I don’t think this is quite the right way of looking at things.
Some black voters who normally vote Democratic may be willing to consider voting Republican.
In Mississippi last Tuesday, some African-American voters said they voted in the GOP U.S. Senate primary for embattled six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in his battle against state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who enjoys tea party support.
Harris said that many African-American voters align best with the Republican Party on social issues — abortion, gay rights, school choice, prayer in schools — but diverge when it comes to the federal government’s role in protecting civil rights and providing a social safety net. With black voters, “economic issues always trump social issues,” Harris said.
But it’s going to be an uphill climb.
There are plenty of religious, socially conservative blacks who strongly oppose abortion and gay marriage. But they tend to vote Democratic anyway, not simply because of economic interests but also because the Republican Party doesn’t respect them and wants to make it harder for them to vote. In other words, there are social, rather than economic reasons that only four percent of blacks vote for the Republican Party. I would not be surprised if simple things like the birth certificate controversy and other demonstrations of lack of respect for the president cost the GOP several percentage points with the black community. Every time some Republican calls the president a Muslim or a tyrant or lazy, another group of black folks gets pissed off and vows never to align themselves with the former party of Lincoln.
In fact, I’d argue that it is social issues that trump financial issues with the black community, because there are a lot of blacks who make enough money to be tax-averse, but this generally doesn’t lead them to become supportive of Republican candidates. You’ll occasionally see notable exceptions, especially among well-paid athletes or entertainers, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule.
The most counterproductive thing the Republicans have done is to mess with voting rights. Both the legislatures and the Supreme Court have gone after black people’s access to the polls, and that is a sin that will not be forgotten.
The number of African-American voters has increased steadily: 12.9 million in 2000, 14 million in 2004, 16 million in 2008 and 17.8 million in 2012.
In 2012, blacks for the first time voted at a higher rate, 66.2 percent, than did whites, with a rate of 64.1 percent, or Asians or Hispanics, with rates of about 48 percent each.
The entire point of voter ID laws was to suppress the black vote and it did not work. The suppression effort galvanized the black community and they turned out in record numbers. This had nothing to do with economic interests.
In Chicago about 2% of black voters voted for McCain over Obama. I asked a politically active black friend of mine why it was not 100%, perhaps they marked the wrong block? He replied, “Those are rich black folks.”
He then explained that there are still older black voters who remember the Democratic Party supporting segregation and the Klan, so they vote for the party of Lincoln as their families did for generations.
Those same older blacks should also be very familiar with MLK, the CRA, the VRA, and Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
People like Colin Powell – who support affirmative action policies but cling to the GOTP label – are more representative of the black family tradition of voting Republican but he publicly endorsed and voted for Obama twice. It’s just my opinion but the 2% who chose McCain over Obama are the self-haters, like Clarence Thomas, who’ve internalized racist stereotypes about their own people.
I still cling to “pressed the wrong button”, but unfortunately I think you have the right of it.
I think it’s wrong to say black voters think that access to the polls has “nothing to do with economic interests.” Blacks are keenly aware of the politically created and maintained barriers they face in the housing, job, and education markets.
It’s also incorrect to claim that blacks (or any other realists) see abortion and school choice as social issues. Both are clearly and correctly perceived as economic issues.
Gay rights (SSM, not discrimination aspects) and prayer in schools are the only “issues” mentioned that are generally non-economic. And, I’d argue, would only drive black votes if they were presented as referenda.
The GOTP’s insistence on fictional lines between “social” and economic issues is all about divide and conquer. Those lines – especially where they’ve drawn them – are contrivances that make little or no sense to all those who lack the economic security and resources to have “options” (also largely contrived) to decide to abort so they can maintain their figures or select the child’s sex.
Poor whites, largely perceived as voting against their economic interests, may actually be convinced that the racist economic hierarchy they’re supporting is actually their best economic bet. It’s no accident that one of the first things, the GOTP’s Southern Strategy messaging did was convince blue-collar and low wage whites that the Democrats were “for” the blacks and that the liberal elite (Jews, gays, intellectuals) were no longer “looking out” for whites.
