When the primary for the 2020 presidential contest was just beginning, an acquaintance — an intelligent, wealthy, white Democrat — shared her sure-fire prediction as we shared dinner. “It’s going to be Michael Bloomberg,” she said. “He’s the logical choice” to be the party’s nominee for president. She seemed shocked when I told her, “It will never happen.”
My explanation was a simple one, and it had not crossed her mind because, I realized, it had never affected that particular New Yorker nor any member of her family. The most loyal base of the Democratic Party had for some time been Black voters, and for many of them, the former New York City mayor would always be associated with three words: “Stop and frisk.” Stopping mostly Black and brown young men as a means to reduce crime was, after all, his signature.
When the tactic was questioned, when data showed minorities frisked by police were no more likely to possess guns, Bloomberg did not budge, and said: “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” He vetoed city council bills that curbed the practice and railed against a federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional.
For any person of color, especially one with a family member stopped more than once, that was a pretty insulting stand from your mayor — and the feeling never faded away, even after potential candidate Bloomberg embarked on an apology tour in front of Black audiences.
Though it was Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s debate takedown that is credited with the demise of Bloomberg’s presidential hopes, in truth, he had turned off the party’s base long before.
To see all the hot takes, the recriminations, the second-guessing pouring in after the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris at the hands of Donald Trump, is a little infuriating.
Those who would lead the Democratic Party out of the wilderness still don’t get it, not completely, anyway. You’ve seen the pundits across cable TV and the blogosphere, familiar faces — mostly white and male and stuck in the past.
It’s not that Democrats should turn away from trying to woo the white voters of every age and income bracket who would all but guarantee victory, or get better at the messaging game the GOP has mastered, or figure out a way to connect popular and successful policies with their party. But the party also has to be clear-eyed about the complicated reasons those voters have turned away, instead of turning to solutions that lecture Black voters and dismiss their concerns, figuring they have no place else to go.
A majority of white voters in the U.S. have not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee — white or Black, win or lose — since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, at a time when President Johnson was both praised and reviled for his signature on landmark civil rights legislation.
To study that 1964 campaign is to note familiar themes, with the GOP conjuring visions of violent Black Americans breaking laws and stealing “white” jobs. It makes sense, despite progress, that racial unease and fear of change can still be used as a hammer in 2024.
But instead, many are placing blame where it doesn’t belong. There’s the “identity politics” excuse, the opinion that the Democratic Party erred by leaning too much into considerations of minorities, despite the fact that Vice President Harris did not. In fact, she avoided mentioning race or gender, even her own.
Her proposed policies — and yes, she had plenty — were focused on all Americans on issues from health care to housing, ones critics insisted she ignored.
Could the campaign have done a better job of countering a tsunami of misinformation and misleading ads? Of course. Would it have solved that problem if the Harris team had thrown diverse members of the party’s coalition under the bus? Probably not.
So, why this particular attack against Harris, who talked about pride in her country and values like patriotism? Apparently being a woman of color was enough to get many opponents, and some who were supposed to be on her side, to use her identity to define her.
It was Trump who used identity politics with gusto. He actually talked about his “white, beautiful white skin” at a Michigan campaign rally and raised fear in speeches and ads about criminal Black and brown immigrants and pet-eating Haitians.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are not fair to whites, according to the wealthy son of wealth, though loyalty, not qualifications, marks many of his Cabinet picks so far.
Yet, in America, where white is the default, the identity politics label did not stick to him.
Many Democrats, with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont leading the choir, fault the party for forgetting the working class, though he seems to always forget that Black Americans make up a big chunk of that constituency. The economic concerns cited by Americans historically have hit them harder than most. Yet a majority of African Americans who voted did not see Donald Trump as their savior.
When narratives of what went wrong for Democrats in 2024 overlook the constituency that has stuck with it, it’s not hard to understand why many don’t see the use of voting at all. Getting them off the couch and into the voting booth, enthusiastically, won’t happen if the Democratic Party’s only move is to pine after voters who deserted them long ago.
I shook my head when I heard former Democratic consultant David Axelrod and others float the name Rahm Emanuel as the perfect choice to chair the Democratic National Committee. Thankfully, Emanuel seemed to remove himself from the mix, though in a recent interview, he didn’t rule out a future run for office.
My mind immediately went back to that Bloomberg conversation with my clueless friend.
Former Chicago mayor Emanuel, who closed schools in mostly minority areas and withheld information about the police killing of Black teen Laquan McDonald, is exactly the wrong person to convince skeptical Black voters that the Democratic Party cares about them. In fact, there was resentment when he slid into a gig as ambassador to Japan in the Biden administration.
The enthusiasm in some quarters for Emanuel to head the DNC did prove one thing — that too many Democratic leaders still have a lot to learn about motivating the voters they have taken for granted, voters who have started to have their doubts.
Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.
