Sometimes politics have me doubting my sanity.

[OneBro]

Last edited Thu Nov 3, 2022, 11:23 AM - Edit history (1)

https://fivethirtyeight.com/

Not because there isn't hope for Democrats, but because the elections shouldn't be remotely this close.

They are giving Stacey Abrams only a 9% chance of defeating Kemp, in part because, as cited in Bloomberg:

One-third of Black men registered in Georgia haven’t voted in the past several elections, with pollsters saying these disaffected voters just don’t think the outcome will improve their lives. In recent years, Black men also have shown they’re more willing to vote Republican, in Georgia and nationally. About 1 in 5 Black men voted for Donald Trump in 2020, up from 2016.

Together, these two groups -- Black men who typically don’t vote and those who have crossed party lines -- could determine the outcome in November. The key is figuring out the reasons for their choices and persuading them to change their minds.

“What they’re doing is consciously choosing to stay away from elections,” said W. Mondale Robinson, who founded the Black Male Voter Project in 2015, adding that little progress has been made in addressing many of the issues affecting the lives of Black men.

“It’s not a problem created by Stacey Abrams. It’s not a political phenomenon,” Robinson said. “We haven’t seen a decrease in the number of Black men killed by police. Black men are still unemployed at twice the rate of others, and those who are arrested and can’t pay cash bails sit in jail even though they haven’t been proven guilty. This is a conscious choice from people who do not see politics addressing their issues.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-11/black-men-are-showing-tepid-enthusiasm-for-stacey-abrams-in-georgia-race

I just . . . I really canNOT wrap my head around it. Surely Donald Trump did not get 20% of the black male vote. Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, I know we are not a social or political monolith, but what . . . the . . . actual . . . fuck.

EDITING to ADD: Whew! Reality of Trump’s share of the black male vote was 12%, not 20%. Still 12% too high, but . . . whew!

“Biden received 92% of the Black vote, statistically indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s 91% in 2016. His support among Black women was never in doubt, but President Trump’s alleged appeal to Black men turned out to be illusory. (His share of the Black male vote fell from 14% in 2016 to 12% in 2020 while Biden raised the Democrats’ share from 81% to 87%.) https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/06/new-2020-voter-data-how-biden-won-how-trump-kept-the-race-close-and-what-it-tells-us-about-the-future/

I already voted, and I do still have hope that America will find its moral fiber, but if 538 is anywhere near accurate, I may need to be heavily medicated on election night.

[Funtatlaguy]

1. What's even sadder is 51% of white women voting for Trump.

The fact that Hillary Clinton did not carry white women still boggles my mind.

[OneBro]

2. White, female Evangelicals in particular. Difficult to overcome such a block.

[PortTack]

6. Is that 51% of all women? Or 51% of gqp women?

[Funtatlaguy]

7. 51% of all White women only. Black women overwhelmingly vote blue.

[tulipsandroses]

3. No. Trump did not get 20% of the black male vote. That false narrative needs to die

Are Black Voters Really Leaving the Democratic Party

SNIP——
If you hold all this up to the light at just the right angle, you might be excused for thinking that there may be some minor partisan realignment underway within the black electorate. But—and I cannot say this strongly enough—it ain’t happening.

Before explaining how I can be so sure, let us begin with some numbers. The immediately available exit polls showed Trump increasing his share of the black vote by 50 percent—from 8 percent in 2016 to 12 percent in 2020—and winning nearly 1 in 5 black men. If these splits were right, Trump would have tied for the highest Republican share of the black vote in four decades.

Trump received just 6 percent of the black vote in 2016 and 8 percent in 2020. On average, from 1968 to 2004, Republican presidential nominees earned just over 11 percent of the black vote—which means not only did Trump underperform the party average in consecutive elections, but he also did worse (twice!) than every single Republican nominee since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 except for the two (John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012) who ran against a black guy.
https://www.thebulwark.com/are-black-voters-really-leaving-the-democratic-party/

[kelly1mm]

4. Doesn't that still beg the question is how did Trump get a BIGGER percentage of the black

vote AFTER 4 years as President with everyone seeing what he did?

[tulipsandroses]

8. How did he get a bigger share of any demographic?

A better question is how much work is being done by Democrats to counteract republican outreach? Let’s be clear that we are talking about a small # here.
However, One cannot assume that a certain demographic will automatically vote for you. I posted a few weeks ago about ridiculous Republican ads being played on Caribbean immigrant radio. They will not win over most. But they will win over some.
Black folks are not a monolith. My concerns are different from some other black folks I know. They are not so concerned about student loan forgiveness. Vice versa, I have to admit that I have not been as concerned concerned about their issues. Example, some of the black men that support Kemp, are self employed, in particular barber shop owners. They say they support Kemp because he kept their businesses open during Covid. Unemployment for black men is atrocious. And it’s not for lack of trying. When no one will hire you, you make your own way.
If the republicans are showing up to remind you that you were able to feed your family because they let you stay open while the Democrats wanted to shut you down, you may just buy that argument. What is the counter narrative other than they should just vote for democrats?

Since I don’t want to get hit with “criticizing democrats”, I won’t post it here, but Dr. Jason Johnson’s interviews on this issue, is spot on, if anyone cares to use their Googler.

