The video on the right is gruesome. It graphically shows what it is like to be living in the Middle East - the land of milk and honey and occasionally mixed with blood from peace loving Muslims.
A Suicide bomber was shot dead by Israeli Forces. Muslims took up his body and started protesting. They did not know that the Suicide Vest was still active & tied to the bomber's body they were carrying.
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MORAL TO THIS STORY - if you are going to carry a dead terrorist through the streets while chanting ALLAHU AKBAR, make sure he isn't still wearing his active suicide vest.
As I noted in a previous memo I finally had the opportunity of being with Selena Zito my October guest speaker. She will be speaking at our home about: "The Trend in Populism," and autographing her book (The Great Revolt) on Sunday and Monday Oct. 27 and 28 at 5 PM and 7 PM respectively. If you wish to come, since space is limited, please let me know.
I also indicated I would post some of her most recent op eds in a subsequent memo and now I am doing so.
Salena is an op ed investigative reporter-journalist with The Washington Examiner and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard and more recently Washington and Lee University. (See 1 - 1c below.)
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Dick
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1) Salena Zito: The cookie table and the bonds of traditions in America
Why? “To bake the cookies for the wedding, of course,” she said.
In certain parts of the country, particularly in Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio, where the Yavorcik family came from, if you do not have a cookie table — actually several cookie tables ready to greet your guests as they enter the wedding reception — you may as well expect nothing short of a revolt by the guests.
Or at least life-long judgment and gossip about "that wedding" that had no cookies.
“If you don't do it, people talk about the wedding that ‘didn't have the cookie table' — nobody wants that shame brought to their name,” said Christina Blasi, who had a bountiful cookie table at her Pittsburgh wedding.
“Everyone makes different types of cookies, and once complete, they come together to be a massive assortment of deliciousness. The key to the success of a cookie table is to-go containers. Most people can't eat a dozen cookies after dinner and cake, but they sure will pack to-go containers full of them to eat for breakfast the next day,” said Blasi.
In short the cookie table is everything; no matter if the wedding is held at a fire hall, social club banquet hall, high-end hotel, or on a beach, and no matter how inconvenient it is — if you are from the Rust Belt you will find a way to bring homemade cookies and display them artfully at your wedding.
For the generations who made up America’s Melting Pot and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren the cookie table is more important than the cake, what is served for dinner, or what kind of dress the bride wore.
It is a tradition whose origin is not entirely clear but involves months of preparation, several hundred pounds of sugar, butter, and flour, a variety of nuts as well as a sense of pride and connection to the past.
Every cookie you make you know you are continuing a custom started by your mother's, mother's, mother as a way to showcase your family’s culinary prowess.
Often times you are using their same recipes; some with notes in the cookbook written in their native language, most of them with smudges of butter or molasses in at least one of the corners of the page.
The story goes during the great migration of the 20th century — a massive influx of laborers and their families migrated to Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Michigan for work from Poland, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece, and Serbia. When their children got married they were too poor to host elaborate weddings — so they found the only way they knew how to "show off" their family heritage for the wedding: making elaborate cookies.
Hundreds, even thousands of them.
They would enlist their mothers, aunts, sisters, and neighbors; the baking would go on for weeks, with sheets laid out on card tables as dozens of women rolled, kneaded, and decorated; forming an assembly line of dusty flour, gossip, espresso, and eventually wine by the end of each day.
There would be laughter, gossip, some squabbles, and children sneaking in for a taste of sugary dough or icing. Many of them placed their finished confectionaries in their fruit cellars. Not just so they would not spoil, but so that no one was tempted to eat them before the big day.
Today they go into freezers.
The day before the wedding they would enlist every family member and neighbor to help them bring boxes and boxes of cookies, then spend hours artfully displaying them on a series of tables at the reception hall.
The end result was a point of pride on the wedding day; guests were greeted as they walked into the reception with several long tables filled with colorful cookies stacked on trays all waited to be judged first, if only mentally, then eaten.
