The Pragmatic Tradition of African-American Voters

[Cali_Democrat]

African-American support for Hillary Clinton asserted itself again in Wisconsin and accounts for her firm command of the Democratic primary. It is likewise the source of befuddlement and consternation among Bernie Sanders’s supporters. Sanders has energetically promoted racial justice and attracted numerous high-profile black surrogates, all of whom earnestly see his brand of left-wing politics as a natural fit for their community. And African-Americans form the bulwark of the Democratic base, just as white southern Evangelicals do the Republican base. But while white southern Evangelicals have relentlessly pushed their party rightward, by supporting the tea party and other conservative activist movements, African-Americans have played nearly the opposite role in the Democratic Party, helping its mainstream wing to crush its ideologically purist insurgency. From the perspective of a Sanders loyalist, the behavior is puzzling. Why would the party’s most underprivileged community exhibit the least radical tendencies?

Clinton’s dominance of the African-American vote has been explained as a residue of the long-standing ties she and her husband have built over decades on the national scene. Sanders’s failure has likewise been attributed to his decades of confinement to the flamboyantly white state of Vermont. Both factors have surely played a role. But there is a larger and more durable force behind the African-American place in the Democratic Party mainstream: a long historical tradition of highly rational electoral pragmatism.

The Democratic primary is a reprise of the classic purity-versus-pragmatism conflicts that periodically break out in both parties. Purists (on the left and the right) cast voting in morally absolute terms. They believe a hidden majority of the electorate shares their preferences, and a sufficiently committed, eloquent, or uncorrupted leader could activate that majority. Sanders is a classic proponent of this worldview. He has portrayed conservatism as simply a false consciousness constructed by big money and a biased news media, and something that would, in an uncorrupted system, be reduced to 10 percent of the public or less. Pragmatists read the electorate much more pessimistically. They recognize that the other side votes, too, and, having lowered expectations of what is possible in the face of a divided country, recognize that progress will be incremental and weighed down by compromise — sometimes with truly odious forces. That is the history of even the most spectacular episodes of progress in American history. Abraham Lincoln, who was holding together a coalition of voters that included supporters of slavery, refused to support abolition until the very end. Franklin Roosevelt needed the votes of southern white supremacists, and had to design social programs to exclude southern black people in order to pass them through Congress.

No community in the United States is more aware of the power of its enemies than African-Americans. For most of American history, the franchise itself was denied to black voters, who leveraged their precious vote for whatever they could. That did not mean holding out for politicians who would treat them as equal human beings, but merely supporting the less-bad party. In the first half of the 19th century, writes Daniel Walker Howe, “wherever black men had the power to do so, they voted overwhelmingly against the Democrats” — despite lacking anything like a racially egalitarian party to support. The emergence of the Republican Party in the middle of the century provided a vehicle for African-Americans to exercise more leverage. When neither party offered any positive inducement, as they deemed to be the case in 1916, black civic leaders stayed neutral.

Read more:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/pragmatic-tradition-of-black-voters.html

[Gothmog]

1. History supports the OP

It has been been my experience that the OP is correct in its analysis http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/09/bernie_sanders_presidential_campaign_what_would_it_take_for_the_vermont.html

. For as much as black Americans might like his policy positions—which fit their enthusiasm for a stronger safety net—they’re also strategic voters, not ideological stalwarts. Electability is key, and as a consequence, they tend to back the establishment choice: Al Gore over Bill Bradley; John Kerry over John Edwards. On occasion, blacks will back a factional candidate, like Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. But Jackson had the reverse problem—he couldn’t win enough whites.

Again, Sanders would have a stronger campaign if someone could provide a good explanation as to viability

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. And ...

Again, Sanders would have a stronger campaign if someone could provide a good explanation as to viability

Hint: Wailing and calling PoC that aren't on board "low informationed", "lesser educated", psychically scared, mindless followers of leaders, ain't that explanation!

[Gothmog]

7. They did not teach this method of persuasion in my law school

It is a great way to win voters by calling them stupid and "lesser educated".

How are you doing?

[1StrongBlackMan]

8. Nor, mine. ...

I'm doing well ... spending 60-70 hours on the job and averaging 8-10 hours during the weekends doing Democratic GOTV/VR work.

[Coolest Ranger]

2. We know that

our vote is powerful. That's why so many people try to silence or bully us into voting their way. I have a brain, I have one eye and I still have the good mind and the smarts to do research on people and when i like what I see I follow through on it and if my vote doesn't track with what you want well tough. I vote in my best interest for my community

[rusty quoin]

3. It's all true.

White people have the privilege to be all over the place. They also have the privilege to be wrong all the time, and not learn a darn thing. Look at Trump.

Black people have been more careful and pragmatic.

[Cha]

4. Thank you for this, Cali!

I love the pragmatic tradition of African American voters.. they're helping our country immeasurably!

[Uponthegears]

5. While there are parts of the OP article

I can agree with, I have to say that I don't need yet another white guy telling me why "we" vote the way "we" do.

I happen to support Senator Sanders. I have family and people who I count among my friends who support Senator Clinton. Their reasons are many. Some, as the article suggests, have a quasi-fear that demanding too much will result in losing what we have gained. Some, again as the article suggests, believe that policies that "raise all boats" still leave our boats half-full of water and us still with nothing but a coffee can to bail with. Some people believe Hillary's "I'm with you up so long as a majority of white folks are still with you" policies satisfy the priorities they have developed through the experiences and the experiences of their communities (you know, kinda like why white folks think they vote the way "they" do). In short, they didn't choose Hillary just because "that's the way 'we' are."

I support Senator Sanders because, over my more than six-decade life, I have seen the products of incremental-ism. I see many of the gains made during the so-called "Civil Rights Era" not just wiped out, but rolled backwards. Our right to vote is as impaired now as it has been since the days of the poll tax. The VRA, for all intents and purposes, might as well have never been passed. The criminal justice system, notwithstanding the recent window-dressing of the Fair Sentencing Act, chains, disenfranchises, and executes us like we were still on plantations. We were disproportionately the victims the banking collapse. We are being murdered in the streets by cops and vigilantes and the power structure won't even admit that it is happening. What's more, all of this is happening as we are being led by a person of color who is perhaps the greatest president in the history of this country and who has done everything possible to prevent it.

We have been asking for nothing but incremental change and they are STILL pushing us back into the fields. It's not working.

I may well agree that a rising economic tide still leaves us behind, but I believe that there is only one thing that will produce racial justice and, even considering the naivety of Sanders' particular policies, it is something I believe he represents . . .

Revolution.

[Number23]

9. An interesting analysis

And pragmatism inflects the African-American view of how politicians perform in office. Purists see compromise as a sign of moral failure or weakness, an inability to smash a corrupted system. Pragmatists expect political opposition as normal and enduring. A politician who has their best interests in mind and pushes policy in the proper direction is better than the all-too-common alternative. Sanders’s campaign draws much of its strength from the left-wing critique of Barack Obama’s presidency, which it dismisses as largely feeble half-measures. Sanders has attracted Democrats most discontented with Obama’s progress, while Clinton wins those most satisfied, among whom African-Americans are disproportionately represented. Obviously, Obama’s status as the first black president creates a unique bond with black supporters, but much more than racial affinity is at work here.

Rec