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Episode: Black Voters and the Democratic Party: One Family’s Story
Author: The New York Times
Duration: 00:44:19
Episode Shownotes
Warning: This episode contains strong language and racial slurs.For decades, Black Americans formed the backbone of the Democratic Party, voting by overwhelming margins for Democratic candidates. While most Black voters are expected to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, polls suggest that support for her might be softening, particularly among
Black men.Sabrina Tavernise travels to Georgia, a key swing state, with two “Daily” producers, Lynsea Garrison and Sydney Harper, to speak with one family about their experiences through the decades.Guest: Sabrina Tavernise, co-host of “The Daily.”Lynsea Garrison, a producer on “The Daily.”Sydney Harper, a producer on “The Daily.”Background reading: Some Black voters have drifted from Democrats, imperiling Ms. Harris’s bid, a poll showed.As Black voters appear to hesitate on their support, Democrats race to win them over.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker_06
From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. For decades, Black Americans formed the backbone of the Democratic Party, voting by overwhelming margins for Democratic candidates.
00:00:17 Speaker_06
And while a majority of Black voters are expected to enthusiastically cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, polls suggest that support for her might be softening, particularly among Black men.
00:00:30 Speaker_06
The stakes of that dynamic are highest in the swing state of Georgia, where in 2020, Black voters helped flip the state blue for the first time in decades, and where this time, Harris will need strong Black turnout to win the state, and with it, potentially, the presidency.
00:00:49 Speaker_06
Today, I travel to Georgia with Daily Producers Lindsay Garrison and Sydney Harper to speak with one family whose experiences through the decades tell the story of the relationship between Black Americans and the Democratic Party and why some are beginning to question that relationship.
00:01:11 Speaker_06
It's Thursday, October 31st. A few weeks ago, we drove down to the southwest corner of Georgia, toward the city of Albany. It's a majority Black city, and many families have lived there for generations.
00:01:26 Speaker_06
Lindsay Garrison is going to tell the first half of the story.
00:01:31 Speaker_08
For Irma Wilburn, before there was politics, there was segregation. She was born in 1948 in Fitzgerald, Georgia, a small town not too far from Albany.
00:01:42 Speaker_08
Her family worked for low wages, harvesting tobacco and collecting resin from trees to make turpentine, and picking cotton.
00:01:50 Speaker_07
Cotton? Oh God, I picked cotton from the time I was able to walk good. They would make little flower sacks for little kids. Like yeah, we started doing that at a very early age, as soon as you knew how to pick.
00:02:04 Speaker_08
Irma is 76 now. She has warm eyes and a sharp memory.
00:02:09 Speaker_08
One of her earliest ones is remembering how first thing in the morning, a white man would drive up in his pickup truck, and Irma and her family would pile into the back to begin the day's work in the fields.
00:02:20 Speaker_07
But, you know, as a child, you know, my parents didn't talk about racism or bad-mouth white folk. Our relationship was basically just working for them.
00:02:34 Speaker_08
When Irma was little, the world she lived in was the Jim Crow South. That meant segregation in places like schools, stores, and it meant many Black people weren't allowed to vote.
00:02:45 Speaker_07
You know, at that young age, I didn't question it. It was never a subject in the house. If the adults talked about it, they only talked about it to themselves. But, you know, I guess there was an element of fear, too.
00:03:03 Speaker_07
I think they really tried to protect us because they never would tell stories of the things that would happen to them. So we never had to focus on that. All we had to focus on was school, church, and family. That was our life.
00:03:21 Speaker_07
And then when the Civil Rights Movement came to town, black people were waking up real quick.
00:03:28 Speaker_08
When Irma was a teenager in the summer of 1964, she remembers her Aunt Mary coming home from college and telling her and the other nieces and nephews that it was time to change things. I mean, she came directly to us.
00:03:40 Speaker_07
It was time to fight for their rights. And you kind of got swept up because you were her nieces and nephews. You know, she needed bodies out there. So we went.