It is a tradition that is very much alive today with one slight variation; every family provides a to-go box — back then the cookies went home in your gramma's or mother's pocketbook wrapped up in a napkin.
The only hard and fast rule: no store-bought or bakery cookies.
When 25-year-old Chelsea Marrie of Lowellville, Ohio, interned in Washington, D.C., none of her friends had ever heard of a cookie table, “They really didn’t understand why or the concept,” she explained.
“It made me really miss home, but at the same time appreciate that I come from a place where family and friends aren't just people you see every once in a while, but people you share your life with,” she said.
Lowellville is a small working-class village along the Mahoning River just north of Youngstown, where almost everyone who lives here had family who worked at Sharon Steel and is of Italian descent. Like Marrie, whose brother’s wedding was laden with homemade cookies made by her immediate family, relatives, and friends, “It is a really amazing tradition and it's always wonderful to participate,” she said.
Jason Jack Miller of suburban Pittsburgh said he has never attended a wedding that did not have an extravagant cookie table at the reception, in fact, there are typically three to six tables, not just one.
Dave DiCello, a famed photographer in Pittsburgh, has shot 60 weddings in the area; he is always greeted with cookie tables piled high with thousands of homemade pizzelles, pignoli, peanut butter blossoms, lady locks, buckeyes, oatmeal, macaroons, chocolate chip, biscotti, and dozens of other varieties.
“Of those 60 weddings, only one did not have a cookie table,” said DiCello.
Former President George W. Bush deputy press secretary and current CNBC contributor Tony Fratto did not have a cookie table at his wedding, the Pittsburgh native instead went big: “We actually had a cookie room.”
When Wellsville, Ohio, native Dane Dysert started planning his wedding to Steve Wood earlier this year he said wasn’t very adamant about any of the particulars of the big day, “I didn't care too much about a lot of details but was adamant that we have a cookie table,” he said.
Dysert’s fiancé is from New England and had never heard of the tradition until they both went to a big Italian wedding in Ohio in 2012. “That allowed him to experience his first cookie table,” he said.
“Steve worried about the logistics of getting hundreds of cookies from many different places and figured we would just do a cake,” said Dysert explaining the challenges of the logistics for their wedding, which will be held in Charlotte, N.C., where both men now live.
“I don't have a lot of, or any, family traditions surrounding weddings but this is a way to connect to where I came from,” he said adding it allows him to bring some of that tradition to his college friends, the new friends they’ve made in Charlotte, and his future in-laws.
“Cookie tables are something unique to the Ohio and Mahoning Valleys so it will allow us to have something exceptional at our own wedding that not too many of our guests will know too much about,” he explained.
In his challenge to get homemade cookies from Ohio to travel to the reception, Dysert has found a way to bring the custom of the Rust Belt to the South. “To keep with the tradition of homemade cookies I've enlisted the help of our friends and neighbors, who took some convincing at first, ( Why do I have to make cookies? How many do I need to make? Do I bring them with me when I show up?), but now seem excited to bake,” he said.
Culture and traditions from other countries have always been part of the American experience; it’s why we go to ethnic festivals in the summer and fall to take a peek at the foods and celebrations and foods that people from other countries have incorporated into the American fabric.
The cookie table is one that was started here by immigrants as a way to connect not just with their past but also to the new country they started to call home. As their children married outside of their ethnic backgrounds or religions and assimilated to their new country a new tradition was born to connect all.
Yes, it was a way to show-off — but it was also a way to welcome. Deep friendships and community ties began at those kitchen tables and card tables that the women labored over 100 years ago — they still do. I know. I made 3,000 cookies for my daughter Shannon Venditti three years ago when she got married, my sister Heather made hundreds of the Neapolitan cookies, a family recipe passed down for generations in my family.
And no one can ever compare to my sister Annette’s always perfect, always chewy, never flat chocolate chip cookies — who just made hundreds for her son Nicholas’ wedding this fall.
