September 6, 2025 • 27 mins
Christopher Towler, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento…He is the Director of the Black Voter Project, Co-Founder of Black Insights Research and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
In the first half of today’s program, we discuss Dr. Towler’s opinion piece featured in Newsweek entitled From Decline to Revival—Why Democrats Must Repair Their Relationship with Black Voters. We cover much of the data his team has procured and examine the results to determine some of the lessons Democrats should have learned from the 2024 election.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
your host, Rams's job. Big shout out to q Ward
who is taking care of mom after surgery. But have
no fear. He will be back soon. But in the meantime,
in between time, we have a very special guest. The
(00:23):
return of a very special guest, the one the only,
Doctor Christopher Tower for those that don't remember or were
unable to bear witness to his greatness on this show.
He is the associate professor in the Department of Political
Science at California State University, Sacramento. He is also the
director of the Black Voter Project, the co founder of
(00:44):
Black Insights Research, and the editor in chief of the
Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics. And today we are
going to be talking to him about a recent article
entitled from Decline to Revival, Why Democrats must repair their
relationship with Black voters. A potent article, something that a
(01:06):
lot of people need to be made aware of, certainly
in democratic circles, but I think the population at large
needs to understand the trends that you tend to track,
and we're grateful for your time one more time on
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So welcome back, Thank you so much, happy to be back,
Excited for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Absolutely and again, like I said, just a lot of
conversations back and forth in political circles and around the
kitchen table, conversations around the country. A lot of people
still don't know what the what is and how to
make heads or tails of the twenty twenty four election,
the implications of the twenty twenty four election, the Democratics,
(01:44):
the democrats strategy prior to the election and post election.
And I think that today's conversation is going to give
a lot of folks a lot of valuable insight into
sort of the trends that you've been monitoring. So we
do appreciate your time. Before we get to all that, though,
it is time, as always to start off with some
ebony excellence. In today's ebony excellence, we are going to
(02:08):
be sharing a bit from the b I N So
this story is going viral, the black TikToker going viral
himself for serving poetic justice to a white man who
launched a racist tirade against him during a live stream Tamo,
who boasts over one hundred eleven thousand followers on TikTok,
was talking about Pokemon cards and video games when the
man crashed his live stream and began repeating racial slurs.
(02:33):
Following the incident, Tamil revealed that he had identified the
man and discovered his military affiliation, and we are going
to hear from him. This is at Noratamo, in his
own words, to.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The white guy that called me slurs over and over
again in my live stream the other night for no reason.
Guess what, You're going to get kicked out in the
United States Navy. You know how they tell us that
we should be careful what we do on social media
because there could be real life consequences. Hi names real
life consequence. I've done a thorough background check and now
I know everything about you. I know what little town
in Texas you're from. I know your name, your phone number,
your email address. I've seen your disciplinary records. I know
(03:09):
the names of all of your family members, including your
dead mother and your daughter who turns to next week
and her mother who's going to have to pay for
all the birthday presents this year because you came into
my live stream and saw a black man who was
talking about Pokemon cards and video games, and you assumed, Yeah,
he's not going to do anything if I call him
slurs repeatedly, even though he's trying to help me. Turns out,
turns out I am going to do something. Turns out
(03:30):
there are so many things I can do because I
have all the screenshots, I have all of the recordings.
I know that after you left my live stream, you
went into someone else's and started talking about how much
you love Jesus and God in the Bible. So maybe
I should send that evans to the church you go
to in that little town we both know about. I
know exactly which boat in the Navy you serve on,
and I know the names of black sailors that serve
in the same boat as you. Maybe I'll send the
(03:51):
clips to them as well, but only after I send
them to the Naval Inspector General's office. Because I'm getting
you fired. I'm getting you kicked out of the Navy.
There's nothing you can do to stop me. Apology I
will accept. There is no excuse I will listen to.
There is no money you could offer me. You're getting fired,
and when you're working the graveyard shift in an Amazon warehouse,
and your back hurts and your feet hurt, and those
(04:11):
white bright lights are beating down on you. And the
teenager who still has his life ahead of him, walks
up to you and says, what are you doing here?
Tell him the truth, Tell him about me.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Masterful all right, Time to get to the forthcoming conversation.
So in short, doctor Tyler, talk to our listeners a
bit about I guess a little bit about the work
you do. For folks that aren't familiar with you, we
(04:45):
gave you a brief introduction, but just so people understand
who we're listening to today and what qualifies you to
have the conversation we're about to have.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, Absolutely, I've been studying black politics for over a
decade now, going back to my days in graduate school.
The last six going on seven years now, I've ran
a national public opinion survey called the Black Voter Project,
specifically designed to measure Black attitudes and behaviors towards politics.
