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The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Black Vote in 2020
00:24:59
The last time a Democrat won the White House, he had enormous support from black voters; lower support from black voters was one of many reasons Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Marcus Ferrell, a political organizer from Atlanta, tells Radio Hour about the importance of turning out “unlikely voters” in order to win an election, which, for him, means black men. Jelani Cobb, a New Yorker staff writer and historian, points out that the four Democratic front-runners, all of whom are white, may struggle to get the turnout they need. Cobb tells David Remnick that Joe Biden’s strong lead may begin to fall after his weak showing among largely white voters in Iowa; Pete Buttigieg has very low support among South Carolina voters, and even faces opposition from black constituents in his home town, South Bend. But Bernie Sanders, Cobb says, seems to have made inroads with at least younger black voters since 2016. Plus, a New Yorker staffer picks three favorites.
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From One World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.
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If I wear a Stacey Abrams shirt in the airport, black men, black women will be like, where did you get that thing from to this day? And I'll buy it off of you right now.
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. And this is Marcus Ferrell, a political organizer in Atlanta.
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We're not going to increase the turnout of Black women by 20 points because Black women already vote at the highest rate. Obama won because black men, Latino brothers finally voted at high rates.
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Ferrell has worked with the New Georgia Project, which is leading voter registration drives in the state. And he says that the most untapped voting bloc is black men.
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B
When I go and talk to black men, they are not impressed with the current talking point that candidates are providing them. The things that candidates are very comfortable talking about aren't the things that black men care about at all. Right? So we want health care. That might be, that might be great. But there's no one having conversations about keeping black men out of jail. There's no one having conversations about increasing trade work so African American men can get jobs and be healthy, beneficial parts of society. So it's a different thing to say, I believe in Medicare for all, but if you can go to a black man and say I believe in Medicare for all and this is why it's going to help you, black man, then that's a different conversation. But no one wants to have that conversation. Everybody wants to talk in Iowa Speak. Iowa speak is generalized conversations to 41 year old white women to make them like you and make them feel safe that you're going to be a good pick for president. Even the media and even the press and even the posters go to people who are already going to vote. But you don't win with likely voters. You win with turnout. Voters and turnout. People just want to hear what, what are you going to do for me? How are you going to help my life? How are you going to help me feed my babies? How are you going to help me work one job and be able to pay all of my bills? How are you going to create a living wage? How are you going to stop gentrification in my neighborhood because I'm getting taxed out of my grandmama house right now. Right? That's what voters who are unlikely and the unliking voters are the reason that we were going to win. So some of the most impressive things have been Tom Steyer running ads in South Carolina, speaking about reparations. That's one of the reasons why Tom Steyer went up in the polls, because there are candidates that talk to black men. I just don't think that the candidates that talk to black men have a chance.
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Marcus Farrell, a political organizer in Atlanta. As Farrow pointed out, the last time a Democrat won the White House, he had enormous support from black voters. And this year, with Kamala Harris and Cory Booker out of the race, the four white frontrunners may really struggle to get the turnout they need. I called up Jelani Cobb to talk about the black vote in the 2020 election. Jelani is a staff writer and a historian, and I reached him in his office at Columbia University in the State of the Union address. It seemed to me that among the many dramas and themes, race played a central role. On the one hand, you had Donald Trump gesturing toward any number of people of color in the audience, including a Tuskegee airman. At the same time, he awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can get, to Rush Limbaugh, whose record of racist statements is extremely long. What was the motivation, in racial terms and in electoral terms of this strategy that clearly was animating the State of the Union address?
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C
Yeah, I think that it was a really interesting spectacle. There was a kind of tokenization of African Americans who could be against recognizing a Tuskegee airman, particularly a man who is over 100 years old and still looks like, you know, he could report for duty tomorrow morning if need be. And so there's a kind of gross ham fisted showcasing of black people. It's a more refined version, I think, than what we've seen before. Because if you remember the Trump of the 2016 campaign era, when he was literally saying, look at my African American.
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A
Right? I have Don King.
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C
Yes, exactly. You know, I have Don King and Kanye. What else do I need? It was a deeply cynical moment. And, you know, maybe we should be accustomed to that. Maybe, you know, cynicism is the native language that Trump speaks in. But I think that what struck me about the State of the Union was that he seems to be speaking it more fluently.
