Hiram College Professor Jason Johnson joined HuffPost Live to discuss the top stories on April 7, 2015, including the presidential campaigns of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
Click here to watch Jason Johnson on HuffPost Live.
Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell
Hiram College Professor Jason Johnson joined HuffPost Live to discuss the top stories on April 7, 2015, including the presidential campaigns of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
Click here to watch Jason Johnson on HuffPost Live.
Hiram College professor Jason Johnson was quoted by the International Business Times in the story “Rand Paul 2016 And The Black Vote: Will His Presidential Campaign Benefit From His Overtures To African Americans?”
By pushing for bipartisan criminal justice reform, reduced sentences for petty crime and speaking out against the militarization of police, Paul is both indicating that it’s a smart strategic move for the Republican Party and trying to signal that he’s a viable candidate in 2016, according to Jason Johnson, a political science professor at Hiram College in Ohio and politics editor for the hip-hop magazine the Source. But Paul is unlikely to win the Republican nomination because he can’t match the fundraising juggernauts of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Johnson said. “That makes it difficult for him to demonstrate how well he can be with African-American voters,” he said.
On MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton, Hiram College professor Jason Johnson and political strategist Angela Rye discussed comments made by Rand Paul and Chris Christie on the subject of vaccinations.
Barack Obama never really had a chance when dealing with issues of race in America. From the moment he ran for office, critics questioned whether he was “black enough” or an “angry black man.”
As the first African-American president of the United States, Obama is supposed to prove America is post-racial, be the president of “all of America” and show a special empathy for African-Americans, all while battling institutional racism but not calling it out.
While these debates are largely philosophical and symbolic, the nationwide protests in the wake of the non-indictments of police officers responsible for killing Mike Brown and Eric Garner have shown that race can no longer just be an academic subject for presidents and presidential contenders.
The crowds marching across America protesting the ugly intersection of racism, law enforcement and economics are some of the largest, most diverse groups of protesters seen in American history. These issues are going to be laid at the doorstep of all serious 2016 contenders. So while many are grappling with the events of the last several months, we’re left to wonder: Where’s Hillary Clinton?
We all know that, barring some bizarre unforeseen event, Clinton is running for president in 2016, and it’s only a matter of time before she announces. She will not march smoothly to the nomination; there are questions about how much she connects with the middle class, her muddled book rollout this spring and of course, for those who still care, “Benghazi.”
But the most serious problem for Hillary 2016 is the perception that she’s an overly cautious politician who is afraid to take tough stances on anything, especially those issues the Democratic base might be passionate about. And nowhere is this more evident than in her almost utter silence on the recent protest marches across the nation.
Hillary Clinton took almost 19 days before she said anything about the violence and rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, and that was after Democrats and pundits called her out for her silence. At the time she said:
“Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers were three times as likely to be searched by police during a traffic stop as black drivers instead of the other way around. If white offenders received prison sentences 10% longer than black offenders for the same crimes. If a third of all white men — just look at this room and take one-third — went to prison during their lifetime. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow Americans in so many of the communities in which they live.”
Which was fine, at the time — better late than never. Mind you, she slipped these comments in at a tech conference where the majority of her comments would focus on other issues.
Clinton seemed to have learned her lesson after a New York grand jury did not indict officers in the killing of Eric Garner. She only waited two days to say something about the result :
“Each of us has to grapple with some hard truths about race and justice in America, because despite all the progress we’ve made together, African-Americans, most particularly African-American men, are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to long prison terms.”
But again, these comments were tagged onto a speech she was giving at a women’s conference in Massachusetts and hardly echoed beyond the walls of the building where she was speaking.
While Republican 2016 contender Rand Paul can come right out and say police militarization is a problem and that the officer who killed Garner should be fired, Hillary Clinton talks about restoring “balance.”
While Obama is sitting down to do a serious interview about race, law and justice on BET, Clinton is doing events with Prince William and Catherine in New York. The point is that while other political leaders who hope to lead this country can take the time out to seriously address the longest-running protests in American history since the Montgomery bus boycott, Hillary Clinton sandwiches her comments in at the tail end of paid speaking engagements and keeps it moving. That seems a little tone-deaf.
And this isn’t the first time Clinton has shown this penchant for avoiding thorny cultural and racial issues on the not-quite-yet-campaign trail. She assiduously avoided addressing race in a town hall interview earlier this year on CNN. And one has to wonder if she would’ve said anything about the George Zimmerman verdict in the killing of Trayvon Martin if she hadn’t been giving a speech at the convention of Delta Sigma Theta (a black sorority) the night the verdict came in. She certainly hasn’t said much about it since.
If Clinton thinks she’s being smart by avoiding thorny race issues on the campaign trail, she’s making a huge mistake. Maybe Team Clinton thinks that whatever support she may lose in the African-American vote will be made up for by high turnout among white women.
