RACE AND DEMOCRATS — 2015

Without making many in depth examinations of these articles, I have included them because each is full of valuable information relating to which Democratic candidates will stand firmly behind the social justice and social equity issues against the increasing growth of the millionaires’ wealth and the loss of income within the Middle Class. Likewise, the number of young black men who are being incarcerated, abused or killed at the hands of the police and the courts has become an inescapable issue since a case of police brutality and general overkill in Ferguson, MO hit the news. Like clockwork another case of very similar circumstances emerged in the national news almost every week for the next ten months or so. There haven’t been many more in the last few months, thank goodness, and it may, just MAY represent a change in what the various city PDs are doing internally. Nobody wants to feel as though they have been pushed into a retreat, but I believe the rapidity and seriousness of the Black Lives Matter group and others such as the old original NAACP from the 60‘s in their alertness and Internet connectedness have made a noticeable difference. Several police departments have spoken about improving community relations, hiring and training differences, and so on which encourages me. That little bit of voluntary progress has to continue, however, with a federal attention to the way police select, train, monitor and discipline their police officers from now on. They haven’t done well enough on their own.

Racial hatred is an evil thing always, but it is as common as grains of sand. What has been really frightening to me was the extent to which some officers have been going in their use of force for flimsy reasons, and the appearance that night in Ferguson in their tanks, full body shields, automatic weapons, etc. They looked like Nazi SS officers. Murder is still murder whether racial hatred was the cause or not. Police do specifically need close psychological testing, IQ testing, at least some college coursework, and a background check before they are hired, and then MANDATORY sensitivity training, as it was called in the 70s, after they become officers. A recent news article was about a new psychological training they have developed which reduces the level of racial/cultural hatred that an officer has. Hatred can, at least to some degree, trained out of an individual. Of course, to me, there is no substitute for mixing socially with people of a different race so that we become used to their differences and respectful of them. However, no matter how an officer feels toward a man who is walking down the middle of a street, they shouldn’t shoot him for doing something which is a very small misdemeanor at worst. That is not “law and order,” at all, but mayhem.

Police have been given “the benefit of the doubt” by the white John Doe citizens walking down the street and by the local courts and city governments as well. That is especially bad. An officer should be prosecuted for those killings. I think they will be more often now, and especially if Black Lives Matter keep on their backs about the matter. I do want to see our good Democratic presidential hopefuls jumping on the bandwagon and pushing justice forward in every case. Likewise, in the Congress they need to make laws mandating change and officer responsibility for the things that they do. No more shoot first and then fudge it with a lie – “I feared for my life!”




WHY RACE IS STILL IMPORTANT AS AN ISSUE:
BECAUSE IT AIN’T GOING AWAY ANY TIME SOON


http://abcnews.go.com/US/cliven-bundy-controversial/story?id=23468481

Who Is Cliven Bundy and Why Is He So Controversial?
April 25, 2014
By LIZ FIELDS

In a matter of 20 days, Cliven Bundy went from being a little-known Nevada cattle rancher to being labeled a conservative folk hero, and then a "racist" who "wondered" if black people were "better off as slaves, picking cotton."

Bundy, a 67-year-old patriarch of a large Mormon family with over 50 grandchildren, first came into the spotlight when the federal government started impounding his 900 head of cattle in early April, following a 20-year battle over cattle-grazing on federal land.

The government claims Bundy owes $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees and penalties for continuing to let his cattle roam free on land near Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, even after the government established the area as a protected habitat for the endangered desert tortoise in 1993 and slashed Bundy's cattle allotment.

Nevada Cattle Rancher Wins 'Range War' With Feds

The situation escalated in the week of April 5 as hundreds of supporters from around the country rallied on Bundy’s property to protest the federal cattle round-up. The dispute reignited debate over Bureau of Land Management practices, especially in Nevada where federal agencies control 85 percent of the land.

The confrontation turned ominous as armed militia gathered on his cattle and melon farm, aiming semi-automatic weapons at armed BLM officials from a bridge overpass. Some protesters were tasered by authorities and others arrested and later released, including one of Bundy’s 14 adult children.

