Why Black Voters Support Hillary Clinton

The 2016 primary season has been a particularly interesting one. Bernie Sanders, the insurgent candidate on the Democratic side, has taken up the label of the candidate of the common man. Although he has energized millions of voters and won several states, he’s done terribly with the most consistent and reliable Democratic voters in the Party — Black voters. Sanders has not cracked 30 percent of the Black vote in a single state, atrocious numbers for a Democrat who wants to be the nominee. Sanders and his campaign have made several convenient excuses:

1. Black voters will flock to Sanders once they get to know him

2. Voters in “red states” don’t matter, because those states are more conservative

3. The Clintons are a brand, and Bernie is a relative unknown

All of these excuses are problematic, especially for someone who is supposed to be running a national campaign. Votes in South Carolina count just as much as the ones in Washington state, for one. And if Black voters don’t know who Sanders is by now, then the blame lays with the Sanders campaign for doing a terrible job at minority outreach. Perhaps the worst excuse, which we don’t really hear from the campaign, but we do hear a lot from backers on social media, is that Black voters just don’t know what’s in their best interest. This is condescending at best, and racist at worst, the insinuation being that Black people aren’t smart enough to know who the candidates are, what they stand for, or what their own interests are as a group. Black voters are just as intelligent as any other group, and they know their interests just fine. It’s just that they’ve decided Hillary Clinton serves their interests far better than Bernie Sanders. That is why Hillary Clinton has beaten Sanders by 40 points or more with Black voters in every single state that has voted so far.

Black voters’ preferences have perplexed many observers, especially leftists who have found fault with the Clintons for not being “progressive enough,” and angered Sanders backers such as Michelle Alexander, who don’t believe the Clintons “deserve” the Black vote. In the past few months, the entire Clinton Presidency has been relitigated with a particular focus on the crime bill. The crime bill was supposed to be the smoking gun that would turn Black voters against the Clintons this election cycle. That line of thinking has failed mostly because there is a lot of confusion from academics about what the bill actually did.

What People Get Wrong About The Crime Bill

There is a myth that Bill Clinton decided he wanted mass incarceration and then pushed the crime bill through hoping to hurt Black people as much as possible. That is so far from the truth, but the narrative persists. Let’s be honest here — mass incarceration did not start with the crime bill. The crime bill only applies to federal prisoners, and federal prisoners only make up 10 percent of those imprisoned in the United States. Mass incarceration is a manifestation of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” which was actually just the war on Black people. Let’s take a look at the growth of incarceration rates in the United States. As you can clearly see, the massive rise in incarceration didn’t start in 1992. It started shortly after 1970.

It is important to have context here. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was enormous backlash across the country. Democrats had officially opened their arms to Black voters, and the white working class left the Party en masse for the Republicans (it wasn’t because of the big banks). The Republican Party became the anti-Black Party after 1964. Notorious conservative campaign consultant Lee Atwater explained that while it had become untenable to be openly racist, Republicans could still institute racist policies by using abstractions:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

The War on Drugs was a way for Republicans to hurt Black people without openly claiming that they were trying to do so. Perhaps most importantly, the drug war was instituted mainly at the state level. Under Reagan’s lead, many states began instituting “zero tolerance policies” that disproportionately put people of color behind bars. It was wildly popular, because hurting Black people was wildly popular. After the Civil Rights Act was passed, Republicans won five of the next six elections — 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988. Just as importantly, Republicans were scoring massive wins in Governorships and state legislatures, and they could pass draconian crime laws that drastically increased the United States prison population and disproportionately hurt Black people.

The crime bill didn’t start mass incarceration — that phenomena started decades earlier under Republican Presidents, Governors, and state legislatures. Under Nixon and Reagan in particular. Was the crime bill a good bill? No, it wasn’t. Federal mandatory minimums disproportionately hurt Black people. But ultimately, the bill was a compromise with a Republican Congress. A compromise that Black mayors, Black churches, and the Congressional Black Caucus overwhelmingly supported. If a Republican President had been in office, it is likely that the crime bill would have been far worse. The bill was a compromise, and it didn’t work as intended. But it is important to see what the alternative was — a bill that would have been dramatically worse for Black people across the board. Nobody’s hands are clean here — Joe Biden wrote the bill, the Clintons pushed it, and Bernie Sanders voted yes and bragged about being “tough on crime” for the next decade. Still, the bill only applied to the 10 percent of US prisoners in the federal system — the other 90 percent are held in state prison systems where the bill had no effect.

