Trump courts more black voters
[Hat tip: John Hinderaker at Powerline.]
If this ends up actually working, Democrats will be in trouble:
President Trump is opening 15 urban campaign field offices in an aggressive bid to improve his performance with black voters, who for decades have been an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency.
Sleek and situated in retail shopping districts to generate foot traffic, this unique collection of regional “community centers” is a critical component of the Trump campaign’s multimillion-dollar strategy to double in 2020 the 8% support the president received from black voters nearly four years ago…
Five offices are slated for Florida: Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. In North Carolina, branches are opening in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro. Others will be located in Atlanta, Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee.
These cities were probably very carefully chosen, too, as places where changing even a small percentage of black voters’ views to Trump’s side will have the most bang for the buck in terms of being meaningful in winning the state. Note that there are none in New York or California cities. Perhaps the calculation is that that would be wasted effort in states so overwhelmingly blue.
I’ve written before about the effort by Trump – and black conservatives such as Candace Owens – to appeal to black voters. If such a campaign is at all successful, it would be a nightmare for the left. The Democratic Party counts on a nearly monolithic support from black voters to win many states, and any significant defection from that allegiance could be very significant.
Trump is wise to use some resources on this. Perhaps the effort won’t pay off, but if it reaches some sort of critical mass it could be key. Black voters vote Democratic these days in such overwhelming numbers for many reasons, some of it historical and dating back to the 30s and FDR and then the 60s and the Civil Rights legislation. Barack Obama being a Democrat didn’t hurt any, either. But I don’t get the impression that black voters are leftist in ideology, and (as many have pointed out) there is a rather broad streak of social conservation among black voters.
You can see some of the history in this chart:
What you can’t see in that chart is that until FDR, black voters were reliably Republican. You can read a comprehensive article about the switch under FDR here (I haven’t read it). At the time, though, the switch to the Democrats by black voters was just part of a large switch to Democrats among voters generally. It was sparked by the Great Depression and FDR, who received about 61% of the general popular vote in 1936 – and, according to the chart I put up, 71% of the black vote. in 1940 that rose to 62.5% for FDR in the overall vote, and black voters went for him 67%, according to the chart. So, not all that different.
But those percentages for the black voters and the Democratic candidates held, even during the Eisenhower years, and in 1964 there was another huge leap to the almost monolithic Democratic voting among black people that we still see today.
Until now.
It’s an uphill battle. Some of this affiliation with the Democrats is – like most political affiliations – force of habit and surrounding culture. If a person grows up knowing almost all Democrats, it’s hard to break the mold. That’s why black spokespeople such as Owens might be very important.
I very much doubt that Trump will win a higher percentage of the black vote than in 2016, despite the best efforts of such an interesting young person as Candace Owens, whose speech this morning at CPAC was very impressive. I also believe that Bernie, who, unless sabotaged by the DNC, will be the nominee of the donkeys, is overwhelmingly likely to choose a black woman as his VP; this will strengthen even further his appeal to non-white voters, and even Muslims are now favoring him.
Trump’s efforts are admirable, but I doubt the will be successful. The “Trump is racist” meme runs deep.
Black employment is at its highest level…ever.
Candace Owens is not alone.
The #walkaway movement may be just the tip of the iceberg. That is because like Ronald Reagan, far more liberals perceive the Democratic Party as having left them, than them leaving their party. The 2016 election was a harbinger of what the radical seizure of the democrats foretells.
The Left’s portrayal of Trump as racist is contradicted by an utter lack of evidentiary support.
Democrat’s have utterly ignored Lincoln’s warning; “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.”
I think djt has the potential to garner 15% of the black vote, a real game changer should it occur.
I have a good friend who is serving time in a state prison in the deep south. He is white while the majority of his fellow inmates are black. During the Super Bowl commercial featuring Alice Johnson’s release from prison (due to sentencing reform), he said that the black inmates watching the game were rapt – he said that you could hear a pin drop. I think that Trump is having an impact on the black community. I would be surprised if he did not have a notable % bump up from the 2016 election.
“The “Trump is racist” meme runs deep.”
I don’t disagree with you, but I sure don’t understand it. Have you any idea what underlying statements/actions are the basis for this idea? I haven’t heard or seen anything that supports it. Same with the anti-female statements people make.
During the 1950s, black voters had preference distributions similar to those you’d see among core-city ethnics generally. There wasn’t much out of the ordinary about it on the face of things. I suspect what happened is that in 1964 you had a radical change in the sources of black voter preferences. Before that date, you had a number of vectors at work producing a resultant. After 1964, voting was an identity affirmation and quite insensitive to circumstances. IOW, there was a significant regression in the sophistication of the black electorate.