And I've really just enmeshed myself in what's going on
(05:15):
electorally the last few election cycles. As I was worried
and it came to someone came to be somewhat true
that black voters would end up with the short end
of the stick post Obama, meaning there would be less
attention paid to them, less emphasis on their needs, and
less resources invested into the black community when it comes
(05:35):
to getting them out to vote, to engaging them and
mobilizing them, getting them excited about politics and elections. And
that's really what this article, this piece that came out
is about. There were a number of different sort of
twenty twenty four obituaries written in The New York Times
and the Washington Post, but none of them really focused
on what happened with black voters and what took place
(05:58):
in the election that led to black turnout dramatically dropping
from twenty twenty close to twenty sixteen numbers, and you know,
falling even more dramatically from the historic turnout rates we
saw in two thousand and eight and twenty twelve under
President Obama. Yeah, and so the thrust was really there
to continue to investigate the election, but centering black voters
(06:23):
and the black community.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Absolutely. Yeah, And you know, you mentioned the Newsweek article,
the opinion piece. So talk to us just a brief overview,
because we're going to actually spend the bulk of the
show talking about some of the details in the article,
but again a general overview of the article entitled from
Decline to Revival, Why Democrats must repair their relationship with
(06:49):
Black voters sort of talk to us about why you
felt this was necessary, and you know, give us a preview,
I suppose of what we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, the article was came from my place of trying
to understand why Democrats did not successfully turn out black
voters at similar rates in twenty twenty four as they
did to twenty twenty. Recent analyzes suggests that black turnout
dropped as much as six percentage points nationally, even as
(07:20):
much as two to three percentage points in some of
the most contested battleground states and in other states such
as Georgia. Right, black turnout was the black voters were
the only group to experience a decline in turnout, where
we saw turnout amongst white voters, Latino voters, Asian American
voters all increased from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four.
So there was something missing, some part of this story
(07:42):
that needed to be investigated when trying to understand what
happened and really understand Okay, if black voters were turned out,
what could have been? Right? In part of the analysis
suggesting if black turnout had not dropped as significantly as
it did, Harris's chances in some of these battlegrounds states
places like Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, right would have been
(08:05):
different and she could have even turned or flipped some
of these states blue if black voters were poured into
the way that we feel they need to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, So this is part of the conversation that we've
been having since the election. What happened to There was
low voter turnout across the board, but with respect to
black voters, I guess a group that we would have
imagined would have shown up to support Kamala Harris. In
(08:37):
my recollection, Kamala Harris had a plan for black men,
black business ownership. She had pieces of legislation that were
intended to address issues in the black community. But there
(08:59):
was still low voter turnout. Do you think that's because
of misinformation or disinformation from the opposing campaign, or do
you think that's because Kamala Harris, her messaging and her
plans for Black America failed to resonate or is it
something that we haven't considered.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yet, you know, try not to play the fence here.
I think it's a combination of both, right, and I
think the plan on the Republican side was to flood
the zone with as much misinformation or disinformation as possible,
to try and make both parties seem sort of comparable,
and to not give what we consider low propensity or
(09:40):
infrequent voters any additional motivation to get out there and
vote if they feel like, Okay, Republicans and Democrats are
just as bad on a lot of issues, right, we
can't really differentiate the two. And so there was some
success there, especially on social media and with commercials right
in certain states in zones, really driving this narrative that
(10:02):
Democrats and Republicans are just the same, or trying to
convince voters that Republicans are better than Democrats. Again not
necessarily believing that black voters are going to go out
and vote Republican now, but that it's just going to
be not much more confusing and difficult to decide if
it's worth voting at all. So that's yes, on the
one hand, that's the case. On the other hand, as
(10:24):
was kind of spelled out, in the Newsweek piece. There
was a problem when it came to campaign contact for
the Harris campaign, and that a lot of the messaging
and the information about her policies, such as you mentioned
her plan for black men or her Black Economic Empowerment Zone,
went out to high propensity voters or voters who were
(10:45):
going to vote anyway, and we're likely going to vote
for Democrats and for Harris. They're the ones who are
getting most of this information and understanding that Harris did
have a short runway, but we really didn't see any
emphasis on black voters until October, until like a month
or less than prior to the election, and even going
(11:06):
back to when Biden was the candidate, right, there could
have been and should have been an emphasis on getting
that information about black voters, about their plan for black voters,
not just out there, but out there to the people
in communities who are not necessarily going to vote right away,
right who might need a little bit more convincing or
might need a bit more information to make that decision
(11:27):
to get up off their couch and vote. And so again,
it kind of goes both ways, right, the misinformation helped
keep people home, and the lack of information reaching the
target audiences that really need it to make that decision
to vote right from our analysis, just wasn't there or
wasn't there in time.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, you know, your words ring truer than you may know,
certainly around here, because Q and I we ended up
kind of working with, you know, the Harris campaign. In short,
(12:03):
we thought that a lot of what they were trying
to get out was important to share with our communities.
And you know, where we are, in the space that
we hold, we have the capacity to share some direct
messaging from that campaign with voters across the aisle. And
you're not wrong when you say that there was a
(12:24):
late push to address specifically the needs of black voters,
and that only happened once I think Republicans and Donald
Trump specifically started touting the fact that they were pulling
at historic highs. I don't know if they were indeed
(12:46):
historic highs, but something like that. Effectually, this is what
they were saying with respect to black men specifically, and
that caused the alarm bells to start going off within
the Harris campaign. And I think that that I don't
know that that speaks directly to Kamala Harris. I don't
want to bad mouth her. One hundred and seven days,
(13:06):
as she puts, it is not a long time, and
certainly you're scrambling to put together plans that affect the
entire United States of America. Typically you kind of know
in advance that you're going to, you know, step into
that role. But Democrats in general, I think that that
sort of too little, too late with respect to black
(13:27):
voters and black men in particular. I think it shows
a almost like black voters are taken for granted, that
there's a ready assumption that black people are going to
vote for Democrats or the Democratic candidate, or for a
(13:48):
Kamala Harris who is a black woman, and there's no
messaging or nothing that Democrats really need to do about this.