On April 12, the BLM ended the stand-off, returned Bundy’s confiscated cattle and retreated from the land citing safety concerns. But self-styled civilian militia stayed behind to “protect” Bundy’s property and family, while Bundy toured the media circuit to promote his conservative views, flanked at times by armed bodyguards.

Civilian Militia Remains at Bundy Ranch After Standoff Ends

Bundy rode a horse while carrying the American flag, and made public speeches in which he repeatedly said he does not recognize the U.S. government, prompting Sen. Harry Reid's, D-Nev. to label Bundy supporters as “domestic terrorists.”

He was initially cheered, however, by Republican politicians including Sen. Rand Paul and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller. Paul and Heller later backed away from their support after Bundy's remarks on race were made public.

Bundy became even more controversial, however, and some of his support wilted when he was quoted in the New York Times making racist comments.

"They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton," Bundy said to reporters according to the New York Times. "And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom,"

Paul and Heller both distanced themselves from the rancher after his comments.

Other supporters, however, remain on his ranch, refusing to budge until the Bundy family tells them to go home.



GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY -- HOW MANY DEMOCRATS ARE RACIST?


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-more-racist-than-white-democrats/

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats?
Race 3:15 PM Apr 30, 2014
By Nate Silver and Allison McCann

The comments made by Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling this month demonstrate that the U.S. is far from a colorblind society. And the reaction to their comments has drawn further attention to the fraught relationship between racism and partisan politics. When racist statements by high-profile figures are made public, some news commentators become preoccupied with trying to discern the speaker’s political affiliation.

We were curious about the long-term trends in racial attitudes as expressed by Americans in polls. Are Republicans more likely to give arguably racist responses in surveys than Democrats? Have the patterns changed since President Obama took office in 2009?

Like The New York Times’ Amanda Cox, we looked at a variety of questions on racial attitudes in the General Social Survey, which has been conducted periodically since 1972. The difference is that we looked at the numbers for white Democrats and white Republicans specifically, based on the way Americans identified themselves in the survey.1 Our focus was only on racial attitudes as expressed by white Americans toward black Americans (of course, racism can also exist between and among other racial groups).

Two warnings about this data. First, survey responses are an imperfect means of evaluating racism. Social desirability bias may discourage Americans from expressing their true feelings. Furthermore, the sample of Democrats and Republicans in the survey is not constant from year to year. If the partisan gap in racial attitudes toward blacks has widened slightly in the past few years, it may be because white racists have become more likely to identify themselves as Republican, and not because those Americans who already identified themselves as Republican have become any more racist.

We looked at eight questions from the General Social Survey. First, how many white Americans say they wouldn’t consider voting for a black presidential candidate? In the 2010 edition of the survey, the most recent version to ask this question, 6 percent of white Republicans and 3 percent of white Democrats said they would not. However, it’s possible that these responses have something to do with Obama himself. In 2008, when Obama was a candidate rather than a president, the numbers were about equal among Republicans and Democrats. And at earlier times, white Democrats were more likely than white Republicans to say they wouldn’t vote for a black president. In 1988, for instance, when Jesse Jackson was running for the Democratic nomination, 23 percent of white Democrats said they wouldn’t vote for a black president, compared to 19 percent of white Republicans.2

We can also look at whites’ willingness to express negative feelings about blacks. From 1990 to 2008, white Republicans were just slightly more likely than white Democrats to say they considered blacks to be more “unintelligent” than “intelligent.” However, the numbers have fallen over time, and the small partisan gap erased itself in the past two surveys, 2010 and 2012, under Obama’s presidency.

Another question asked respondents whether they regard blacks as more “lazy” or “hard-working.” White Republicans are slightly more likely than white Democrats to characterize blacks as “lazy,” and the numbers haven’t changed much over time.

A related question asked respondents whether they think blacks lack the motivation to pull themselves out of poverty. The numbers on this one are high: In the 2012 survey, 57 percent of white Republicans and 41 percent of white Democrats agreed with the statement. This is also one question where the partisan gap has increased since Obama took office.

What about more personal attitudes toward interactions with African-Americans? A longstanding question on the survey has asked whites whether they’d object to a close relative marrying a black person. The percentage of white people saying so has fallen drastically over time, to 20 percent of white Democrats and 27 percent of white Republicans as of 2012. In 1990, by contrast, 65 percent of white Democrats and 71 percent of white Republicans said they’d object to an interracial marriage of a close relative.

