September 5, 2016

NYT: "Young Blacks Voice Skepticism on Hillary Clinton, Worrying Democrats."

A NYT article by Jonathan Martin observes the problem — which will, presumably, be pointed to as an explanation if Clinton loses — that young black people lack the motivation to turn out to vote.
Mrs. Clinton’s difficulties with young African-Americans were laid bare in four focus groups conducted in Cleveland and Jacksonville, Fla., for a handful of progressive organizations spending millions on the election: the service employees union, a joint “super PAC” between organized labor and the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, and a progressive group called Project New America. The results were outlined in a 25-page presentation by Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, and shared with The New York Times by another party strategist who wanted to draw attention to Mrs. Clinton’s difficulties in hopes that the campaign would move more aggressively to address the matter....

[According to a poll from earlier in the summer:] In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, 70 percent of African-Americans under 35 said they were backing Mrs. Clinton, 8 percent indicated support for Mr. Trump and 18 percent said they were backing another candidate or did not know whom they would support. In 2012, Mr. Obama won 92 percent of black voters under 45 nationally, according to exit polling.
And that is how Hillary loses the election, isn't it? Those are the swing states, and she needs the black vote to which her party feels entitled.
Part of Mrs. Clinton’s problem, said Symone Sanders, a former top aide to Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign, is that the candidate is overly cautious and is conducting an outdated style of black outreach. Ms. Sanders has begun taking matters into her own hands. She said she was working with other young activists to recruit black celebrities for a millennial mobilization tour through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

“Black churches and an H.B.C.U. tour is just not going to cut it in 2016,” said Ms. Sanders, referring to historically black colleges and universities. “The Clinton campaign has to be willing to get out of what’s comfortable and get on the streets.”

[Addisu Demissie, Mrs. Clinton’s voter outreach and mobilization director,] said the Clinton campaign’s efforts were more expansive, pointing to voter registration efforts already underway in barbershops and salons as well as sneaker and video game stores.
When I first read that, I thought there was a plan to get Hillary Clinton into those places, but it's only a voter registration effort. (By the way, isn't that list of 4 places to find black people a little disrespectful?) Sanders — Symone, the former aide to Bernie — seems to be talking about Clinton herself getting out "on the streets" where she is not "comfortable." When is the last time Clinton went somewhere where she's uncomfortable? I'm sure part of the rising panic in her campaign lies in the suspicion that if she were to go where she isn't comfortable, she'd only make it worse.
Today’s young African-American voters are less likely to be found in black churches and more likely to be found in schools, loosely organized activist groups and online....
Not sneaker and video game stores?!
Not only are younger black activists reached in different ways, they also have far higher expectations on leaders, dismissing boilerplate pleas for racial equality and justice as insufficient.
She has that and the contention that Donald Trump is a racist. Meanwhile, Trump has his "What do you have to lose?" approach. The NYT article quotes a Democratic politician who calls that question "disrespectful to the black community" but then tells us that the millennials in the focus groups did not respond to a photo of Trump with the line "We have to beat the racists." So the Clinton campaign knows it needs to come up with something better... and that the election depends upon it. 

52 comments:

MayBee said...

Here's a question I would like the politicians or pundits to answer:

"What is the black community?"

rehajm said...

Being such an unapproahable cold fish there's a meaningful risk Hillary pulls a Coakley by refusing to get out and mingle. I suspect her quant minions have calculated she can take the black vote for granted and focus on preventing defections from the ranks of white union voters.

Curious George said...

"By the way, isn't that list of 4 places to find black people a little disrespectful?"

No, that would be Camp Randall via Photoshop.

David Begley said...

Mook and Hillary already looking for a scapegoat.

rehajm said...

BLM and Occupy are Obamas game. The Clintons are Renaissance Weekends on Hilton Head with rich elite whites and powerful white unions.

David Begley said...

Symone Sanders is from Omaha and is a Creighton grad. She's the next Donna Brazile.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

A rising tide lifts all boats.

Any chance that might work for her?

David Begley said...

Me reporting on Hillary in Omaha with Warren Buffett, "The event was held at Omaha North high school. It is located in the historical heart of the black population of Omaha, but I doubt that even five percent of the crowd was black."

Sanders is very smart. She went to Omaha Mercy HS. she escaped the failed Omaha Public School district.

viator said...

"Donald Trump's outreach to African-Americans is the most significant action of the 2016 campaign so far, especially for its potential longterm implications for our culture.

The liberal media and their academic and entertainment industry allies know this and for that reason they will redouble their efforts to portray Trump as a racist."
Roger L. Simon

MayBee said...

