Why Black Voters Support Hillary Clinton

[Her Sister]

https://medium.com/marcushjohnson/why-black-voters-support-hillary-clinton-afcf7e6ff5bb#.idpbdia3a


The 2016 primary season has been a particularly interesting one. Bernie Sanders, the insurgent candidate on the Democratic side, has taken up the label of the candidate of the common man. Although he has energized millions of voters and won several states, he’s done terribly with the most consistent and reliable Democratic voters in the Party — Black voters. Sanders has not cracked 30 percent of the Black vote in a single state, atrocious numbers for a Democrat who wants to be the nominee.

Sanders and his campaign have made several convenient excuses:
1. Black voters will flock to Sanders once they get to know him
2. Voters in “red states” don’t matter, because those states are more conservative
3. The Clintons are a brand, and Bernie is a relative unknown


All of these excuses are problematic, especially for someone who is supposed to be running a national campaign. Votes in South Carolina could just as much as the ones in Washington state, for one. And if Black voters don’t know who Sanders is by now, then the blame lays with the Sanders campaign for doing a terrible job at minority outreach. Perhaps the worst excuse, which we don’t really hear from the campaign, but we do hear a lot from backers on social media, is that Black voters just don’t know what’s in their best interest. This is condescending at best, and racist at worst, the insinuation being that Black people aren’t smart enough to know who the candidates are, what they stand for, or what their own interests are as a group. Black voters are just as intelligent as any other group, and they know their interests just fine. It’s just that they’ve decided Hillary Clinton serves their interests far better than Bernie Sanders. That is why Hillary Clinton has beaten Sanders by 40 points or more with Black voters in every single state that has voted so far.

Black voters’ preferences have perplexed many observers, especially leftists who have found fault with the Clintons for not being “progressive enough,” and angered Sanders backers such as Michelle Alexander, who don’t believe the Clintons “deserve” the Black vote. In the past few months, the entire Clinton Presidency has been relitigated with a particular focus on the crime bill. The crime bill was supposed to be the smoking gun that would turn Black voters against the Clintons this election cycle. That line of thinking has failed mostly there is a lot of confusion from academics about what the bill actually did.
What People Get Wrong About The Crime Bill :...

Pretty long article, lots of good information about Voting Rights, History, the Clintons all the way to Obama

[UMTerp01]

1. I see no lies

He has done horribly with Black voters even though he has made slight inroads. Younger Blacks are more so for Bernie, but you're still finding Hillary winning a slight majority depending on the state. A lot of it does have to do with the Clinton brand and the fact that Bernie has no "street cred". Sanders message is one that actually should appeal to Black voters but for whatever reason it is not translating into votes. As he is going to find out, you can't win the Democratic nomination without the majority support of the Black Dem voting base.

[Her Sister]

2. lol! I can tell you read the article

HRC GROUP!

[Her Sister]

4. Check out the high incarceration rate of Blacks in Vermont

They make around 1% of population but 10% of the incarcerated. Check it out!


Here's How Black People Actually Fare in Bernie Sanders' Home State

What does this mean? Black Vermonters make up just 1.2% of the state's general population, but 10.7% of its incarcerated population. Meaning that, proportionally, there are nearly 10 times more black people locked up in Vermont's jails and prisons on a given day than there are walking its streets.

Few in Vermont seem able to explain how this happened. The black incarceration rate grew faster than any other in the state between 1993 and 2007, before it leveled out and stayed relatively constant. But shortly before its peak, the Sentencing Project reported that Vermont had the second-highest black-to-white incarceration rate in America — topped only by Iowa, another state with a small black population.

http://mic.com/articles/124341/here-s-how-black-people-actually-fare-in-vermont-with-bernie-sanders-as-their-senator#.ykTd5i2Vd

[CalvinballPro]

3. A great summation of the situation:

Nobody’s hands are clean here — Joe Biden wrote the bill, the Clintons pushed it, and Bernie Sanders voted yes and bragged about being “tough on crime” for the next decade. Still, the bill only applied to the 10 percent of US prisoners in the federal system — the other 90 percent are held in state prison systems where the bill had no effect.

A very interesting article.

Edit: Even more awesome facts! (emphasis mine)

The Clintons Built Relationships with Black Voters When It Wasn’t Popular To Do So
We should always remember the context of the time. As we talked about earlier, Republicans won five out of the next six Presidential elections after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Being associated with Black people was not popular politically at the time, in fact, Republicans had rode anti-Black sentiment to rousing success over the past several decades. Democratic Presidential candidates in 1984 and 1988 largely ignored Black voters and went for the white working class vote (it didn’t work out so well). The Clintons were in that political environment, and they still decided to build relationships with Black voters. The Clintons reached out to Black voters in ways that Presidential candidates simply hadn’t done before. President Clinton appointed the most diverse Cabinet in US history when it wasn’t popular to do so. Bill Clinton appointed seven Black Cabinet Secretaries. He appointed more Black people to federal judgeships than were appointed all of 16 years prior to his taking office. In fact, 14 percent of all Clinton appointees were Black — a number that was twice as high as any administration prior. Bill Clinton put Black people in positions of power when it hadn’t been done before, and when it wasn’t very popular with the white working class.

[Her Sister]

6. The Black Caucus signed on it at the time also

Many were involved in the whole thing... including communities all over the USA.


Me too edit: Yes there was a lot of good pieces in the article, could not choose, so just posted the intro.

[Cha]

5. Compelling article.. thank you! And, then BS dismisses Hillary's lead by saying "a lot of that

came from the South".. what a maroon. Who the hell does he think he's fooling?

His fans? They're already there.. he needs to attract more voters not drive them away with his divisive bullshit.

[UMTerp01]

7. It was dismissive and arrogant sounding

It was like he just dismissed it as well thats the south and thats over now, as if those are votes that somehow are less than.

[nini]

12. Last time I looked Southern Democrats had a voice in who their nominee should be

whether or not the state leans repuke is not the issue.. deciding the nominee is.

He is the most un-Democratic candidate I've seen in a while - that wasn't republican at least.

[Cha]

13. I know, huh. we all do.. across this country of ours. And, to be dismissive of a certain

segment of Dems because they didn't vote for you is actually pretty stupid.

When Hillary is asked about young people not being for her.. she says.. "Well I'm for them.." paraphrasing.

nini

[CalvinballPro]

8. Any plans to cross-post this to GDP? I think it's too informative to keep to ourselves.

Rarely do I see anything in the news that provides as much context on an issue as this article does. Sorry for the double reply, but that's how blown away by this piece I find myself. There's no way someone can read that and try to yell "super-predator" as some kind of valid response. The data on the Cabinet and federal appointments alone is proof enough that blacks ARE voting in their best interests when voting for the Clintons.

[Her Sister]

9. Would you mind cross-posting yourself?

Only time I went into GD was to post on Tulsi Gabbard Islamophobia and other interesting info about her!

http://www.alternet.org/comments/civil-liberties/curious-islamophobic-politics-dem-congressmember-tulsi-gabbard

[CalvinballPro]

10. Done. Link included.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511707146

[Historic NY]

11. Very good article and it is spot on.....

I have followed him on my Twitter Feed, he does a good job analyzing.