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A
Well, exactly. And it seems to me that it's all about the campaign. He knows he's not going to win the black vote, so called black vote. He's not going to win the Hispanic vote. But if he can raise the percentages just a bit in a very, very close election, that might be decisive.
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C
I think that's absolutely right. And if you think about the statement he made in 2016, when he said, what do you have to lose? Well, people who are looking at public policy would say a great deal. Trump was the beneficiary in 2016 of a percentage among, you know, a fairly sizable part of the African American electorate, that there wasn't that much difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And I think that what we're seeing is laying the groundwork for raising those same sort of cynical perspectives about who average you will wind up being the nominee, you know, later on this year on the Democratic side. And depending upon who he's talking about, that could be an effective strategy, you know, especially given the way we've seen race and history and civil rights and people's personal backgrounds on these issues become a subject in the Democratic debates. And now in the Democratic primaries, we.
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A
Just heard from Marcus Farrell, who's been doing work to engage with black voters, and he paints a picture of a huge disconnect between the issues that Democrats are talking about and the issues that are important to the black community. Do you see a disconnect there?
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C
Sure. And so I think what's happened has been a kind of big tent idea with the Democratic Party and the concern that the tent has gotten so big that the roof is now sagging. And what I mean by that is, do you want to go all in on the issues that are most concerning to African Americans and potentially turn off the elusive, ever sought after working class white voter? And so I think there is a disconnect. But what's interesting is Bernie Sanders in that he has gone with a very kind of old school, almost old left form of economic populism and had a surprising degree of, of effectiveness in luring African American voters. He's now, I mean, he's light years behind Joe Biden. Joe Biden has about 48% of African Americans supporting him, and Bernie Sanders only has about 20%. But that's still impressive given that he's really one of the people who kind of prioritizes the interests of the working class and people who've been left behind and so on, is now more accustomed to making appeals specifically to the issues that affect African Americans. But that's far from a language that I think that he speaks naturally.
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A
Sanders 2016 campaign was often criticized for its failure to reach out to black voters. Did you agree with that criticism and has he fixed it in 2020? He seems to be getting quite a few African American voters who are younger, while Biden seems to be drawing from an older population.
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C
Bernie Sanders has one of the more interesting developments and political evolutions in 2016, his really poor showing among African Americans, especially African Americans in the south, was attributed to all sorts of things. There was even a question about whether there was an aspect of anti Semitism in people's disregard for him or their disinterest in him. You don't hear any of that now. It's fairly remarkable that he has 20% in South Carolina. His numbers are about that as well. You know, somewhere in the 20% range, he benefits from having some fairly high profile African Americans who are supportive of him. You know, if we kind of think back to Cornel west and his constant critiques of Barack Obama, he is right there, you know, next to Bernie Sanders, you know, for the whole way of this campaign. And also in 2016, he washis events were disrupted twice by Black Lives Matter protesters. This year he has significant numbers of people who are young grassroots activists who are like right there.
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A
Campaigning for him now is Joe Biden's appeal to the African American community. So far, 95% of it's stardust from his relationship to Barack Obama.
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C
Yeah, I think it's probably 60% stardust from Barack Obama and 40% the idea that he is the type of person that other voters, namely white voters, might be inclined to vote for over Donald Trump. And so it's the kind of electability argument over once again. And I think that it's interesting to see how this is playing as well, because it is very much contingent upon results. If we thought about Barack Obama, he surged in popularity in South Carolina and surged in popularity among African Americans in South Carolina after he won Iowa because he had essentially proved to black voters that white voters were willing to vote for him. So he wouldn't be a wasted vote. I think that in a way, Joe Biden faces the opposite problem, that his African American support may begin to erode if there are significant suspicions that maybe he isn't as popular with the kind of Joe lunch bucket white guy as black voters would perceive him to be.
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A
You know, Pete Buttigieg came out of the Iowa caucuses in a pretty strong position, but he's got very little support among black voters so far, particularly in South Carolina. Why is that?
