Midterm Wildcard: The Black Vote May Be In Play

In all of the hyper focus on Russia, Mueller, Manafort, Cohen, Stormy, Omarosa and the general gusher of hysterical nonsense from the Democrat-Media Complex, there is a quiet little revolution brewing: The first real cracks in the Democratic Party stranglehold on the black vote are coming into view.

We see signs of this with Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, with the rocketing rise of Candace Owens and the black involvement in the #WalkAway movement. We also see it, importantly, in the black church, such as a recent White House faith meeting on prison reform hosted by Trump, where Pastor Darrell Scott called him the “most pro-black president I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

But it is coalescing now in some very tangible ways around actual statistics and actions on the ground that are getting hard for Democrats to ignore, and crack the door open for Republicans and Democrats.

Polls are showing positive movement among minorities in President Trump’s approval ratings, even while he is daily being labeled a racist. While Trump won only 8 percent of the black vote in November 2016, the national NAACP’s own polls now show Trump’s approval rating among blacks at 21 percent — nearly three times higher than his election numbers. That doesn’t necessarily mean he would get 21 percent of the black vote, but it does show substantial movement.

Further, Rasmussen polls now have Trump’s approval ratings among blacks at 36 percent. Rasmussen pulls from a broader and less politicized base of respondents and typically is above the poll averages. But what is important is again the movement. One year ago at this time, Trump’s approvals in this same poll were 19 percent.

And we are even seeing breaks in the NAACP itself at the grassroots level. The Manatee County NAACP in Florida is interviewing all local candidates and has supported one Republican over a Democrat and is planning to support more going forward in the general election.

Rodney Jones, President of the Manatee NAACP, said he is a lifelong Democrat, but that he’s fed up with Democrats taking his vote for granted.

“We don’t see Democrats until election time and that’s the truth,” Jones said on an ABC panel Tuesday night. “I live in the neighborhood. I’ve lived there my entire time and we don’t see Democrats until election time because they come for one purpose and one purpose only, to get votes. After the elections, we don’t see any of them.”

This is not a new sentiment. Frustration with being taken for granted has been growing for some time among black voters. Popular black ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith said in 2015 that all blacks should vote Republican for one election to send a signal. “I definitely believe that the black vote has been taken for granted.”

Smith said Democrats had successfully painted Republicans as opposed to the interests of black Americans and “we’ve bought it hook line and sinker…vast majorities of black Americans look at the Republican Party as the enemy.” It’s time to make politicians earn the vote of black Americans, he said.

That is what Jones is doing in Florida. He is not running to Republicans, but he is leading his organization to look at issues and choose candidates accordingly. And his group is totally onboard with that. This is a concept that has interesting ramifications because Jones considers himself somewhat conservative on a lot of issues — family, faith, personal responsibility — and he thinks American blacks overall are more so than the hitherto party-line voting suggests.

“We’re not letting Republican or Democrat come into our community and set an agenda for us,” Jones said. “I’m kind of anti-Democratic and Republican…The Democratic Party comes out of the deep south, actually out of the Klan and white supremacy.”

To be clear, Jones is not advocating becoming Republican and he is not at all a fan of Trump, considering him a low-character racist.

But this is part of the point. If American blacks begin thinking independently in a political sense — exactly what Kanye is advocating — they may never be majority Republicans, but they will stop being monolithically Democratic. Issue by issue favors Republicans on many topics.

Pew Research has noted that blacks and Hispanics who identify as Democrats are far less likely to consider themselves liberal than white Democrats. This reflects what Jones and his NAACP chapter are saying.

Making this more problematic for Democrats and opportunistic for Republicans is that the Democratic Party is definitely moving further left, even sprinting left. It’s not clear at all that 90 percent of blacks will be onboard with the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez socialism or the intersectional , 72 genders politics of the party elites. In the same way that Democrats are slowing losing the vast center of the country — geographically and politically — they are risking doing the same with the black vote.

American blacks shifting more to issues than to party loyalty would throw Democratic national politics, and probably local politics, into a tailspin. This would not happen overnight. The Democratic death grip has been generational. But a few points per election would be a tectonic shift. It may already under way, as the black vote for the Democratic presidential nominee peaked in 2008, declined in 2012 and plummeted in 2016.

The door is ajar for Republicans, and maybe President Trump.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

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