It's time for me to admit to myself a dirty, shameful little secret.
On some strange, masochistic level, I find political discourse and analysis...fun.
Even I admit, while I wasn't entirely surprised that Hillary Clinton won in South Carolina - as much as I like Bernie Sanders' ideas and policies, I was and still am fairly narcissistic about his ability to woo voters of demographics who actually show up to vote - I was absolutely flabbergasted by how wide a margin she won.
Looking at the numbers, it's easy to see why Clinton won. According to ABC exit polling, Clinton carried 81 percent of votes among African Americans, a demographic that made up 61 percent of Democrat primary voters this year.
It kind of made me wonder, though...why do black voters support Clinton so overwhelmingly, and not Sanders?
It was something I couldn't come to an answer for just by thinking about it. I blame my pudgy, middle class whiteness for that.
It is also not a new issue for the Sanders campaign. An article published by The Root back in October addressed the lack of support for Sanders amongst black voters, a demographic which author Charles Ellison correctly states no candidate can win the Democratic nomination without.
Ellison touched on threepoints that still ring (mostly) true four months since his article was published. I will touch on two of them.
The idea that stood out to me most was the idea of black loyalty to the Clinton name which, if we're being honest, is hot garbage. Now, the numbers don't lie. Dating all the way back to World War I, Bill Clinton received the highest percentage of the black vote (82 percent) by a winning Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson (94 percent, buoyed in my opinion by his fulfilled promise to sign Kennedy's 1964 Civil Rights Act, something his opponent Barry Goldwater vehemently opposed), Bill's popularity amongst African Americans at the time was undeniable, with the New Yorker's Toni Morrison referring to him as America's "first Black President" back in 1998.
To say that Hillary carries the black demographic so readily because of brand loyalty to Bill, however, just seems disingenuous to me. To me, at least, it feels like saying that voters are incapable of forming their own opinions, and instead follow a brand name, much the same way I pledge my eternal pizza delivery loyalty to Dominos.
Granted, my opinion on that subject might be in the minority, as one of my high school friends, photographer and web personality Stephanie Cooper (who I quote and name with permission, and who also has a new podcast with her beau Lucas debuting March 8 on iTunes and Spreaker), posits that black voters aren't voting for Hillary, but are trying to vote in a third term for Bill.
“They branded him the first Black President before Obama came on the scene ... He has his offices in Harlem, which is almost predominantly black now. He’s popular among blacks mainly because of how he treated the black community as President. He earned their respect and never lost it. ”
The second point, and the one that I think has to do with it more than anything, is that it is more of a generational gap.
Even popular fervor and favorable polls have to give way to reality, and at the risk of rehashing pretty much my entire point last week, the white, liberal millennial Democrats that make up the core of Sanders' base just doesn't bother to vote. In the 2014 elections, less than 20 percent of voting Democrats were under the age of 30, the lowest ever recorded in a federal election. Data compiled by the Election Project shows that, since the mid-1980s, voters 30 and up have maintained at least 50% voter turnout regardless of sex or ethnicity, whereas the highest turnout percentage among 18-29 year olds was about 48 percent, back in 2008. During that same time period, overall voter turnout by non-Hispanic blacks rose steadily, with black voters turning out in higher numbers during the Obama election years than non-Hispanic whites.
It is in that older demographic, the one that so badly out-participates millennials at the polling places where Clinton gets her power.
Clinton appeals well to the older and more moderate Democrats, the ones who past numbers show actually...you know...show up to vote. Sanders can pick up celebrity endorsements and support of some older voters, but those are statistical outliers compared to the millions of voters who will make their opinions known come November.
As for me...well, just writing and researching this post in and of itself has sapped my zeal for political analysis and discourse. Maybe it really is masochism that drives me to write about politics two weeks in a row, tackling subjects that part of me says is too hot button, leave it alone you fool.
Screw it. Today's payday. I'm gonna go eat good today.