And the Trump campaign, to its credit, kind of saw that,
I guess, do nothing approach with respect to black voters.
(14:09):
This is just me guessing. And that coupled with the
sort of do nothing Democrats narrative that Donald Trump had
been chronicling for a long time, which is to be
fair partly based in reality at least, I guess, it
left some folks vulnerable to the messaging coming from Donald
(14:30):
Trump's campaign. So here's my question. You know you mentioned
from your article black turnout was down by six percent nationally.
That's a big deal, and two percent in swing states.
That's critical because those swing states often they kind of
hinge on the margins. And this is all relative to
the numbers in twenty twenty All things equal, Harris would
(14:52):
have likely beat Trump in twenty twenty four had black
turnout simply matched what Biden produced. This is from your art.
So what I guess in your words, have Democrats failed
to recognize with respect to Black voters? And I think
the better question is how do you believe Democrats can
(15:13):
regain the trust of the black electorate.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, those are great points. I think you know two things.
First off, when talking with black voters before and after
the election, this idea that Democrats don't really do anything
for the black community, this do nothing Democrat narrative is
there at present, right, And it's it's not just with
black men, it's with black women. When we polled black
women after the election, fifty one percent of Black women
(15:40):
basically said they're exhausted after the election and they kind
of just want to be left alone, right, And so
this apathy is there across the board, and so and
There were a number of other pieces. There was one
in particular, longer opinion piece that talked to black Republicans
after the election, and many of them said, the reason
they look towards the Republican Party is because the Democrats
(16:01):
don't do anything right. And we've heard this from voters
time and time again. They only show up every four
years when they need our vote. We don't see them
any other time. So this is absolutely something that the
Democrats need to combat and address in the black community,
this idea that they're do nothing Democrats when it comes
to black vote, and that coupled with this idea that
they don't reach out to them other than elections, and
(16:23):
when they do reach out to them at the elections,
it's at the last minute, right at the eleventh hour.
And so when looking at Trump in his campaign, one
thing he's successfully done when he's won the White House
the last two times is turn out low propensity white voters.
He's found a way to invigorate and engage white people
across the country who usually might not vote. They're like, oh,
we're going to vote for Trump. That's something that we
(16:45):
feel really powerful about and we need to get out
there and do that and that's what Democrats need to
figure out how to do with black voters, especially you know,
in these title elections, when they're running candidates and switching
candidates and have these crazy election cycles. They need to
make sure they're getting every possible Black voter out to
the polls that they can, and that just didn't happen
this last election cycle. And so for us, right, the
(17:08):
two main things we point out in the article. One
is about contact and making sure that there are resources
front loaded to either send two grassroots campaigns or to
state campaigns or to state parties to get out low propensity,
unlikely black voters across the battlefield. And that needs to
happen early and often, right. You can't convince someone to
vote who usually doesn't vote two weeks before the election,
(17:32):
it's just not going to happen. You have to be
getting in the communities, talking with them, sending them, you know, mailers,
flyers about your campaign, and making an impression upon them
for weeks if not months before the election in order
to get them out to vote. And secondly, the messaging
right needs to be very direct, first, meeting black voters
where they are with an understanding that there might not
(17:53):
be a really positive view of the Democrats right now
in the black community. And that's not something that you
can try and like change on the spot. You're not
going to necessarily convince someone, especially someone who's not really
into politics or voting all the time. You know in
one conversation that Democrats are there and going to change
your lives. So you have to understand that you first
(18:13):
have to meet black voters where they are, and then second,
play on the environment of the time, which is this
crazy Trump environment, this idea that the black community is
going to be worse off tomorrow than it was today
if we continue to allow Trump and the Maga Republicans
to stay empowering and gain more power, and that in
(18:34):
of itself should be enough to get people out to vote.
Then once you have people voting and Democrats can regain
some political power, right, the task is on them to
give back to the black community, to pass policy and
poor resources into the Black community that they can then
point to in the future, right and kind of hope
to rebuild that relationship and re engage black voters by
(18:57):
first understanding there's a problem, talking to them about how
despite the problem we are living in very dangerous times
that there is a major threat to the black community,
and from there on forward, you can have a more
sort of leveled conversation about what Democrats can do for
the black community once that trust is rebuilt.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So I want to I want to go with that
because I've actually heard and read a lot of political
minds suggest that, I guess the the the approach of
using scare tactics by themselves, which I don't know if
(19:40):
this is what happened with the last election cycle, but
I know that Democrats heavily leaned on it. Here's what
happens that makes your life worse if you don't vote
for us, or if you don't vote right that that
wasn't entirely effective. Obviously, people need to know what the
(20:02):
opposing campaign is up against it, and I don't think
anyone was trying to say that that's not an important
part of the messaging. But there's a lot of great
thinkers who've said that Democrats rely too heavily on what
could go wrong if Donald Trump wins again. And there
were people that suggested that this messaging might not resonate
(20:26):
with people whose lives are already unbearably bleak, and they
may not be susceptible to fear because they've already lived
under Trump administration, and Trump gave them a check quote unquote.