Another question asked respondents whether they’d object to living in a half-black neighborhood. As with the marriage question, the number of white Americans saying they would object has fallen quite a bit since the 1990s. There generally hasn’t been much of a partisan gap on this question.

Since 1996, the survey has also asked respondents whether they feel “close” to blacks. Closeness is obviously a subjective quality, and failing to feel close to those in another racial group doesn’t necessarily imply racism. However, a survey question like this one may also be able to pick up on implicit racial attitudes that respondents would feel less comfortable asserting in questions about things like interracial marriage.

This question, in contrast to many of the others, has shown little change over time. It has also shown little partisan gap, although the number of white Republicans saying they don’t feel close to blacks has increased some since Obama took office.

A final question asked Americans whether they think society spends too much money trying to improve the conditions of blacks. This is the most overtly political of the questions that we’ll study. It also shows the largest partisan gap of any of the questions, and one that has increased since Obama took office.

In 2012, 32 percent of white Republicans said they thought society was spending too much money trying to improve blacks’ conditions, compared to just 9 percent of white Democrats. However, it’s important to note that some of the partisan gap may reflect attitudes toward government spending, rather than toward African-Americans specifically. For example, in 2012, 16 percent of white Republicans, but just 1 percent of white Democrats, said they thought the U.S. was spending too much money on trying to improve the education system.

Obviously, measuring racism is challenging — through surveys or by other means. If you take the question about voting for a black president as the best indicator of racism, then only about 5 percent of white Americans admit to racism toward blacks. If you regard the question about whether blacks lack motivation as indicative of racial antipathy, then about half of them do.

We combined the responses from the eight questions into one index of negative racial attitudes. We accomplished this by averaging the number of white Americans who provided the arguably racist response to each survey item, extrapolating the value for years in which the General Social Survey didn’t ask a particular question based on the long-term trend in responses to it.

As of 2012, this index stood at 27 percent for white Republicans and 19 percent for white Democrats. So there’s a partisan gap, although not as large of one as some political commentators might assert. There are white racists in both parties. By most questions, they represent a minority of white voters in both parties. They probably represent a slightly larger minority of white Republicans than white Democrats.

Fortunately, the expression of racism by whites toward blacks has decreased over time, and for Americans in both parties — at least, according to this survey. In 1990, the index of negative racial attitudes stood at 40 percent for white Democrats and 41 percent for white Republicans.

There hasn’t been much of an overall increase or decrease in the index since Obama took office. On average, between the 2004 and 2006 editions of the surveys — the last two before Obama was either a president or a candidate — the index of negative racial attitudes stood at 22 percent for white Democrats and 26 percent for white Republicans. Those values are within the margin of error for those in the 2010 and 2012 surveys.

If there’s a discouraging trend, it’s not so much that negative racial attitudes toward blacks have increased in these polls, but that they’ve failed to decrease under Obama, as they did so clearly for most of the past three decades.


Footnotes

1.Our figures only include those who identified themselves as Democrats or Republicans, and not independents who said they lean toward one of the parties. ^
2.The General Social Survey did not ask this question at any point between 1998 and 2006, which accounts for the unusual smoothness of the lines in the chart during that period. ^


Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.   @natesilver538


Allison McCann is a visual journalist for FiveThirtyEight.   @atmccann





http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/upshot/where-are-the-national-democrats-on-ferguson.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Where Are the National Democrats on Ferguson?
The Upshot
Quiet On Criminal Justice
Josh Barro
August 21, 2014

Photograph -- A protest in Ferguson, Mo., this week. No national Democratic politician has given voice to the anger there. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

There is something very strange about the national political reaction to the protests in Ferguson, Mo., (and nationally) over Michael Brown’s shooting. The protesters are angry, and they’re not aimlessly angry. They have a specific set of policy grievances about policing and criminal justice that are shared by a large slice of the electorate, particularly the Democratic primary electorate.

