The moral of this story is voter suppression works.
Could it have been different if the dems had run the civil rights activist instead and if John Lewis had acknowledged his work? Maybe next time, eh.
A few % decrease is not plummeting. A return to very high turnout instead of the extremely high turnout of the last election is not plummeting. Black people turned out in insane numbers in 2012 to assure Obama victory in the face of the racist backlash his election triggered. Itâs never going to be that high again. Fuck anyone who even hints at blaming us for this surge in white supremacist politics.
A combination of (a) vote suppression and (b) too many liberals being useful idiots for the GOP.
Bernie lost the primary by not competing for Black votes. And he lost it months before the thing with Lewis. The idea that heâd get more Black votes in the general than the woman who got 80%+ of Black votes in the primary is dumb.
F*ck you. Black voter decrease is due to voter suppression.
Sanders was NOT a civil rights activist and Lewis was. Iâm sick to sh*t of White people like you putting the blame on Black people. Sanders treated Southern Blacks as if they were too stupid to figure out what was best for them. The Dem Party has been steadily losing working class White support but gaining some educated White collar support for years
Take Sanders and shove him up your ass.
EDIT TO ADD: Sanders was asked to campaign in WI for Clinton and he did. A lot of good it did too.
among African-American votersâparticularly in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Wisconsin has a strict law, Michigan just enacted one and Pa doesnât have any id law.
There are a lot of reasons for this timeline, but if âasleep at the wheelâ isnât one of emâŚ
The idea that Sanders, âfrom lily white Vermontâ, âcouldnât win states with large minority voting blocsâ, was being pushed by Camp Clinton and the media for months before Lewisâ (and Huertaâs) BS.
Did she (or Lewis) lie? #askinforafriend
Sanders would have been a terrible candidate.
The guy got completely crushed in the primaries as far as minority votes were concerned. And as we saw recently with his supporting the anti-abortion candidate while not willing to support Osoff he doesnât care much about women issues either.
If Sanders was the candidate the Dems would be in as much, if not more, disarray than Labour is in under Corbyn in the U.K. (and to be fair, at least Corbyn wins the primary equivalents of the U.K. and is a member of the party he stands for, neither of which can be said of Sanders).
Sanders doesnât lose the minority vote because he is feom lily white Vermont.
Sanders loses the minority vote because he doesnât listen and only wants to tell everyone how his pet issue is the cause of all their problems.
Thatâs also why people who agree with him support him so vehemently, because they see that he is pushing their pet issue ahead of all others, while everyone else basically just feels railroaded by him and his supporters.
You make an excellent point. But I wonder what more the Democrats could have done to foil the active and ongoing voter suppression of all minorities. That, it seems to me, is the crux of the voter turnout problem. Would it have helped for Democrats to point out repeatedly what was happening and to raise funds to combat it? It didnât seem to me that the Dem mainstream understood the magnitude of the ongoing disenfranchisment efforts by the GOP.
Who would that be?
I noticed the study didnât say anything about Latinos. They turned out in higher numbers for Trump than for Romney I read elsewhere. This needs to be assessed as well.
Nice job black people! /s
In all seriousness, I donât think the point of the article was to blame black people collectively. The turnout is what it is.
National elections and pity parties do not mix. Hillary was the candidate. Trump was the alternative. Anyone who was not a victim of voter suppression and didnât go to the polls to cast a vote for Hillary effectively voted for Trump.
You either do what is best for the country, or you donât. Or you have Republican lawmakers actively taking the choice away from you with voter suppression laws.
It didnât seem to me that the Dem mainstream understood the magnitude of the ongoing disenfranchisment efforts by the GOP.
Clinton addressed this on the trail. Dems absolutely got the magnitude but the question remains: What EXACTLY is the Democratic Party supposed to do about this? This is the number one issue that Perez should be addressing as opposed to going on some groveling tour for WWC votes across the midwest.
No worries. Those Latino voters got deported shortly thereafter.
EDIT TO ADD: I realized after I wrote this that I should have added that, in at least one instance, this was absoultely true not me being rude and snarky.