Dr. Jason Johnson delivers news about a political issue that has been voted on in reference to abortion. Other panel members include Adolfo Franco (RNC Surrogate), Erica Werner (the Washington Post), and host, Chris Matthews.
Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell
Dr. Jason Johnson delivers news about a political issue that has been voted on in reference to abortion. Other panel members include Adolfo Franco (RNC Surrogate), Erica Werner (the Washington Post), and host, Chris Matthews.
Bernie Sanders needs more people. Preferably African American people who live in the South.
But after being routed by Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, it looks like the numbers aren’t on his side. Sanders lost the African American vote to Clinton by an incredible 86 percent to 14 percent. To put this in context, he did worse than Hillary Clinton did with black voters in 2008 (19 percent), and he did worse than John Edwards (36 percent), John Kerry (32 percent) and even Rev. Al Sharpton (19 percent) in the 2004 Democratic primary. The last time a Democratic candidate got beaten that bad amongst black voters in South Carolina and still went on to win the nomination was Michael Dukakis way back in 1988, back when South Carolina held a caucus and not a primary.
A Sanders win in the Palmetto State was always a long shot. Every poll predicted that Clinton would beat Sanders, but there was some hope of him putting a dent into Clinton’s stronghold on the black vote. But that hope was dashed when she administered a political beat down so bloody that Ryan Coogler would’ve left it on the cutting room floor. As of publication, with over 98 percent of South Carolina precincts reporting, Clinton is steamrolling Sanders 74 percent to 26 percent and will win the majority of the delegates. The questions now are: What can Senator Sanders due to survive his third degree “Berns”?
Bring ‘Em Out
The Sanders campaign has always banked on getting young voters out to the polls, and increasing turnout as a way to counter Clinton’s 20 plus year relationships in several primary states. That didn’t happen in the 2016 South Carolina primary and actually hasn’t been happening across the board during the Democratic contests thus far. The turnout amongst Democrats in South Carolina was 359,066 in 2016, certainly higher than turnout in 2004 but nowhere close to the tsunami of support that occurred in 2008, where turnout reached 532,469 voters. If Sanders has any chance of competing across the remaining Southern States he’s got to get higher turnout, and especially amongst African American voters. This is actually a lesson for both candidates, because on the Republican side turnout in South Carolina jumped from 445,677 in 2008 to 737,924 in 2016.
SC Democratic Primary 2016 | Total | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Hillary Clinton | 270,810 | 73.47% |
Bernie Sanders | 95,737 | 25.97% |
SC Democratic Primary 2008 | Total | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Barack Obama | 294,898 | 55.42% |
Hillary Clinton | 140,990 | 26.49% |
African American turnout is the engine the drives the Democratic party in national elections and thus the candidate with the best chance of attracting and turning out African American voters is the Democrats best chance to win the White House again. The African American vote increased not only as a percentage of the electorate but African American women voted at a higher percentage than any other Demographic group in 2008 and 2012. This breaks down to about 2 million more voters across America and the difference between Ohio, Florida and Virginia flipping from Romney to Obama.
Sanders visited historically black colleges. He campaigned with director Spike Lee, rapper Killer Mike, and Prof. Cornel West. He even diversified his campaign team. Meanwhile for almost two weeks Clinton was battered with viral stories about her policy choices in the 90s, questionable use of racialized terminology and her overall fitness as a candidate. Yet, African American voters emphatically voted for her over Sanders.
Why? Because over 70 percent of South Carolina Democratic primary voters (61 percent of whom are African American) want a president to continue President Obama’s policies. Over the last several months Hillary Clinton has been hugging Obama so tight that Michelle is giving her side-eye. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has consistently said he wants to move further left than Obama’s policies, something only 19 percent of South Carolina voters supported.
At the core, the Sanders campaign did an excellent job of reaching out to African American voters. They just didn’t like what he had to say. His focus on economic justice resonates, but clearly African American voters don’t believe that he can accomplish his goals, and further, as many have argued, he seems new to, or only recently interested in the fate of African American voters. Is this fixable? Possibly. The Sanders campaign will have to be careful that white liberal supporters don’t continue to alienate black voters with suggestions that “They don’t know what’s good for them” and further he’ll have to remember that demonstrating policy is just as important as talking about it.
Sanders and Clinton are being vetted by black voters harder than any Democratic candidate since the 1960s (and that includes Obama) so showing up four months out with a few out-of-state endorsements wasn’t enough for Sanders to break through.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump has already started to move on from attacking (or really pummeling) rivals like Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz to focus on Clinton. Saturday night after a sound beating of Sanders, Clinton pivoted to general election rhetoric, calling out Trump by his slogan and gearing up for battle. With Saturday’s results, it’s not a matter of if Bernie Sanders will drop out of the race, it’s a matter of when. Sanders has decreased in his share of the vote in every single category: whites, women, young people, African Americans and every other Demographic group from the Nevada caucus to South Carolina. If he doesn’t win several of the 12 Super Tuesday states, or at least stay within a reasonable delegate margin by keeping Clinton from running up the score, this race may have all but ended in the Palmetto state.
This article originally appeared online at The Root.
On CNN, The Root Politics Editor Jason Johnson and conservative commentator Kayleigh McEnany analyze the Republican Presidential Primary debate in Greenville, South Carolina, and the fight between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.
On The Ticket, a Presidential election podcast on KUT Texas Public Radio, Dr. Jason Johnson discusses the campaign of Bernie Sanders and the South Carolina Democratic Primary.
Click here to listen to Dr. Jason Johnson on KUT.
