The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Black Vote in 2020

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

The last time a Democrat won the White House, he had enormous support from black voters; lower support from black voters was one of many reasons Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Marcus Ferrell, a political organizer from Atlanta, tells Radio Hour about the importance of turning out “unlikely voters” in order to win an election, which, for him, means black men. Jelani Cobb, a New Yorker staff writer and historian, points out that the four Democratic front-runners, all of whom are white, may struggle to get the turnout they need. Cobb tells David Remnick that Joe Biden’s strong lead may begin to fall after his weak showing among largely white voters in Iowa; Pete Buttigieg has very low support among South Carolina voters, and even faces opposition from black constituents in his home town, South Bend. But Bernie Sanders, Cobb says, seems to have made inroads with at least younger black voters since 2016. Plus, a New Yorker staffer picks three favorites. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. I wear a Stacey Abrams shirt in the airport. Black men, black women will be like, where's you get that thing from to this date? And I'll buy it off of you right now. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and this is Marcus Farrell, a political organizer in Atlanta. We're not going to increase women by 20 points because black women already vote at the highest rate. Obama won because black men, Latino brothers, finally voted at high rate. Farrell has worked with the New Georgia Project, which is leading voter registration drives in the state,

and he says that the most untapped voting bloc is black men. When I go and talk to black men, they are not impressed with the current talking point that candidates are providing them. The things that candidates are very comfortable talking about aren't the things that black men care about at all, right? So we want health care. That might be great, but there's no one having conversations about keeping black men out of jail. There's no one having conversations about increasing trade work so African-American men can get jobs and be healthy, beneficial parts of society. So it's a different thing to say, I believe in Medicare for all. But if you can go to a black man and say, I believe in Medicare for All, and this is why it's going to help you, black man, then that's a different conversation. But no one wants to have that conversation. Everybody wants to talk in Iowa speak. Iowa speak is generalized conversations to 41-year-old white women to make them like you and make them feel safe that you're going to be a good pick for president. Even the media and even the media and even

the press and even the posters go to people who are already going to vote. But you don't win with likely voters. You win with turnout voters. And turnout people just want to hear, what are you going to do for me? How are you going to help my life? How are you going to help me feed my babies? How are you going to help me work one job and be able to pay all of my bills? How are you going to create a living wage? How are you going to stop gentrification in my neighborhood? Because I'm getting taxed out of my grandma in my house right now, right? That's what, voters who are unlikely, and the unlikely voters are the reason that we were going to win. So some of the most impressive things have been Tom Steyer running ads in South Carolina

speaking about reparations. That's one of the reasons why Tom Steyer went up in the polls because there are candidates that talk to black men. I just don't think that the candidates that talk to black men have a chance. Marcus Farrell, a political organizer in Atlanta. As Farrow pointed out, the last time a Democrat won the White House, he had enormous support from black voters. And this year, with Kamala Harris and Corey Booker out of the race, the four white frontrunners may really struggle to get the turnout they need. I called up Jolani Cobb to talk about the black vote in the 2020 election.

Jelani is a staff writer and a historian, and I reached him in his office at Columbia University. In the state of the union address, it seemed to me that among the many dramas and themes, race played a central role. On the one hand, you had Donald Trump gesturing toward any number of people of color in the audience, including a Tuskegee airman. At the same time, he awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can get, to Rush Limbaugh, whose record of racist statement, is extremely long. What was the motivation in racial terms and in electoral terms

of this strategy that clearly was animating the State of the Union address? Yeah, I think a tokenization of African Americans, who could be against

recognizing a Tuskegee Airman, particularly a man who is over a hundred years old and still looks like, He could report for duty tomorrow morning if need be. And so there's a kind of gross showcasing of black people. It's a more refined version, I think, than what we've seen before, because if you remember the Trump of the 2016 campaign era when he was literally saying, look at my African-American.

Right, I have Don King. Yes, exactly. I have Don King and Kanye. What else do I need? It was a deeply cynical moment. And, you know, maybe we should be accustomed to that. Maybe, you know, cynicism is the native language that Trump speaks in. But I think that what struck me about the state of the union was that he seems to be speaking it more fluently.

