By Black Kos
Tuesday Dec 01, 2015 4:09 PM EST

Black Celebrity Endorsements: The Cautionary Tale of Joe Louis’ Endorsement for Wendell Willkie

Commentary by Chitown Kev


Joe Louis campaigned for Republican nominee Wendell Willkie in 1940. Still, ~65-70% of blacks voted for FDR nationwide.

Last Tuesday in Atlanta, rapper and political activist Killer Mike (birth name: Michael Render) reiterated his endorsement of Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic nomination for President. Killer Mike’s introduction of Senator Sanders, in which he explained his endorsement of Bernie Sanders is both passionate and eloquent. Frankly, I think this is a good “get” for Senator Sanders in terms of endorsements for his candidacy.

But I am alarmed by the volume of commentary hoping and hyping that Killer Mike’s endorsement will, somehow, drive up Senator Sanders’ sagging poll numbers among African-Americans. To read much of the commentary on this specific endorsement of Senator Sanders, Mr. Render’s endorsement will unleash torrents of damned-up African American support for Senator Sanders that will allow Sanders to siphon off enough African American supporters of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and sweep Sanders to the Democratic nomination. Historically, gaining black electoral support via black celebrity endorsements is easily said but rarely done, as the case of heavyweight champion Joe Louis’ endorsement of Republican nominee Wendell Willkie in the 1940 presidential campaign shows.

First, let’s just stipulate that in terms of “celebrity”, Killer Mike is not in the same league (or even the same galaxy cluster) as Joe Louis circa 1940. That’s simply an objective fact.

Mr. Louis gave his reasons for supporting Mr. Willkie’s 1940 presidential campaign in his 1978 autobiography Joe Louis, My Life (written with Edna and Art Rust, Jr.):



The rest:

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/1/1454901/-Black-Kos-Tuesday-s-Chile

By Amanda Marcotte / Salon November 27, 2015


New numbers prove that Trump is pulling support from the highly xenophobic Republican contingent.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll proves what gut instinct was already telling you: The Donald Trump campaign’s success is built on the backs of racists. Or, if you prefer a gentler word that captures the immigrant-specific questions the poll asked,xenophobes. Either way, fear of foreigners coming to America to white people isn’t just driving the rhetoric of the Trump campaign, but it’s, quite predictably, shaping who his supporters are.

“Nearly half of GOP-leaning respondents in the poll — 47 percent — both support the deportation of undocumented immigrants and oppose accepting refugees from Syria and other Mideast conflicts,” the Washington Post reports. “If a GOP-leaning voter supports deportation, there is a 79 percent chance she or he also opposes Syrian refugees, compared with 54 percent if they oppose deportation.”

Call them the twofers: Republicans who both want to kick out all undocumented immigrants and stop Syrian refugees from entering. A whopping 51 percent of Trump’s supporters are twofers, compared to only 16 percent of all other Republican voters. “Put another way, pro-deportation/anti-refugee voters account for almost three-quarters of Trump’s support,” the Washington Post reports.
To be clear, nearly every Republican in the race has pandered to the twofers on some level, stoking hysteria about Syrian refugees and talking tough on immigration, even if they fall short of embracing Trump’s build-a-wall-kick-’em-out program. But Trump’s laser-like focus on these issues, along with a simple-minded belligerence that appeals to the bigoted (who are not known for their nuanced approach to issues) means he is killing with these voters. Enough to hold a comfortable lead as the primaries draw closer.

While these results aren’t surprising, there’s a couple of important lessons to be drawn from them. One, traditional coalition-building is collapsing in the Republican Party, which has become victim of its own propaganda machine. Two, this should (but won’t) put to bed any lingering hope that Trump is somehow going to say something too racist and lose his base of support.



http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-race-shocker-polls-prove-his-success-really-based-racists