Black Women Are Voting, But Doubts Over Black Female Presidential Contenders Remain
Debates over the role and value of symbolic representation will likely follow Democrats into the 2020 primaries and beyond.
After Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones’ stunning electoral victory last December, many analyses of the race pointed to record high turnout among black voters (particularly black women) in the major cities and black belt region of the state as the source of Jones’ win. In light of the numbers, DNC chairman Tom Perez declared on Twitter that black women “are the backbone of the Democratic Party” and their votes shouldn’t be “take[n] for granted”.
Democratic plaudits for black female voters were a sharp contrast to the conversations pundits held immediately following the 2016 presidential election, when many argued Democrats needed to move away from overt appeals to women and minorities that might alienate the working class white voters they’ll need to win in future elections. A related criticism insisted that Democrats had been lead astray in 2016 by demographics-as-destiny thinking, having assumed that increasing numbers of minority voters in conjunction with declines in older, lower-educated white voters meant that the party had a long-term structural advantage that would play itself out in future elections. In reality, some argued, non-white voters’ party preferences aren’t as reliably pro-Democrat in the long haul as the party believes.
But as recent debates about media mogul Oprah Winfrey and California Sen. Kamala Harris reveal, despite a seemingly renewed focus on black female voters, some continue to doubt that black women can compete in a general election against President Trump. Whatever the strength of black female partisanship in the Democratic Party, the sort of candidates who might appeal directly to them are feared to not have broad enough appeal to win a national race. While these concerns have been mostly framed around Winfrey’s celebrity or Harris’ policy record, ultimately they point to ongoing disunity among Democrats over the value of symbolic representation in progressive politics.
Talking Around Race
Kamala Harris raised her national profile last summer with several notable exchanges with Trump cabinet members in Senate hearings on the Russia investigation. A potential 2020 run for president seemed even more likely after reports surfaced that Harris had “met with members of Hillary Clinton’s ‘inner circle’ and other top Democratic operatives and fundraisers in the Hamptons” about becoming President Trump’s Democratic challenger for the White House in three years. Progressives balked, accusing Harris of being yet another corporate Democrat that would continue the party down the same losing path of center-left technocracy. Examining her record as a prosecutor, progressives also expressed dissatisfaction with her record on criminal justice issues.
More recently, Oprah Winfrey delivered a resounding acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes ceremony, which many took to be a preview of a future DNC presidential nomination acceptance speech. Like Harris, Winfrey’s potential presidential aspirations were shut down by progressives who felt her connection to (or in this case, her being one of) the billionaire elite meant she couldn’t possibly appeal to average voters, or compete against President Trump’s populist demagoguery. And of course Winfrey’s celebrity and lack of political experience could not be ignored by those who had decried Trump’s reality show background in the past, lest they be called hypocrites.
I found just about all of these criticisms of Harris and Winfrey valid, but they all seemed yoked to a class-centric view of presidential elections that doesn’t appear to be playing out the way progressives think it is. Not only has President Trump faced little backlash for embracing the Republican donor class economic agenda (as evidenced by shifts in support for the new tax law), public opinion continues to give him relatively good marks for the economy, which has remained largely unchanged from Obama’s second term. In short, when judging presidents Americans don’t appear to be keyed into any particular economic issue beyond the professed state of the economy around election time. Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches probably meant less to the outcome of the 2016 presidential election than did Republicans and socialists developing much more compelling narratives against her candidacy than Democrats ever did in support of it.
Another problem with the criticisms of Harris and Winfrey is that they all seemed constructed around not acknowledging the fact that these would be two black women running for office in a political climate that remains tilted towards meeting the demands of working class white voters. Attacks on Harris’ record as a prosecutor seemed disconnected from the double standards black and female public officials face if they are perceived as “soft” on crime. Certainly, a similarly tough track record on crime would unlikely be seen as potentially derailing the presidential aspirations of a “safe white guy” — if anything, it would be seen as helpful in his appeal to working class white voters. In order to contend for the presidency, black women are expected to be untouchable by the right-wing media machine.
As Brittney Cooper noted last August, black women’s pragmatism must be judged in the context of the double standards they face in pursuit of political power. This is not to say that being a black woman excuses Harris from criticism of her record, but that her success in law and politics comes in part from her blackness not being radicalized by whites — and her womanness not being pathologized by men. As revealed during the Obama years, even fairly conventional policy positions can be framed by the right as extremist if it is a black person promoting them. To that end, Harris or any black female candidate’s ability to read the electorate and craft a message around shared policy goals may be of more value in judging her governing ability than decisions she made in a different role years ago.
Down The Ballot
Recent electoral victories by black mayoral candidates like Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi, Randall Woodfin in Birmingham, Alabama, and the emerging Georgia governor candidate Stacy Abrams, do suggest that black candidates with explicitly progressive platforms can win elections in major cities. But these races don’t necessarily reflect the sort of national political environment a potential black female presidential candidate will likely face in 2020, where any conspicuous effort to appeal to non-white voters will be met with accusations of playing identity politics.
The reluctance of some Democrats to defend explicit appeals to minority voters reflects a more fundamental rift in the party over the importance of symbolic representation in achieving social and economic justice. In the Atlanta mayoral run-off last December, for instance, some voters backed Keisha Lance Bottoms in hopes of maintaining the city’s tradition of black mayors, while others felt this view gave a pass to black Democratic mayors who did little to help the city’s poor and working class black residents. As former Democratic State Rep. LaDawn Jones lamented in a blog post according to The Intercept, “[I]f you can look past the ethical issues that the black Democrat has solely because of her identifiers then you are doing the exact same thing the Roy Moore voters are”.
Ultimately, Democrats probably agree that more black and female representation in politics is a good thing, but how much of it matters in the pursuit of class mobilization, and whether or not it is helpful to long-term electoral coalition building, remains contested. These questions will likely loom over the 2020 primaries, although the 2018 midterms could provide some feedback on what messages work and don’t work. Regardless, a black female presidential contender in 2020 will be asked to represent a party whose members want a “safe” candidate to compete against Trump, a bold populist left-wing policy agenda, and the ability to see parts of themselves in the candidate they nominate. She won’t likely fill all shoes, but she must try.