00:03:50 Speaker_08
With Aunt Mary as the ringleader, they spent the summer going to marches, sit-ins.
00:03:54 Speaker_07
They threw one of those Molotov cocktail bombs into the house.
00:03:58 Speaker_08
It was a violent time. We sat in jail, sang freedom songs. She was arrested while trying to desegregate the public library. And he points the gun. One time, she thought she was going to get shot. He's shaking.
00:04:10 Speaker_08
She and some kids were sitting on some steps outside when the newspaper delivery man, who was white, pulled up and pointed a gun at them.
00:04:17 Speaker_07
This man is so enraged that he's willing to kill because of integration. But it kept waking people up. It kept adding to the battle cry. And it woke Irma up, too. At 15, I didn't fully understand the importance of voting.
00:04:36 Speaker_07
But I understood how important it was enough that they didn't want us to. When you really understood it, that's one of the most important things of being a citizen, is to have that right.
00:04:52 Speaker_08
And finally, Irma heard the news that President Lyndon B. Johnson was about to sign the Voting Rights Act, a law that would put an end to racial discrimination in voting.
00:05:01 Speaker_07
Everybody was so excited. All of these were SNCC workers. He's going to sign the bill. We got to go out. And it was urgent to start getting people to come and register.
00:05:12 Speaker_08
So that day, she and another activist named Steve went around trying to register people to vote. She says they found some people sitting on a porch of a house. It was owned by a white man, who they also worked for.
00:05:24 Speaker_07
They were uneducated. The kids did not go to school. They was raised to work for him.
00:05:30 Speaker_08
Irma wanted to tell them, you don't have to read or write. You can still register to vote. But she noticed how hesitant they seemed. And they wouldn't even look up at us. They kept their head down.
00:05:40 Speaker_07
And I kept trying to talk to them.
00:05:43 Speaker_08
She saw one of them keep looking off to the side. And so she followed his gaze. The white man they worked for was standing outside. With a shotgun in his hands. That's when he addressed Irma and Steve, using a racial slur.
00:05:58 Speaker_07
These are my niggers. Just like that. My head started pounding. The blood rushed up so fast. All I could feel was Steve tugging me, trying to, you know, let's go, let's go. And just like I hit a blind spot and he was just dragged, literally dragged.
00:06:15 Speaker_07
I don't know what I was going to do. It's just, it hit me so hard that this joker thought he still owned people. And I was livid. I never could have imagined, you know, um, But it made me very determined to keep fighting.
00:06:41 Speaker_00
Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that's ever been won on any battlefield. Yet to seize the meaning of this day, we must recall darker times. three and a half centuries ago.
00:07:04 Speaker_09
Do you remember learning about the news that the Voting Rights Act had passed?
00:07:09 Speaker_07
Yeah.
00:07:10 Speaker_09
What was that like?
00:07:10 Speaker_07
It was like winning the football game, you know? You know, these jokers that just pissed me off to no end. We won, you know?
00:07:19 Speaker_00
Because of the act that you have passed that I will sign today.
00:07:25 Speaker_09
Did you feel like you were part of that achievement for Black Americans across the country?
00:07:30 Speaker_07
Yeah, yeah, because we had been out working and putting my life at risk. That was one of the important parts of that, you know, what we were asking for. So, yes, really, really happy that it happened. Yeah, an achievement, yeah.
00:07:54 Speaker_08
Irma and her family helped change the country for millions of Black Americans. They had momentum behind them, and they wanted to use it to get more change. And in the 70s in Albany, that's what they did. We had to get to the table.
00:08:09 Speaker_08
And the way to get to the table was through the Democratic Party. Was everyone a Democrat? Was everyone behind it?
00:08:16 Speaker_07
Of course. What was that like? of being a Republican in our family.
00:08:22 Speaker_08
For Irma and so many around her, the Democratic Party had become completely fused together with what they felt they'd accomplished and what they wanted to accomplish through politics, like voting and desegregation.