Well, exactly. And it seems to me that it's all about the campaign. He knows he's not going to win the black vote, so-called black vote. He's not going to win the Hispanic vote. But if he can raise the percentages just a bit in a very, very close election, that might be. be decisive. If you think about the statement he made in 2016, we said, you know, what do you have to lose?

Well, you know, people who are looking at public policy would say a great deal. Trump was a beneficiary in 2016 of a perception among, you know, a fairly sizable part of the African-American electorate that there wasn't that much difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And I think that what we're seeing is laying the groundwork for raising those same sort of cynical perspectives about whoever you will wind up being the nominee, you know, later on this year on the Democratic side. And depending upon who he's talking about, that could be an effective strategy, you know, especially given the way we've seen race and history and civil rights and

people's personal backgrounds on these issues become a subject in the democratic debates and now on the Democratic primaries. We just heard from Marcus Farrell. who's been doing work to engage with black voters, and he paints a picture of a huge disconnect between the issues that Democrats are talking about and the issues that are important to the black community. Do you see a disconnect there? I think what's happened has been an idea

with the Democratic Party so big that the roof is now sagging. And what I mean by that is do you want to go all in on the issues that are most concerning to African-American? and potentially turn off the elusive or working class white voter. And so I think that there is a disconnect. But what's interesting is in that he has old-school, almost old-left form of economic populism and had a surprising degree of effectiveness in luring African-American voters.

He's now, I mean, he's light years behind Joe Biden. Joe Biden has about 48% of African-Americans supporting him, and Bernie Sanders only has about 20%. But that's still impressive, you know, given that he's really one of the people who kind of prioritizes the interests of the working class and people who've been left behind and so on, and is now more accustomed to making appeal specifically to the issues that affect African-Americans. But that's far from a language, I think, that he speaks naturally. Sanders' 2016 campaign was often criticized for its failure to reach out to Black voters. Did you agree with that criticism? And has he fixed it in 2020?

He seems to be getting quite a few African-American voters who are younger while Biden seems to be drawing from an older population. Bernie Sanders has one of the more interesting developments in political evolutions. and 2016, his really poor showing among African-Americans, especially African-Americans in the South, was attributed to all sorts of things. There was even a question about whether there was an aspect of anti-Semitism in people's disregard for him or their disinterest in him. You don't hear any of that now. It's fairly remarkable that he has 20 percent. In South Carolina, his numbers are about that as well, you know, somewhere in the 20 percent range.

He benefits from having Americans who were supportive of him. You know, if we kind of think back to Cornell West and his constant critiques of Barack Obama, he's right there, you know, next to Bernie Sanders, you know, for the whole way of this campaign. And also, in 2016, his events were disrupted twice by Black Lives Matter protesters. This year, he has significant numbers of people who are young grassroots activists who are right there campaigning for him. Now, is Joe Biden's appeal to the African American community so far, 95% of its stardust from his relationship to Barack Obama? Yeah, I think it's probably 60% stardust from Barack Obama and 40% of the ice. idea that he is the type of person that other voters, namely white voters, might be inclined to

vote for over Donald Trump. And so it's the kind of electability argument over once again. And I think that it's interesting to see how this is playing as well, because it is contingent upon results. If we thought about Barack Obama, he surged in popularity in South Carolina and surged in popularity among African Americans in South Carolina after he won Iowa because he had essentially proved to black voters that white voters were willing to vote for him. So he wouldn't be a wasted vote. I think that in a way, Joe Biden faces the opposite problem, that his African-American support may begin to erode if there are significant suspicions that maybe he isn't as popular

with the kind of Joe lunch bucket white guy as black voters would perceive him to be. Now, Pete Buttigieg came out of the Iowa caucuses in a pretty strong position, but he's got very little support among black voters so far, particularly in South Carolina. Why is that? Pete Buttigieg speak at Morehouse College in Atlanta. And, you know, Morehouse College, very well-known, historically black college for men. And he laid out his case and got kind of like golf applause at the end of it. And it was interesting. said, you know, I was watching, I said, I think that there's a cultural difference here, which is he's a