I think you and I have had that conversation with
Donald Trump putting his name on the stimulus checks, and
(20:48):
he opposed the stimulus checks initially and had nothing to
do with approving them. He just held them up. But
in any event, the idea that Project twenty twenty five
and and and and Trump unhidden Trump two point zero
didn't do enough to scare voters to the polls. Right.
(21:10):
It motivated voters who were already aware of that, but
in terms of a scare tactic in and of itself
wasn't sufficient. Do you have any any thoughts about that?
Do you think there's some truth there or do you
think that that was a sound strategy And again that
this campaign was susceptible to other forces that kind of
(21:32):
cost it in the eleventh hour.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I think what you said at the end of remains true, right,
that there's still issues with having a really short campaign
that we can't really get away from. Right, that's going
to hinder the campaign and the strategy no matter what.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, it's not doing it any Your favors.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Over one hundred days. Right, that's not going anywhere. That's
always going to be something there in the background that
you know, we have to acknowledge. That said, there is
some truth in what you said that you know, there's
a lot of analysts that are worried about Trump fatigue
and you know, people getting inundated with too much Trump this,
Trump that, and that it's going to you know, actually
exhaust and discourage people. And we did see some of
(22:12):
that in our data after the election. But we're not
necessarily talking about trying to engage and mobilize the black
people who are paying attention to the news, who are
hearing the Trump stuff day in and day out. Those
are the people who are going to vote. Right, even
if they say I'm tired of hearing about Trump, they
understand the importance of their vote, and they understand the
importance of their voice and politics. Our analysis is really
(22:35):
focused on those black voters who don't pay attention to politics,
who might hear about Trump once or twice on the
radio on their way to work, but that's it, right,
They're not going to go home and turn on MSNBC
and just zone out to the panel harping on Trump,
you know, for hours and hours and hours. They don't
really care to do that. They're not interested in it
in that way. And so we're saying, one, the campaign
(22:56):
needs to figure out how to first contact those individuals
right who aren't getting this political information regularly, and when
they do contact them, our analysis shows that the best
message to contact them is one that shows the dangers
that Trump presents, right. And it's and I hesitate to
say scare tactics because our analysis is not necessarily trying
(23:16):
to scare people, but it's trying to impression upon people
that their community and their lives will be damaged further
by Trump's policies in such a way that we hope
angers them if nothing else right, that makes them understand, Okay,
I'm not happy with what's going on, and I'm going
(23:37):
to be even less happy if we continue to allow
these policies in this Trump presidency in MAGA to gain
more power. And so that's that's really where it's at.
Where they're not going to get a lot of political
messages from the start, and so the few messages that
they do get, we hope, you know, one they're getting
messages from Democrats. Our analysis showed that of those who
(23:58):
got messages only about thirty one percent where people who
had you know, were not frequent voters, compared to almost
seventy percent of those people who voted all the time.
And so the people who are not really voters who
need to be in these elections for Democrats to win,
right these black people are just not getting a lot
of messaging from the Harris campaign or others representing her
(24:20):
or fighting for her. And so the first step is
to get those people the messages, to get to their doors,
to knock on them, to have bus campaigns in their
community so that they can see a presence and know
that their voices matter and have people talking to them.
And then secondly to make sure they understand what's at
stake here, especially in this current political environment where the
(24:42):
Trump administration has time and again seem to specifically target
the black community, right, I mean, right now, we're living
in a situation where there's police, federal forces and National
guards being you know, commissioned to go into black cities,
right DC, Baltimore, these places where it's clearly the you know,
symbolic of the administration's opposition to black leadership. And black power.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Absolutely. Now we're we're gonna be a little short on
time for this response, but give me about thirty seconds
because I want to get back to your article. So
this is from your article. Consider the following comparison between
Biden's numbers and twenty twenty to Kamala Harris's. In twenty
twenty four, Biden captured eighty nine percent of the black vote,
Harris just eighty five percent. In swing states, it was
(25:31):
even closer. Biden won ninety one percent of the black
vote to Harris's eighty nine percent. Now that difference matters,
and we would imagine that with Kamala Harris she would
have been just as strong or even stronger than Joe Biden. Now,
based on what you found in the data, what would
you guess appealed to again the relatively small group of
(25:51):
Black Americans who ended up voting for Trump that we
didn't expect and didn't anticipate. Again, about thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Real quick. I think that finding is interesting and would
I would say a lot of the appeal there is
sort of either these conservative values that are traditionally associated
with the Republican Party coupled with, as you said before,
misinformation and sort of false narratives about Trump working for
black people or working for the black community. And so
if you don't have a principled conservative who's just always
(26:22):
going to vote Republican moving to the party and it's
someone who's trying to do so based on what they
think the benefits are, most of those benefits are false, right,
It's complete misinformation. The point there, though, is that that
drop is very small, especially compared to the turnout right.