00:08:35 Speaker_08
LBJ was a Democrat and had worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. And all the white activists who joined in the civil rights movement were also Democrats. So being part of the Democratic Party was a given.
00:08:47 Speaker_07
It was just like sweet tea in the South as opposed to unsweet tea. Democratic Party is the sweet tea.
00:08:56 Speaker_08
Oh yeah. So they started organizing. By this point, Irma's Aunt Mary had become the first female Black attorney in Albany. She had a yellow law office in the bustling Black business district in the city.
00:09:08 Speaker_08
The whole family would gather there to plan various actions and campaigns. It became a power base of Black democratic politics in the area. And Albany itself was a thriving place at the time.
00:09:20 Speaker_08
Jobs were easy to come by, with several manufacturers opening plants in the city.
00:09:24 Speaker_07
We had never seen those kind of salaries. My husband came right out of sharecropping, almost.
00:09:30 Speaker_08
The city was nicknamed Good Life City, and it really felt like that. Not only were Black residents getting more economic prosperity, they were getting more political power, too.
00:09:40 Speaker_08
And once again, Aunt Mary was at the forefront of it all, and she decided to jump into politics herself. — My whole job was to get those leaflets out, knock on doors.
00:09:48 Speaker_08
— So she did the same thing she did in the civil rights movement— recruited her nieces and nephews to help elect her to office. And by this point, many of those nieces and nephews were grown, and now had children of their own.
00:10:01 Speaker_08
— I'd be marching with them in my belly, one on my hand, one on my head. — The family had built an army of Democrats.
00:10:07 Speaker_04
Democrat. All day. All day.
00:10:11 Speaker_08
Michael is Irma's oldest son. He was just a small child in the 70s, born into this supercharged Democratic family. And that meant he and his other cousins would campaign for Aunt Mary, too.
00:10:22 Speaker_04
Oh, yeah. From the time I was old enough to walk, you know, I mean, all of my cousins, we all did this. We all rode in the back.
00:10:27 Speaker_08
Michael said all of his cousins would pile in the back of a pickup truck.
00:10:30 Speaker_04
You know, there'd be some guy, Mr. Somebody would be driving the truck. Y'all make sure y'all sitting down in the back now, because, you know, we're about to pull off. They turn the radio on. WJIZ 96.3. Play music.
00:10:42 Speaker_03
Ain't no stopping us now.
00:10:44 Speaker_08
We're on the move. Shout from the megaphone.
00:10:47 Speaker_04
Vote for Mary, you know.
00:10:48 Speaker_08
And begin the day's work of door knocking.
00:10:51 Speaker_04
Hello, how you doing? My name is Michael and I'm working with Mary Young's campaign. She's running for city commissioner. And we would like you to come out and vote for Mary Young.
00:11:00 Speaker_06
Did your aunt Mary win the election?
00:11:02 Speaker_04
Oh, yeah, she did.
00:11:05 Speaker_08
In 1975, Marion Cummings, along with another Black candidate, became the first Black city commissioners in Albany.
00:11:14 Speaker_06
Was your mom proud of you that you were doing this? Do you remember, were you aware of what your mom thought of all this?
00:11:21 Speaker_04
I think so. I think so. I think she was proud of us. You know, I don't know that she necessarily felt proud of doing this work because this was such a norm in the family that this is just kind of what you did. We were movement babies.
00:11:35 Speaker_04
And so it was just a given that we were going to push these ideals forward.
00:11:40 Speaker_08
Part of growing up as a movement baby was overhearing his mom recollect the stories of the civil rights movement with her brothers and sisters.
00:11:48 Speaker_04
Michael would overhear conversations about the violence, the arrests, the fear, being jailed.
00:11:54 Speaker_08
But Irma said she would also talk to Michael directly. She wanted him to understand the lessons she learned from that time, about the things that mattered most.
00:12:03 Speaker_04
We talked a lot about Martin Luther King and nonviolent principles.
