Right, that's what I was trying to get at with these two paragraphs towards the end:
"Historically, it is true that Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic — including Black voters with more conservative views — because the Democratic Party was seen as the party of civil rights. Voting blue was a way of practicing in-group solidarity.
That solidarity was enforced by institutions like the Black church and the memory of the civil rights movement, which helped keep the most conservative Black voters in the Democratic coalition."
I read that as implying that black voters' alignment with the Democrats was primarily because of issues like Jim Crow that are no longer live, and persists to the present primarily through inertia. (Which would imply that it's unlikely to continue as time goes on.) That's a different hypothesis from one that black voters—even conservative black voters—*still* don't trust the Republicans not to be racist, and so are more likely to stick with the Democrats.
This was a fair part of my story as well: a trans person who sees policies like "cancel my driver's license with zero grace period" can do an awful lot of agreeing with Republicans about economics or racial politics and still have zero interest in voting for them.
My slight pushback on this would be that 2008-2016 were actually outlier times for black support so comparing it to then is somewhat overstating the problem.
Like, yes, Harris only getting 75% of the black vote looks bad compared to 2012 or 2016, but if you look at the Roper numbers on 2004 - Kerry got 88%. Considering A-A women always support Democrats at higher numbers, if we say A-A women were at 90% and men were at 85%, then a 10-point drop is still a worry, but it's less of a disaster than looking at 2016 when Obama was still POTUS.
I also think in general, there's an overreaction to the moderation of the black vote - by everything I've seen, yes, African-American voters are closer to the median voter on things like LGBT rights, abortion, etc., but they also care less about those issues and may actually vote more 'liberal' in a primary because of their left-leaning views compared to the population on race, policing, or gun control.
I thought the conventional wisdom was that black people vote Democratic in large part because they believe that Republicans are racist.
Right, that's what I was trying to get at with these two paragraphs towards the end:
"Historically, it is true that Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic — including Black voters with more conservative views — because the Democratic Party was seen as the party of civil rights. Voting blue was a way of practicing in-group solidarity.
That solidarity was enforced by institutions like the Black church and the memory of the civil rights movement, which helped keep the most conservative Black voters in the Democratic coalition."
I read that as implying that black voters' alignment with the Democrats was primarily because of issues like Jim Crow that are no longer live, and persists to the present primarily through inertia. (Which would imply that it's unlikely to continue as time goes on.) That's a different hypothesis from one that black voters—even conservative black voters—*still* don't trust the Republicans not to be racist, and so are more likely to stick with the Democrats.
This was a fair part of my story as well: a trans person who sees policies like "cancel my driver's license with zero grace period" can do an awful lot of agreeing with Republicans about economics or racial politics and still have zero interest in voting for them.
This is a great piece - but one quibble I have is that while it was true that Black voters supported police defunding in 2020, that position was not stable. Pew saw this change significantly only one year later- the percentage preferring reduced funding dropped from 42% to 23%, which was a much larger drop in that position than any other racial group. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-want-more-spending-on-police-in-their-area/
My slight pushback on this would be that 2008-2016 were actually outlier times for black support so comparing it to then is somewhat overstating the problem.
Like, yes, Harris only getting 75% of the black vote looks bad compared to 2012 or 2016, but if you look at the Roper numbers on 2004 - Kerry got 88%. Considering A-A women always support Democrats at higher numbers, if we say A-A women were at 90% and men were at 85%, then a 10-point drop is still a worry, but it's less of a disaster than looking at 2016 when Obama was still POTUS.
I also think in general, there's an overreaction to the moderation of the black vote - by everything I've seen, yes, African-American voters are closer to the median voter on things like LGBT rights, abortion, etc., but they also care less about those issues and may actually vote more 'liberal' in a primary because of their left-leaning views compared to the population on race, policing, or gun control.