Nah, White Women ... You Cant Have This One

[GaryCnf]

54. I agree with what I think you are saying

but there is a real danger in denying the FACT that we did not turn out for Senator/Secretary Clinton across the upper Midwest and down the East Coast from North Carolina to Florida and if we had it would have done more to change the outcome than every other factor that has been mentioned. In fact, other than "re-educating" white folks (a task which I have come to believe is impossible), increasing black turnout is the single most important objective for the Democratic Party.

Before I get to that, however, I want to talk about one other thing I find notable in the post-victory celebration in Alabama . . . did Alabama's black men all die right before the election? That's sarcasm, of course, but as glaring as is the implicit racism in the statement "Women put Doug Jones in office," at least SOME people (Example: this OP . . . thanks sheshe2!) are pointing out that every time 10 white women went to the polls in Alabama, Doug Jones got 4 votes further behind. What almost NO ONE is talking about is that it wasn't just black women who turned out in droves for Jones, it was also black MEN.

That is important and you really talk about it later in your post so I know you get it. Here though is where the danger I spoke about earlier comes in. Yea, white folks who want to BLAME us for not turning out for Hillary can pretty much ***. I'm f'ing over that. When there is low turnout, that is on the f'ing PARTY. On the other hand, when we deny that we didn't turn out for Hillary, we give the party an EXCUSE to not talk about the difference between what we did in Alabama in 2017 and what we didn't do in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, etc. in 2016.

I came down from Memphis to Montgomery twice to try to get our folks to vote for Doug Jones. I am talking from first hand experience when I say that two months out from that election, Doug was going to lose and he was going to lose bad. He was going to lose because, even though he personally had only a fraction of the baggage we had in urban communities in 2016, his campaign was a mirror of 2016 . . . he was running on the despicability of Roy Moore and his supporters. Now I understand that the conventional DNC wisdom has been (at least since McCaskill came from behind to beat Akin in Missouri) that white women are so fired up about issues like child molestation, sexual harassment, misogyny etc. that if we have a sick mf running as a Republican we can run on the "he's despicable" platform and they will carry us to victory, but regardless of whether that is correct, what the people I was trying to get out to vote were saying was "Are we invisible or do you just think you are entitled to our vote?"

I tell this story only partly as criticism, because the party deserves criticism for those kinds of campaigns, because the real story of victory in Alabama was what happened next. Black leaders, and by leaders I don't mean black folks who are leaders just in the eyes of white Democrats, came to Alabama. They talked about issues that were unique to black voters in Alabama, issues that white people don't want hear about AND they talked right out in the open and unfettered (and unfiltered). By the next time I got to Montgomery, the week before the election, everything had changed. I honestly had not seen people that fired up since 2008.

That change in strategy, that respect, that not taking us for granted is what won in Alabama AND it can win all across the country (although it's an uphill battle in Missouri after McCaskill sided with Ferguson DA Bob McCullough). I fear though that no nationwide change in strategy, no PUBLIC acknowledgement of our unique interests, will result in the same FACT we saw in 2016, low black turnout in key states and losses that should have been wins.

I know I've gone on for a while but I wanted to end by saying thank you for your posts in this string. I am that former generation and to see you stand up like this means a lot.