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C
I saw Pete Buttigieg speak at Morehouse College in Atlanta and, you know, morehealth College, very well known, historically black college for men. And he laid out his case and got kind of like golf applause at the end of it. And it was interesting. I said, I was watching. I said, I think that there's a cultural difference here, which is he's a Midwestern guy and he was talking at a Southern college. I was like, I don't think he would have fared well with Southern white people because he was very reserved in that sense. And people expect you to have a little bit more of your personality, a little bit more of who you are on the surface, but that's just the kind of superficial part of it. Much more substantively, I think, is the concerns of African Americans in South Bend. I have a rule about politics, which is to never trust someone who's more popular away from home than they are at home. African Americans in South Bend are very critical of them, particularly around issues of policing. If we, if he winds up being the nominee, you can expect the Republican Party to make a lot of references to South Bend. You can expect there to be commercials from PACs featuring disgruntled black people who were in the city when he was mayor. And I think that would be an all out assault. While they're going full tilt talking about what they've done for criminal justice reform on the Republican side.
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A
Now, Jelani, we started out the primary race with several pretty high profile candidates of color. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, and they're all gone. And you've got Deval Patrick, who's in the race, but not so as you'd notice. He's polling at below 1%. Why hasn't he caught on? And how has the race been changed by the fact that these other candidates of color have dropped out?
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C
Yeah, I think that there's a problem with that, a visibility problem. And, you know, it doesn't help that you have a billionaire on the stage who essentially bought his way onto the stage and another billionaire who appears to be on the verge of buying his way onto the stage as well.
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So we're talking Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg.
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C
Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg. And I think there is the line there were more billionaires than black people on the stage, you know, during the debates. And so where I think this will become really tricky is if the DNC rules allow Mike Bloomberg to get onto the next debate. And people were saying we essentially changed the rules to allow him to get his foot in the door. While the firm threshold did not allow Cory Booker to continue making his case for why he should be elected president, I think that ultimately whoever gets the nomination, we are likely to see a person of color in the vice presidential slot. If it's Elizabeth Warren, it seems fairly reasonable to expect Julian Castro. But there are all sorts of people who are coming up. You know, Kamala Harris comes up. Cory Booker comes up. Stacey Abrams still comes up as a person that people would expect to see getting tapped to be in the vice presidential slot depending upon who wins the nomination.
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A
Now, if Iowa told me anything, it told me that this is the dissatisfaction about the catastrophic disorganization in Iowa is just a precursor to what is, if not likely, then very deeply possible in November, which is that the election will not be considered legitimate.
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C
Right.
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If Trump wins, the scale of suspicion and disappointment will be almost unspeakable. And Trump is almost certain to challenge any election unless he's crushed in that election. I don't see that happening.
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C
Yeah, I think I've had this conversation with a few people of late. And, you know, one of the things that the impeachment did was send me and lots of other people, I imagine, back to the Federalist Papers. And one of the things that comes across in reading them is the real fear that certainly Hamilton and Madison had about the possibility of political violence coming as a result of the system operating on bad faith in some way, shape or form. And when notably, Adam Schiff read from that letter from Hamilton to Washington and described the kind of character he was afraid of, and it sounded very similar to the character that we have come to know Donald Trump to be. So would a person with his history and his particular psychology, can that person stand being humiliated on the biggest stage in the world by losing an election? Not likely. And is he above saying that the election is illegitimate? I don't think so.
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He was ready to say it last time. I mean, he was talking about it's being stolen and rigged and all the rest until he won, until that terrifying moment for him when he stood up and had to declare victory.
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So what happens if he does that now with all the kind of institutional power that he now wields? I think the possibility of political violence in the country has increased significantly, and certainly heading into the election is something that we can't dismiss as a real possibility.
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Jelani, thanks so much.
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Thank you.
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A
Jelani Kaba is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School and he's a staff writer at the New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Tyler Foggatt has a wide range of interests. Recently she wrote about Jay Sekulow, one of the Trump lawyers in the impeachment trial, who also happens to play drums in a classic rock band, if you like that sort of thing. And Tyler knows all kinds of weird stuff, and she's always got Interesting things to recommend. Tyler, welcome. Please surprise me.
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D
So I recently saw this movie called Cure. It came out in 1997. It's this Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. And the reason why I went to go see it is because I saw Bong Joon Ho's Parasite and I really liked it. And I read an article where Bong was talking about how Kir was his all time favorite film.
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A
So it's by the other Akira Kurosawa, right?
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D
Yes.
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A
Akira Kurosawa is the classic filmmaker from Japan who we all know. This is the other guy.
