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OPINION

Democrats Should Worry About Minorities Moving Away From Left Politics

the black vote in america

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Patrice Lee Onwuka By Monday, 14 September 2020 11:44 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

Last week on ABC's "The View," co-host Sunny Hostin disparaged Black speakers during the Republican National Convention calling them "props."

Cable news hosts and analysts on other networks were not so kind.

The Left is increasingly panicked about how minorities will vote this November, particularly Blacks, and whether they will guarantee President Trump another term.

Their long-term fear is that there may be a migration of minorities away from Leftist politics and there is a good reason for them to be worried.

According to the latest polling, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is trailing President Trump among Hispanic voters in Florida, making the campaign nervous about potentially losing the delegate-rich swing state and potentially the race.

Hostin downplayed this analysis and pivoted to Biden’s overwhelming support among Blacks (despite him trailing Clinton’s share of the black vote by over 5 percentage points) and then took a jab at black conservatives:

"You know, you hear all of this coming from the Trump campaign about how Black people have nothing to lose and they are gonna overwhelmingly vote for Trump, and you had all the black people props all over the RNC talking about all the stuff they’ve done for the black community. . . They’re not voting for Trump."

This echoes other media analysis during the convention.

On MSNBC's "AM Joy," guest host Tiffany Cross panned the diverse roster of speakers at the convention saying, " . . . it really did look like a modern-day minstrel show to me."

On night one of the Republican convention, CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson boiled the appearance of prominent Republican minorities including former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., down to tokenism.

"It's sort of an indirect appeal to white voters when you kind of put black issues, black people, black Republicans front and center, as we saw happen tonight,” Henderson said.

These media personalities (all of whom are female minorities) could care less about the content of the messages that the speakers delivered; they would only ever view them as tokens.

Yet, conservatives are in a "Catch-22."

If no minorities were given any speaking roles, these same commentators would criticize the convention for its lack of diversity.

These attacks stem from the fear that the messages Black and minority conservatives are making will resonate. Minorities and women made some of the most compelling speeches during the convention in support of President Trump, his administration, and conservatism.

Kimberly Klacik, Republican congressional candidate running for the late Rep. Elijah Cummings’s seat in Baltimore, Maryland, pointed out the decades of failed Democratic policies leaving her hometown in poverty.

Alice Marie Johnson, whose life sentence President Trump commuted at the request of Kim Kardashian and others, is now a criminal justice advocate.

She promotes how the landmark bipartisan First Step Act secured the freedom of thousands of Blacks. Others like Ann Dorn, the widow of retired police captain David Dorn who was slain amid the rioting and looting in St. Louis, spoke of the lawlessness across American cities and called for a return to order.

Each day of the convention numerous speakers mentioned school choice.

The aim of derogating their stories as "minstrel" acts and "props" is to delegitimize their voices, diminish their personal experiences, and direct attention away from the real harm: the Left’s destructive policies. But these intimidation tactics may backfire. Blacks increasingly fed up with the media’s gaslighting are deserting the liberal movement.

Conservatives realize what Joe Biden and Sunny Hostin misunderstand about black voters. They are not ideologically tied to the Democratic Party nor are they committed to supporting Democratic candidates only.

In 2019, just 29% of Black Democrats identified as liberal while 43% called themselves moderate and 25% identified as conservative. On issues, for example, large majorities of Blacks and Hispanics support school choice, a direct opposition to the Left’s orthodoxy on education.

The support of 100,000 Black moms concerned about their kids’ educations tipped the gubernatorial race in favor of Gov. Rick DeSantis, R-Fla., over his black Democratic challenger, Andrew Gillum, in the Sunshine State. 

The Left advocates defunding police while blacks overwhelmingly support the same or greater police presence in their communities. The Left supports decriminalizing illegal immigration, an idea which two out of three minorities oppose.

It's possible for conservatives to peel off enough Black voters in key swing states to trigger an upset on election night. But, this is bigger than just one presidential election.

Minorities are assessing whether Leftist policies truly empower them.

Blacks are tired of being taken for granted by the Democratic Party and are right to reconsider their political alignment.

What some call the pragmatic approach of voting together to secure political power has not yielded policies that move the needle on measures such as wealth, employment, investment in black communities, and educational success for kids.

Greater safety in black communities and greater freedom and opportunity are all policies that give blacks and minorities a reason to break from the grip of the Left to pursue independence.

After all, what do they have to lose?

Patrice Lee Onwuka is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and a senior fellow with the Alliance for Charitable Excellence, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable. She is also a Tony Blankley Fellow at The Steamboat Institute. She has worked in policy, advocacy, and communications roles in Washington, D.C. for more than a decade on issues related to the economy, employment, technology, and the criminal justice system. Prior to moving to Washington, Patrice served as a speechwriter for a United Nations spokesman. Onwuka is a regular guest on Fox News, Fox Business News, MSNBC, and PBS programs. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Hill, Bloomberg, The Washington Times, the New York Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and other outlets. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Tufts University and a master’s degree in international relations from Boston College. Follow her on Twitter @PatricePinkFile. Read Patrice Lee Onwuka's Reports More Here.

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PatriceLeeOnwuka
According to the latest polling, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is trailing President Trump among Hispanic voters in Florida.
delegate, rich, rnc
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2020-44-14
Monday, 14 September 2020 11:44 AM
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