It would be agreeable if Trump could catalyze another political ecosystem flip which would include a reconstitution of the political culture of the black population, but I’m not holding my breath.
Have you any idea what underlying statements/actions are the basis for this idea?
Democrats make this accusation routinely. Truth isn’t a value for liberals under 70. That aside, the source of the complaint, one might wager, is the same as it was contra Mayor Koch 35 years ago. Trump isn’t deferential to the client groups of gentry liberals. Liberal politics these days turns almost completely on status considerations. Clerisies composed of gentry liberals define the strata and their clients assert themselves according to assumed or assigned status. Since Trump and his supporters are low-status persons in these taxonomies, they are forever speaking out of turn. So, Trump says that illegal aliens are a lower calibre than the ordinary run of people in their countries of origin and that a lot of illegal aliens are criminals (a positive statement subject to verification and critique) and it’s simply outrageous in their minds because he being deplorable has no franchise to refer to the short-comings of the Anointed’s mascots. Look at this ghastly creature declaiming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GSPrl20BE
Similarly the ‘Black Lives Matter’ discourse. It seems like irrational risk assessment on the face of it: your chances of being shot dead by a police officer in questionable circumstances are close to nil. Only about 7% of the blacks in this country who die by homicide are killed by non-blacks and metropolitan regions typically see only one or two cases a year of such homicides. But it begins to make sense if you realize that black chauvinists and liberals don’t care about social violence but do care about status. The whole mess in Sanford, Florida in 2012-13 and in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014 involved a person of lower status (one an insurance office employee involved in neighborhood watch, the other a police officer) invoking common-and-garden community standards against a person of higher status. It worked this way in the minds of the feral young men in question, of the race hustlers, and of gentry liberals. “Black Lives Matter” actually means, “Your life doesn’t, peasant”.
“TRUMP CHANGE, not chump change” would make a great billboard in black working-class neighborhoods.
Even if the effect on the black vote is marginal, it will send a message to white suburban women if Trump makes a positive effort to show how his policies have helped black people.
>>“The “Trump is racist” meme runs deep.”
>>I don’t disagree with you, but I sure don’t understand it. Have you any idea what underlying statements/actions are the basis for this idea?
No, there’s no rational basis for that, but there’s nothing white suburban women fear more than being called racist. Never mind whether they are or aren’t racist–it’s a fate worse than death to be seen as such.
[BTW, I’m not hung up on white suburban women, but they happen to make up a significant fraction of swing voters, and they’ve been stampeded by the “orange man bad” meme.]
“it’s a fate worse than death to be seen as such.”
There’s nothing herd animals fear more than being ostracized.
The important thing about Trump’s outreach to black voters isn’t whether or not it succeeds. It is that Trump, of all people, is showing us a way out of the demographic race war scenario. A lot of political thinking the last 20 or so years has been undergrid by the idea of a non majoritarian future where power is held by white liberals backed up by reflexively voting minority groups and conservatives doomed to irrelevance by the decline in the white population. Only the racialists on the Right are honest or self-aware about it but just look at the GOP autopsy after Romney’s loss in 2012. It was essentially a declaration of surrender to the Left.
But, and despite what right-wing racialists believe, voting habits are not genetic. There are reasons that blacks and Hispanics and other minority groups vote for Democrats. Those reasons are not always rational but non-rational motivations are still very real.
Trump is the first mainstream Republican/figure on the right to understand this and focus on giving minorities, particularly blacks, actual REASONS to support him. Before this, conservative “outreach” to African-Americans was primarily high-sounding rhetoric and policy proposals that were truly aimed at impressing white suburban wine moms.
It may not succeed with Trump but at least it is an alternative theory that MIGHT work and which gives the Right something besides capitulation or total embrace of white grievances politics. Hopefully conservative intellectuals, even Trump supporters, can give up their obsessive delusions about Trump’s “ incompetence” and “stupidity” to follow the path he’s showing them.
Mike
Watch it and cringe, as Tom Steyer takes to the stage in South Carolina, to
“dance” and “rap” to the tune “Back that Azz Up” in an attempt to “get down” with black voters in South Carolina.
See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8058323/Steyer-dances-Azz-rapper-Juvenile-South-Carolina-rally.html
Right up there with Dukakis and the Tank.
For a reminder see https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/dukakis-and-the-tank-099119
And who can forget Senator Kerry at NASA?
See http://images.politico.com/global/2013/11/15/7-ap040727010312-1_1160.jpg
and policy proposals that were truly aimed at impressing white suburban wine moms.
I doubt ‘enterprise zones’ were a proposal meant to impress ‘suburban wine moms’.
“I doubt ‘enterprise zones’ were a proposal meant to impress ‘suburban wine moms’.“
Whatever their merits as policy, enterprise zones were absolutely more about reassuring suburban whites that the GOP was not racist than they were about attracting black votes.
