President Lyndon Johnson once boasted that, owing to his policies, he’d “have those n****** [racial epithet] voting Democratic for 200 years,” reported journalist Ronald Kessler. And Democrats have for decades captured upwards of 90 percent of the black vote every election. But rap star Kanye West may be changing this: After recently voicing his support for President Trump, approval of the chief executive almost doubled among blacks — and actually did double among black men — in just a week. If real and permanent, it’s a trend that is Democrats’ worst political nightmare.
West received a lot of criticism after being seen in a picture wearing a Make American Great Again cap and saying that he and Trump were brothers who shared “dragon energy.” Yet amidst being labeled a sellout and calls for him to be targeted with violence, West’s actions may have had another effect. As the Daily Caller reports, “A poll taken on April 22, 2018 had Trump’s approval rating among black men at 11 percent, while the same poll on April 29, 2018 pegged the approval rating at 22 percent. It should be noted that Reuters only sampled slightly under 200 black males each week and slightly under 3,000 people overall.”
“Trump experienced a similar jump in approval among black people overall, spiking from 8.9 percent on April 22 to 16.5 percent on April 29,” the Caller continued.
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Sample size aside, the poll’s results make sense. Intelligent black figures such as Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, Alan Keyes, and Larry Elder have long inveighed against liberalism, but, sadly, lack the visibility of a West and are easily dismissed as “Uncle Toms.” The rap star, however, is a pop-culture pooh-bah seen as “authentically black” and thus enjoys street cred. His support for Trump and questioning of the Democrat narrative would have to move the political dial at least somewhat.
And this represents “Democrats’ worst nightmare coming true,” writes American Thinker’s Monica Showalter. She continues, “Their black voting base, which has been taken for granted for years, is suddenly in play, and in a year when Democrats have assured themselves that they have the retaking of Congress in the bag. Black turnout is what put Barack Obama in office in 2008, and now even black support is no longer a given for them.”
Note that if blacks’ 90-plus percent Democrat support were cut to even just 70 percent, it would severely hobble the party’s electoral chances (at least until they imported enough socialist leaning immigrants to compensate).
Having said this, Showalter may be sounding a Pollyanna-ish note. Trump didn’t campaign as your average Republican but as an outsider and is rightly viewed as such; thus, there’s no guarantee his increased approval among blacks would translate into more support for the GOP. It’s also logical to wonder if this opinion shift is merely seeds falling on “rocky places,” seeds that won’t last because they have “no root,” to quote the Parable of the Sower. After all, altering your view because of a pop-star pronouncement doesn’t reflect a deep, politics-wonk-worthy change.
Whatever the case, such a political shift in a seemingly unassailable voting bloc may, perhaps, at least be a breaking of the ice. Moreover, if Kanye’s comments could help dissolve an emotional one so that historical knowledge will be considered, some blacks may return to the Republican ways of their ancestors.
Since the GOP was the home of abolition while the Democrats were the party of slavery, it’s no surprise that blacks were once staunch Republicans. This changed, say leftists, because the parties switched roles, with the “racists embracing the GOP.” Yet this ignores a simple fact: Blacks abandoned the Republicans long before Democrats abandoned their anti-black positions.
While President Johnson might have been trying to permanently cement the black vote, the reality is that it didn’t shift to the Democrats during the Civil Rights Era but because of the New Deal in the 1930s. As columnist Victoria Stroup wrote in 2016, despite Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s appointing of Klansmen and other bigots to his administration, some “New Deal programs benefited black Americans, who were among the hardest hit during the Great Depression, and thus, caused them to switch parties. By 1936, 75 percent of blacks became Democrats, whereas pre-1936, 90 percent of blacks voted Republican. Democrats were dumbfounded: how had they gotten so lucky as to gain the trust of the people they were hoping to oppress?” Below is a video of commentator Dinesh D’Souza explaining the history while fielding a question at a college appearance.
Ironically, though, it’s not just that the Democrats managed to capture the black vote while still the party of racism — it’s that even today they’re the party of racism. For what has changed? Democrats once scared whites with rhetoric about the “black threat,” but such talk is no longer fashionable or effective; now they scare blacks with rhetoric concerning the “white threat,” pontificating about “white privilege” and “white supremacy” as they pose as white knights who can “deconstruct whiteness.” Democrats have changed the targeted colors — not their own colors.
And why would they? Leftist policies may not work, but the race card sure does.
Photo of Kanye West: rodrigoferrari