Midwestern guy, and he was talking at a Southern college. I was like, I don't think he would have fared well with Southern white people, because he was very reserved in that sense, and people expect you to have a little bit more of your personality, a little bit more of who you are on the surface. But that's just the kind of superficial part of it. Much more substantively, I think, is the concerns of African Americans in South Bend. I have a rule about politics, which is to never trust someone who's more popular away from home than they are at home. African Americans in South Bend are very critical of them, particularly around issues of policing. If he winds up being the nominee, you can expect the Republican Party to make a lot of references to South Bend.

You can expect to be commercials from PACs featuring disgruntled black people who were in the city when he was mayor. And I think there would be an all-out assault while they're going full-tilt talking about what they've done for criminal justice reform on the Republican side. Now, John Linde, we started out the primary race with several pretty high-profile

candidates of color, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, and they're all gone. All gone. And you've got Deval Patrick who's in the race, but not so as you'd notice. He's polling it below 1%. Why hasn't he caught on?

and how has the race been changed by the fact that these other candidates of color have dropped down? A visibility problem, a billionaire on the stage who essentially bought his way onto the stage, and another billionaire who appears. So we're talking Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg. Tom Steyer. I think there is the line. There were more billionaires than black people on the stage during the debates. And so where I think this will become really tricky is if the DNC rules allow

Mike Bloomberg to get onto the next debate. And people were saying we essentially changed the rules to allow him to get his foot in the door while the firm threshold did not allow Curry Booker to continue making his case for why he should be elected president. I think that ultimately, whoever gets the nomination, we are likely to see a person of color and the vice president. Elizabeth Warren, it seems fairly reasonable to expect Julian Castro. But there are also the people who are coming up, you know, Kamala Harris comes up,

Corey Booker comes up, Stacey Abrams still comes up as a person that people would expect to see getting tapped to be in the vice presidential slot, depending upon who wins the nomination. Now, if Iowa told me anything, it told me that this is the dissatisfaction about the catastrophic disorganization in Iowa is just a precursor to what is, if not likely, then very deeply possible in November, which is that the election will not be considered legitimate. Right. If Trump wins, this scale of suspicion and disappointment will be almost unspeakable, and Trump is almost certain to challenge any election unless he's crushed in that election. I don't see that happening.

Yeah, I think I've had this conversation of late. And, you know, one of the things that the impeachment did was send me, and lots of other people, I imagine, back to the Federalist papers. And one of the things that comes across in reading them is the real fear that, you know, certainly Hamilton and Madison had about the possibility of political violence coming as a result of, you know, the system operating on bad faith in some way, shape, or form. and you know when you know notably adam shift read from that letter from hamilton to Washington and described the kind of character he was afraid of and it sounded very similar to the character that we have come to know donald trump to be so would a person with his history and his particular psychology can that person stand being humiliated on the biggest stage in the world by losing an election not likely uh and uh is

Is he above saying that the election is illegitimate? I don't think so. He was ready to say it last time. I mean, he was talking about it's being stolen and rigged and all the rest until he won, until that terrifying moment for him when he stood up and had to declare victory. ...power that he now wields. I think the possibility of political violence in the country has increased significantly and certainly heading into the election is something that we can't dismiss as a real

possibility. Jelani, thanks so much. Thank you. Jalani Cobb is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School, and he's a staff writer at the New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick. Tyler Foggett has a wide range of interest. Recently, she wrote about Jay Sekula, one of the Trump lawyers in the impeachment trial, who also happens to play drums in a classic rock band, if you like that sort of thing. And Tyler knows all. kinds of weird stuff, and she's always got interesting things to recommend. Tyler, welcome. Please surprise me. So I recently saw this movie called Cure. It came out in 1997. It's this Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. And the reason why I went to go see it is because I saw Bong Junho's

parasite, and I really liked it. And I read an article where Bong was talking about how Kier was his all-time favorite film. So it's by the other Kurosawa, right? I mean, Akira Kurosawa is the classic filmmaker from Japan, who we all know, this is the other guy. Exactly, yeah. This one is about, I think, he was born like 50 years later. Yeah. But yeah, so the movie is basically about a string of seemingly unconnected murders taking place in Tokyo.

