Dems: Black voters deserve more from party
Democrats say their party needs to “wake up” and stop ignoring major parts of their coalition, particularly black voters.
The party, they say, must build off Doug Jones's win in the Alabama Senate race this week by working hard on issues of interest to minority voters — who have been the party’s most loyal backers.
“This has long been a sore spot,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in an interview.
He said black lawmakers and their constituents have long felt they’re taken for granted.
“We've had meetings, countless meetings, with the political arms of our party and we would go away wondering if we were heard. And not only were we not heard, we were ignored,” he said.
Shortly after the Jones win, former NBA star and Alabama native Charles Barkley captured those frustrations in remarks on CNN — though he did so in a way that sought to draw an alliance between black voters and poor white voters who have often been pitted against one another.
Democrats, he said, “have taken the black vote and the poor vote for granted for a long time. They’ve always had our votes and they've abused our votes."
“It’s time for them to get off their ass,” Barkley added. “This is a wake up call for Democrats to do better for black people and poor white people.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/365003-dems-black-voters-deserve-more-from-party
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