1a)
Remembering Those Who Shaped a Nation
By Salena Zito
An estimated 41 million Americans have served in the U.S. military during conflicts and wars since 1776.
That amounts to about 7 percent of the total population preserving the liberty and freedoms of the other 93 percent of us.Richard Baker, a retired Army master sergeant and historian who leads the research team at the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, wants to thank you and your ancestors who have served among this “Magnificent Seven,” as he calls them.
Henry Peiffer was 24 when he enlisted in the northern army to preserve the Union. He and his brother, Levi, mustered into service at Harrisburg — in Company I, 201st Regiment, a volunteer infantry.
Henry was married with two young boys, nine months apart in age, when he enlisted; census data show he was a laborer.
No account exists as to why he volunteered; one would love to imagine he was caught up in patriotic determination. But poverty in Dauphin County was real in the 1860s, so finances could have played a part.
His regiment was stationed in Chambersburg, then sent to Manassas Junction, Va. He and his brother were honorably discharged in June 1865 after the war ended.
Henry's fortunes fell after the war: He and his young wife, Amelia, divorced; he lived in a poorhouse for a time. By the turn of the century, though, he had become a prosperous man, remarried, owned several hundred acres of prime Central Pennsylvania farmland and a livery business.
Whatever demons he carried from his rise from poverty apparently touched his sons; both committed suicide in Pittsburgh after failed business ventures. Henry died in 1916, having outlived his two sons and second wife — but not his first wife (my great-great-grandmother) or his grandson (my grandfather) with whom she lived on Pittsburgh's North Side until my grandfather (also named Henry) reached age 18.
Between April 1861 and April 1865, at least 2.5 million men served in the Union Army, the majority volunteers. For some of us who never served our country in uniform, what draws someone to the military remains a profound mystery.
Yes, some were driven by poverty, but that does not mean they didn't have that same quiet pride of most veterans when they reflect on why they enlisted, why they stayed on, and how the military shaped them.
My uncles all served in World War II. We listened at their knees as they shared experiences, from the Battle of the Bulge to the Pacific theater; with childish awe and terror, we imagined them as young men, covered in mud, firing guns, protecting our country.
To many of my generation, these men were “regular guys” who worked as laborers during the day, had a drink after work with boyhood friends, rarely moved far from the homes in which they grew up, and dedicated their weekends to tinkering or spending time with those beloved homes and the families they cherished.
Many young people today do not share such connections with a service member; in all likelihood, they don't know anyone who has served. According to the Defense Manpower Data Center, approximately 1.4 million people are serving in the U.S. Armed Forces — about a half a percent of our population.
But that doesn't mean young people do not have a connection with someone who served, as I discovered when the Army Heritage and Education Center's historical research placed me face-to-face with a young Henry Peiffer, who posed for his portrait when he enlisted in the northern army.
Looking at his face, I see my grandfather all over again.
Stone sentinels of forgotten military men jut out from rolling grassy hills all across this country, some of which have not seen a single visitor kneel at graveside for more than a century. All are part of the fabric of who we are as a country, and who you are as a person.
On this Memorial Day, think not only of the men and women who have served in our current wars but also those who shaped this country and shaped us as people, families and communities for more than 240 years.
Their stories should not be forgotten.
1b) Coming home
Nineteen men, trained by al Qaeda, boarded four passenger aircraft that morning, seeking to carry out a devastating coordinated attack aimed at symbols of American freedom: the World Trade Center, the Capitol, and the Pentagon. Three hit their target. Flight 93, the plane targeting the Capitol, crashed in an isolated field in Somerset, Pa., thanks to brave passengers who wrested control of the plane from the hijackers. More than 3,000 people lost their lives that day, 400 of whom were New York City’s first responders.
Sean Parnell, Joni Ernst, Taylor Cleveland, Lloyd Austin, and Victor Lewis are five people whose lives were changed by the terror attacks. They were separated by geography, age, and life experience, but for them, 9/11 proved to be a common call of duty to serve their country. The Washington Examiner spoke with them about their service.
