Will Black Voters Pull A Trump-Like Rebellion Against the Democrats?

An overwhelming majority of black Americans vote for Democrats.

That likely won’t change anytime soon. But New York Times op-ed writer Thomas B. Edsall poses the question anyway: Could the Democratic party face a revolt similar to the one happening now with the Republican party? An excerpt:

Beginning with the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson, African American voters have provided Democrats with their margin of victory in elections at every level across the nation, year after year.

How have African-American voters been faring over all? Badly. The Democratic debt to black voters is immense, and the party has not paid up.

There is no evidence yet of a political rebellion parallel to the one taking place in the Republican Party, despite the fact that poor black Americans are having a much tougher time than the white working class Republicans flocking to Trump.

For some, it’s hard to resist the promise of government fixes. More money for this social program. More excuses for that failure. It is human nature to apportion blame to people other than the person who stares back at us in the mirror.

One obvious reason Democrats appeal to black American voters is that someone has to be the “racist” scapegoat, and someone has to be the non-racist problem-solver amenable to misplaced guilt-tripping.

Regardless, how have lower-income blacks fared under liberals? The debt liberal politicians owe to the blacks who put them in office hasn’t been paid up, Edsall contended.

One key measure of how well a demographic group is doing is the percentage of children living in communities of high concentrated poverty, in so-called toxic social environments.

There is a rapidly growing body of evidence, compiled by economists, sociologists and public policy experts, which demonstrates the depth of the damage inflicted on children in such toxic neighborhoods.

After delineating a range of problems associated with poverty, including anxiety, stress, deprivation, worse health outcomes, and higher crime rates, Edsall said the neighborhoods in which all this takes place are the result of public officials and the Democratic party failing “to deliver housing, employment or education programs that convincingly remediate the problems of poor black families.”

Edsall again pointed out that Democrats benefit from the “black vote,” yet fail to deliver on their promises. 

“Steps to reduce the trouble caused by extremely poor neighborhoods include the assertive use of the existing housing voucher programs to move people into ‘high opportunity communities,’ which have poverty rates of 10 percent or less.”

Speaking of vouchers, low-income blacks who vote for Democrats should demand that these politicians support educational choice, so they can take their children out of failing schools and place them into better ones. Black voters can threaten en masse to withhold their votes until liberal politicians support school vouchers or at least offer alternatives. Why don’t they?

“The question, then, is how long can Democratic Party leaders and candidates continue to rely on African American voters before African-American voters take matters into their own hands – just as white working class Republican voters have done this year,” Edsall wrote.

Comparing the Donald Trump revolution with a potential Democratic one is an interesting idea, but the reality won’t be that clear-cut with black voters.

Photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik – Some Rights Reserved (Creative Commons)