On Thursday, he did not explicitly recant those regrets, but appeared to be angry at any suggestion the bill was wholly bad.
The legislation imposed tougher sentences, put thousands more police on the streets and helped fund the building of extra prisons. The bill was backed by congressional Republicans and hailed at the time as a success for Clinton.
Senator Barack Obama. Some saw him as dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national outgrowth of anger over a string of encounters in which police officers killed unarmed black people. Earlier in Philadelphia, Sanders, a U. We voted for you because initially you spoke our language. We believed you would be more of an activist than a typical suit-and-tie teleprompter politician. Are you not outraged by the treatment of your own people by law enforcement?
Why is it so difficult for you to display a moment of honesty and reflection to the public about your own blackness? Last May, Clinton said in a foreign policy speech :. We are a big-hearted, fair-minded country. That plane — those words — our country represents something special, not just to us, to the world. It represents freedom and hope and opportunity.
Perhaps she thinks that both can be true, but others might conclude that the candidate has either not truly grasped the depth or scale of the crises in black communities today, or that she will say anything to get votes. As for the Clinton supporters who suggest that Trump represents a unique threat to free speech — do they believe that Trump will execute an executive order banning protests?
Will he mobilize the military to stop demonstrations? Black millennials who have taken up the cause of Black Lives Matter have already endured teargas, live ammunition, dogs, false arrest, military tanks, police beatings, fees, fines, prison time, jail, surveillance, infiltration and harassment. All with a black president at the helm.
Under such circumstances, it is a remarkably hollow argument to insist that a vote for Clinton is a vote to be able to continue to organize. The insistence that things will simply get worse under Trump as the motivation to vote for Clinton is to gloss over, if not ignore, the deep and profound ways that young people are already suffering. Yes, life can always get worse, but this narrow fixation ignores the more pressing question: how do things get better?
Why should we trust you? Clinton's big problem with young black Americans. The greatest snub of the debate? Read more. Half of young Americans prefer meteor apocalypse to Donald Trump presidency. Ten black caucus members have backed Harris, another candidate whose politics are best described as center-left establishment. More on her in a bit. And Biden and Harris are also getting the vast majority of endorsements from other high-profile black figures, such as state representatives and prominent mayors.
Why are elected black officials more likely to side with establishment candidates? Many of these candidates have long courted black community leaders, including elected officials, as I mentioned in No.
You see this on Capitol Hill, where black House members are among the strongest defenders of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her internal battles with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the progressive wing of the House. Black elites also express the same pragmatism that black voters do and are wary of pushing forward candidates they view as unable to win a general election.
That said, the lack of high-profile black support for Sanders, Warren and other anti-establishment Democrats creates a self-reinforcing problem. A candidate defined by the press as lacking black support is going to have a hard time getting black voters to support her or black elites to endorse her. Education has become an increasingly powerful predictor of voting behavior in U.
Warren, in particular, has significantly more support among Democrats with college degrees than those without them. Only about 24 percent of black Democrats have college degrees, compared to about 42 percent of white Democrats, according to Gallup data. In other words, the alliance between black voters and establishment candidates may be partly about education, not race. There is some evidence that African Americans are more likely to turn out to vote if there is a black candidate.
In recent Democratic primaries, the candidate who is well-liked by the white liberal activist wing of the Democratic Party has struggled with black voters Bill Bradley in , Howard Dean in , Sanders in , Sanders and Warren in The exceptions were two black candidates: Jesse Jackson in and Barack Obama in But, what transcended that was Trump's anti-establishment stance.
That has finally taken the wool from over the eyes of many African-Americans — including myself — in relation to the Clinton family, media and the establishment. It's been hard to face the facts on how our underserved black lives have gotten worse, not better under our beloved President Obama.
The undeniable truth about the Clintons has been disappointing to many because they've prided themselves on improving the lives of African-Americans for decades, even as their incarceration policies crippled our communities at its core.
Blacks have supported the Clintons, campaigned for them, donated to them and considered them one of our own. Remember when people called Bill Clinton the "first black president? African-American comedian Dave Chapel recently voted for Hillary Clinton but made it clear that he didn't feel good about it as he stated "She's not right and we all know it. When I finally got into the ballot booth and checked away at local, state and national Democrats on my ballot, I chose a different route for president.
I voted for the hundreds of thousands and black non-violent criminals incarcerated as a result of the mandatory minimums. I voted for a more transparent system of deploying aid to underserved countries. I voted for the dream of seeing black millennial and general unemployment rates reach the levels of other races in America. I voted for the hope that entitlements will put accountability measures in place in order to keep low income black parents involved in their kids education as well as help spur job creation over well fare in some cases.
I voted for a hope of making black America great again too.
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