Victor Lewis didn’t come from a military family. Taylor Cleveland, his friend and fellow Ohioan, grew up surrounded by soldiers.
“Even my priest growing up was a chaplain in World War II. I mean, everybody around here served. It’s just expected that’s what you’re going to do,” Cleveland says.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t follow in the footsteps of others. He had been a local high school football star and had wrecked his knee during a game, so the Marine Corps turned him down. Instead, Cleveland turned to community service, earned a degree in criminal justice, then worked as an emergency medical technician, then a firefighter, and then a beat cop before joining the department's SWAT team.
But he knew he had to do something more after the 9/11 attacks.
(Courtesy Photo)
“My grandfather joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor in 1941. And I just knew after that there was no way they would keep me out of this war that was coming. There was no way that people were going to go fight a war for me and that they were going to put their lives on the line for me. I could never live with myself as a man if I didn’t go and let somebody else go fight my battles for me,” he says.
He signed up to join the Marine Reserves but had concerns about his knee injury.
“I figured that because I had the knee problem still they’d still turn me down,” he recalls. “Well, they enlisted me before the medical portion, and they called the house and left a message on the machine that said, ‘Good news, you’re approved.’”
[ Also read: Rolling Thunder rides off into the sunset]
Lewis and Cleveland met in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2003. Cleveland is 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines. Lewis, a Navy hospital corpsman, attached to the Marine unit. The two became like brothers immediately.
They deployed to Iraq in 2005. Cleveland admits he had a hard time adjusting at first. “I was friends with a fellow reservist by the name of Jeff Wiener who had joined the Marines right out of high school. Wiener’s got this book, and it’s got a picture and a story of every person that was killed in 9/11, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing, bro?’ He smiles at me, and he’s like, ‘Man, I just read this whole book. I can tell you what, I read every single person that was in here that died on 9/11. I know why I’m here.’”
Twenty minutes after that conversation, Wiener was fatally shot in the head. Cleveland recalls, “That’s the last conversation I had with him. Having him say, ‘Man, I know why I’m here,’ is the best gift I’ve been given.”
Lewis says he never got shot in Iraq. No mortar. No shrapnel.
Cleveland practically spits out his beer. “Dude, you were hit by a rocket!”
Lewis is sheepish and uncomfortable telling the story. Deployed south of Haditha just outside Haqlaniyah, the engagement turned deadly as a guy coming straight at Lewis fired off a rocket-propelled grenade.
“The blast throws me toward the river. Trying to shake it off, I grab my weapon. I’m trying to fire back. I’m crawling toward the river. I go to stand up and fall back down. Like, ‘What the f---?’ My leg's all mangled,” he explains.
[ Related: On Memorial Day, it falls to many of us soldiers and veterans to keep alive the memory of those we have lost]
(Courtesy Photo)
He was medevaced to Al Asad Air Base, then took a Black Hawk to Basra. From there he was transported to Ramstein, Germany, and finally, Bethesda, Md. He wanted a little Motrin and to go back to "his men," but they told him he was going home.
“I felt like I failed them, you know? Because nobody could take care of my men like me,“ Lewis says. “They’re my boys. We hung out, we partied, we kicked it. We shared everything. I wanted to go back.”
That's the hardest part of returning to civilian life. “I think about it all the time. But you know … you can replay it as many times as you like in your mind. The result’s the same.”
Lewis is blunt about his routine after leaving the military: “Hanging out, drinking, and chasing women.”
He finally went back to work at the fire department, but even working triple shifts couldn't fill the void left by having to do something other than what he saw as his purpose in life.
He sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs and got lost in the system. Lewis says, “I started snapping at people and flipping out over nothing, but that’s not me. I was looking for help.”
It all came to a head one evening outside a bar when he was approached by two men and a woman looking for trouble. They pummeled Lewis pretty badly; he fought back with a knife.
