Why black voters remain in Hillary Clinton’s corner
When Hillary speaks of racial issues--it is not an afterthought--a tack on like it comes across when Sanders brings up the issue of race.
Why black voters remain in Hillary Clinton’s corner
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Hillary Clinton participates in a Breaking Down Barriers town hall campaign event at Morris College in Sumter, S.C., on Feb. 24. (Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency)
February 25 at 9:07 PM
With the Democratic primary in South Carolina upon us, the question isn’t whether the presumed firewall of African American voters for Hillary Clinton will hold. I firmly believe that it will. The question is why. Yes, a lot of it has to do with fealty to President Obama. But it also has to do with what Clinton is saying to African Americans and how she says it.
“Any discussion of the Democratic base must include the acknowledgment that that base is heavily Black,” explains Steve Phillips in his insightful new book “Brown is the New White.” Phillips argues that a “New American Majority” has formed within the voting-age population in the United States: “Progressive people of color now comprise 23 percent of all the eligible voters in America, and progressive Whites account for 28 percent of all eligible voters,” he writes. “The New American Majority electoral equation requires securing the support of 81 percent of people of color and 39 percent of Whites.”
This demographic reality brings the Democratic campaigns for president into clearer focus. Income inequality and Wall Street excess animate both halves of that “New American Majority,” so it’s no surprise that both Clinton and her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), talk a lot about them. Same goes for criminal justice reform and immigration. But not every issue is of equal importance to people of color and progressive whites, and this is the key to Clinton’s advantage. There are three reasons Clinton’s firewall of black voters won’t #feelthebern in South Carolina and beyond.
First, Obama. His approval rating among African Americans is 89 percent in the latest Gallup tracking poll. This explains why Clinton has left no daylight between herself and the man who bested her in 2008 and for whom she worked as secretary of state. And it explains why she highlights the many times that Sanders argued for a primary challenge to Obama in 2012.
Second, Clinton doesn’t shy away from race. Sanders talks about race, too, of course. But he seems to do so at a remove, and his attempts to make a convincing link between his economic message and race continue to fall short.
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“We have to begin by facing up to the reality of systemic racism, because these are not only problems of economic inequality,” Clinton said at Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture last week. “These are problems of racial inequality. And we have got to say that loudly and clearly.” And Clinton’s pitch to black voters is part and parcel of her larger pitch to all voters. She was asked to “look beyond diversity to wealth creation” during an interview with BET recently. “The fastest-growing group of small-business owners are black women,” she said. “We need to do more to help them get access to the credit that they need.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
ever the Republican ones. So I guess my family cancels out your family 
Why did you leave his name and the link out of the op?
We didn't forget how he lied about Bernie.
"Why uninformed black voters remain in Clinton's corner"
Of course, now there is no need for the article.
