans have made over many years now to suppress the Black vote. The list of attempted voter- suppression laws is long and seemingly endless, and sadly some of the laws and still in place and have been effective in screening out voters Republicans would prefer to disenfranchise.
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@RF
Blacks aren't stupid, when having to choose between a party that is basically nothing more than the Dixiecrat party welded to the big money/Koch Brothers party of greed and self interest, they will choose the party that at least pretends to care about them and their issues. When you have a party with a president who looks at the violence in Chicago, that is killing mostly minority folks, and he uses it to denigrate the city and the people in it (not to mention that among his base, Chicago translates to "black city", ie that 'those people' are nothing more than criminals and the like).
Put it this way, blacks are not necessarily socially progressive, especially older blacks who vote, they aren't necessarily pro lgbt, many of them because of the black church and its influence are against sex ed and abortion, but they also understand what is important and that the GOP basically uses blacks as a punching bag to inflame their base. Blacks also aren't for unimpeded immigration, and not without cause, immigrants often do undercut wages for the kind of jobs blacks could get (construction is a classic example, when blacks finally were able to break in, suddenly you had construction being done by illegal hispanic immigrants working as day laborers)....but they also, unlike the white working class, aren't going to allow that conservatism to make them vote against their own self interest and vote for a party that works against them.
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Thank you Thomas Edsall for this informative article. I am well aware that Democrats will not win the presidency in 2020 without the black vote and turnout. I am an activist who pays close attention to politics, but my ignorance of African American views is proof that I live in a fairly hermetic bubble. Keep 'em coming.
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@Bec
So, the onus is on Edsall and his ilk to draw readers like yourself out of their "fairly hermetic bubble"?
This comment is frustrating because it almost exemplifies the old adage of leading a horse to water.
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Well, this is a serious issue long-term, but bit is not really an issue this time once we get a nominee. The Black people with whom I talk are strongly motivated to vote out Trump. One guy told me that black males feel like they are targets right now and that white Trumpers are openly asserting dominance in public spaces and stores by their actions, comments and -loud conversations.
In the long run, the Progressive Wing of the Party will have to grasp the nettle that the black vote and white moderate vote are the majority of the Party nationwide.
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@Lefthalfbach
Agreed, but so many of the comments I read here are to the effect that: if I can't have Bernie, I'd rather have Trump. it is dispiriting, to say the least.
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@Ken
It is indeed but that is classic "...progressive..." not to say Marxist theory. If they cannot get what they want then they want the Right in power in order to radicalize more people.
Voters in key states who were discouraged from voting by specious Facebook posts in 2016 may now present a litmus test for the premise of responsible democracy.
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In other words, the Democratic Party needs to stop allowing the white vision for Blacks to exist versus the Black vision for Blacks. Also, a major issue is that the Dem coalition is much more diverse than the GOP coalition. It is much more difficult for the Dems to provide a cohesive message.
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I'm glad to see this topic addressed (finally) in the press. I am a white person who has been living in a majority-Black neighborhood in NYC for 34 years. Over the years, as I got to know my friends and neighbors, this became clear for me: Black people who vote for the Democratic party, on average, are more conservative than one might think they would be given their voting patterns. I have had many conversations over the years where a friend or neighbor, with whom I have joyfully gone to the voting site to vote for Democrats on Election Day, has expressed views which have surprised me. These views were often so conservative I have wondered why they vote as they do. Part of the explanation is here, in this article.
This article should be important reading for Democrats, in particular. For those who, truly, have taken Black voters for granted over the years, it should be a sign that a mass rush for the most progressive positions is not necessarily a winning strategy.
In other words, much as I love Pete Buttigieg and his platform, he doesn't need to convince only people like me. He has to convince my upstairs neighbor, and their cousins in North Carolina.
I use Buttigieg only as an example. This applies to every one of the candidates for President in the Democratic party. If they do not pay attention, Trump gets another 4 years.
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@Andy Jo Mr. Edsall (as always) provides us with excellent deeply researched analysis.
If I may, i'd like to extend the analysis to a group that I belong to; observant Catholics. We vote, and yet there seems to be no emphasis from the Dem Party to speak to us. It is a travesty of our religion that our leaders do the bidding of the GOP from the cathedra and from the pulpit. But, I have hope that the stranglehold on the Catholic vote can be broken with the right message and the right messenger.
In that, it's going to have to be a hybrid message from the Party. I actually think that Mayor Pete does an excellent job in speaking religion- but he may not resonate with black voters.
We long for the communication skills and gravitas of President Obama. But unlike Obama, there is just no single person in the field who can speak to all groups.
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@Andy Jo, this is all very nice and nuanced, but the occupant of the White House is a White supremacist. What could possibly cause black voters to vote Republican, or to stay home, in 2020?
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"Whites were nearly three times as likely as blacks to describe the moral dimension in terms of religious leaders, organizations or denominations. Blacks, on the other hand, were more likely to describe this dimension in terms of knowing the difference between right and wrong, traditional values, and the expected behaviors that accompany each side of the moral divide."
The above encapsulates the feelings of "conservative" African-Americans. I seriously doubt that most whites, especially those who are die-hard supporters of Donald Trump, have ever thought that black citizens bring to the political equation such complexity and diversity as mentioned above. It is as though Democrats always took African-Americans for granted while Republicans always dismissed them generally.
"...the difference between right and wrong" is very much key here. Republicans have declaimed against "small government" and a deification of market forces but have been slow (or hostile) toward the integration of disadvantaged groups. It's racism, pure and simple, but Republicans mask it by trotting out an encompassing moral worth and value to "individual initiative." It's a double-edged sword: they value it in themselves but not in others.
"Traditional moral values" describes a faith-based approach to living that has always undergirded the African-American experience. Republicans point to crime and social dysfunction as the causes of a black pathology from which they, themselves, have always benefited.
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