And when we're talking about that switch and vote share,
(26:43):
we're actually talking about numbers that are within sort of
this margin of air. There's no real we can't say
with confidence that there's any real difference there. But the
turnout drop is far more egregious.
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
your host, Rams's job. Big shout out to q Ward
who is taking care of mom after surgery. But have
no fear. He will be back soon. But in the meantime,
in between time, we have a very special guest. The
(00:23):
return of a very special guest, the one the only,
Doctor Christopher Tower for those that don't remember or were
unable to bear witness to his greatness on this show.
He is the associate professor in the Department of Political
Science at California State University, Sacramento. He is also the
director of the Black Voter Project, the co founder of
(00:44):
Black Insights Research, and the editor in chief of the
Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics. And today we are
going to be talking to him about a recent article
entitled from Decline to Revival, Why Democrats must repair their
relationship with Black voters. A potent article, something that a
(01:06):
lot of people need to be made aware of, certainly
in democratic circles, but I think the population at large
needs to understand the trends that you tend to track,
and we're grateful for your time one more time on
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So welcome back, Thank you so much, happy to be back,
Excited for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Absolutely and again, like I said, just a lot of
conversations back and forth in political circles and around the
kitchen table, conversations around the country. A lot of people
still don't know what the what is and how to
make heads or tails of the twenty twenty four election,
the implications of the twenty twenty four election, the Democratics,
(01:44):
the democrats strategy prior to the election and post election.
And I think that today's conversation is going to give
a lot of folks a lot of valuable insight into
sort of the trends that you've been monitoring. So we
do appreciate your time. Before we get to all that, though,
it is time, as always to start off with some
ebony excellence. In today's ebony excellence, we are going to
(02:08):
be sharing a bit from the b I N So
this story is going viral, the black TikToker going viral
himself for serving poetic justice to a white man who
launched a racist tirade against him during a live stream Tamo,
who boasts over one hundred eleven thousand followers on TikTok,
was talking about Pokemon cards and video games when the
man crashed his live stream and began repeating racial slurs.
(02:33):
Following the incident, Tamil revealed that he had identified the
man and discovered his military affiliation, and we are going
to hear from him. This is at Noratamo, in his
own words, to.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The white guy that called me slurs over and over
again in my live stream the other night for no reason.
Guess what, You're going to get kicked out in the
United States Navy. You know how they tell us that
we should be careful what we do on social media
because there could be real life consequences. Hi names real
life consequence. I've done a thorough background check and now
I know everything about you. I know what little town
in Texas you're from. I know your name, your phone number,
your email address. I've seen your disciplinary records. I know
(03:09):
the names of all of your family members, including your
dead mother and your daughter who turns to next week
and her mother who's going to have to pay for
all the birthday presents this year because you came into
my live stream and saw a black man who was
talking about Pokemon cards and video games, and you assumed, Yeah,
he's not going to do anything if I call him
slurs repeatedly, even though he's trying to help me. Turns out,
turns out I am going to do something. Turns out
(03:30):
there are so many things I can do because I
have all the screenshots, I have all of the recordings.
I know that after you left my live stream, you
went into someone else's and started talking about how much
you love Jesus and God in the Bible. So maybe
I should send that evans to the church you go
to in that little town we both know about. I
know exactly which boat in the Navy you serve on,
and I know the names of black sailors that serve
in the same boat as you. Maybe I'll send the
(03:51):
clips to them as well, but only after I send
them to the Naval Inspector General's office. Because I'm getting
you fired. I'm getting you kicked out of the Navy.
There's nothing you can do to stop me. Apology I
will accept. There is no excuse I will listen to.
There is no money you could offer me. You're getting fired,
and when you're working the graveyard shift in an Amazon warehouse,
and your back hurts and your feet hurt, and those
(04:11):
white bright lights are beating down on you. And the
teenager who still has his life ahead of him, walks
up to you and says, what are you doing here?
Tell him the truth, Tell him about me.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Masterful all right, Time to get to the forthcoming conversation.
So in short, doctor Tyler, talk to our listeners a
bit about I guess a little bit about the work
you do. For folks that aren't familiar with you, we
(04:45):
gave you a brief introduction, but just so people understand
who we're listening to today and what qualifies you to
have the conversation we're about to have.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, Absolutely, I've been studying black politics for over a
decade now, going back to my days in graduate school.
The last six going on seven years now, I've ran
a national public opinion survey called the Black Voter Project,
specifically designed to measure Black attitudes and behaviors towards politics.
