Based on my long-time association with the black community, I have frequently written about my belief that black voters were on the cusp of a shift in political loyalty.
But first a little history.
Black voter loyalty to the Democratic Party never made sense to me. The Great Depression may have caused a shift in voter loyalty away from the party of emancipation and civil rights. But that was not what held their votes for the next 85 years.
It was a scheme concocted by a Chicago black Congressman William Dawson in the mid-1930s – at a time black voters were starting to return to the GOP. He was placed as the boss of the black precincts by Windy City’s white racist leaders of the Democrat political machine. That was the same practice that had New York’s infamous Tammany Hall – in cooperation with the Mafia — appoint Bumpy Johnson as the political/crime boss of Harlem.
Dawson’s plan was simple. Hook the impoverished black residents on welfare. Make it their lifeline. In return for a permanent poverty level of sustenance, blacks would surrender their constitutional rights of social mobility, equal opportunity, quality education, fair housing, equal justice and access to America’s opportunity society. Generational welfare dependency would become the new civil right – the only civil right for those trapped by social and economic segregation.
It is important to understand that generational welfare dependence did not evolve naturally. It was strategically developed and maintained intentionally for political purposes by the Democratic Party – and the scheme has been working in our segregated cities for four score and five years.
When President Johnson was calming the concerns of southern racist senators, he told them that the war on poverty programs would keep n***ers voting Democrat for the next 200 years. And yes, Johnson was such a frequent user of the n-word that he was dubbed “the connoisseur of the n-word.”
Dawson’s idea appealed to the white supremacism of President Roosevelt, so he had Dawson appointed Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee – commissioned to spread the welfare strategy to the Democrat political machines in other segregated cities.
No ethnic group in American history has been made so permanently dependent on government handouts in place of real jobs with upward mobility. For the impoverished Irish, Italians, Jews and others, America provided an economic escalator to assimilate and prosper. But not for the segregated Negro population trapped in political plantations run by Democrat regimes.
For the past 85 years, many of the conditions of Democratic oppression has continued – segregation, inferior schools, slum housing, menial jobs (or none at all), prejudicial treatment by the police and in the courts. Inner city crime was overlooked as long as it did not spill over into the all-white neighborhoods. And the trade-off is welfare dependency.
Since the 1960s, I spent a good portion of my time and activities devoted to civil rights and racial equality. I often kid that if you know someone who has spoken in more black churches, you would call them “pastor.”
Underlying my efforts was to convince blacks that they were supporting the political leaders who were oppressing them. Conversely, I often lectured the local Republican Party for not engaging in the inner city.
I was confident that by bringing the message to the community, eventually the mindset would change. And it gradually did. Since the Reagan presidency, there are more and more black Republican and conservative voices – elected officials, media personalities, sports figures, writers, educators. There was an increase in participation in GOP organizations. Blacks were joining the Tea Party Movement. There are black conservative groups.
The number of blacks casting their ballots for the GOP has been increasing in recent elections. Despite all the racist accusations thrown at President Trump and the GOP by the radical left, Republican candidates have seen a measurable increase in the minority vote – blacks and Hispanics – in 2020 and 2021.
These were all small changes, to be sure. But I see them as the almost imperceptible rumblings before a major earthquake. And I sensed an increase in the rumbling recently.
The plunge in President Biden’s popularity has been widely reported. But what has not received much media attention is the drop among blacks. The prevailing wisdom was that Biden was wildly popular with blacks. They were the group that pushed him to the Democrat presidential nomination and into the White House. He was – and is still – polling better with blacks than the first woman of color to be Vice President of the United States. That, in and of itself, should be a warning sign to Democrats.
The recent Emerson College National Poll has provided more evidence of my predicted shift in black voting. In the poll, black voters represented the biggest drop in Biden’s overall decline. In February, the Emerson Poll showed Biden with an overall disapproval rating of 39 percent to an approval of 49 percent – a positive 10-points. The recent poll shows Biden with a 50 percent disapproval rating to 41 percent approval rating – a nine-point negative gap. That is a 19-point drop in ten months.
Among blacks, Biden had a 72 percent approval rating. In the latest Emerson survey, his approval among blacks has dropped to 52 percent. That is the biggest drop of any of the demographic groups. For the record, Biden’s approval rate among Hispanics dropped from 56 percent to 50 percent.
This could be the beginning of a major shift. If the Hispanic vote were to drop another 5 or 10 percent – and the black Democrat vote dropped below 80 percent, the Democratic Party would have to battle for survival in the bluest of blue states.
If the next election shows further shift by minorities to the GOP, it will mark the most fundamental change in party loyalty since the Depression.
So, there ‘tis.