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EndElectoral

(4,213 posts)
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 09:44 AM Mar 2016

Clinton and the AA Vote

After reviewing the southern votes, and the northern urban votes one thing jumps out and that is Hillary Clinton's ability to gather large portions of the African American vote. Somehow the message got out that Clinton was a better candidate for the African American voter than Sanders was. The Clinton campaign has been highly successful in this messaging.

Clinton's campaign has been hammering racial inequality over economic inequality and apparently that message has resonated more.

On February 10, Michelle Alexander wrote an article for the progressive magazine The Nation entitled Why Hillary Clinton Doesn't Deserve the Black Vote. Excerpt below, but the entire article goes much more into depth of the Clintons and the black vote. Encourage all to read.

http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/

Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. Clinton did not declare the War on Crime or the War on Drugs—those wars were declared before Reagan was elected and long before crack hit the streets—but he escalated it beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible. He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement.

Clinton championed the idea of a federal “three strikes” law in his 1994 State of the Union address and, months later, signed a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces. The legislation was hailed by mainstream-media outlets as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own.”

When Clinton left office in 2001, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983. All of the presidents since 1980 have contributed to mass incarceration, but as Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson recently observed, “President Clinton’s tenure was the worst.”

...

Just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton proved his toughness by flying back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him for later. After the execution, Clinton remarked, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.”

...

Some might argue that it’s unfair to judge Hillary Clinton for the policies her husband championed years ago. But Hillary wasn’t picking out china while she was first lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways no woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. That record, and her statements from that era, should be scrutinized. In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”


Now, 6 days after this article, Hillary Clinton appeared in Harlem seeking contrast with Sanders on racial inequality versus economic inequality essentially accusing Sanders of being a one issue candidate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-speech-racism-harlem-219311

The Vermont senator so far in his campaign has mainly addressed racism through the lens of economic inequality. “We aren’t a single-issue country,” Clinton said, adding that breaking up the big banks — a staple of Sanders’ campaign — isn’t enough to break down the barriers African-American families face.

...

“This is not just an education issue,” Clinton said. “This is a civil rights issue, and we cannot ignore it any longer. The bottom line is this: We need to be sending our kids to college. We need a cradle-to-college pipeline, not sending them into court and into prison.”

Clinton rattled off a series of statistics highlighting how African-Americans are disproportionately impacted compared to white Americans, citing incarceration rates and profiling before calling it her mission to correct these inequities and challenging Americans to acknowledge that, despite progress, racism still exists.

The first step, she said, is facing the reality of systemic racism. “These aren’t only problems of economic inequality,” she said. “These are problems of racial inequality. We’ve got to say that loudly and clearly.”

...

It’s tempting to believe bigotry is largely over in the U.S., Clinton said, because it would mean there’s a lot less work to be done. However, “race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind,” she said."


Comparing the two articles I am amazed that African Americans bought into Clinton citing African American incarceration rates after this:

"When Clinton left office in 2001, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983. All of the presidents since 1980 have contributed to mass incarceration, but as Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson recently observed, “President Clinton’s tenure was the worst.”


As to the income inequality dismissal to racist bigotry argument

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made the economy his top priority and argued persuasively that conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert attention from the failed economy. In practice, however, he capitulated entirely to the right-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced former president Ronald Reagan’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes—ultimately doing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did.

...

Experts and pundits disagree about the true impact of welfare reform, but one thing seems clear: Extreme poverty doubled to 1.5 million in the decade and a half after the law was passed. What is extreme poverty? US households are considered to be in extreme poverty if they are surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person per day in any given month. We tend to think of extreme poverty existing in Third World countries, but here in the United States, shocking numbers of people are struggling to survive on less money per month than many families spend in one evening dining out. Currently, the United States, the richest nation on the planet, has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the developed world.

Despite claims that radical changes in crime and welfare policy were driven by a desire to end big government and save taxpayer dollars, the reality is that the Clinton administration didn’t reduce the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor; it changed what the funds would be used for. Billions of dollars were slashed from public-housing and child-welfare budgets and transferred to the mass-incarceration machine. By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been allocated to food stamps. During Clinton’s tenure, funding for public housing was slashed by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent), while funding for corrections was boosted by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to sociologist Loïc Wacquant “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the urban poor.”

Bill Clinton championed discriminatory laws against formerly incarcerated people that have kept millions of Americans locked in a cycle of poverty and desperation. The Clinton administration eliminated Pell grants for prisoners seeking higher education to prepare for their release, supported laws denying federal financial aid to students with drug convictions, and signed legislation imposing a lifetime ban on welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense—an exceptionally harsh provision given the racially biased drug war that was raging in inner cities.