[ Also read: Memorial Day has strayed from its sober roots]
“People got hurt,” is all he says. The price? Thirty months in prison.
But he turned his life around. He gets treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder, has a job he loves at a contracting company, and takes care of his twin boys. He talks to Cleveland at least twice a week and is working toward his degree in electrical engineering.
Lewis earned a Bronze Star, and Cleveland a Purple Heart. The lesson they want people to remember is simple: American freedom is paid for a thousand different ways.
*****
Lloyd J. Austin III always knew he’d eventually join the military, but he wanted to attend the University of Notre Dame first. Smiling, he says, “But I went to West Point because my father sat down and we talked about how it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and so eventually I agreed with him.”
The Thomasville, Ga., native not only came from a family tradition of military service, the entire community where he grew up was filled with servicemen, and they loved to gather with townspeople on porches and stoops, in churches and barbershops, and regale them with stories about their lives in the military.
“I wanted to be like them. Walk in their shoes, serve my country, and so that’s the reason that I really wanted to join. I wanted to make a difference,” he says.
And he did.
(Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)
Throughout his career, Austin, now a retired general, was a soldier’s soldier. The four-star general served as the 3rd Infantry Division’s assistant division commander for maneuver during the invasion of Iraq, the vice chief of staff of the Army, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan, and the first African American commander of the United States Central Command. He retired in 2016, and he is now the Class of 1951 leadership chairman at West Point.
“Our character is really a reflection of our values, and in the military, no matter which branch of service you’re in, those values are driven home day in and day out, whether you serve for three years or 30 years,” he says.
[ Editorial: No greater love]
Austin worries the military is becoming isolated from the general population. Only 0.5% of all Americans serve in uniform. “It is not a bad thing, it’s a horrible thing. We can’t allow the American people to get too far away from its military. Those of us who have worn the uniform and are wearing the uniform worry about that part,” he stresses.
One consequence is that people don’t understand the military. “There is this notion that if you’re in the military, you’re there because you can’t do anything else, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Kids are out there interacting with foreign governments, training people, building teams, and even serving and teaching folks in countries how to set up and run governments. So these are very resourceful and talented people, and I think we have to do a bit more to promote them for what they are,” he says.
Every Fourth of July, Austin reflects on a battle just outside the Karbala Gap in Iraq.
“We exchanged gunfire most of the night, and then when day broke and we were about to move out on the attack, there was this one lone vehicle that rode by our position and had the American flag on its antenna. It was tattered, torn, and dusty. It just drove home this sense of patriotism and what we were fighting for,” he says.
What does he want people to think about? That’s easy. “That we still continue to produce those kinds of people who are willing to sacrifice all to protect our treasure.”
*****
Joni Ernst spent nearly half of her life in the Army Reserve and Army National Guard, a career that began with her commission as a second lieutenant in 1992 and ended in 2015 with her retirement as a lieutenant colonel at 44, just over a year after she won election to the U.S. Senate from Iowa.
Ernst is the first female combat veteran in the Senate. Eighteen months after 9/11, she was in Kuwait as the commander of the Iowa National Guard’s 1168th Transportation Company.
[ Related: Dan Crenshaw knows exactly where he is]
It tore at her heart to leave behind her family. “It was very hard,” she says. “I think as a mom you want to be there and be there for your child, but knowing the reason you are serving is to protect your children and future generations.”
(Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)
The unit Ernst commanded drove supply convoys from Kuwait to Iraq. She says, “When our soldiers first got their missions, we were driving constantly. We were short drivers. There were more missions than we had drivers and trucks and trailers, and many of them were running 20 hours a day with mandatory four-hour sleep time. They were running ragged, but it does create that special bond when you’re serving in hardship and you’re out on the road.
