Why are Democrats losing black voters?
Summary
The party’s difficulties with working-class Americans turn out to cross racial lines.
In his introduction to “A Pathway to American Renewal," a new collection of essays by scholars and grassroots activists on how to revitalize low-income communities, the volume’s editor, Robert Woodson Sr., describes himself as “a practitioner—a radical pragmatist—who has spent the last fifty years of my life walking among, and learning from, some of the most resilient people you can imagine."
Given that Mr. Woodson has been coordinating development programs in poor black neighborhoods since the 1960s, I was curious to get his take on why Kamala Harris hasn’t matched the level of support among blacks that other Democratic presidential candidates have received. CBS News reports that in 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump among black voters 90% to 9%, and this year polls have Ms. Harris at a 78% to 15% advantage. In the seven most competitive states about 1 in 4 black men say they “definitely" or “probably" will vote for Mr. Trump, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Woodson mused that the track record of Democrats might finally be catching up with them. “Democrats have been running these big cities for 60 years, and black people see the results," he said. Nor does he believe the problem is unique to Ms. Harris. If Mr. Biden hadn’t dropped out of the race, “he’d be having similar problems with black voters, because they remember the unemployment and low inflation" under Mr. Trump.
The data suggest that Mr. Woodson is on to something. Before the global pandemic shut down the economy in 2020, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings under Mr. Trump grew 12.5% for all black workers and 12.7% for black men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The corresponding figures for white workers—7.9% and 8.2%—demonstrate that, before Covid, black workers were making absolute gains and gaining on their white counterparts. Under the Biden-Harris administration, inflation-adjusted earnings to date are up less than 1% among blacks and down 1.5% among whites.
When I asked Mr. Woodson about Ms. Harris’s new black outreach efforts, which include providing forgivable loans to black entrepreneurs and “creating opportunities for Black Americans to succeed" at dealing marijuana in their communities, he doubted such initiatives would make much difference. “Whenever they try to target a group, whether it’s blacks or women, they propose things that help the more advantaged members of those groups. Only a tiny percentage of blacks are entrepreneurs." Government subsidies for the cannabis industry, he said, are a priority for black elites, who tend not to live in drug-infested neighborhoods with high violent-crime rates.
Ms. Harris’s problem with black voters, Mr. Woodson explained, is part of a broader problem the Democratic Party faces with working-class voters generally. “The black men I talk to are upset at the migrants in places like Chicago and Boston and California getting free cellphones and housing," he said. Yet Ms. Harris has been banging away at Mr. Trump’s comportment, his criminal convictions and Jan. 6. Even her focus on abortion rights plays better with college-educated women than with their blue-collar counterparts, who are more concerned about inflation, illegal immigration and crime.
Barack Obama has suggested that the problem isn’t Ms. Harris’s record as vice president or her message on the stump but rather black men who refuse to support a black woman. Mr. Woodson wasn’t buying that and pointed out that in recent years any number of black women have been elected mayor in big cities with large black populations—including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington. Angela Alsobrooks, a black Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Maryland, has a double-digit lead over her Republican opponent, the popular former Gov. Larry Hogan.
Democrats are panicking because they know that even a small dip in black support could cost them heavily in consequential states such as Georgia, where blacks are more than 30% of the population, and North Carolina, where they are around 20%. Even in swing states with smaller black populations—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin—Democrats still need big margins and turnout in urban areas to prevail next month. Hillary Clinton didn’t get them in 2016, which is one reason she lost.
Ironically, part of Ms. Harris’s problem may be the man going to bat for her. Mr. Obama’s two presidential terms are a not-so-distant memory and demonstrated, among other things, that addressing the challenges that many black Americans still face requires more than simply putting a black person in the Oval Office and hoping for the best. Black Americans, like Americans in general, fared better economically under Mr. Trump than they did under Mr. Obama. There’s no guarantee that Mr. Trump will repeat that performance in a second term, but it’s hard to quibble with the growing number of black voters who want to see him try.