If you look at President Obama through the golden 90s TV lens, Barack is basically the “Uncle Phil” to Michelle’s “Aunt Viv” (the first one). He’s the black man who came from nothing that we can all be really proud of. But every once in awhile he makes you wonder if he really gets it.
The black community has supported Obama at a higher rate than any other group, yet the president has always subtly stiff armed them. Respectability politics litter his speeches to black churches. He chastised Morehouse grads for being stymied by racial discrimination. Even when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”, he followed it with a slew of gotta-hear-both-sides rhetoric in subsequent shootings of unarmed black folks.
Obama delivered the message of his life, and his presidency, in his eulogy at Mother Emmanuel. He became the black president that African Americans have been wanting him to be, and all it took was the tragic deaths of African Americans that were finally a lot more like him.
For the majority of his presidency Obama allowed Eric Holder to play his “Luther” role while he gave speeches to the nation with a kumbaya spin. It’s not that President Obama doesn’t care about black people, but he has a cultural and experiential affinity for a certain part of the black community often overlooked by the press. Obama is an ‘Our Kind of People’ black guy.
Yes, the president went to Trinity United Church in Chicago, which like most big black churches was very socioeconomically diverse, but at his core, Obama spent his social and professional time with other elite black folks and their kin.
Obama has won his political fortunes on the efforts of all African Americans, but he draws his cultural sustenance and identity from the upper and middle class political elites. Not the NAACPers but the 100 Black Men. Not the parishioners but the clergy. Not the Eric Garners but the Clementa Pinckneys.
The reason Obama spoke so lovingly and so humanly at the eulogy of Clementa Pinckney is because the president saw it not only as a moral, and political tragedy, but an attack on who he was. An assault on his kind of black folk. And for the first time since Skip Gates, Obama’s mask cracked and the black man came out to play.
I was at the eulogy of Senator Clementa Pinckney, for personal reasons. I knew Clem, I cared about him and I drew a lot of life lessons from my time as his campaign manager. So my expectations for President Obama’s speech were probably different from the pundits. Many analysts, especially in the black community were gripping for a loud rousing speech that would vent our anger—both intellectual and personal—at the white supremacy, institutional racism and unmitigated cowardice of our political leaders when it came to racial issues.
I didn’t want that. For me, this needed to be about putting Clem Pinckney to rest, discussing his legacy as a man of God, and keeping the focus on his family. Obama, in a way I never anticipated, didn’t disappoint.
I stood on a riser in the upper right hand corner of the arena to see the president, I couldn’t sit down, I was too emotional and antsy after almost 7 hours of waiting in line and jostling for a seat in the packed gym.
I have seen Obama speak live probably a dozen times, but from the moment he entered the room, and the crowd became more excited and affected I knew something different was coming.
First, Obama came into the room clapping his hands to the beat of the hymn being played, in complete synch with the audience, it was the most organic thing I’ve seen him do in years.
And as he walked in, he wasn’t focused on the audience, or even the first lady. He didn’t take a seat. He just looked at the pastors on stage, primed and grounded—almost as if he were about to yell ‘amen’ and get up on stage to do a praise dance.
And really, dancing is the best way to describe Obama’s movements in the 15 or so minutes between when he arrived and when he actually took the stage. President Obama was literally rocking back and forth on his heels, bobbing back in forth in his seat.
And when Obama finally laid out the legacy of Clem, the beauty of his life and his accomplishments, his love and inspiration to others, and his impact on the South Carolina House of Representatives, the entire room could collectively cry and mourn at the same time.
For once Obama didn’t come to the black community to lecture or scold, he didn’t slip in the trials and tribulations of the LGBT community or illegal immigrants. He centered the entire Nation, the entire symbolic and personal power of his presidency on the pain, frustrations, strength and spiritual resilience of the African American community.
So often black pain is ignored, or marginalized, or only viewed in the context of how it makes white Americans feel. But not that afternoon. Obama said, ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘our’ more times than I’ve ever heard him in his presidency.
He did not equivocate or play a balancing act. He did not attach these murders to a short term political narrative. He validated black pain, he validated black mourning and he made African Americans the moral, cultural and political focus of the entire United States of America, for one precious hour in a packed out college arena in downtown Charleston.
In the 48 hours after Obama’s speech, pundits were dropping #HotTakes faster than you can say “newscycle” to contextualized the last two weeks. TPP, Obamacare, Gay Marriage, Charleston, all were rolled into one big Obama sandwich which supposedly showed his presidency still had legs with 18 months to go and his legacy was cemented. Some went so far as to say this might be Obama’s best week ever.
These narratives are just sloppy attempts to paper over what really happened that Friday afternoon. It’s not Obama’s “greatest week” when he eulogizes the lives of 9 people assassinated by a white supremacist, nor can he take credit for the Supreme Court validating policies and lifestyle choices that the public had come to accept years earlier.
This speech was historic because President Obama finally acknowledged in public that #BlackLivesMatter, and that African American forgiveness is not an act of cowardice or weakness but an act of defiance against whites who insist on being centralized in all of our lives, even in tragedy.
A presidency can take a long time to grow but can still find it’s roots in the hearts and souls of the marginalized men and women upon whom its success is built. In the end, while it took some caution, pleading and tragedy that Barack Obama is a black man in America and is no longer afraid to share that with the world and especially black people.
That Friday is the only time an Obama speech made me cry, and if it took the lives of 9, beautiful, God fearing black folks studying the word of God in a Wednesday night bible study to bring out the Black Man in Obama – that is still too high a price.
But if that tragedy can lead to a man and a presidency that can center itself and American conversation on black lives for the next two years. Some—not all—but just some of the debt created by the loss of these lives, will have been repaid by president Obama, the first real Black president of the United States.
This article originally appeared online at NBC BLK.
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