Democrats ought to know better than underestimating Donald Trump. But when it comes to the black vote, that's exactly what some liberals are doing. While the 2020 candidates are pushing the envelope on social extremism, no one seems to be counting the cost. And that cost, more African-Americans are hinting, is the demographic they've taken for granted most.
Small changes, Vox warns, "make a big difference in close elections." So when Democrats don't take the president's outreach to the African-American community seriously, Matthew Yglesias warns, they're making a huge mistake. "There's some evidence," he reports, that the DNC has "lost ground with black voters." Believe it or not, Yglesias writes, Donald Trump did "slightly better with black voters than did John McCain in 2008 or Mitt Romney in 2012." Even in last year's midterm elections, "Democrats won the black vote by 'only' a 90 percentage point margin in 2018 House races down from 93 percent in the 2016 presidential." Obviously, he says, "that's still a huge landslide. But the direction of the shift is striking."
There are a lot of factors to point to -- record low unemployment for black workers for one, and, of course, Trump's passionate push for criminal justice reform. But there might also be another explanation: the Democrats' race to embrace radical abortion policy. Dean Nelson, Executive Director of Human Coalition Action, joined me on "Washington Watch" to talk about the faith community's reaction to the Left's agenda. And in some predominately black denominations -- like the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) -- the warning signs are everywhere.
After years of trying, the COGIC passed a resolution last month officially denouncing elective abortion -- unanimously. Why is that significant? Well, for starters, they took this stance in the middle of the Democratic primary season, at time when candidates are racing to embrace everything from legal infanticide to taxpayer-funded abortion. Secondly, they couched their objections in the strongest civil rights terms.
"The Church Of God In Christ opposes elective abortions. This issue of personhood has haunted America since the Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson and Roe vs. Wade decisions. Just as slavery was overturned in America, Jim Crow was defeated, and Nazi Germany was overthrown, it is our prayer that the heinous industry of abortion will become morally reprehensible worldwide."
As Dean pointed out, "We live in a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to Christians -- whether they're white, black, Asian, or Hispanic. And for them to [have] the political courage to do this at this time, I think shows that they are much more committed to biblical values than they are to partisan politics." Is this something, I asked Dean, that might get the attention of the Democratic candidates? "I think they'll notice," he agreed, but at this point, they're so sold-out to the abortion industry "that they'll continue to go in the direction that they've gone until large numbers of black Americans show up at the polls and vote differently."
The New York Times wonders if that's slowly starting to happen. "The African-American electorate has been undergoing a quiet, long-term transformation, moving from the Left toward the center on several social and cultural issues," Thomas Edsall warns. Take abortion attitudes, as one example. "WSJ/NBC surveys show that 97 percent of white primary voters agree that the procedure should be 'totally legal' compared with two-thirds of black primary voters. A vanishingly small number of white Democratic primary voters -- three percent -- said abortion should be illegal, compared with a third of black Democrats. A CBS News poll of Democrats in states holding early primaries that was conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept. 4 reinforced these findings."
"Too many liberals," strategists warn, "have failed to recognize the liabilities of some of the policies they have been pushing... The result has been an unchallenged belief among white liberals that as they continue their sharply leftward movement of recent years, they will be able to rely on black Democrats for continuing political support." That's a big gamble -- one every liberal should be worried they'll lose.