And I've really just enmeshed myself in what's going on
(05:15):
electorally the last few election cycles. As I was worried
and it came to someone came to be somewhat true
that black voters would end up with the short end
of the stick post Obama, meaning there would be less
attention paid to them, less emphasis on their needs, and
less resources invested into the black community when it comes
(05:35):
to getting them out to vote, to engaging them and
mobilizing them, getting them excited about politics and elections. And
that's really what this article, this piece that came out
is about. There were a number of different sort of
twenty twenty four obituaries written in The New York Times
and the Washington Post, but none of them really focused
on what happened with black voters and what took place
(05:58):
in the election that led to black turnout dramatically dropping
from twenty twenty close to twenty sixteen numbers, and you know,
falling even more dramatically from the historic turnout rates we
saw in two thousand and eight and twenty twelve under
President Obama. Yeah, and so the thrust was really there
to continue to investigate the election, but centering black voters
(06:23):
and the black community.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Absolutely. Yeah, And you know, you mentioned the Newsweek article,
the opinion piece. So talk to us just a brief overview,
because we're going to actually spend the bulk of the
show talking about some of the details in the article,
but again a general overview of the article entitled from
Decline to Revival, Why Democrats must repair their relationship with
(06:49):
Black voters sort of talk to us about why you
felt this was necessary, and you know, give us a preview,
I suppose of what we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, the article was came from my place of trying
to understand why Democrats did not successfully turn out black
voters at similar rates in twenty twenty four as they
did to twenty twenty. Recent analyzes suggests that black turnout
dropped as much as six percentage points nationally, even as
(07:20):
much as two to three percentage points in some of
the most contested battleground states and in other states such
as Georgia. Right, black turnout was the black voters were
the only group to experience a decline in turnout, where
we saw turnout amongst white voters, Latino voters, Asian American
voters all increased from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four.
So there was something missing, some part of this story
(07:42):
that needed to be investigated when trying to understand what
happened and really understand Okay, if black voters were turned out,
what could have been? Right? In part of the analysis
suggesting if black turnout had not dropped as significantly as
it did, Harris's chances in some of these battlegrounds states
places like Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, right would have been
(08:05):
different and she could have even turned or flipped some
of these states blue if black voters were poured into
the way that we feel they need to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, So this is part of the conversation that we've
been having since the election. What happened to There was
low voter turnout across the board, but with respect to
black voters, I guess a group that we would have
imagined would have shown up to support Kamala Harris. In
(08:37):
my recollection, Kamala Harris had a plan for black men,
black business ownership. She had pieces of legislation that were
intended to address issues in the black community. But there
(08:59):
was still low voter turnout. Do you think that's because
of misinformation or disinformation from the opposing campaign, or do
you think that's because Kamala Harris, her messaging and her
plans for Black America failed to resonate or is it
something that we haven't considered.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yet, you know, try not to play the fence here.
I think it's a combination of both, right, and I
think the plan on the Republican side was to flood
the zone with as much misinformation or disinformation as possible,
to try and make both parties seem sort of comparable,
and to not give what we consider low propensity or
(09:40):
infrequent voters any additional motivation to get out there and
vote if they feel like, Okay, Republicans and Democrats are
just as bad on a lot of issues, right, we
can't really differentiate the two. And so there was some
success there, especially on social media and with commercials right
in certain states in zones, really driving this narrative that
(10:02):
Democrats and Republicans are just the same, or trying to
convince voters that Republicans are better than Democrats. Again not
necessarily believing that black voters are going to go out
and vote Republican now, but that it's just going to
be not much more confusing and difficult to decide if
it's worth voting at all. So that's yes, on the
one hand, that's the case. On the other hand, as
(10:24):
was kind of spelled out, in the Newsweek piece. There
was a problem when it came to campaign contact for
the Harris campaign, and that a lot of the messaging
and the information about her policies, such as you mentioned
her plan for black men or her Black Economic Empowerment Zone,
went out to high propensity voters or voters who were
(10:45):
going to vote anyway, and we're likely going to vote
for Democrats and for Harris. They're the ones who are
getting most of this information and understanding that Harris did
have a short runway, but we really didn't see any
emphasis on black voters until October, until like a month
or less than prior to the election, and even going
(11:06):
back to when Biden was the candidate, right, there could
have been and should have been an emphasis on getting
that information about black voters, about their plan for black voters,
not just out there, but out there to the people
in communities who are not necessarily going to vote right away,
right who might need a little bit more convincing or
might need a bit more information to make that decision
(11:27):
to get up off their couch and vote. And so again,
it kind of goes both ways, right, the misinformation helped
keep people home, and the lack of information reaching the
target audiences that really need it to make that decision
to vote right from our analysis, just wasn't there or
wasn't there in time.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, you know, your words ring truer than you may know,
certainly around here, because Q and I we ended up
kind of working with, you know, the Harris campaign. In short,
(12:03):
we thought that a lot of what they were trying
to get out was important to share with our communities.
And you know, where we are, in the space that
we hold, we have the capacity to share some direct
messaging from that campaign with voters across the aisle. And
you're not wrong when you say that there was a
(12:24):
late push to address specifically the needs of black voters,
and that only happened once I think Republicans and Donald
Trump specifically started touting the fact that they were pulling
at historic highs. I don't know if they were indeed
(12:46):
historic highs, but something like that. Effectually, this is what
they were saying with respect to black men specifically, and
that caused the alarm bells to start going off within
the Harris campaign. And I think that that I don't
know that that speaks directly to Kamala Harris. I don't
want to bad mouth her. One hundred and seven days,
(13:06):
as she puts, it is not a long time, and
certainly you're scrambling to put together plans that affect the
entire United States of America. Typically you kind of know
in advance that you're going to, you know, step into
that role. But Democrats in general, I think that that
sort of too little, too late with respect to black
(13:27):
voters and black men in particular. I think it shows
a almost like black voters are taken for granted, that
there's a ready assumption that black people are going to
vote for Democrats or the Democratic candidate, or for a
(13:48):
Kamala Harris who is a black woman, and there's no
messaging or nothing that Democrats really need to do about this.