Look at the recent criminal justice reform law. It is entirely plausible that a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio would also have signed such legislation. I absolutely guarantee, however, they would have focused on waving it in the face of white America to prove how not racist they are, unlike Trump who is using to directly appeal for black votes.
Mike
Whatever their merits as policy, enterprise zones were absolutely more about reassuring suburban whites that the GOP was not racist than they were about attracting black votes.
Thanks for the ex cathedra pronouncement. It’s been an education.
“It’s been an education.“
I’m sorry, what is your contention here? That the GOP and conservatism has been diligently and sincerely courting black voters for decades and just utterly failing? Why would that be? Because Republicans are the WORST politicians ever invented or is it because black people are just too stupid to know what’s good for them?
You seem like a bright and fairly well educated guy but, like most of us, you also seem to believe some things that just aren’t so.
Mike
“Trump is the first mainstream Republican/figure on the right to understand this and focus on giving minorities, particularly blacks, actual REASONS to support him.”
“Look at the recent criminal justice reform law. … Trump who is using to directly appeal for black votes.”- MBunge
Trump started courting black Americans in 2016. You can take your pick of stories, but most of them on the first page of Google search are like these two: they report what he said, and then start denigrating it (yep; I chose that word on purpose).
However, I think the message got through to at least some people (look at the #WalkAway demographics), and then he delivered the economic improvements he promised. I think the Democrats are very worried about him peeling off a significant slice of their voters (it won’t be 95%, doesn’t have to be a large one to make an electoral difference).
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-black-voters_n_57b77ac1e4b03d5136888aaf?guccounter=1
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/what-do-you-have-to-lose-donald-trump-appeals-for-black-vote
He is making a push for black votes that previous GOP incumbents & candidates never even considered trying.
Add the Tuskegee General, the pardon of Jack Johnson, prison reform, and other similar actions to his existing group of prominent black supporters, on top of the economic improvements, and it’s no wonder he’s getting traction in the black community.
On Neo’s comments about the shift in black votes from Republican to Democrat, I don’t need to rehearse for this readership the intent and affect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but you should read Thomas Sowell, a man who knows what he is talking about when he tells us: it didn’t work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth,_Poverty_and_Politics
A review by WaPo is old enough to be out of the paywall, and will give you some concept of what Sowell was exploring.
Despite admitting the instances where Sowell is right, the author dismisses the other instances where Sowell is right by misrepresenting the content, context, and conclusions of the book, and failing to provide evidence for his own contentions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/heres-why-poor-people-are-poor-says-a-conservative-black-academic/2015/09/03/df8ff1fc-1ab4-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html
(
Trump won at least one black voter – Gertrude Stone. She has a great story, and I never heard it; all the press reports and books I know about concern Rosa Parks (who certainly deserves credit for her courage).
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/02/29/89-year-old-civil-rights-icon-shares-her-experience-in-the-segregated-south-n2562375
The bus segregation law was declared unconstitutional in 1956; I didn’t know that either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browder_v._Gayle
Wiki doesn’t have a post on Stone yet.
The GOP ought to follow the advice in this post.
https://www.redstate.com/jeffc/2020/02/29/conservatives-here-is-the-real-reason-why-progressives-call-you-racist/
There was a poll a few months ago that showed black support for Trump surging. I happen to follow Peggy Noonan on twitter, and I was shocked at what she said about this poll — it’s long enough ago that I can’t find it quickly by googling, so I can’t give you the verbatim, but she didn’t believe the results, and she said something like, Where was this poll taken, in the living room of Ben Carson or those two ladies who talk so much? I wish I could remember exactly how she described them — she meant Diamond and Silk, but she didn’t deign to mention them by name, just put them down as nobodies. I couldn’t believe she was so condescending — she is usually all about being nice.
I checked to see how many twitter followers Peggy has. About 190,000. That’s a lot. But guess how many people follow Diamond and Silk on twitter? 1.3 million!! And that is only one of their platforms, they also do events, and stream their videos directly. And they have a book coming out in August — nice timing for the election. These gals are sisters who really like Trump and really dislike the Democrat plantation mentality. They don’t care if people like Peggy Noonan don’t take them seriously for not being highbrow enough, in fact that’s probably a badge of honor — they are regular people with their own funky style, and they play that up; that’s very appealing today.
Then there is Kanye West. I love that he talks openly about how you shouldn’t let people tell you what to think, shame you into silence, etc. Think for yourself is a powerful message, it can lead to big changes if people take it seriously.
And then there is the data — black unemployment is at historic lows, etc.
I think people will be very surprised at how much of the black vote Trump gets this time.