I couldn't believe the way CNN went after the black minister who is hosting Trump. It was definitely a shame show.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

The reason Trump is trailing in the polls is the 'white community'. A good fraction of the 'white community' won't vote for him, for a variety of reasons.

Birkel said...

The assumption behind the article is that blacks should vote for Democrats without the Democrats delivering anything to those black constituents, beyond promises.

Question the assumption.

bleh said...

Yes, I was stunned by the disrespect. Can you imagine an article about Trump's lack of outreach to the black community and a quote from his aide assuring a NYT reporter that the campaign has been working the barber shops, salons, sneaker stores and video game places? How would the article have read?

campy said...

Doesn't matter how blacks vote. The fraud machine will count a 99 to 1% landslide for Hillary, if not more.

Tommy Duncan said...

I'm sure part of the rising panic in her campaign lies in the suspicion that if she were to go where she isn't comfortable, she'd only make it worse.

So nothing is better than something.

Hillary spent August raising money from the uber-rich. She likes money and is very comfortable raising money. Campaigning for the vote of the peasants is an uncomfortable endeavor.

Humperdink said...

"Doesn't matter how blacks vote. The fraud machine will count a 99 to 1% landslide for Hillary, if not more."

Which is why Trump put the "Dems will cheat" stake in the ground a few weeks ago. Not sure it will help, but he at least put them on notice.

Sebastian said...

"the rising panic in her campaign" Huh?

Humperdink said...

"the rising panic in her campaign" Huh?

I would say so. Her email problems that fester, unanswered questions regarding her health, her mysterious avoidance of the news media, her inability to "connect" with the voter. Did I mention selling the State Department? Other than that she's a stellar candidate.

gspencer said...

"and is conducting an outdated style of black outreach"

Hillary, "Mr. Legree, get out there and tell 'em darkies how they're gonna vote."

Rob said...

The last time Hillary went someplace where she's uncomfortable? Gee, I don't know, when's the last time she went to bed with Bill?

campy said...

Which is why Trump put the "Dems will cheat" stake in the ground a few weeks ago. Not sure it will help,

I'm sure: it won't.

Humperdink said...

Which is why Trump put the "Dems will cheat" stake in the ground a few weeks ago. Not sure it will help,

I'm sure: it won't.

Think Trump will concede the election if a state like Pa is given to Hillary, when Hillary carries Philly with 105% of the vote?

320Busdriver said...

Encouraging to see abc's Martha Radditz yesterday at least partially challenging T Kaine to explain Clintons unavailability to the press.

That liar Kaine said she set it all up to use a single device, which of course, was shown to be a lie in the fbi release Friday. 13 phones is what it showed.

Explain to me how someone could possibly defend voting for a disgusting pair of liars like Clinton/Kaine. Any of us would be in prison after having done anything remotely close to what Clinton did while at State.

Clinton is a criminal.

Chuck said...

I get these numbers, and the fear on the part of liberals that blacks are not excited to vote for Hillary.

But to some extent, this is where the new liberal darling of "early voting" comes into play. Those voters will be rounded up, and hauled off to polling places by the Obama-era ground machine.

And now that we are just a very few national elections into "early voting," we have already gotten to the place that any effort to reduce "early voting" days in a state like North Carolina are viewed as racist violations of the Voting Rights Act, when a state like my home state of Michigan has exactly zero early voting days. Meanwhile, Michigan Republicans tried to eliminate "straight ticket" voting in Michigan, which would bring Michigan in line with 40 other states, and that legislation has been enjoined by federal courts because, they say, that change would dispararately impact black inner city voters. And central to that finding is that Michigan doesn't have enough early voting or easy absentee balloting provisions.

It is essentially a situation in which federal courts are now acting as super-legislators, gradually defining a nationalized set of rules for voting.

virgil xenophon said...

"Not sneaker and video game stores?!"


Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

That Anne, such a card... (h/t Bugs Bunny)

Bob Boyd said...

The Republicans took a big chunk of their core constituency for granted. Our future lies with Hispanics, they said, those white men have no where else to go. And they were right, those voters didn't have anywhere else to go...until they did.

Have Democrats made the same mistake with black voters?
It's a much tougher nut for Trump to crack. For one thing, Republicans supporting upstart Trump didn't have to cross a party line.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

"BLM and Occupy are Obamas game. The Clintons are Renaissance Weekends on Hilton Head with rich elite whites and powerful white unions."

Obama does pretty well with the Renaissance Weekend crowd too, not to mention rich elite whites and powerful white unions. BLM and Wall Street - that's the real Democratic definition of diversity.

William said...

