In a somewhat unprecedented column, Charles Blow reluctantly addressed the prospects of a significant share of black voters abandoning the Democratic Party. He sought to understand at least some of their legitimate concerns whereas in the past, liberals have universally attempted to demonize any blacks who strayed.
Famously, in 2020 when interviewed by Charlamagne tha God, candidate Biden said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” In 2022, Roland Martin condemned as disgraceful African-American ministers who allied themselves with Donald Trump. And just two weeks ago Charles Barkley claimed, “If I see a Black person walking around with Trump mugshot, I’m gonna punch him in the face.”
Despite these efforts, cracks began to appear in the 2022 elections. In NYC, 90 percent of black voters did select the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Cathy Hochul. However, black voter turnout plummeted. This decline was most dramatic in the Bronx, the poorest and most nonwhite borough, where it declined from 36% to 24% while it remained the same outside New York City. In Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit, turnout fell 10 percent to 12 percent beneath 2018 levels while turnout increased in the rest of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Blow correctly notes, “For Democrats, the fear isn’t that Black voters will begin to vote differently from other voters, but that they’ll begin to vote like other voters.” He notes that they might support Trump on a range of issues:
Black voters remember the stimulus checks that went out in 2020 with Trump’s name on them.” And there are Black voters who believe that the business environment was better under Trump than it is under Biden. … And there’s also the Black community’s relatively high religiosity that pushes some voters to resistance and others to resignation. …Then there are the issues specific to this election cycle like the war in Gaza and concerns about the candidates’ ages and competence.
The problem is that Blow doesn’t mention any of the prime issues that underpin why a significant share of black voters are shifting: schooling, immigration, crime, and abortion. A large share of black Americans favors charter schools over traditional public schools because of consistent evidence that low-income black students perform substantial better in charter than in traditional public schools. The rejection of the traditional public school only increased as, pandemic public schools closings robbed student of the instruction they needed, causing already large black-white school deficits to grow. In the last year teachers’ unions, together with their liberal Democrat allies, have stifled charter school expansions in many cities. In Los Angeles, a new regulation severely restricted the space available for charter schools. The Illinois legislation voted again to severely limit the number of charter schools in Chicago. And in New York, an anti-charter coalition was able to reduce from 14 to 5 the number of new charters allowed in New York City.
As undocumented immigrants streamed into northern cities, many in black communities reacted angrily. In New York City, they decried having makeshift shelters in their communities. In Chicago, it was the government shifting funds to migrant care. “We already feel like we’re being underserved, now the resources are going to other people who didn’t sort of wait their time in line,” [UrlBlockedError.aspx]said author Michael Collins. They also understand that illegal immigration harms black workers as employers have a greater supply of less-skilled workers.
Urban crime and gun violence in black neighborhoods also put liberal Democratic policies at odds with black concerns. While the black urban public has some issues with policing, it overwhelmingly rejected the defund-the-police movement. Even after the George Floyd murder, 81 percent of black Americans surveyed wanted either the same or a greater amount of police in their neighborhoods. In the 2021 New York City Democratic primary, 63% of black New Yorkers voted for the law-and-order candidate Eric Adams but only 15% for his black opponent Maya Wiley who desired to move crime prevention away from police to neighborhood anti-violence groups.
Even on the issue of abortion, there is strong dissent from the dominant Democratic position. Like other groups, the majority of black Americans opposes the extreme anti-abortion position of some conservatives. In 2020, however, only 46% of black Americans believed abortion is morally acceptable and only 32% believed it should be allowed under all circumstances.
Blow’s blinders are symptomatic of the Democratic leadership’s approach: an unwillingness to consider that the party’s positions on many issues are at odds with the sensibilities and interests of the working class. While this leadership may be correct that only a small share of discontented black Americans will vote for Trump, unless its position changes on at least some of the pressing issues, it is likely that black turnout will again be low. And low black turnout in battleground states may cause Biden to lose; an outcome many of his critics like myself do not want to see happen.