The problem with that logic is that these protests from New York to Chicago to Detroit, to Cleveland, to San Diego, Los Angeles and even St. Louis are incredibly diverse. Take a look at the crowds in Times Square after the Garner verdict and you could see white, Latino, Asian, African-American, old, young and other demonstrators all carrying signs that read “Black Lives Matter.”
A new NBC News/Marist poll shows that 47% of Americans believe that the justice system applies different standards to blacks and whites. In other words, the people out there marching right now are the Democratic base, with a few independents and libertarians thrown in there for good measure.
This is the coalition that Clinton needs to win the presidency, and on the most important issue in decades she’s not only not ‘”ready to lead,” she doesn’t seem to have much to say, and when she does speak on these issues it’s always as an afterthought to some larger message.
America is being wracked by nationwide protests and thousands of Americans of all colors are questioning the fundamental fairness of the American justice system. Boycotts are happening, malls are being shut down and transportation all across America is being affected by protests during the biggest shopping season of the year, because many Americans are unhappy with our justice system.
No one expects Clinton to be out in Times Square marching with the #ICantBreathe hashtag plastered across her cheek. But if she decides she wants to be serious about being elected president of the United States, she needs to do more and say more than a few throwaway comments in the midst of her busy speaking and fund-raising schedule.
The foot soldiers for Clinton’s political future are out marching in the cold, marching toward the change they want to see in America. Clinton might want to catch up to them, because if she doesn’t, I’m sure Rand Paul, Elizabeth Warren or Andrew Cuomo would be happy to do so.
This article originally appeared online at CNN.com.
One of the best things about presidential election season is just how bold candidates get before the first ballot has even been cast. Gary Hart daring the press to follow him, Howard Dean swearing he was going to take back Washington, and Mitt Romney telling the president to “Start packing” just months before Obama trounced him on election day. There’s a lot of claim staking trash talking and game spitting heading up to a presidential election, and now Rand Paul has gotten into the act. Rand Paul, who fashions himself as a new wave African American friendly Republican has lifted his bat and pointed to the right field of 2016 with his recent interview in Politico released last Friday:
“If Republicans have a clue and do this and go out and ask every African-American for their vote, I think we can transform an election in one cycle,” Paul said.
Paul acknowledges that there will be plenty of black voters not willing to embrace a Republican at the national level, but that doesn’t stop him from making his claim.
Paul: “But I think there is fully a third of the African-American vote that is open to much of the message, because much of what the Democrats has offered hasn’t worked.”
Now before the liberal left and cynical political observers fall off their chairs laughing consider this isn’t just wishful thinking from Rand Paul. There is some historical and polling data to back up his “One Third of the Black Vote” argument, and if there’s anybody in the 2016 Republican field with even a puncher’s chance of pulling this off, it’s Rand Paul.
This “One Third of the Black Vote” claim isn’t new. Herman Cain was making the same pitch back in 2011 essentially using the “Your Momma and your cousin too” polling method common amongst your less sophisticated candidates:
“The African American vote, I am confident, based upon black people that I run into, black people that used to call my radio show, black people that have signed up on my website to support me [sic]. I believe, quite frankly, that my campaign, I will garner a minimum of a third of the black vote in this country and possibly more [sic]
However, Rand Paul isn’t a fake presidential candidate running in order to bolster his speaking fees and radio show. When he was elected to the Senate from Kentucky in 2010 a week before the election he was polling almost 25 percent of the black vote in Kentucky. He eventually earned 13 percent of the black vote on election day; which puts him ahead of other 2016 contenders like Ted Cruz and Scott Walker. But unlike other 2016 Republican hopefuls Rand Paul has made legitimate pitches to African American community like speaking at Howard University, going to Ferguson to speak with African American leaders and teaming up with “Barack Obama 2.0” Cory Booker for legislation on prison and sentencing reform.
Obviously Paul didn’t get his “One Third of the Black Vote” statistic from Herman Cain, but there are numbers to back it up — sort of. Paul’s boast is likely based on an oft repeated bit of statistical gymnastics promoted by the Republican Party since the mid-1990s. The story goes like this: among African American voters, about 30 percent consider themselves to be liberal, 50 percent consider themselves to be moderate and 20 percent consider themselves to be conservative. If a Republican presidential candidate could pull in a maybe 40 percent of the of the African American voters who consider themselves to be moderates and conservatives, the back-of-envelope-math says you get roughly 30-33 percent of the African American vote.
There is some precedent for this, according to Pew Research Latinos are split almost evenly across the ideological spectrum (33 percent Conservative, 32 percent Moderate, 31 percent Liberal). George W. Bush won 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004 carrying a decent group of moderate and conservative Latino voters across the country despite the preponderance of them identifying as Democrats. Of course, no Republican presidential candidate has carried more than 18 percent of the African American vote since 1972 (Nixon), and no Republican has won over 10 percent of the black vote since Bob Dole in 1996. So what would Rand Paul have to do to win his magical 30 percent threshold of black voters?