I don't think black people will turn out to vote for Hillary, but they may turn out to vote against Trump. The important thing is to keep Hillary under wraps. She inspires a kind of numbing apathy that inhibits the motor functions of all who come in contact with it. It's hard to keep the flame of anti Trump hatred alive in the steady, November drizzle of Hillary leaks.

samsondale said...

"'The reason Trump is trailing in the polls is the 'white community'."

Can you still say he is trailing given that the LA Times polls have consistently shown him leading and now even Reuters (of the cut feed when Pastor Jackson is singing Trump's praises) shows him inching ahead?

cacimbo said...

Funny, this "insider" poll shows Trump getting 8% of the black vote. The media keep making a big deal of the fact that "public" polls show Trump with zero support in the black community. They are trying to push the meme NO black could possible vote for Trump. Again showing polls released to the public are just an attempt to shape the vote, not reflect current reality.

320Busdriver said...

"Can you still say he is trailing given that the LA Times polls have consistently shown him leading and now even Reuters (of the cut feed when Pastor Jackson is singing Trump's praises) shows him inching ahead?"

I would say he has closed the gap some, but looking at RCP avg. and Sabato's Crystal Ball show he is still behind. CB has Trump only achieving 190 E votes and sadly shows a likely swap in the US Senate. Hillary still has some imploding left in her bag of scheiss so who knows.

Comanche Voter said...

samsondale I wouldn't much rely on an LA Times poll. Even if the poll was whether people liked strawberries. The LA Times (unfortunately my home town newspaper) long ago ceased to be a serious newspaper. They get the agenda bit between their teeth and off they go. Their poll may show improvement for Trump, but it sure as heck isn't because their news "writers" have been supporting him. Every day the front page comes out with at least one (and sometimes two) anti Trump stories.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

samsondale said...
Can you still say he is trailing given that the LA Times polls have consistently shown him leading and now even Reuters


The only data that has any meaning are the aggregate of polls and these show very little change other than a small but steady loss of support for both candidates.

Bruce Hayden said...

Dems should start worrying here. Trump is doing Black outreach. He asked them what do they have to lose by voting for him, then got a standing ovation after he quoted the Bible in a Black church. And now this. Apparently, a lot of Blacks liked his TV show too. Getting back to pre-Obama Black voting for Republican candidates would hurt Crooked Hillary, and esp if he could do better. We shall see. But what we probably not going to see is her doing what he has been doing. And her surrogates can only do so much.

Bruce Hayden said...

@ARM - maybe, maybe not with the polls. One problem with aggregated polls is that they lag surges, because they keep counting pre-surge polls in the aggregate polls. And, you really have to look at what polls are being included (sometimes obviously quite biased polls are included to bias an aggregate poll). Give it a couple weeks, and we shall see if there is a surge or not.

rehajm said...

One problem with aggregated polls is that they lag surges, because they keep counting pre-surge polls in the aggregate polls.

FiveThirtyEight tries to account for this phenomenon with their 'Now-cast'.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Trumps effort to woo the black vote seems pointless. He needs to win more white voters. If he can't win a significantly greater fraction of white voters than Romney then he goes down.

walter said...

"the candidate is overly cautious and is conducting an outdated style of black outreach."
More hot sauce pandering. She ain't no wayzze tyrred.

As much as multi millionaire sportster/entertainer/activist Caepernick's little protest is lame, that he suggested Hil should be in jail is just somehow overshadowed by pig socks.

walter said...

AReasonableMan said...He needs to win more white voters.
--
Some, maybe most, of the outreach to minorities by both candidates is about "white" votes. The white voters that wants to FEEL their candidate isn't racist...that they're not racist by supporting them.

Balfegor said...

Part of Mrs. Clinton’s problem, said Symone Sanders, a former top aide to Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign, is that the candidate is overly cautious and is conducting an outdated style of black outreach. Ms. Sanders has begun taking matters into her own hands. She said she was working with other young activists to recruit black celebrities for a millennial mobilization tour through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

And part of it is that her party has gone mad, and she's had to repudiate the successful policies of her husband's presidency on the grounds that they were racist. The last two years of Clinton I's presidency were, I think the best years for Black unemployment (although to be fair, 2016 is almost as good, so far). But more remarkably, 1999 and 2000 were the best years for Black unemployment and also the best years for Black labour force participation (2016 is better than, say, the 1970s, but it is about on the level of 1984, and noticeably worse than any year of Bush I, Bush II, or Clinton I). Meanwhile, the crime rate -- and hence, the rate at which Blacks were victims of crimes -- dropped dramatically during Clinton I's presidency.

