Julius H. Cromwell: Why blacks didn’t vote for Hillary

What happened to the black vote? If it’s true that 8 percent of the black electorate voted for Donald Trump and approximately 4 percent didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, then the message to the Democrats is very clear. Black voters can no longer be counted on to automatically vote Democratic.

It is also clear that in spite of the fact that 17.8 million blacks voted in the 2012 presidential election, with 98 percent voting for President Obama, many stayed home this time around. The campaign rhetoric was too vitriolic, coarse and hostile and did not resonate well with the black electorate.

Also, blacks did not forget Bill Clinton’s 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill that resulted in mass incarceration of blacks for minor offenses. Both Clintons were aggressive advocates for this bill.

It should also be noted that the enormous turnout for Obama in 2012 may have given Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party a false sense of hope and security, and that African-Americans would turn out in large numbers for Hillary. This did not happen.

Consequently, the Democratic Party is now faced with the problem of how to regain its primary base of African-American voters while Trump’s GOP will be working frantically to increase that 8 percent black support for the 2020 presidential election.

This story was originally published December 8, 2016 at 7:45 PM with the headline "Julius H. Cromwell: Why blacks didn’t vote for Hillary."