Yet no national Democratic politician, nobody of the sort who is likely to mount a presidential run anytime soon, has risen to give voice to the anger we’re seeing in Ferguson. Nobody seems eager to make police abuses or racial injustice a key issue in a national campaign, even though an awful lot of Democratic voters could be activated on those issues.

Why not? African-Americans are a hugely important Democratic Party constituency. Gallup data suggests 22 percent of self-identified Democrats are black. Exit polls showed black voters made up one-third of North Carolina primary voters in 2008 and a majority in South Carolina. If there were an incident of similar salience to a group that made up such a large share of the Republican base, you can bet a number of Republican politicians would be lining up to associate themselves with the protesters.

There are answers to the “why not?” question, but I don’t think they make the quiet on this issue sustainable.

You can start with the fact that blacks and whites tend to view the situation in Ferguson very differently. According to a poll conducted this month by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of black respondents say the shooting “raises important issues about race,” but just 37 percent of whites do. Whites are much more likely than blacks to have confidence in the police investigation. A New York Times/CBS poll on Ferguson released Thursday finds a similar divide.

Democrats win elections by building coalitions of white and nonwhite voters, and for decades, Democrats have used “tough on crime” stances as a way to build support with whites. The Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, spent 16 years as his state’s attorney general as a strong proponent of capital punishment.

Democrats have bad memories of the Willie Horton ad and other Republican campaign messages that used “law and order” issues to consolidate white voters. So faced with a policy issue that places a crowd of angry black people on one side and the police on the other, it’s not surprising that Democratic politicians would be wary of siding with the crowd.

Democrats also haven’t had to fear that not taking up this issue will cost them black votes. “Up until the last few months, there really hasn’t been any serious competition for the black vote on a policy level,” said Jeff Smith, a white Democrat who represented a racially mixed St. Louis district in the Missouri State Senate from 2006 to 2009. Even with Senator Rand Paul taking up the issues of over-incarceration and the drug war, Republicans remain too far from the median black voter on a swath of issues from economics to voter ID to make a serious general election play.

So there is a good general election logic for Democrats to give short shrift to the issues raised in Ferguson. But if the Tea Party has taught us anything, it’s that a base can force its party to take stances that won’t be popular in a general election. Black voters, and other Democratic voters who care about issues of policing and racial justice, don’t have to flex their political muscle by being willing to leave the party. If these issues are of importance to much of the electorate — and this month’s protests suggest they are — then a politician should be able to build a credible Democratic primary campaign by focusing on them.

Indeed, that’s roughly what Bill de Blasio did to win last year’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York. The fact that Democrats had lost the last five mayors’ races in part because of perceived weakness on policing issues did not stop Mr. de Blasio from winning the primary or the general elections easily while saying the New York Police Department’s policing tactics had gone too far. Mr. de Blasio was able to see that the sharp decline in violent crime in New York had changed the politics of policing, and made a softer touch more politically palatable.

The nationwide slump in violent crime should mean that trend isn’t limited to New York. The declining threat of crime and the cost of imprisoning so many people has created space for politicians, especially Republicans, to endorse policies aimed at reducing incarceration.

The decline of crime should change the calculus with black voters, too: Reduced crime makes aggressive policing look less justifiable and more gratuitous. Combine the favorable crime trend with the declining share of the Democratic primary electorate that consists of white voters, and there should be room for a candidate who takes Mr. de Blasio’s message on racial inequities in policing national.

Back in June, Matt Yglesias of Vox wrote that Democrats are “more unified than ever,” and policy unity is what forestalls a serious primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. On the issue set he discussed, he’s right. Democrats broadly agree on issues like taxes and spending, the safety net and bank regulation.

Mr. Yglesias’s article didn’t discuss policing and criminal justice issues, and didn’t describe the Democratic coalition as divided over questions like whether the police have too much power and whether we imprison too many people. That lack of division may be only because no ambitious candidate has emerged to push the party leftward on criminal justice — yet.





http://www.kwtx.com/centraltexasvotes/home/headlines/Democrat-Bernie-Sanders-Vows-To-Fight-Racism-321412991.html

Democrat Bernie Sanders Vows To Fight Racism
By: Associated Press
August 16, 2015

LOS ANGELES (August 11, 2015) Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders vowed that he would fight harder than any other presidential candidate to end institutional racism in front of a packed Los Angeles arena two days after Black Lives Matter protesters derailed one of his rallies.