And the Trump campaign, to its credit, kind of saw that,
I guess, do nothing approach with respect to black voters.
(14:09):
This is just me guessing. And that coupled with the
sort of do nothing Democrats narrative that Donald Trump had
been chronicling for a long time, which is to be
fair partly based in reality at least, I guess, it
left some folks vulnerable to the messaging coming from Donald
(14:30):
Trump's campaign. So here's my question. You know you mentioned
from your article black turnout was down by six percent nationally.
That's a big deal, and two percent in swing states.
That's critical because those swing states often they kind of
hinge on the margins. And this is all relative to
the numbers in twenty twenty All things equal, Harris would
(14:52):
have likely beat Trump in twenty twenty four had black
turnout simply matched what Biden produced. This is from your art.
So what I guess in your words, have Democrats failed
to recognize with respect to Black voters? And I think
the better question is how do you believe Democrats can
(15:13):
regain the trust of the black electorate.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, those are great points. I think you know two things.
First off, when talking with black voters before and after
the election, this idea that Democrats don't really do anything
for the black community, this do nothing Democrat narrative is
there at present, right, And it's it's not just with
black men, it's with black women. When we polled black
women after the election, fifty one percent of Black women
(15:40):
basically said they're exhausted after the election and they kind
of just want to be left alone, right, And so
this apathy is there across the board, and so and
There were a number of other pieces. There was one
in particular, longer opinion piece that talked to black Republicans
after the election, and many of them said, the reason
they look towards the Republican Party is because the Democrats
(16:01):
don't do anything right. And we've heard this from voters
time and time again. They only show up every four
years when they need our vote. We don't see them
any other time. So this is absolutely something that the
Democrats need to combat and address in the black community,
this idea that they're do nothing Democrats when it comes
to black vote, and that coupled with this idea that
they don't reach out to them other than elections, and
(16:23):
when they do reach out to them at the elections,
it's at the last minute, right at the eleventh hour.
And so when looking at Trump in his campaign, one
thing he's successfully done when he's won the White House
the last two times is turn out low propensity white voters.
He's found a way to invigorate and engage white people
across the country who usually might not vote. They're like, oh,
we're going to vote for Trump. That's something that we
(16:45):
feel really powerful about and we need to get out
there and do that and that's what Democrats need to
figure out how to do with black voters, especially you know,
in these title elections, when they're running candidates and switching
candidates and have these crazy election cycles. They need to
make sure they're getting every possible Black voter out to
the polls that they can, and that just didn't happen
this last election cycle. And so for us, right, the
(17:08):
two main things we point out in the article. One
is about contact and making sure that there are resources
front loaded to either send two grassroots campaigns or to
state campaigns or to state parties to get out low propensity,
unlikely black voters across the battlefield. And that needs to
happen early and often, right. You can't convince someone to
vote who usually doesn't vote two weeks before the election,
(17:32):
it's just not going to happen. You have to be
getting in the communities, talking with them, sending them, you know, mailers,
flyers about your campaign, and making an impression upon them
for weeks if not months before the election in order
to get them out to vote. And secondly, the messaging
right needs to be very direct, first, meeting black voters
where they are with an understanding that there might not
(17:53):
be a really positive view of the Democrats right now
in the black community. And that's not something that you
can try and like change on the spot. You're not
going to necessarily convince someone, especially someone who's not really
into politics or voting all the time. You know in
one conversation that Democrats are there and going to change
your lives. So you have to understand that you first
(18:13):
have to meet black voters where they are, and then second,
play on the environment of the time, which is this
crazy Trump environment, this idea that the black community is
going to be worse off tomorrow than it was today
if we continue to allow Trump and the Maga Republicans
to stay empowering and gain more power, and that in
(18:34):
of itself should be enough to get people out to vote.
Then once you have people voting and Democrats can regain
some political power, right, the task is on them to
give back to the black community, to pass policy and
poor resources into the Black community that they can then
point to in the future, right and kind of hope
to rebuild that relationship and re engage black voters by
(18:57):
first understanding there's a problem, talking to them about how
despite the problem we are living in very dangerous times
that there is a major threat to the black community,
and from there on forward, you can have a more
sort of leveled conversation about what Democrats can do for
the black community once that trust is rebuilt.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So I want to I want to go with that
because I've actually heard and read a lot of political
minds suggest that, I guess the the the approach of
using scare tactics by themselves, which I don't know if
(19:40):
this is what happened with the last election cycle, but
I know that Democrats heavily leaned on it. Here's what
happens that makes your life worse if you don't vote
for us, or if you don't vote right that that
wasn't entirely effective. Obviously, people need to know what the
(20:02):
opposing campaign is up against it, and I don't think
anyone was trying to say that that's not an important
part of the messaging. But there's a lot of great
thinkers who've said that Democrats rely too heavily on what
could go wrong if Donald Trump wins again. And there
were people that suggested that this messaging might not resonate
(20:26):
with people whose lives are already unbearably bleak, and they
may not be susceptible to fear because they've already lived
under Trump administration, and Trump gave them a check quote unquote.
