Democrats eye black millennial turnout for ’18
Democrats are exulting in their coast-to-coast spanking of the Republican Party up and down the ballot in Tuesday’s elections. So why are so many smart Dems so justifiably nervous about carrying that momentum into 2018?
Maybe they believe that Frederick Douglass was correct: Power concedes nothing without a demand. In America that starts with the great equalizer, the vote. A sure sign is how hard some sacrificed to attain it, while others continue fighting to suppress it.
Last November, it seemed a given that “Obama Coalition” votes of African-Americans and women, young and progressive whites, Hispanics and Asians, would anoint Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. Just as they twice earlier had elected Barack Obama.
Yet back in Reality, USA, the current occupant of the White House is Republican Donald J. Trump, a former reality TV star and accused serial sexual abuser of women, whose campaign is under investigation for allegedly colluding with Russians to get elected.
“But we outnumber them!” has been a lament heard the past year. And yes, U.S. Census data on the racial and ethnic composition of 2012 and 2016 state electorates show a consistent increase of 2 to 4 percentage points in the black, Hispanic and Asian eligible voting population.
Moreover, there was a corresponding decrease in the non-Hispanic white eligible voting population in such states as Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.
But there also was that “pervasive decline in 2016 minority voter turnout,” according to a Brookings Institution report. “Among minority groups, black Americans showed the sharpest decline in voter turnout — 7.1 percent since 2012.”
Dropping the ball
So what was the problem in 2016, especially among African-American voters, long the soul of the Democratic Party — evidenced by the 94 percent of black women who chose Clinton, while 53 percent of white women voted for Trump?
There’s been much brainstorming on that — and whining and finger-pointing and protesting. But is there a plan? Looking back at 2016, what will it take for African-Americans in particular to make a Dem difference in 2018, and beyond?
Some of the keenest insights come from local veteran Democrats who have won and helped others win elections based on knowledge of the political system and African-Americans’ experience with it.
One consensus is that their party was not ready for prime time. That also goes for its most loyal or youngest voters, with so many still lacking the political sophistication to consistently exercise a fundamental privilege.
For sure, “There were a lot of things going on in 2016,” said Port of Palm Beach Commissioner and Democratic activist Jean Enright. “But black people took it for granted. Many didn’t want to vote for a woman.
“And then Hillary didn’t do what she needed to do. For example, she didn’t go into a whole lot of black neighborhoods that she should have. She didn’t use (Barack) Obama, and Michelle Obama. They should have been coming to more places like Riviera Beach.”
Like others, however, she cited black millennials’ unreadiness to grab the mantle of leadership — and the Democratic Party’s failure to groom them for it.
“We have to meet people where they are, learn how to engage them,” said Joseph Anderson, president of the Together We Stand Democratic Club of African-American Democrats.
“It has to be ingrained in them about voting,” Anderson said. “So many have lost hope, are so far removed from the civil rights movement. Some of them are not getting that history lesson, and hear it as cliché.”
Rock star’s legacy
“I’m so disappointed with what I call my millennial babies,” said Addie Greene, a grande dame of area politics who has held elected local, county and statewide office. “Some got disgusted and didn’t vote. Now that makes me angry. How can you not vote?”
Greene also said “God has made a movement that is really going to impact the next election” — the ongoing national anthem demonstrations in the National Football League and other major sports. “That’s if they are sincere and not blowing smoke.”
Michael Brown no longer is as involved as he once was as mayor of Riviera Beach, but remains a keen observer of the political scene. “A lot of millennials were 18 and 19 years old the first time, they elected Obama,” Brown said. “He was a rock star who knew how to reach them, but he over-promised.”
Eight years later, many were still living with their parents, disillusioned and resentful, he said, while overlooking the lingering effects of the world economy’s collapse and kneejerk GOP opposition to Obama’s initiatives.
Brown advises young adults to focus “not only on the presidency, but the governorship, state house, your city council and mayor. You have to make sure local government is operating.”
He urges them to “open your minds up, use critical thinking, because people died for the opportunity for you to do something that you take for granted. And I try not to sound like an old guy talking to young people.”
Enright decried her party’s failure to groom young candidates, but also recalled, “Remember when Obama won? The people stayed in (the voting) line. But we didn’t find one poll with a line when the polls closed this time. We had that same kind of demeanor, that same kind of attitude, going on in other states.”
The open question
“We have to wake up,” Enright said. “We have to educate and school our young folks, because that’s where we’re falling along the wayside. If young people had picked up that torch . ... “
Instead, she said, they are throwing away their inheritance — not money, or property.
“It’s more precious.
It’s those values, and the beliefs,” she said.
“Protesting is so 1960s,” said one of the longtime faithful Democratic voters who offered lay perspectives.
“Did Martin Luther King and so many others protest for us to still be protesting in 2017? When the coalition they built is the majority?
“We need to realize that their movement succeeded, and demand our rights as Americans. Obama’s election was proof that hearts and minds have sufficiently changed in America to have government that truly reflects American values — from one person-one vote, to universal health care, to tax policy that supports the least of these.”
The question remains whether black Democrats will produce good candidates and turnout in 2018, or more protests in 2019. Many hope the ongoing 2016 post-mortem doesn’t prove to be the upcoming elections’ pre-mortem, given that either word can refer to a dead body or a project that has failed.
There’s been much brainstorming on (Democrats losing the White House in 2016) — and whining and fingerpointing and protesting. But is there a plan?