To win in states like Michigan, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Democrats have long counted on a significant share of the white working-class vote, which surprisingly abandoned them for Trump in 2016. But that bloc was by no means the only important one in the Democratic coalition — nor is it the only one they might do well to take less for granted.
Which brings us to an interesting piece in today’s New York Daily News by Shaun King, known as an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement. His friend, a Senate staffer, described to him how Senate Democrats are happy to collect black votes, but not so eager to hire black employees.
“They are all so phony,” the staffer told me. “Every time I hear any of the Democratic senators, including my own boss, talk about diversity, I cringe, because it’s all one big lie. That they’ve been allowed to enjoy this reputation as a party that values diversity, while doing next to nothing of substance to align their actions with their words, is expert-level deception.”
Aside from the anemic black presence on the Hill’s north side overall, King’s friend pointed out that the absence is especially noteworthy in the more senior jobs, of which he said blacks hold just three out of 336.
“Do you know how many black chiefs of staff exist in the Senate?” his friend asked. “One. Out of one hundred chances they had to hire a black chiefs of staff, they hired just one African-American.”
And that wasn’t the worst part:
“I haven’t even given you the punchline yet. … The lone black chief of staff in the entire United States Senate works for South Carolina Republican, Tim Scott. His office may be the most diverse in the entire Senate.”
Republicans should not start getting delusions about carrying the black vote. But neither can Democrats afford to take this group for granted. When Barack Obama was on the presidential ballot, the party was able to inspire love in black voters, not just the less powerful motivator of fear, and this was probably the secret to his success. And even when Obama isn’t on the ballot, blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, of course, albeit in slightly smaller numbers and by a few points less.
But bloc politics works at the margins. Democrats would stop being competitive in many states if their margins with black voters slipped even just a bit — say, if they started winning by only 70 points (85/15) rather than than 80 points (90/10). If Democrats lose the confidence of even a very small fraction of black voters, it will be curtains. And there is also no guarantee that younger blacks, having grown up in a different world from their forebears, are always going to be quite as brand-loyal. In this past election, the exit polling shows, the youngest black voters (age 18-29) already weren’t — 15 percent of them voted either for Trump or for a third-party candidate this time around.
Don’t expect to see any electoral surprises soon. But equally strange things have happened before anyone expected them. As 2016 taught us, when you take people for granted long enough, you really never know what’s going to happen.