I think you and I have had that conversation with
Donald Trump putting his name on the stimulus checks, and
(20:48):
he opposed the stimulus checks initially and had nothing to
do with approving them. He just held them up. But
in any event, the idea that Project twenty twenty five
and and and and Trump unhidden Trump two point zero
didn't do enough to scare voters to the polls. Right.
(21:10):
It motivated voters who were already aware of that, but
in terms of a scare tactic in and of itself
wasn't sufficient. Do you have any any thoughts about that?
Do you think there's some truth there or do you
think that that was a sound strategy And again that
this campaign was susceptible to other forces that kind of
(21:32):
cost it in the eleventh hour.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I think what you said at the end of remains true, right,
that there's still issues with having a really short campaign
that we can't really get away from. Right, that's going
to hinder the campaign and the strategy no matter what.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, it's not doing it any Your favors.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Over one hundred days. Right, that's not going anywhere. That's
always going to be something there in the background that
you know, we have to acknowledge. That said, there is
some truth in what you said that you know, there's
a lot of analysts that are worried about Trump fatigue
and you know, people getting inundated with too much Trump this,
Trump that, and that it's going to you know, actually
exhaust and discourage people. And we did see some of
(22:12):
that in our data after the election. But we're not
necessarily talking about trying to engage and mobilize the black
people who are paying attention to the news, who are
hearing the Trump stuff day in and day out. Those
are the people who are going to vote. Right, even
if they say I'm tired of hearing about Trump, they
understand the importance of their vote, and they understand the
importance of their voice and politics. Our analysis is really
(22:35):
focused on those black voters who don't pay attention to politics,
who might hear about Trump once or twice on the
radio on their way to work, but that's it, right,
They're not going to go home and turn on MSNBC
and just zone out to the panel harping on Trump,
you know, for hours and hours and hours. They don't
really care to do that. They're not interested in it
in that way. And so we're saying, one, the campaign
(22:56):
needs to figure out how to first contact those individuals
right who aren't getting this political information regularly, and when
they do contact them, our analysis shows that the best
message to contact them is one that shows the dangers
that Trump presents, right. And it's and I hesitate to
say scare tactics because our analysis is not necessarily trying
(23:16):
to scare people, but it's trying to impression upon people
that their community and their lives will be damaged further
by Trump's policies in such a way that we hope
angers them if nothing else right, that makes them understand, Okay,
I'm not happy with what's going on, and I'm going
(23:37):
to be even less happy if we continue to allow
these policies in this Trump presidency in MAGA to gain
more power. And so that's that's really where it's at.
Where they're not going to get a lot of political
messages from the start, and so the few messages that
they do get, we hope, you know, one they're getting
messages from Democrats. Our analysis showed that of those who
(23:58):
got messages only about thirty one percent where people who
had you know, were not frequent voters, compared to almost
seventy percent of those people who voted all the time.
And so the people who are not really voters who
need to be in these elections for Democrats to win,
right these black people are just not getting a lot
of messaging from the Harris campaign or others representing her
(24:20):
or fighting for her. And so the first step is
to get those people the messages, to get to their doors,
to knock on them, to have bus campaigns in their
community so that they can see a presence and know
that their voices matter and have people talking to them.
And then secondly to make sure they understand what's at
stake here, especially in this current political environment where the
(24:42):
Trump administration has time and again seem to specifically target
the black community, right, I mean, right now, we're living
in a situation where there's police, federal forces and National
guards being you know, commissioned to go into black cities,
right DC, Baltimore, these places where it's clearly the you know,
symbolic of the administration's opposition to black leadership. And black power.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Absolutely. Now we're we're gonna be a little short on
time for this response, but give me about thirty seconds
because I want to get back to your article. So
this is from your article. Consider the following comparison between
Biden's numbers and twenty twenty to Kamala Harris's. In twenty
twenty four, Biden captured eighty nine percent of the black vote,
Harris just eighty five percent. In swing states, it was
(25:31):
even closer. Biden won ninety one percent of the black
vote to Harris's eighty nine percent. Now that difference matters,
and we would imagine that with Kamala Harris she would
have been just as strong or even stronger than Joe Biden. Now,
based on what you found in the data, what would
you guess appealed to again the relatively small group of
(25:51):
Black Americans who ended up voting for Trump that we
didn't expect and didn't anticipate. Again, about thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Real quick. I think that finding is interesting and would
I would say a lot of the appeal there is
sort of either these conservative values that are traditionally associated
with the Republican Party coupled with, as you said before,
misinformation and sort of false narratives about Trump working for
black people or working for the black community. And so
if you don't have a principled conservative who's just always
(26:22):
going to vote Republican moving to the party and it's
someone who's trying to do so based on what they
think the benefits are, most of those benefits are false, right,
It's complete misinformation. The point there, though, is that that
drop is very small, especially compared to the turnout right.
And when we're talking about that switch and vote share,
(26:43):
we're actually talking about numbers that are within sort of
this margin of air. There's no real we can't say
with confidence that there's any real difference there. But the
turnout drop is far more egregious.
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