[uponit7771]

11. Cross vote has happened to most incumbent presidents in the US IINM

[uponit7771]

10. ***THANK YOU!!!***

[tulipsandroses]

5. The entire article is worth the read to debunk this false narrative

SNIP—-
Did the Republican share of the black electorate double between 2008 and 2020 from 4 percent to 8 percent? Yes. And if you had your pay cut at work from $20/hour to $8/hour, and then management doubled your pay to $16/hour, did you get a raise? Sure.

To put a finer point on it: What we are witnessing with black voters today is not an exit from the Democratic party as a result of too much wokeness on the left and the appeal of Trumpism on the right. Rather, we are seeing black Republicans who chose to vote for the first black president (or sat out an election or two so as not to vote against him) return to their voting habits now that Obama is no longer on the ballot. And it seems that a couple percentage points worth of those pre-2008 black Republican voters may have decided to ride it out with Democrats.
https://www.thebulwark.com/are-black-voters-really-leaving-the-democratic-party/

And here is the part that the folks engaged in journalism malpractice, like to leave out.
That historically speaking, there are more black men that identify as conservative, and thus vote Republican than black women. It’s not a new phenomenon.

SNIP———
In the Richard Nixon era, for example, Black newspapers complained bitterly of “Black men singing” the gospels of the GOP. That any Black person would support a man who represented the “evils of white America—racism, capitalism, treachery, imperialism, arrogance, and deceit” was shocking, wrote the editors of the New York Amsterdam News in the early 1970s. And yet, approximately 23 percent of Black male voters did just that in the 1972 presidential election. Those Black men who cast ballots for Nixon did so primarily for financial reasons, pointing to the president’s economic agenda and his emphasis on entrepreneurship and “Black capitalism.”
Black men dropped out significantly from the GOP with Ronald Reagan’s ascent to the presidency in the ’80s, but he still managed to grab about 13 percent of their votes. Similar to Nixon’s efforts, Reagan’s campaign focused heavily on financial matters, advocating for a “Black-owned, Black-operated philosophy,” and lobbying for states’ rights as a means for Black communities to “take back” their neighborhoods through cooperative economics. Reagan’s team focused on shifting the political dialogue away from conversations about race and racism, instead highlighting preexisting tensions between Black voters and Democratic politicians.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/11/why-black-men-and-women-vote-so-differently/617134/

[tulipsandroses]

9. What a former Abrams' staffer said, allegedly

Democrats and activists in Georgia and nationwide remain concerned that Abrams may not be able to again conjure the magic she did last time — and Democrats did in 2020 — not necessarily because of Kemp's strength, but because of difficulties in getting her base out.

A former Abrams aide told Newsweek those difficulties stem from a less effective organizing program. In 2018 Abrams had 140 organizers on the ground; now she has fewer than 100. And there are reports of slippage with Black men, a critical voting segment that Abrams needs to be a strong part of her coalition.

"Stacey can't win without Black and brown voters," the source said. "You also can't do last-minute outreach to them and call it voter of color outreach."

"Stacey is struggling with Black men," the source added. "How do you struggle 48 days out of an election?"

Abrams campaign released an internal poll showing 85% support among Black men, a figure that is still short of her 2018 performance by about eight percentage points, The New York Times reported.

Even if that # is correct, 85% of black men support Abrams, it’s interesting that the blame or questioning would be aimed at a group of people voting at 85 % and not the groups voting at much much much lower percentages. Hence why I agree with Dr. Johnson.

I don’t know how this will turn out. I will be heart broken if she does not win. I do have some hope given this factHowever, political observers noted that the AJC poll skewed older and more Republican than the 2018 electorate proved to be. The Abrams campaign and a "combat coalition" of some of the top Georgia groups said that they had this same problem with polls in 2018, during a race that proved to be much closer than expected.
https://www.newsweek.com/trailing-kemp-georgia-stacey-abrams-struggles-support-black-men-

[ecstatic]

12. The qOP has gotten pretty good at micro-targeting,

and in some cases, brainwashing influencers by attacking from the left or from the "African American" perspective, and sometimes it's even broken down further by race and gender with MRA / incel-inspired themes, or targeting investors / retail traders, etc. The microtargeted approach might account for recent trends with some black male voters (assuming the numbers are true).

The influencers, in turn, spread the concerns, attacks and disinformation to their millions of followers. Then the followers end up in the same loop of microtargeted disinformation, thanks to the algorithms on most social media platforms. The republican party knows that their brand is trash and that they are associated with trump and vile racists, but if they can convince a few black male voters here and there or discourage people from voting at all, their mission is a success.

This is why it was so important for Democrats to at least partially address police brutality, especially in the wake of George Floyd. Instead, we watched the narrative get flipped (purposely) due to police deliberately stepping back from their duties and, in some cases, facilitating the so called crime wave (with the help of City officials).

Several people who I convinced to turn out in 2020 and in January 2021 are now procrastinating and wavering on whether they will vote or not. I have today and tomorrow to try to turn things around. At this point, all I have left are threats. I told my sister, who is adamant about not having any more kids, that I will NOT babysit in the event of a forced pregnancy and birth.

All of that said, black voters are fraction of the United States population. I think 12 or 13%. I think the bigger concern is that millions of republicans, mostly white, are willing to throw democracy in the trash to follow trump or (mistakenly) feel like they're getting a bigger tax cut. What are we going to do about that?