Setting the Table
First, let’s assume Rand Paul is the GOP presidential nominee in 2016, and he’ll be facing off against Hillary Clinton. While Hillary doesn’t have the warmest of relationships with African American voters, she’ll have her husband Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and a slew of members of Congress and black celebrities campaigning for her. Let’s assume some drop-off from Obama’s African American numbers to Hillary, and we’ll give Rand Paul a sporting chance and spot him the 13 percent of the black vote he gets in Kentucky. So he would need to grab about 17 percent more black voters to make his dreams come true.
The following three things would have to happen in the next two years for Rand Paul to have a chance.
1. Republicans would have to both abandon and repudiate voter ID policies from the national to the local party. The first reason is obvious. If you actually want black voters to come out and vote for you, you should probably abandon policies that are specifically designed to frustrate and suppress African American turnout. Second, voter ID is the single most galvanizing issue for black turnout against Republicans during the Obama presidency. Rand Paul knows this. He spoke out against voter ID legislation as both bad strategy and poor policy repeatedly before he got cold feet and backtracked on Hannity. Voter ID laws cut down the black vote by about 3-5 percent. If Rand Paul makes himself the GOP point man for stopping voter ID he can earn some of those votes.
2016 Black Vote Goal: (13 percent + 4 percent = 17 percent)
2. Rand Paul would have to champion and pass some legislation that specifically benefits the African American community — preferably a policy that Obama has been too cautious or distracted to pass. Enterprise Zones specifically targeted at the inner city, sentencing reform that expunges the records of non-violent drug offenders, a federal block grant to hire more minority police officers — the options are endless. The NAACP Battleground poll of 2012 showed that 13 percent of African Americans would consider voting for a Republican presidential candidate if they took Civil Rights and Equality issues more seriously. If Paul does his job, maybe half of them will vote for him.
2016 Black Vote Goal: (17 percent + 6 percent = 23 percent)
3. Rand Paul would have to pick a credible African American man or woman as his running mate. When I say credible, I mean someone who actually has some legitimate cultural, ideological and policy connections to the African American community. Not a millionaire cheater like Herman Cain. Not a Haitian American Mormon married to a white man living in Utah like Mia Love. And not someone like Michael Steele who has too much negative baggage from pandering to the anti-Obama tea party crowd. Paul would have to select someone like Senator Tim Scott (R – South Carolina), a true card carrying conservative who doesn’t seem to go out of his way to attack African Americans or Obama just to score points with white conservatives. If Paul really wanted to shake up the race and give himself a chance, he would go the John McCain route from 2008. McCain flirted publicly with the idea of picking Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2008 with the promise to the public that only a bi-partisan ticket could fix Washington and that they’d only serve one term. Paul should pick his new political BFF Cory Booker from New Jersey. It would shock the political world, and Booker might just be politically hungry enough and ambitious enough to try it. Booker is currently polling at about 3 percent for 2016 without even declaring. A Paul/Booker ticket, focusing on civil liberties, the free market and ending gridlock would be the kind of radical multi-racial ticket that could grab a good chunk of conservative African American voters and galvanize under 40 black voters from across the spectrum.
2016 Black Vote Goal: (23 percent + 3 percent = 26 percent)
So in the end Rand Paul might fall just short of his 30 percent goal. But honestly, if he could pull 26 percent based on the strategy above, he’d flip states like Ohio and Virginia, and dash any chances Hillary has of pulling out Georgia or North Carolina. In other words, this plan is doable, and Rand Paul is just about the only Republican who has the ideology, background and drive to pull it off.
Of course, this is all wishful thinking, Rand Paul has about as much chance to win the GOP nomination in 2016 as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or any of a host of Republican Senate candidates who will be hamstrung by their role in the most unpopular Congresses in American history. Plus, I doubt the GOP has enough messaging and policy discipline to get Republican governors and Secretaries of state to repeal voter ID policies (which help them get elected locally) for the overall good of possibly getting a Republican in the White House. That’s like telling everyone to take a dive in the NFL because the league would be better served if the Cowboys make the Super Bowl. However, you have to give Paul credit for his big ideas and bold predictions. That’s the kind of radical thinking that got a little known Senator from Illinois to believe he could be the first Democrat to get 40 percent of the White Vote and win the White House, as a black man. And that worked out pretty well for him.
This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post.
Dr. Jason Johnson is a professor, political analyst and public speaker. Fresh, unflappable, objective, he is known for his ability to break down stories with wit and candor. Johnson is the author the book Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell, a tenured professor in the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and Politics Editor at TheRoot.com. Dr. Johnson has an extensive public speaking and media background ranging from … [Read More...] about About Jason Johnson