00:12:07 Speaker_08
After experiencing so much violence herself, and then seeing the assassinations of JFK and MLK, she wanted him to understand the importance of peace, a value that MLK and other activists preached.
00:12:20 Speaker_08
And she also wanted him to understand the importance of voting, because his own family fought for it.
00:12:26 Speaker_06
Did hearing those stories teach you anything about who you were, who your family was?
00:12:33 Speaker_04
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're very proud of my family. I feel like it empowered me. It made me feel capable, made me feel like I was part of a legacy of people who were trying to do good in the world. We felt like heroes, or we came from heroes.
00:12:53 Speaker_04
And my mom was definitely one of them.
00:12:59 Speaker_02
If you look at the footprints, these footprints commemorate the marchers from the Albany movement that marched up here. — What's going on, sir? You doing alright?
00:13:09 Speaker_08
— While in Albany, we met with Demetrius Young, one of Michael's cousins. He was born and raised here, and now serves as a city commissioner. He agreed to take us around, to show us how Albany has changed since Irma's time.
00:13:26 Speaker_02
So right along here were a lot of historic Black businesses. This used to have restaurants and shops and different things.
00:13:35 Speaker_08
The neighborhood that was once busy and electric decades ago has changed.
00:13:41 Speaker_02
This was the Ritz Theater. This was the Black Theater.
00:13:46 Speaker_06
— It looks like there's plywood over the door.
00:13:49 Speaker_02
— Yeah. Yeah, there has been some damage to it.
00:13:52 Speaker_08
— Now this neighborhood is quiet, full of empty brick storefronts.
00:13:56 Speaker_02
— This building right here on this corner, this yellow house, was my mother's old law office. Yeah.
00:14:04 Speaker_08
Irma's Aunt Mary, the Mary who recruited her into the civil rights movement, is Demetrius' mother. And this was her law office, that place that used to be a hub of black democratic politics in Albany.
00:14:18 Speaker_02
You would see kids running out of here, playing on the ground and shooting marbles right here on the thing and some community meeting going on in the back.
00:14:28 Speaker_08
The creamy yellow paint is chipping. The big front porch appears to be caving in. the ornate latticework is broken.
00:14:36 Speaker_06
— When were the bars put on the windows?
00:14:39 Speaker_02
— I want to say that was in the 80s, when it got pretty bad during the crack epidemic, getting broken every night, you know? It was pretty bad. It was pretty bad at one point in time.
00:14:55 Speaker_04
I think if you grew up around that time, you remember all of a sudden it was like crack hit with a vengeance. We'd never seen anything like it.
00:15:02 Speaker_09
How fast do you think it took over?
00:15:05 Speaker_04
How fast was the change? It felt overnight. It felt like it was, you know, it was devastating.
00:15:14 Speaker_08
Michael was a teenager when crack started flowing into the streets of Albany in the 80s. It would be the first in a long series of devastating events over the following decades.
00:15:25 Speaker_08
The manufacturing plants that had afforded people a middle-class life started moving out of the city. And that was only made worse by the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
00:15:37 Speaker_08
Clinton also signed the 94 Crime Bill. Joe Biden, who was a senator back then, was a big supporter of it. It mandated harsh sentences for low-level drug offenses, worsening incarceration rates for men of color.
00:15:50 Speaker_08
And then came the housing crash in 2007 and the financial crisis that followed.
00:15:57 Speaker_04
People were losing their homes. You know, this thing happened to people that I knew.
00:16:01 Speaker_08
Michael was living in Atlanta at the time, but all he saw around him were people struggling. One cousin in Albany was hit particularly hard.
00:16:10 Speaker_04
Yeah, they went through it. They went through a lot. He lost his house. And it happened to like three or four other people that I know. seemed to be really prevalent in this part of the country and it all seemed to be young black people.
00:16:22 Speaker_08
It felt unfair to him that the country was spending so much money on a war in Iraq when the black people around him and in his own family were struggling to survive.