“That brotherhood of arms. You know, the bad times and the good times through deployment, and so many of us are still very, very close today,” she says, her voice cracking and tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Unfortunately, I saw some of my unit members last weekend. One of our soldiers committed suicide, and we got together. The struggles that came from trying to get back to normal life, and what it is just to be a citizen, and not having that same purpose, and I think that’s what a lot of our service members feel when they get back. Sometimes they lose that purpose, and they struggle ... with substance abuse [or] trying to find their role in society. He just couldn’t make it,” she says. “It’s tough. That’s the second one we’ve lost to suicide. It hits home.”
Last month, Ernst introduced two bipartisan bills for veterans in crisis. The first helps states apply a "Green Alert" system to find missing veterans. The other fixes a flaw in bankruptcy law that jeopardizes veterans who rely on disability benefits. She criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs last year, urging it to fix problems in its suicide prevention outreach program and outlined its continued failures on the issue.
Her mission is to get veterans the help they need. “Often, the veterans that are committing suicide don’t ever seek assistance at our VA. The vast majority never seek VA benefits; they don’t ever go into a VA hospital. We need to make sure that they are reaching out and providing that support however we can.”
*****
On Sept. 10, 2001, Sean Parnell was an elementary education major at Clarion University in Western Pennsylvania. His run-down apartment smelled perpetually of stale beer, and he struggled to find his purpose.
“I wake up the next morning lying flat on my back on this beat-down couch in my living room, surrounded by crushed Iron City beer cans and cigarette butts all over the floor and with the hangover of a lifetime. I turn on the television, and in that moment, was shaken to my core,” he says, recounting what it was like to watch the horrific events unfold that day.
“What grabbed my attention more than anything else — in the wake of that terrorist attack — was how ordinary Americans responded. Police officers and firefighters ran into the flames to save people they didn’t even know. In many cases, people who ran into the flames that day never came out again. I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, this is an act of selflessness I have never seen before in my entire life.’ I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve got to do something.’ I had to serve something greater than myself,” he says.
(Justin Merriman/Washington Examiner)
He transferred to a university that had an ROTC program. He became an officer and was on the ground in December 2006. “Getting ready to fly into the front lines — 9/11 just lit a fire under my ass in a way that nothing else in my life, up to that point, had ever done. For the first time ever, I knew exactly why God had put me on this earth. I spent 485 days in heavy combat. I got what I wanted,” he says.
During one battle, Parnell suffered a skull fracture in three places and received a medical discharge after being diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD. During his service, Parnell received two Bronze Stars, one for valor, and a Purple Heart.
“When I got out, my mission shifted from defense of the country to capturing and preserving the legacy of my soldiers. That was the rocket fuel that propelled me to write Outlaw Platoon in 2012,” the Pittsburgh native says of his best-seller. Besides being an author, Parnell also runs a foundation that pairs highly trained service dogs with veterans dealing with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD.
The platoon he served in reached a sad milestone recently: It has lost more soldiers to suicide than it did to combat.
“War changes everything it touches. Whether you’re a soldier fighting or a kid affected by it, it’s with you for life. Like spyware on a computer, it’s always running in the background. It becomes a question of how you frame that experience." He uses it as motivation, whereas for many veterans, it’s an anchor that sinks them.
“In a warrior culture, if [samurai] lose a battle, they take their own life. If Vikings lose a battle, they take their own life. There’s a cultural difference in the way that elite warriors live, and it’s driven into your mind when you’re in the military.” He says, “When you’re in the Army, the warrior ethos is everything. It’s who you are."
He continued: “That’s why you see all these veterans walking around with, ‘See you in Valhalla.’ Because they believe that their true paradise is with their brothers in arms after they pass. There’s a difference in perception of what suicide means among some in the veteran community.”
Parnell says the natural reaction to his framing of suicide and the warrior ethos is, “My gosh, it’s selfish. You leave your family behind. You leave your friends behind. Everyone is upset and sad. They miss you. That’s the perception among civilians. But in a veteran community it’s like, ‘My family and friends don’t even get me anymore. I want to go be with my brothers that do in Valhalla.’”
