Delivering for black voters
by Tom Sullivan
Carson Brown tamps down the “black voters are superheroes” narrative coming out of Alabama after Tuesday’s special election win by Democrat Doug Jones. Yes, there was a huge surge in black voters, and 96 percent voted for Jones, she writes at New Republic. But Democrats would be wise not to think they voted for Doug Jones or for Democrats. Black women, especially, voted for themselves:
In Alabama, the stakes for black residents couldn’t be higher. They want more than a fair shake in life: They want the government to do something about the state’s extreme poverty, which has seen a rise in the previously eradicated disease hookworm, bogs of raw sewage, and calamitous effects on health care. Republican attempts to dismember Obamacare have been hugely unpopular with those who rely on the program and Alabama is no exception to the rule. Now, it’s on the Democratic Party to engage meaningfully with black voters, lest it wrongly assumes they will continue to turn out for Democrats out of the good of their hearts.
Watching the election returns Tuesday night and hearing mentions of Alabama’s “Black Belt,” I wondered how many viewers beyond the South had ever heard the term outside of martial arts. It’s holdover from slavery and not just Alabama. In North and South Carolina, the Black Belt tends to lie along I-95 inland from tourist areas along the coast.
That black voters make up such a sizeable proportion of the local electorate gives them considerable clout in statewide elections in the South. Which is why, of course, there are efforts to suppress their votes. But the areas also tend to be poorer, more rural, and with less economic clout and thus less political clout despite the numbers.
Brown’s description of conditions in Alabama are not confined there. But another reason to not place too much stock in the superheroes narrative gets back to politics being local. Ed Kilgore points out one reason outside fear of Roy Moore that black voters came out for Jones:
The robust African-American turnout in Alabama on December 12 was attributable to many factors, including heroic local organizers, nationally prominent black politicians and celebrities, and the powerful antipathy both Trump and Moore aroused among nonwhite voters. But it didn’t hurt that Alabama’s black voters were turning out for a candidate who had performed a significant service to their community by successfully prosecuting the murderers who perpetrated the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, and who gave every indication that he would vote with left-of-center Democrats in the Senate.
Jones’ credibility won’t carry Democrats in other states. Nor can black voters carry them on places they are not.
In the western mountains of North Carolina there are counties with fractional percentages of black voters. The same applies to the entire states of Wyoming or Montana. Democrats fighting for state legislative seats cannot count on turning out black voters that aren’t there. But elsewhere they absolutely should be doing more to strengthen the hands of black voters, especially in historically under-courted voters in “belts” across the South, areas like those that delivered for Doug Jones. Rural and poor, they have been too easy for Democrats to take for granted. Tuesday proved what a mistake that is.
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