00:16:32 Speaker_04
— No, these were hard-working people. You know, these were people that had jobs.
00:16:35 Speaker_08
These were people— — He and his family blamed it on President Bush, on Republican policies.
00:16:40 Speaker_04
— We were all really uptight. I mean, between— — Things felt uncertain.
00:16:44 Speaker_05
But then… — I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America!
00:16:54 Speaker_08
— Barack Obama ran for president.
00:16:58 Speaker_04
Oh my God. Oh my God. That was amazing. That made me so excited.
00:17:04 Speaker_05
I recognize that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement. Wow.
00:17:13 Speaker_04
Yeah. Okay. Wow. This is it.
00:17:16 Speaker_05
I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington, but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.
00:17:25 Speaker_04
There was no doubt in my mind that under the leadership of Barack Obama, the plight of African-Americans would improve.
00:17:36 Speaker_06
Was it kind of like Black Americans have been loyal voters of the Democratic Party since the civil rights movement, since your mom's coming of age, and now is the time that these dividends, you know, will really pay off? Like, now is our time?
00:17:54 Speaker_04
Oh, you hit that right on the head. That was very much the feeling and the vibe, if you will, amongst my family, amongst my friends. I remember going into the polling place, and I remember all of the Black people.
00:18:10 Speaker_04
And even though, you know, they're not talking, you can feel it. Everybody's just like, oh, wow, this is it. We're getting to do this. And I remember, you know, the slightly older black woman, and she's one of the polling workers.
00:18:23 Speaker_04
And I remember her giving me this kind of knowing smile, like, all right, baby, go on in there and vote. Let's do that. You know what I mean? And it's like, yes, ma'am. Let's do this. Yes, we can.
00:18:34 Speaker_05
Yes, we can. America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there's so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves, If our children should live to see the next century, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
00:18:58 Speaker_05
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.
00:19:08 Speaker_06
Michael, once he was elected, what were you hoping to see him do? What kind of change were you hoping he would bring?
00:19:22 Speaker_04
Ah, the heartbreak. Oh, the heartbreak. Oh, the heartbreak. It was so swift. It was so swift. Yeah, the balloon popped really quick. And it was like, oh, oh, well, none of the things I had hoped for were going to happen with this president.
00:19:40 Speaker_08
As Obama began his term, Michael felt the policies he was enacting were essentially an extension of the Bush era. Instead of providing relief to people who'd lost their homes during the housing crisis, Obama approved industry bailouts.
00:19:54 Speaker_08
Michael was in disbelief. He felt people like his cousin needed help, not big businesses. And when it came to foreign policy, Michael says Obama acted like the conservative war hawks he'd railed against during the campaign.
00:20:08 Speaker_08
like when he intervened in Libya and plunged that country even further into chaos. Obama also signed a renewal of the Patriot Act, a Bush-era law that allowed for more government surveillance of American citizens.
00:20:21 Speaker_08
And finally, when protests erupted in Obama's second term, when a white police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Obama never visited. For a president who campaigned on hope and change, Michael didn't feel much of it at all.
00:20:37 Speaker_08
In fact, he felt like the party was moving to the right.
00:20:41 Speaker_04
It felt like a betrayal. I think by the time Obama was out of office, I felt like the party was no longer the Democratic Party. They weren't Democrats the way I knew Democrats to be. Yeah. It was disappointing.
00:21:07 Speaker_04
It was very disappointing that during my lifetime and my generations, we had lost a lot of impact. We had lost the ability to influence that change, that we could get people in office, but that we could not force that change anymore.
00:21:32 Speaker_07
I don't know if I expected a whole lot as far as real tangible changes, because I was realistic. But the fact that he made it in, you know, that in itself was the achievement, a victory for the dreamers.
00:21:57 Speaker_08
For Michael's mother, Irma, Obama's ascension to the presidency was the ultimate sign of Black progress, that ultimate seat at the table that she and so many others had fought for since the Civil Rights era.