If you were to put together a mix of policies that were objectively beneficial to African Americans, Clinton I's policies score better than most, and a lot better than Obama's, but Clinton II has been forced to repudiate, e.g. welfare reform, the crime bill, and other key elements of the Clinton I policy mix. True, even at the time, they were understood to be right-wing, so it's not surprising that a party that has drifted way over to the loony left would be pressuring her to repudiate them. But they worked.

walter said...

Balfegor said...True, even at the time, they were understood to be right-wing,
--
Well they were different times. The days of "Contract with America" and a political reality that had Bill proclaiming "The era of big government is over".
What the hell would Hil get out out of dredging that stuff up?

walter said...

Actually, she did briefly allude to handing over the economy to slack jaw Bill.
Seems like that notion was not embraced by the public/media and she "wiped" it.
But who knows..maybe she'll return to that in the dabates.

samsondale said...

Comanche Voter - that is why I referred to the LAT poll. I doubt that they are purposely skewing in favor to Trump. They do state that there is a possible skew in that direction due to their methodology; they try to weight by how people voted in 2012 but admit that it is possible that more people say they backed the winner than actually did, thus possibly overweighting Romney voters by a point or so. I would think that the shy Tory effect would offset that but who knows?

eric said...

Did you see the video of P Diddy and Al Sharpton?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN6ovxW9em4

His struggle here is the story. He has such a hard time saying, "I actually think that as a community, we need to hold our vote."

And that's about the best he can get. And you can tell he has a really hard time saying it. He doesn't go so far as to say, "Don't vote for Clinton." and I don't suppose he would ever even consider voting for the white Republican.

But this video illustrates just how hard it is for Republicans to win black votes and just how tough it is for Democrats to lose their vote. He isn't advocating here for black people to vote for Trump, nor is he saying directly, don't vote for Clinton. But man is he trying.

walter said...

Man..I thought Sharpton was off the air...who's dressing that guy? Looks like he's wearing upholstery from a 70's era couch.
P diddy spent a lot of time on education..but zero reference to school choice which is an identifiable option favored by numerous "black" parents.

walter said...

Eric,
You can also hear how disappointed P Diddy is with Obama..though he very quickly papers that over with qualifiers...and somehow circling back to him having done a great job.
Yeah..bet he toweled off after that appearance.

Sammy Finkelman said...

One idea - I put here more to get acrorss the general idea than these specific percentages.

Percentage of the popular vote cast for one of the two major party candidates:

>> 74% – Hillary Clinton wins.

71-74% – Possibility of the election being thrown into the House of Representatives.

56% – 71% – Donald Trump wins.

53% – 56% – Election thrown into the House of Represenatives – more than one third party candidate gets some Electoral votes – only one, of course, is among the 3 candidates the House can vote for.

51% – 53% – Election thrown into the House but Hillary Clinton is not a choice.

< 51% – A third party candidate wins.

This is based on the fact that as more votes are cast for third party candidates, the margin Hillary Clinton has gets lower, so at a certain point it will tip. That is, she’s got fewer people who actually might want her than does Donald Trump.

Luke Lea said...

TRUMP CHANGE, NOT CHUMP CHANGE -- a slogan that's just waiting to be used. Maybe on billboards in African American communities.

khesanh0802 said...

Arm@1126 I think Trump's black outreach makes sense. He is never going to get a majority of blacks, but if he either puts a dent in black turn out or actually manages to increase his share of blacks then he has taken a critical element from Clinton. A few weeks ago all the writers were saying how important the black vote is to Clinton. Are we changing our mind now? The impact of peeling off black votes in Philadelphia - say through Trump's support of charter schools - could have an impact on the vote totals in PA. Worth the effort - and is the right thing to do, regardless of its strategic value.

Bruce Hayden said...

@Sammy - I just don't see 1/4 of the voters voting for a third party candidate. Neither of the big ones seems to be catching on yet, and we are running out of time. Both of the majors are likely to blanket the airways starting about now, and aren't likely, at present to get invited to the debates. Crooked Hillary, in particular, seems unlikely to open herself up to attack from the left, and looking like the sickest, by far, of the four candidates can't help her. Besides, it is much easier to just be the Trump alternative, than actually have to make sense. I don't see either Blacks or Hispanics voting third (or fourth) candidate.

Peter said...

To get a high turnout among young black voters, Hillary must represent Trump as a threat to black people.

And perhaps she will. I'd be surprised if her advisors are not already thinking of ways to present Trump as a scary threat to black Americans.

Toussaint Foster said...

It's true that younger Blacks are not passionate about Hillary. At best they are lukewarm about her candidacy. At worst, they are hostile to it. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of African-Americans (especially middle aged women) favor Clinton. That should be enough to enable her to win on election day. Blacks who are skeptical of Hillary are a minority within a minority otherwise, Bernie Sanders would have won the nomination.