These voting rate increases are national figures. Not all states engaged in Repub vote suppression schemes, only Repub-controlled ones could pull the suppression, and the courts stopped some of them from being implemented for the last election, but allowed them to go forward for 2016. I haven’t heard of a (Repub) state that passed a vote suppression scheme deciding to actually repeal it.
These Repub vote suppression schemes WILL work, to the extent they are implemented, they will succeed in blocking some targeted voters. Whether they will also stimulate turnout of the same targeted groups such that there are enough additional minority votes cast to offset the number being suppressed in any given state will be difficult to get at.
One of my neighbors is from Pittsburgh, an ex-Green Beret in Vietnam, and a black Republican from the William Scranton era of Republican politics in Pennsylvania who has never changed his registration. Because of the gratuitous gridlock and disrespect, he sees not one single Republican candidate this year that he can vote for. The GOP party discipline of crazy has gotten that solid.
As for the participation rate, one has to beware of the fact that this is not a presidential year and that it will take hard GOTV work to turn out all of the demographics of Democratic voters.
And white Democratic candidates in red states (cough, Michelle Nunn) need to beware of being too much me-too relative to the Republican candidates. It is much easier for Democrats to suppress their own vote with lukewarm positions than for an actual campaign of voter suppression to actually work. An actual voter suppression campaign spurs turnout as resistance.
Whereas the lukewarm “me too” Democrats discourage turnout of their own partisan voters. As the Bible says somewhere, “Because thou art neither hot nor cold but art lukewarm, I will spew thee from my mouth”. There’s a lot of great English prose in the King James Bible.
What are the rules of the primaries in Mississippi? Can you vote in either primary, but you have to chose one? And Travis Childers isn’t going to exactly inspire anyone to go to the polls. So either Cochran or McDaniel are most likely going to be Mississippi’s Senator next year. So if you can vote in either primary, and your choice is between one ignorant, corrupt fool who keeps his trap shut(Cochran) and one who is loud and proud about his ignorance and corruption(McDaniel), what are you going to do?
Exactly. People do things in the primaries that have no bearing on how they will vote in the fall. Others will vote for someone they hate if he is nevertheless preferable to the alternative. It means nothing.
I’m pretty positive my political views are relatively radical lefty even for most leftists.
I live in Georgia. I’m a registered Republican.
I live in Georgia, too. Lifelong Democratic voter, but never been a registered Democrat. Didn’t know that was even possible or necessary, unless one wanted to prove her political allegiance. Open primaries, and all that.
Why are you a registered Republican?
Well, I guess “registered” is a strong word.
I vote in Republican primaries.
Black people vote their economic interest.
Social issues don’t trump the Social Safety Net.
Bottom line.
We don’t get distracted by bullshyt social issues and vote against our economic interests like White working class folks.
I participated in a voter registration campaign in Tulsa during the 2008 campaign. I asked an AA girl in the grocery check out line if she had registered. She informed me she had, but she wouldn’t be voting for Obama because of the abortion issue. I believe preachers in black churches, especially in the south, push the social issues so there might be more black republican voters that we think. If they don’t vote for the first AA presidential candidate, something or someone is pushing them strongly in a rightward direction.
that would surprise me
Voter ID has increased Black turnout, but treating the first Black President as illegitimate – disrespecting him at every turn – has galvanized Blacks against the GOP in a way that little else can. If they treat him like that then what do they think about me? This is also why the Clintons’ political capital can be valued in Confederate dollars hereabouts…
I see that. At the USPS I work with lots of black people. Many who know me well have expressed disappointment with Obama, but when wingnuts attack him they leap to his defense.
I think I see an analogy. I would be very very disappointed with Andrew Cuomo as the first Italian-American President. But if people started stupid Italian jokes or Mafia references, treating him like an organ grinder, I would be very pissed and defend him too.