00:22:10 Speaker_08
It felt like a crowning achievement of her generation. And for Michael, his presidency also marked a major moment. But it was a moment of such profound disappointment that it led him to question if it achieved anything at all.
00:22:29 Speaker_08
And in Albany, that same question has left a generation of voters searching for new answers. After the break, Sabrina picks up the rest of the story.
00:23:02 Speaker_02
Did y'all go downtown here to Ray Charles Plaza and all of that? No. Oh, no. OK. Got to get that in.
00:23:11 Speaker_06
Driving around Albany with Demetrius, there's a lot that people are proud of. They have a state-of-the-art civil rights museum that marks the history that was made here. They have an HBCU that's top-ranked in the state.
00:23:23 Speaker_06
But Demetrius told us that after taking all of those hits over the decades, there are neighborhoods that are still struggling, like his own.
00:23:30 Speaker_02
But this is South Albany. This is my ward. This is Ward 6.
00:23:35 Speaker_09
How would you describe this area, Demetrius, like Ward 6?
00:23:41 Speaker_02
Um, it's a primarily a low income community. Some people, you know, don't have a lot, but
00:23:53 Speaker_06
A third of people live in poverty, one of the highest rates of any city in Georgia.
00:23:57 Speaker_02
They moved a lot of the schools out of this area.
00:24:01 Speaker_06
A majority of schoolchildren come from homes that qualify for government assistance. We only got two grocery stores for this entire side of town. Many neighborhoods don't have any grocery stores where people can buy fresh food.
00:24:14 Speaker_02
But we got liquor stores and convenience stores and all kind of bullshit.
00:24:19 Speaker_06
Demetrius even had to fight off a liquor store that was set to open in his neighborhood.
00:24:23 Speaker_02
When the pandemic hit, Albany had one of the highest per capita death rates in the nation. Most were Black residents.
00:24:40 Speaker_06
Demetrius says that some people feel like their only relief from the government lately came during the Donald Trump administration, when stimulus checks were sent out as COVID was crashing the economy.
00:24:50 Speaker_06
The money was pushed forward by Democrats in Congress, but Trump's name was on the checks, and so many people gave him credit for that relief. And that money was meaningful to people. It helped people buy groceries and pay bills.
00:25:03 Speaker_02
You didn't have to sweat, you know, paying your light bills or paying for medicine, you know, where you got to make those type of choices.
00:25:16 Speaker_06
And it was right around this time that one of his cousins suggested to the family in a group chat that it might be worth looking at what Republicans had to offer.
00:25:24 Speaker_02
They started talking about, you know, we need to be with the Republicans and we need to talk to the Republicans and this kind of stuff. And I was like looking at him like, You know what family you in? Are you, you lost your mind?
00:25:36 Speaker_02
You know, and he really took a lot of, excuse my French. He took a lot of shit for it. You know, I mean, we'd be in family group chat and everybody was, you know, banging him hard. Like, what are you, you lost your mind? What are you talking about now?
00:25:51 Speaker_02
I do think, I do think there is an amount of, alienation that a lot of young black males are feeling because, you know, they see a lot of young black women being elevated.
00:26:06 Speaker_02
They don't see more or less a space for them within the larger democratic left-leaning machinery. So I see these young black men with a lot of energy to do things, but they're not being engaged.
00:26:26 Speaker_02
Because, you know, with my cousin, he took a lot of shit from our family instead of everybody kind of asking him why.
00:26:35 Speaker_06
We actually talked to that cousin. He didn't want to be recorded. But he told us about his life growing up in Georgia. He said his mother struggled with addiction, and so he had to be sent away. His father was incarcerated.
00:26:48 Speaker_06
And he blamed Democrats for that, because they helped pass the 1994 crime bill. And to him, that felt like a betrayal. And he started looking more at the Republican Party. He said he liked its conservative values.
