This is the least surprising development of this election cycle. Despite MD having a Republican governor now, the nominee the party chose this cycle never had a chance against a Dem candidate like Wes Moore.

Per usual, Black voters are the bellwether.
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/… In 2018, current GOP gov Larry Hogan – running against a progressive & well-known Black Democrat Ben Jealous – won nearly 30% of the Black vote on his way to an easy re-election, a DOUBLING of his showing w/ Black voters from 2014.

washingtonpost.com/local/md-polit…

This is a good read, but it makes a claim I find increasingly... incomplete: "American democracy is dying."

We had a democracy during slavery, dispossesion of the Indigenous, when women & immigrants couldn't vote, etc. So what exactly does it mean today to say it's dying???

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1550119293978693633

We fashion ourselves as the oldest constitutional democracy, which means that form of government co-existed with way worse things than we are dealing with today.

What we seem to be facing now is the death of liberalism - and trending toward democratic illiberalism.

My @BrennanCenter colleagues and I examined every pending & passed "anti-CRT" bill in the states – a much easier undertaking thanks to an index created by @PENamerica.

We wrote up what we found for @FiveThirtyEight
fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-a… One primary finding: GOP electeds introduced every one of the 183 bills across 40 states since Jan 2021.

Though the pitch was these bills “empower parents” & re-assert local control of schools, 2/3rds of pending bills & 11 of 12 passed laws just copy a Trump exec order verbatim

This is THE question of 21st century America - and given how race is increasingly entangled w/ our hyperpartisan politics - the question is synonymous w/ this: Is democracy in America sustainable?
This article is a good survey of some pertinent literature.
nytimes.com/2021/09/01/opi… Increased contact across racial groups is critical to a stable multiracial democracy. One of our primary issues is that our social circles, our communities, schools, etc remain racially segregated.

We don’t know each other. I hammer this point in my book.

Lots of folks in my neighborhood fly American flags, some of which are often snarled on poles. As a retired military guy, esp today on the Fourth of July, my first instinct is to straighten the flags out. As a black man, I dare not set a foot on someone’s property to do so. And so it is that the symbols that should highlight our shared values have been hijacked to divide us - all for political expedience. When the people are encouraged to demonize one another, all of us are cheated out of the nation we want.

nytimes.com/2021/07/03/nyr…

Today is the anniversary of #BloodySunday, the day 600 people began a march in Selma after police killed an unarmed black man.

At the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were beaten & gassed by police. Amelia Boynton, knocked unconscious. A young John Lewis, fractured skull. The peaceful march was to confront Alabama’s governor about police abuses of power & the denial of Black people’s voting rights. They were only given more violence, more oppression.

Nevertheless, they persisted. Bloody Sunday was just the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches

“Mr. Biden held a 78-11 percentage point lead among Black men ... a comparatively weak number for a Democratic nominee whose ticket includes the first Black woman selected as vice president.”

Not exactly. Trump has underperformed w/ black men relative to both Bushes & Reagan.

https://twitter.com/anniekarni/status/1322701680157315072

Any gains Trump is seeing - and they are not much at all - are just the type of black men who voted GOP pre-Obama simply coming home now that Obama is out of office.

If Trump is hoping black men will save him, he is going to be sorely disappointed next week.

Today, as they say, I wrote a thing.

1st, that this article appears in @NRO is not immaterial.
2nd, it argues the current protests are hard evidence of the threat racism exposes.
3rd, that threat is an illiberal state with agents acting w/ impunity.

nationalreview.com/2020/06/americ… "If we are to capitalize on the present crisis to strengthen America & make the Union a little more perfect, we are duty-bound to grapple w/ the abiding sense of injustice that is felt in black America & fuels civil unrest today, as it has for centuries"
nationalreview.com/2020/06/americ…

Biden had a good night & black voters in the South helped him to his biggest margins of victory

But if you look closely, you’d see something missing: the mythic “black monolith.” There was an observable regional character in the “black vote” yesterday.

brennancenter.org/our-work/analy… We saw this coming; it was not a surprise. Biden won 61% of black voters in SC (20 points worse than Obama ’08 & Clinton ’16) and only beat Sanders by 10 points in Nevada, 38-28.

This is an interesting Buttigieg interview with @MaayanSchechter. You can read & watch it here: thestate.com/news/politics-…

This Buttigieg quote, though, stood out to me because it captures the train of thought I’ve been hearing more and more lately. @MaayanSchechter Whenever I hear pols/pundits suggest that if their candidate can just win Iowa, black voters in SC will come around – and then cite Obama in 2008 as proof– my eyes roll. Obama ’08 is the exception, not the model.

But Kerry ’04, however, might be a model.
nytimes.com/2004/01/20/us/…

This is a pretty interesting poll that seeks to take the temperature of black America.

There are a two things, though, I want to draw out – black optimistic/pessimistic outlooks and negative views about Trump.
washingtonpost.com/politics/black… It shows that 2/3 black Americans are optimistic about their lives, but 2/3 also think it’s a bad time to be black in America

When this is coupled w/ the view that Trump is hurting America/black ppl, 2020 appears ripe for high turnout/Trump defeat

But not so fast, my friend…

Ok, Buttigieg & black folks.

Look, his inability to gain traction w/ black voters is MUCH less a function of his being gay than of his lack of connection/reputation. Of course there’s homophobia - in the US & in black America; the question is does it affect black vote choice… We know that Buttigieg’s white support is on the rise while his black support has remained at or near statistical zero. This 3% in the latest YouGov poll shows how anemic his black support still is.

One of the benefits of a large 2020 Dem field is what can be learned about voters’ preferences. For example, black conservatism – widely misunderstood – is presently on display & most of the nation is missing it. Let’s consider Booker & HBCUs. In this CNN town hall video, Booker responds to a question about HBCU funding & touts Opportunity Zones (OZs). The OZ legislation was the pet project of GOP Sen. Tim Scott, who was able to get it into Trump’s tax cut bill in 2017.

https://twitter.com/corybooker/status/1111244370760683521

I wrote this piece about black voters’ politics of pragmatism. The basic argument is that black voters approach presidential elections practically - not ideologically - voting primarily to protect civil rights gains. Biden is the present beneficiary. Why?
washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-do… The perception is Biden is best-positioned to beat Trump, which is the priority 2020 goal for most black voters.

BUT black political pragmatism isn’t just about electability. It is far more nuanced & contextual – e.g. these two very different candidates benefited. Here’s why…

This new poll on Virginians views on Northam is interesting, and it confirms what those of us who study political behavior have long known: 1) black voters are exceptionally pragmatic, and 2) the Northam/Fairfax/Herring scandals are politics first & moral deficiencies second. Why on earth do Republicans want Northam gone more than black people do? Easy. Republicans want to hurt Democrats. Period. And pragmatic black voters know Northam is indebted to them after his blackface debacle. Period.
This is about the politics, folks. politico.com/magazine/story…

One of the most illustrative stories about the relationship between racism and the nation’s interests takes place on Route 40 in Maryland. If you know Maryland, this stretch between the Delaware line and Baltimore hasn’t been particularly kind to black Americans In the 1950’s, many African nations gained independence. They sent their new Ambassadors to the U.S. to present credentials to the president & establish a presence at the U.N. This meant driving from New York to DC along US40 through a racially segregated Maryland

1/ Lost in the debate over NFL players' kneeling is how Kaepernick came to kneel during the national anthem instead of sitting. 2/ When Kaepernick first started to draw attention to the oppression of black people, he was sitting on the bench in protest.