The wildly enthusiastic and overwhelmingly positive rally avoided the Vermont senator's previous problem in Seattle.

The rally began taking on the issue head-on as Symone Sanders, Bernie Sanders' newly hired national press secretary who is not related to the candidate, introduced him and talked at length about racial justice.

Symone Sanders is a black criminal justice advocate and a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter movement, and said Sanders was the candidate to fight for its values.

The response both to Symone and Bernie Sanders was a deafening roar from the packed arena, whose usual capacity is about 16,000 people.





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/hillary-clinton-racial-justice-black-lives-matter-article-1.2298347

Hillary Clinton gives support for racial justice by saying ‘black lives matter’
BY Dan Friedman
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, July 20, 2015, 8:27 PM

Photograph -- Hillary Clinton is among the Democrats to be criticized for saying 'all lives matter.' But she changed her tune Monday.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

Photograph -- Former Gov. Martin O'Malley (R) had to apologize when he told demonstrators: 'Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.'
Charlie Leight/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton said Monday that "black lives matter," in a nod to activists pressing Democrats to adopt tough rhetoric on racial justice.

The former secretary of state was responding to a reporter's question during a Facebook chat. He asked what she would have told progressive activists at Netroots Nation, a progressive conference that Clinton declined to attend.

"Black lives matter. Everyone in this country should stand firmly behind that," Clinton wrote. "We need to acknowledge some hard truths about race and justice in this country, and one of those hard truths is that racial inequality is not merely a symptom of economic inequality. Black people across America still experience racism every day."

Clinton called for body cameras on all police officers, prison reform, universal early childhood education and expansion of voting rights as steps for countering the effects of racism.

Clinton is among the Democrats who have taken flak in recent weeks for saying "all lives matter" — a response that some activists say is inadequate.

Former Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin O'Malley drew boos recently for telling demonstrators: "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter."

O'Malley later apologized.

Clinton used the Facebook chat to rip Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after he was quoted saying that "the gender card isn't alone enough" for her to become President.

"Wow," Clinton wrote. "If that's what he said, Mitch McConnell really doesn't get it. There is a gender card being played in this campaign. It's played every time Republicans vote against giving women equal pay, deny families access to affordable child care or family leave, refuse to let women make decisions about their health or have access to free contraception."

dfriedman@nydailynews.com





http://election.democraticunderground.com/128035137

(rest at link)
https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/

Racial Justice
Mon Aug 10, 2015

We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
PERPETRATED BY THE STATE
Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

PERPETRATED BY EXTREMISTS
We are far from eradicating racism in this country. In June, nine of our fellow Americans were murdered while praying in a historic church because of the color of their skin. This violence fills us with outrage, disgust, and a deep, deep sadness. Today in America, if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. These hateful acts of violence amount to acts of terror. They are perpetrated by extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black and brown people in this country.

ADDRESSING PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetuated by police, and racist terrorism by white supremacists.

A growing number of communities do not trust the police and law enforcement officers have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter, and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.

We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.

We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.

We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.

At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.

We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.

Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.

We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.

We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.

States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.

We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE
DISENFRANCHISEMENT

In the shameful days of open segregation, “literacy” laws were used to suppress minority voting. Today, through other laws and actions — such as requiring voters to show photo ID, discriminatory drawing of Congressional districts, not allowing early registration or voting, and purging voter rolls — states are taking steps which have a similar effect.

The patterns are unmistakable. An MIT paper found that African Americans waited twice as long to vote as whites. Wait times of as long as six or seven hours have been reported in some minority precincts, especially in “swing” states like Ohio and Florida. Thirteen percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions.

This should offend the conscience of every American.

The fight for minority voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.

We must work vigilantly to ensure that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely and easily.




http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/upshot/where-are-the-national-democrats-on-ferguson.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Where Are the National Democrats on Ferguson?
The Upshot
Quiet On Criminal Justice
Josh Barro
August 21, 2014

Photograph -- A protest in Ferguson, Mo., this week. No national Democratic politician has given voice to the anger there. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

There is something very strange about the national political reaction to the protests in Ferguson, Mo., (and nationally) over Michael Brown’s shooting. The protesters are angry, and they’re not aimlessly angry. They have a specific set of policy grievances about policing and criminal justice that are shared by a large slice of the electorate, particularly the Democratic primary electorate.