00:27:01 Speaker_06
He liked the way the party talked about traditional families and keeping families together. We're reporters from the New York Times. My name is Sabrina. Walking around Albany, we heard this from other people, too. This openness to Republicans.
00:27:20 Speaker_06
And to Donald Trump. Sorry, we're interrupting your haircut. We went into some barbershops and spoke to the men there.
00:27:25 Speaker_01
I feel like, OK, boom, yeah, he's got locked up and all this, but he's still running for president.
00:27:34 Speaker_06
We talked to a young man who'd been incarcerated, and he told us since Trump also has a felony, if he wins, it could maybe change the conversation around people with criminal records.
00:27:44 Speaker_01
He's going to be our president, and y'all mean to tell me I'm a felon and I can't get a job? What the hell? That's what I feel like.
00:27:51 Speaker_09
— Does that give you hope?
00:27:52 Speaker_01
— Yeah, it can give hope, because it should give hope. Because, like, OK, he's a president, bro, you can go do it. You feel me?
00:28:01 Speaker_03
Anybody can get a job.
00:28:09 Speaker_06
— We talked to another man who'd lost his job at a tire factory. He said he was two years from retirement when it closed down. And so now, he's cutting hair for less money. And he doesn't know when he's going to be able to retire.
00:28:21 Speaker_06
— Do you think that Trump will help? — In our reporting, we called dozens of Black men across Georgia, and heard story after story like this, of people who are frustrated with their prospects right now, especially their place in the economy.
00:28:37 Speaker_06
And this is an issue where, according to polls, voters tend to prefer Trump. Some men we talked to had different reasons.
00:28:45 Speaker_01
— Has there ever been a woman president? — No.
00:28:49 Speaker_00
In America, no.
00:28:49 Speaker_01
— That's what's going to scare me. That's kind of scary. Like, damn.
00:28:54 Speaker_06
— They said they didn't think a woman could be president.
00:28:57 Speaker_01
— But I'm talking about the worst circumstances. Like, I don't know if we get into it, I don't know if she's going to be able to put down force and be firm on, like, as a male would do.
00:29:11 Speaker_06
But you're worried that maybe she can't and that's why you wouldn't vote for her?
00:29:14 Speaker_01
Well, basically, yeah. I have my doubts.
00:29:35 Speaker_09
What do you make Demetrius of young black voters who are voting for Trump?
00:29:40 Speaker_06
But in talking to Demetrius about this, he says he isn't very concerned.
00:29:44 Speaker_02
I just don't think that's a real thing.
00:29:47 Speaker_06
He's skeptical that the men who like Trump will actually turn out to vote for him. And he says there's always been a small contingent of black voters who are open to Republicans.
00:29:56 Speaker_06
So instead of focusing on that, he says there's a deeper question the Democratic Party needs to be asking itself right now.
00:30:03 Speaker_02
To me, what is a more of a pointed question is why Kamala is not, I guess, inspiring the same excitement from young people that Obama did. And I think there's a lot of
00:30:18 Speaker_02
Reasons for that, you know if you're not getting something because a lot of folks feel they're not getting anything from the Democratic Party You know, they felt some folks feel like they didn't get anything from Obama and I'm talking about tangible stuff But do you understand why they think that I?
00:30:36 Speaker_02
Think that's because they saw it. That's what they see That's what they see you go through eight years of a black man. I eight years of a Black female mayor, Obama faced change, the representation of change.
00:30:54 Speaker_02
And the South Side of Albany is still looking the same. That's what they grew up under.
00:31:03 Speaker_06
What Demetrius is pointing to is that for some people here, representation hasn't necessarily translated into meaningful change. Younger generations grew up with a Black president. And they've seen Black leaders ascend locally here, too.
00:31:17 Speaker_06
Albany elected its first Black Democratic mayor in 2004. A majority of the city commissioned today is Black. But that representation hasn't done much to solve the deep-rooted problems that people have faced here.
