Why Black Voters Prefer Establishment Candidates Over Liberal Alternatives

[Tom Rinaldo]

36. Iowa and NH are flawed, not meaningless. And so, in a sense, is SC.

The white vote in Iowa and NH is disproportionately large, to a very significant extent, in those states than is either the electorate as a whole or the Democratic base. To a significant degree the opposite is true of SC regarding the Black vote.

I wholeheartedly support having SC and Nevada front ended in the primary/caucus cycle. In fact I would like for Washington DC to vote immediately after NH, if not before. Iowa, NH and Washington DC are small population contests to campaign in, which makes it possible for Democratic candidates who previously lacked a major national profile and the big league funding that goes with it to get a toehold in the race that they can subsequently expand upon.

While I don't want relatively lily white states like Iowa and NH to dominate the Democratic selection process there are some (probably unpopular) observations that I think should be made. Over the last few decades Democratic Presidential candidates have usually been competitive in Iowa and NH in the General Election. That has not been true for deep southern states like SC. Establishing strength in a swing state in not a bad thing.

A very strong case can be made, for better or for worse, that it was the strong loyalty of southern state African American primary voters that won the nomination for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Hillary Clinton failed to carry any of those states in the General Election. And overall turn out by African American voters in the General Election dropped in 2016 relative to 2012, which was one (among many, Jill Stein for example was another) of the contributing factors to Trump winning the Presidency.

Minorities, especially African Americans, and even more so African American women, have been loyal and strong and indispensable for Democratic presidential victories. Their voices in the nominating process deservedly must be front and center and listened to. But Democrats don't win with minorities alone. A hell of a lot goes into picking a winning presidential candidate, and sometimes with certain people in certain years, an "establishment" identified candidate may not be the most likely to win the actual General Election.