In 2016, Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes went to Trump. He bear Hillary in a fairly solid blue state 1,405,284 (47.22%) to 1,382,538 (46.45%). That's 22,746 votes. Participation in black neighborhoods in Milwaukee was way off. Voters didn't switch the Trump they just stayed home. What happened? Were people so sure Hillary would win that they didn't both to show up? Were GOP voter suppression regulations aimed at African-American voters successful? Or did black voters find Hilary as meh a choice as lots of white Democrats did, myself included?Milwaukee County delivered Wisconsin for Obama both times he ran, with 319,819 votes in 2008 and 332,438 votes in 2012. In 2016 though, Hillary only took 288,822, enough to win the county, of course, but not enough to win the state. In 2008, 475,1892 voters participated. Four years later, voter participation shot up to 492,576. It collapsed when Hillary and Trump were the candidates-- down to 441,053. (Both McCain and Romney out-polled Trump.)Conventional wisdom accepts that white working class voters rejected Hilary's status quo message. How about black working class voters? Black women didn't and they turned out and voted for her. Black men on the other hand... they started away and the Trump vote was higher among black men then it was among black women. Nominate Mayo Pete is you want to see that black women's vote shrink down almost as much as the black male vote did-- and will do even more if Mayo's the candidate. We'll come back to him in a moment. Let's look at Alexi McCammond's Axios post, 2020 Democrats turn focus to black men first. "Black voter turnout," he wrote, "declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years. And 13% of black male voters supported Donald Trump-- over three times the rate of black women who did the same. An estimated 30 million black Americans will be eligible to vote next year. While black men share some of the same concerns as black women at the ballot box, they are not the exact same voting bloc."In the 2018 midterms, the overall turnout was 53%, while among blacks, 55% of women voted but only 47% of black men. McCammond asserts that "Black men may be more likely than black women to stay home or cast a vote for the GOP-- but represent more untapped potential for individual candidates.Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC: "We have seen some movement across black voters, frankly, in not as strongly identifying with the Democratic Party as they may have previously. Where that sentiment is the strongest is among black men... There is a concerted effort to try to win over black men by the Trump campaign... Black men feel like they’ve been forgotten about within the party and when it comes to this election."Outreach from Bernie's campaign towards black men has been very strong and an out-sized proportion of the Biden support among African Americans is among women and seniors. Before throwing in the towel yesterday, Kamala Harris was also making a big push to win over black male voters, at least in South Carolina, in the hope of breathing life into her already moribund campaign.Mayo Pete has the least support-- like virtually none-- from black voters. He tried to explain it away by calling them bigoted against gay people but that didn't work out too well and he's been trying a new tack lately. He's skipping the voters in South Carolina and trying to charm the influencers instead, inviting them to small, more intimate, invitation-only soirees.
In recent weeks, Buttigieg’s missteps with African American voters-- both in his campaign’s outreach to them and his own previous statements about the black community in South Bend-- have threatened the picture of a candidate on the rise in the early states. In the November debate, Buttigieg’s rivals were asked about his campaign’s usage of a stock photograph of a Kenyan woman. South Carolina officials said Buttigieg botched the roll-out of local endorsements for his Douglass Plan, a policy aimed at lifting up African Americans, by putting out a list of supporters that included some people who said they weren’t backing his policy plan.Meanwhile, video footage of the mayor’s 2011 comment that low-income, minority students lacked role models triggered a scathing essay in The Root, followed by another post, released hours later, that featured a conversation between author Michael Herriot and Buttigieg.To fix those mistakes in the minds of African American voters, Buttigieg has had to go person-to-person to “clean it up. Clean it up,” said Louise Brown, an 84-year-old union activist who came to see Buttigieg speak at a 30-person “Fight for $15” town hall event in North Charleston on Sunday.“You aren’t going to convince people who are skeptical of you by holding some big town hall in some big venue where two or three hand-selected people get to ask a question,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, who is not planning on endorsing a Democratic primary candidate....The small, invitation-driven events also avoid the awkward dynamic that plagued past Buttigieg events in South Carolina, where mostly white audiences showed up at events in mostly black cities. In May, Buttigieg held a meet-and-greet in Orangeburg, a city that is 76 percent black, and an overwhelmingly white crowd showed up....Buttigieg’s push in South Carolina won’t come just from events. The campaign announced its first statewide TV ad in South Carolina Monday morning, part of a $2 million ad buy. The spot features Buttigieg quoting Scripture at the Iowa Liberty and Justice dinner earlier this fall.On this swing through South Carolina, Buttigieg also brought South Bend City Councilwoman Sharon McBride, who is African-American and wanted “to be a witness” to the Buttigieg’s work with people of color in South Bend. After Jennings’ question in Allendale, McBride took the microphone and called Buttigieg’s lack of support a “myth.”“A lot of things that you’re hearing on the national media and a small portion of people who are negatively talking, that’s their reality and maybe their truth, but my experience of being on the council has not been that,” McBride said.But Jennings, for her part, still found the mayor’s answer “not entirely satisfying.”“He really did say nobody knew him, and that is the truth,” said Jennings, who is still undecided in the primary, but likes Biden and Sen. Cory Booker. “No one knows him, and it’s going to be difficult to get that done by the primary. That’s going to be difficult.”
Mark Ruffalo endorsed Bernie today and explains why in this video below. Please watch it. "We need a movement leader," he said. "We need a movement organizer. We need a leader who’s actually one of us, and Bernie is one of us and he’s always been one of us." In every way, Bernie is the polar opposite of Mayo:According to the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Mayo is in the 4th place, after Biden, Bernie and Elizabeth. And that's where he is in South Carolina as well, but in single digits. And he's one of the 6 who has qualified-- at least so far-- for the Democratic debate this month, the other 5 being Status Quo Joe, Bernie, Elizabeth, Klobuchar and get spending billionaire Tom Steyer. My friend Roland suggests that Yang will qualify if he adds a free narwhal tusk for every voter-- along with their thousand dollar check-- as part of his platform.