Yet no national Democratic politician, nobody of the sort who is likely to mount a presidential run anytime soon, has risen to give voice to the anger we’re seeing in Ferguson. Nobody seems eager to make police abuses or racial injustice a key issue in a national campaign, even though an awful lot of Democratic voters could be activated on those issues.

Why not? African-Americans are a hugely important Democratic Party constituency. Gallup data suggests 22 percent of self-identified Democrats are black. Exit polls showed black voters made up one-third of North Carolina primary voters in 2008 and a majority in South Carolina. If there were an incident of similar salience to a group that made up such a large share of the Republican base, you can bet a number of Republican politicians would be lining up to associate themselves with the protesters.

There are answers to the “why not?” question, but I don’t think they make the quiet on this issue sustainable.

You can start with the fact that blacks and whites tend to view the situation in Ferguson very differently. According to a poll conducted this month by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of black respondents say the shooting “raises important issues about race,” but just 37 percent of whites do. Whites are much more likely than blacks to have confidence in the police investigation. A New York Times/CBS poll on Ferguson released Thursday finds a similar divide.

Democrats win elections by building coalitions of white and nonwhite voters, and for decades, Democrats have used “tough on crime” stances as a way to build support with whites. The Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, spent 16 years as his state’s attorney general as a strong proponent of capital punishment.

Democrats have bad memories of the Willie Horton ad and other Republican campaign messages that used “law and order” issues to consolidate white voters. So faced with a policy issue that places a crowd of angry black people on one side and the police on the other, it’s not surprising that Democratic politicians would be wary of siding with the crowd.


Democrats also haven’t had to fear that not taking up this issue will cost them black votes. “Up until the last few months, there really hasn’t been any serious competition for the black vote on a policy level,” said Jeff Smith, a white Democrat who represented a racially mixed St. Louis district in the Missouri State Senate from 2006 to 2009. Even with Senator Rand Paul taking up the issues of over-incarceration and the drug war, Republicans remain too far from the median black voter on a swath of issues from economics to voter ID to make a serious general election play.

So there is a good general election logic for Democrats to give short shrift to the issues raised in Ferguson. But if the Tea Party has taught us anything, it’s that a base can force its party to take stances that won’t be popular in a general election. Black voters, and other Democratic voters who care about issues of policing and racial justice, don’t have to flex their political muscle by being willing to leave the party. If these issues are of importance to much of the electorate — and this month’s protests suggest they are — then a politician should be able to build a credible Democratic primary campaign by focusing on them.

Indeed, that’s roughly what Bill de Blasio did to win last year’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York. The fact that Democrats had lost the last five mayors’ races in part because of perceived weakness on policing issues did not stop Mr. de Blasio from winning the primary or the general elections easily while saying the New York Police Department’s policing tactics had gone too far. Mr. de Blasio was able to see that the sharp decline in violent crime in New York had changed the politics of policing, and made a softer touch more politically palatable.

The nationwide slump in violent crime should mean that trend isn’t limited to New York. The declining threat of crime and the cost of imprisoning so many people has created space for politicians, especially Republicans, to endorse policies aimed at reducing incarceration.

The decline of crime should change the calculus with black voters, too: Reduced crime makes aggressive policing look less justifiable and more gratuitous. Combine the favorable crime trend with the declining share of the Democratic primary electorate that consists of white voters, and there should be room for a candidate who takes Mr. de Blasio’s message on racial inequities in policing national.

Back in June, Matt Yglesias of Vox wrote that Democrats are “more unified than ever,” and policy unity is what forestalls a serious primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. On the issue set he discussed, he’s right. Democrats broadly agree on issues like taxes and spending, the safety net and bank regulation.

Mr. Yglesias’s article didn’t discuss policing and criminal justice issues, and didn’t describe the Democratic coalition as divided over questions like whether the police have too much power and whether we imprison too many people. That lack of division may be only because no ambitious candidate has emerged to push the party leftward on criminal justice — yet.