Perhaps most alarming, Clinton also made it easier for public-housing agencies to deny shelter to anyone with any sort of criminal history (even an arrest without conviction) and championed the “one strike and you’re out” initiative, which meant that families could be evicted from public housing because one member (or a guest) had committed even a minor offense. People released from prison with no money, no job, and nowhere to go could no longer return home to their loved ones living in federally assisted housing without placing the entire family at risk of eviction. Purging “the criminal element” from public housing played well on the evening news, but no provisions were made for people and families as they were forced out on the street. By the end of Clinton’s presidency, more than half of working-age African-American men in many large urban areas were saddled with criminal records and subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and basic public benefits—relegated to a permanent second-class status eerily reminiscent of Jim Crow.
...

 An oft-repeated myth about the Clinton administration is that although it was overly tough on crime back in the 1990s, at least its policies were good for the economy and for black unemployment rates. The truth is more troubling. As unemployment rates sank to historically low levels for white Americans in the 1990s, the jobless rate among black men in their 20s who didn’t have a college degree rose to its highest level ever. This increase in joblessness was propelled by the skyrocketing incarceration rate.

Why is this not common knowledge? Because government statistics like poverty and unemployment rates do not include incarcerated people. As Harvard sociologist Bruce Western explains: “Much of the optimism about declines in racial inequality and the power of the US model of economic growth is misplaced once we account for the invisible poor, behind the walls of America’s prisons and jails.” When Clinton left office in 2001, the true jobless rate for young, non-college-educated black men (including those behind bars) was 42 percent. This figure was never reported. Instead, the media claimed that unemployment rates for African Americans had fallen to record lows, neglecting to mention that this miracle was possible only because incarceration rates were now at record highs. Young black men weren’t looking for work at high rates during the Clinton era because they were now behind bars—out of sight, out of mind, and no longer counted in poverty and unemployment statistics.

To make matters worse, the federal safety net for poor families was torn to shreds by the Clinton administration in its effort to “end welfare as we know it.” In his 1996 State of the Union address, given during his re-election campaign, Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and immediately sought to prove it by dismantling the federal welfare system known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). The welfare-reform legislation that he signed—which Hillary Clinton ardently supported then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008—replaced the federal safety net with a block grant to the states, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, added work requirements, barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions, and slashed overall public welfare funding by $54 billion (some was later restored).


African Americans are trusting Hillary Clinton. I hope they do review the actions of the Clintons illustrated in this article from the rhetoric on the campaign trail.
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MADem

(135,425 posts)
6. What a horrid article. Should people not vote for Sanders based on his wife's poor
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 09:51 AM
Mar 2016

performance as President of that little college?


Some might argue that it’s unfair to judge Bernie Sanders for the policies his wife championed (not very many) years ago. After all, HE hired his wife to serve as his Chief of Staff. She's written many of the pieces of legislation that he put forward....


See how that ugliness works?

In essence, that article demands that the Sins of Bill be visited upon the spouse. It's really a dreadful piece. I expect more of The Nation, but this is one of those "logic fails."

Sour grapes, I guess.

Loki

(3,825 posts)
8. I will continue to vote for the person that reflects my values and a
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 09:54 AM
Mar 2016

commitment to all the people in this country, no matter what race, gender, religious or sexual orientation. Stop trying to divide us. We are all Americans.

 

Lizzie Poppet

(10,164 posts)
9. The buyer's remorse will be intense.
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 09:58 AM
Mar 2016

Although not as bad as it might of been if she actually stood a chance in November.

Sunsky

(1,737 posts)
11. We are voting for Hillary Clinton not Bill.
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 10:08 AM
Mar 2016

Thanks for the lesson anyway because you know we need the lecture. The Clintons 101.

vdogg

(1,384 posts)
12. So Hillary actually carries the white vote.
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 10:12 AM
Mar 2016

And you're still hammering away at the "AA's vote against their own interests" tripe. Gotcha.

yardwork

(61,418 posts)
14. Condescending to minorities isn't working for the Sanders campaign. Ya'll should stop.
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 10:14 AM
Mar 2016

It's been one insulting post after another here on DU, and all over social media, telling people of color and gay folks that we are stupid, must have Stockholm Syndrome, are low-information voters, must not know what's good for us, are just ignorant, must be voting with our vaginas, should listen to our betters, should vote like Killer Mike says, should listen to Susan Sarandon who put "that liar" Dolores Huerta in her place, live in states that "don't matter," and so on and so forth day after day.

Get a clue. It's not working.

BumRushDaShow

(127,324 posts)
15. OFFS
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 10:38 AM
Mar 2016


You know us "ghetto" dwellers don't know no better. Nah-suh. Stockholm. Low information voter.

Because. Ghetto.

(I expect I better put this -> lest I be misunderstood)

Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)
17. Maybe if the Sanders camp didn't piss off so many black voters
Wed Mar 16, 2016, 10:48 AM
Mar 2016

By first trying to run against Obama, he might have made more inroads...

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