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D
Exactly. Yeah. This one is about. I think he was born like 50 years later, but yeah. So the movie is basically about a string of seemingly unconnected murders taking place in Tokyo. It sort of starts off as like a police procedural whodunit type film, but they tell you who did it pretty early on. In this particular scene, the detective and suspect are having a conversation in which the suspect says that he sort of feels a kinship with the detective. And you can kind of see reality break down. And it's actually unclear whether the conversation is even happening or whether it's in the detective's head.
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Okay.
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The conversation just went from conversation to. He threw him against the wall.
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D
Yes. Yeah. There are a lot of mood shifts in this movie, which is also how I see it as being kind of similar to Parasite.
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A
Let's move on. Let's go to the second thing that you're up to. What have you been listening to? Maybe?
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D
Yeah. So it's a remix of Kanye West's song say youy Will, which was originally on his 2008 album 808s and Heartbreak. And in 2015, he came out with this remix of the song that's just like completely different, where he collaborated with Caroline Shaw. She's this Pulitzer Prize winning musician, the youngest musician ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. And she's really interesting because she has this choral technique where it's sort of like her voice singing layered on top of it, like over and over and over again. So it's like a one person choir almost.
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Why would she make calls out the blue? Yeah, I remember this one. I do.
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D
Now I'm awake.
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Sleep as soon. Hey, hey. Don't say you will.
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D
I absolutely love this song. I listen to it almost every day now. He's sort of known for his whole Sunday service thing, which is him reimagining all of his old songs as gospel tunes. And a lot of people don't really like it either because they don't like gospel. Music or because they think it's sort of indicative of a lack of creativity. I mean, why go back and redo something you already done when you can make something new? But I actually think it's really interesting that he is willing to return to these old songs over and over and over again and completely reinvent them. It's almost like each song is a platonic ideal, and then each new version that he makes of the song is, like a reflection of that ideal. I've become sort of obsessed with this Netflix show called the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The third season just dropped pretty recently, and I watched it all in, like, two days.
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A
You watched that and not Messiah?
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D
Exactly. And the show was basically a reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was on, like, in the 90s and early 2000s. And I grew up in, like, a pretty traditional household. And I'll tell you, I was given the hardest time for watching that show.
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A
Because that was considered satanic in some ways.
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C
Yeah.
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D
Cause it's like a promotion of witchcraft. I mean, it's like, for the same reasons.
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A
So for religious reasons.
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D
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like, you know, I was given a hard time for reading, like, Harry Potter and that kind of thing too. And so I'm gonna play you a clip from the original Sabrina because you'll see that it's just the lightest show in the entire world. Why don't you guys go, and I'll stay home with Salem.
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C
Hey, the whole point of a family vacation is so I can get a vacation from the family. Please, I need some downtime.
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A
How old were you when you were watching this?
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D
I was, like, in middle school. Yeah, I was pretty young.
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A
And you were sort of, you know, right in front of the tv. Fists on chin.
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D
Exactly. I thought that Salem was, like, literally the coolest cat in the world. I was just obsessed with this show. And so when I heard that this reboot was happening, I was interested. I just thought that I would check it out, especially because it's made by the same guy who produces Riverdale, which is another show that I quite like. Sabrina, who are you? So you have Sabrina, played by Kiernan Shipka, little Sally Draper from Mad Men.
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A
Ah, there's the cat.
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D
Yes. Now he's a cat. But, I mean, it's a crazy show. It's about this group of witches who worship the devil. And the big twist is that Sabrina is not half mortal, half witch, as you've been led to believe, but actually half mortal, half demon. She is Lucifer's daughter.
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A
Amazing.
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D
Yeah, it's quite a career turn.
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A
Amazing. Well, these are, I would say this is our darkest pick three in a while.
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D
Yeah. Happy Valentine's Day.
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A
Yeah, thanks. Tyler Foggit, thanks so much. You can find all of Tyler Foggatt's writing on politics and a thousand other subjects@new yorker.com I'm David Remnick and that's our show for today. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll join us next time.
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E
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed, composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Karen Frillman, Kalalea, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses and Steven Valentino, with help from Danny Bonner, Morgan Flannery, Allison McAdam, Meng Fei Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Chorina Endowment Fund.