The Clintons Built Relationships with Black Voters When It Wasn’t Popular To Do So

We should always remember the context of the time. As we talked about earlier, Republicans won five out of the next six Presidential elections after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Being associated with Black people was not popular politically at the time, in fact, Republicans had rode anti-Black sentiment to rousing success over the past several decades. Democratic Presidential candidates in 1984 and 1988 largely ignored Black voters and went for the white working class vote (it didn’t work out so well). The Clintons were in that political environment, and they still decided to build relationships with Black voters. The Clintons reached out to Black voters in ways that Presidential candidates simply hadn’t done before. President Clinton appointed the most diverse Cabinet in US history when it wasn’t popular to do so. Bill Clinton appointed seven Black Cabinet Secretaries. He appointed more Black people to federal judgeships than were appointed all of 16 years prior to his taking office. In fact, 14 percent of all Clinton appointees were Black — a number that was twice as high as any administration prior. Bill Clinton put Black people in positions of power when it hadn’t been done before, and when it wasn’t very popular with the white working class.

Hillary Clinton, in particular, took a strong policy stance in the Clinton Administration. Unlike almost every First Lady before her, she was dedicated to having a policy role and meaningfully supporting the legislative agenda. She played a significant part in most of the administration’s successes, and her effectiveness led to her being elected Senator and eventually serving as Secretary of State under President Obama.

Black voters aren’t stupid, they remember the Clintons fondly for a reason. The Clintons had near universal support from Black voters at the end of Bill Clinton’s Presidency, largely because their policies worked well. Here are a few of the Clinton era policies and successes that positively impacted Black people:

· Earned Income Tax Credit

Clinton made the EITC one of his biggest legislative agenda wins. In 1993, he doubled the amount of the federal credit, which helped to support working class workers with children. By the end of his Presidency, most states had developed their own state version of the EITC. The EITC is a redistributive program. It effectively gives poor people money that was taxed from wealthy people. Here’s what NPR had to say about the EITC in 2013:

Last year, a federal program called the Earned Income Tax Credit took about $60 billion from wealthier Americans and gave it to the working poor. … But it was President Clinton who turned the program into what it is today — one that effectively gives low-wage working parents a big bonus. For some workers making around $15,000 a year, that bonus can now reach nearly $6,000. As the name suggests, the money is paid out like a tax refund, when workers file their income taxes.

Clinton dramatically expanded this program in ways that no President had previously.

· Children’s Health Insurance Program

The Children’s Health Insurance Program provided healthcare for five million working class children at the time, and now provides insurance for more than eight million children. It was one of the largest children’s healthcare investments in decades.

· Rising Incomes

Under the Clinton Administration, annual Black incomes rose over $3,300. This corresponded with a drop in Black unemployment, from 14.2 percent in 1992 to 7.3 percent. Clinton defended affirmative action and promoted its continued use as an effective economic tool for Black Americans.

· Brady Bill

The Clinton Administration fought against the NRA and won by passing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. The NRA fiercely opposed the bill, and had gotten it tabled in years prior. The bill created a waiting period of 5 days before a firearm could be sold to an unlicensed individual. Since the NICS system was created, over one million attempted firearm purchases have been blocked. Black people are disproportionately harmed by gun violence.

· Federal Funds For Low Income School Districts

Clinton dramatically increased the percentage of high poverty schools receiving federal Title I education funding, and got many of these schools connected to the Internet for the first time.

Black voters aren’t ignorant. They know their interests, and they know them well. They’ve simply decided that Hillary Clinton is the best champion of their interests. She played a large role in some of the biggest legislative successes of the 1990s, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But perhaps where she truly won over Black voters was when she lost to Barack Obama. Black voters left the Clintons in 2008 to support now President Obama, who then had the chance to become the first Black President. I still think it is understated, how big a deal that was to Black people. Clinton lost a close and bitter race and had every opportunity to take her ball and go home. She didn’t — she fought to get Obama elected twice by campaigning for him, and she served under him as his Secretary of State. I personally don’t agree with every legislative choice Obama made, but Hillary Clinton’s willingness to stick by him and fight for him after a stinging defeat won Black voters over for 2016. Especially given the unprecedented vitriol and racist attacks against Obama by the opposition.

The Clintons brought good economic times and a real increase in jobs and income for Black people. They fought against the NRA and won. The dramatic increase of the EITC program redistributed wealth to the working class. They built relationships with Black voters and put Black people in positions of power when it wasn’t popular to do so. All of those things are very progressive. Those are real achievements that positively impacted Black people. Black people remember the 1990s fondly for a reason.

It is easy then, to see why Black voters have utterly rejected Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the antithesis of the Clintons in several respects. While the Clintons were putting Black people in positions of power and building relationships with Black voters in the 1990s, Sanders had never once been elected by a diverse electorate, let alone been responsive to Black people’s needs as an elected official. While the Clintons fought the NRA, Sanders was voting with the NRA to protect gun manufacturers even while Black Americans are disproportionately harmed by gun violence. Sanders talks about potentially raising incomes for minority groups, the Clintons actually did it. The Clintons have real accomplishments to their name, not dogma or uncompromising rhetoric. And those accomplishments positively impacted Black people. Black voters didn’t forget.