{"id":8491,"date":"2019-11-13T20:33:41","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T20:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2019\/11\/14\/politics-expert-black-voters-look-for-electability\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:30:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:30:45","slug":"politics-expert-black-voters-look-for-electability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/politics-expert-black-voters-look-for-electability\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics expert: Black voters look for electability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Currently, Sen. Joe Biden is considered to be the favorite to win African Americans\u2019 votes and the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. But, that could change, and it boils down to one factor: who has the best chance of winning the general election, according to Teresa Cosby, an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Furman University and a specialist in race politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cBiden is the favorite until (Sen.) Elizabeth Warren can prove she\u2019s electable,\u201d Cosby says.<\/p>\n

African American voters are, generally, very pragmatic and strategic with their votes, Cosby says. While young African Americans trend more liberal, \u201colder black people, who are the reliable vote, are not that progressive,\u201d she says. \u201cGo by a black church at 2 o\u2019clock; they\u2019re still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren is seen by many African Americans as too liberal and, consequently, unable to win the general election, Cosby says. Biden, on the other hand, can perform well in states that have large African American populations and those that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But, Biden could find himself in the situation Hillary Clinton faced in 2008. Clinton was the frontrunner going into the first primary because African American voters didn\u2019t think Barack Obama could win in November.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Cosby says, Obama won the Iowa Caucuses. \u201cThen Bill Clinton said \u2018fairy tale\u2019 and Obama won South Carolina,\u201d she says, referring to a comment the former president said he made in reference to Obama\u2019s stance on the Iraq War. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn told The New York Times<\/a> he was bothered by Bill Clinton\u2019s \u201cfairy tale\u201d comment and comments Hillary Clinton made about the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n

Seeing that Obama won Iowa and South Carolina, and perhaps taking a cue from Clyburn, African Americans turned their favor toward the first-term senator from Illinois and away from the senator from New York, and the rest is history.<\/p>\n

A shared history among African Americans has created a cohesive group, with shared threats and opportunities. \u201cIt creates cohesion about voter choice,\u201d Cosby says.<\/p>\n

“While Hispanics, the country\u2019s largest minority group, emigrate to the United States from many different Latin American countries, and Asians come from different countries and with different languages, most African Americans come from the same historical backdrop: slavery,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the 2016 presidential election, low voter turnout among African Americans, especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, meant the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Cosby says, and Clinton didn\u2019t have a strategy to turn out the African American vote.<\/p>\n

Regardless of who the Democratic nominee is, Cosby expects wide voter turnout in the \u00a02020 general election.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlacks are so energized to get Trump out of office, it won\u2019t matter. It could be a turnip,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Currently, Sen. Joe Biden is considered to be the favorite to win African Americans\u2019 votes and the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. But, that could change, and it boils down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":8492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,32,7],"tags":[211,212,213],"class_list":["post-8491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-politics-and-international-affairs","category-top-four-news-2nd-story","tag-2020-election","tag-election","tag-voter-behavior"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}