1c)
Progressives keep taking black voters for granted — at their peril
PHILADELPHIA — Maurice Floyd is tired of liberal intellectuals who insist on speaking for all black voters.
“They want us to fit into their mold,” said the veteran political operative. They “don’t dig deep down to really find out what is really on the consciousness of African-Americans.”
Because black voters tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat, candidates and pundits often assume they share the same views as progressives, supporting third-trimester abortions, the Green New Deal and Medicare for all, Floyd said.
“I don’t think black voters are really that progressive,” he said. “They’re pretty moderate. They care about their community. They care about their schools. They care about getting a decent paycheck.”
The most recent Pew survey of Democratic voters shows just that. Black voters characterize their values as more moderate than liberal, with 40 percent of black Democrats calling themselves moderate, 30 percent conservative and only 28 percent liberal.
It’s a stark contrast to white voters in their own party, where 55 percent of white Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify themselves as liberal, while 35 percent describe themselves as moderate and only 8 percent as conservative.
Joann Bell, who once served as the Pennsylvania governor’s executive director on African-American affairs, said black voters are especially more conservative when it comes to economic issues. Everyday concerns like being able to put food on the table will usually come before more global causes, such as fighting climate change.
“Not everybody,” Bell said, “has the luxury of being progressive.”
So far, among the 21 Democratic candidates in the primary field, some have openly embraced the progressive label while others have danced around it, but only one — Joe Biden — has avoided being boxed into any kind of designation.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that black Democratic voters overwhelmingly back him as their candidate right now. According to a March Quinnipiac poll, Biden holds 44 percent support from black voters, giving him a double-digit advantage over his nearest competitor, Bernie Sanders.
No one is suggesting that black voters will suddenly support Donald Trump for president, but if they’re not enthusiastic about a candidate, it could depress turnout at the ballot box and help get Trump re-elected.
In 2016, according to an analysis from the Washington Post, Clinton saw at least a 10 percent decline in vote totals in most counties with a nonwhite majority nationwide — such as Philadelphia County — compared to Obama in 2012. In a fifth of these counties, Republicans actually saw a small gain in votes.
Philadelphia City Council president Darrell Clarke said it’s wrong to assume the black community will vote on identity politics rather than issues closer to home.
He points to the fact that a white candidate, Jim Kenney, beat a black candidate, Anthony Williams, in the race for mayor of Philadelphia in 2015, even though nearly 44 percent of the city’s population is black.
“I think African-Americans pretty much want what everybody else wants: access to good health care, jobs, a good education, a home and a safe community,” Clarke said.
Currently, there are three black candidates running for president in the Democratic primary. Though Clarke has not officially endorsed anyone in that race, he admits he is leaning strongly towards one candidate.
“It’s likely going to be Joe,” he said. “I haven’t made an official decision yet. But I know Joe Biden quite well.”
Malcolm Kenyatta, the first openly gay person of color elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature last year, said he is also supporting Biden. Kenyatta said he wants to prioritize issues that impact his district over identity politics.
“People in my community are practical,” he said. “I certainly consider myself to be a progressive, but when I go home people want to know [if] I am working with my Republican colleagues to get things done. It is a constant question I get, and I think they care a lot less about whether or not folks are ‘politically pure.'”
Floyd, who has never worked for Biden, said many of the Democratic presidential candidates are running on issues that voters aren’t even thinking about, such as restoring voting rights to the Boston Marathon bomber.
“Let me put that in perspective,” he said, recalling a mayoral forum on gentrification and guns held in Philadelphia recently. “They asked the people in the room whose kids or relatives were killed by guns to stand up. I swear almost everybody in the place stood up. It was so heartbreaking.”
It’s unlikely that any of those constituents would want to restore voting rights to the person who killed their family member, said Floyd.
A candidate like Biden understands this sentiment, he added, and that’s why he’s likely backing him for president.
“I want somebody that just has some common sense,” he said. “Just some common sense.”
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