It sort of starts off as like a police procedural who-done-it type film. But they tell you who did it pretty early on. In this particular scene, the detective and suspect are having a conversation in which the suspect says that he sort of feels a kinship with the detective. And you can kind of see reality breakdown, and it's actually unclear whether the conversation is even happening or whether it's in the detective's head. Okay, the conversation just went from conversation to we threw him against.

the wall. Yes. Yeah, there are a lot of mood shifts in this movie, which is also how I see it as being kind of similar to Parasite. Let's move on. Let's go to the second thing that you're up to. What have you been listening to, maybe? Yeah, so it's a remix of Kanye West's song, Say You Will, which was originally on his 2008 album, 808s and Heartbreak. And in 2015, he came out with this remix of the song that's just like completely different, where he collaborated with Caroline Shaw, She's this Pulitzer Prize winning musician, the youngest musician ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. And she's really interesting because she has this choral technique where it's sort of like her voice singing layered on top of it like over and over and over again. So it's like a one-person choir almost.

Why would she make calls out the blue? Yeah, I remember this one. I do. I'm awake, sleep for soon. I absolutely love this song. I listen to it almost every day. I mean, now he's sort of known for his whole Sunday service thing, which is him reimagining all of his old songs as gospel tunes.

And a lot of people don't really like it, either because they don't like gospel music or because they think it's sort of indicative of a lack of creativity. I mean, why go back and redo something you've already done? when you can make something new. But I actually think it's really interesting that he is willing to return to these old songs over and over and over again

and completely reinvent them. It's almost like each song is a platonic ideal and then each new version that he makes of the song is like a reflection of that ideal. I've become sort of obsessed with this Netflix show called The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

The third season just dropped pretty recently and I watched it all in like two days. You watch that and not Messiah. Exactly. And the show was basically a reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was on, like, in the, yeah, 90s and early 2000s. And I grew up in, like, a pretty, you know, traditional household. And I'll tell you, I was given the hardest time for watching that show because it was... That was considered satanic in something?

Yeah, because it's like a promotion of witchcraft. I mean, it's like for the same reasons... So for religious reasons that came down on you. It's like, you know, I was given a hard time for reading like Harry Potter and that kind of thing, too. And so I'm going to play you a clip from the original Sabrina. because you'll see that it's just the lightest show in the entire world. Why don't you guys go and I'll stay home with Salem? Hey, the whole point of a family vacation is so I can get a vacation from the family.

Please, I need some downtime. How old were you when you were watching it? I was, I was in middle school. Yeah, I was pretty young. And you were sort of, you know, right in front of the TV, fists on chin. Exactly. I thought that Salem was like literally the coolest cat in the world. I was just obsessed with this show. And so when I heard that this reboot was happening, I was interested. and I just thought that I would check it out, especially because it's made by the same guy who produces Riverdale,

which is another show that I quite like. Sabrina. Who are you? So you have Sabrina, played by Kiernan Shipka, Little Sally Draper from Mad Men. Ah, there's the cat. Yes, now he's a cat. But it's, I mean, it's a crazy show. It's about this group of witches who worship the devil.

And the big twist is that Sabrina is not half mortal. half witch, as you've been led to believe, but actually half mortal, half demon. She is Lucifer's daughter. Amazing. Yeah, it's quite a career turn. Amazing. Well, these are, I would say this is our darkest pick three in a while. Yeah, happy Valentine's Day. Yeah, thanks. Tyler Foggett. Thanks so much. You can find all of Tyler Foggett's writing on politics and a thousand other subjects at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our show for today. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards,

with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Karen Frulman, Callalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Danny Bonner, Morgan Flannery, Allison McAdam, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.