00:31:30 Speaker_02
So a lot of them, the young folks, Politics doesn't work. Government is not going to do anything. That's their reality. And so now they're saying, OK, that wasn't really changed for me.
00:31:51 Speaker_09
What does it feel like to be the person you are, having been in the civil rights movement, fought for the right to vote, Democrat all your life?
00:32:02 Speaker_08
What does it feel like to see Black Americans vote Republican or vote for Trump?
00:32:08 Speaker_07
What does it make me feel? It kind of angers me. You know, it angers me because You know, because I think they're stupid. You know, I think they're just taking up airspace, doing something stupid. Particularly if you're black.
00:32:25 Speaker_07
But maybe they didn't have parents or grandparents that taught them anything. So maybe they don't really have a point that they can come from that would make them not vulnerable to a Trump.
00:32:39 Speaker_06
For Irma, the choice in this election is very clear.
00:32:43 Speaker_09
Why are you voting for Kamala Harris?
00:32:45 Speaker_06
Why?
00:32:47 Speaker_07
I'm going to vote for her because she's a Democrat. I'm going to vote for her because she's a Democrat.
00:32:53 Speaker_06
She doesn't understand people who are turning their backs on the party right now, whether it be voting for Trump, staying home, or voting third party.
00:33:01 Speaker_09
What does that make you feel, those people who are doing that?
00:33:04 Speaker_07
Not voting or voting third party? I don't know that. I think they have a shallow kind of understanding about where we are as a country. I don't think they see the gravity of where we are.
00:33:23 Speaker_07
If they vote third party, they're just throwing away the vote, you know?
00:33:32 Speaker_06
What do you think your mom would say if you didn't vote for Harris and she found out about it? She would be disappointed. She might even be angry. She would definitely call me foolish.
00:33:43 Speaker_06
Irma's own son, Michael, is feeling conflicted about whether to vote for Harris.
00:33:48 Speaker_04
Tough one. Tough one. I have no idea. I know how much my vote counts in a state like Georgia, where you've got a swing state. I know how important it is. But if I had to vote today I would probably be voting third party. Yeah.
00:34:08 Speaker_06
Would it be the first time you didn't vote for a Democrat in a presidential election?
00:34:15 Speaker_04
Yes. She doesn't make me feel good. She doesn't.
00:34:24 Speaker_06
He has his reasons for not supporting Harris. For one, he says, when she was announced as the Democratic nominee, he was frustrated by how the party went about it.
00:34:33 Speaker_04
I felt like we had no choice. We had no say. You either get this or you get, you know, crazy orange guy, you know, like we were being held hostage.
00:34:44 Speaker_06
But more importantly, he disagrees with a lot of her policies. One example is the U.S. handling of the war in Gaza, which is a conflict he's been watching closely.
00:34:53 Speaker_06
He didn't like how she shushed pro-Palestinian protesters or bragged about America having the most lethal military in the world.
00:35:00 Speaker_06
He sees her approach to the war as essentially an extension of President Biden's approach and the latest example of the party's longer drift rightward. More broadly, he sees her entire candidacy as more of the same.
00:35:14 Speaker_04
You know, here's some ideas. Here's a child tax credit. Here's some money we're going to invest here to kind of stimulate some jobs. We're going to build some homes. OK. You know, and other than that, it'll be the same.
00:35:30 Speaker_06
And so when some of his friends reached out asking him to help with the Harris campaign, he refused.
00:35:35 Speaker_04
I don't want to do any of that. I don't really feel good about this. What are the policies? And that was like the wrong question to ask. He says the conversation got heated. I got it from a couple of different angles really quick.
00:35:47 Speaker_06
And they accused him of being a misogynist.
00:35:50 Speaker_04
I expected better of you and how could you hate on the sister, you know, when she's trying to make change.
00:35:55 Speaker_06
His questions around Harris had somehow gotten him lumped in with Trump supporters.
00:36:00 Speaker_04
Anti-Black woman, not protecting the Black woman, not listening to the Black woman.
00:36:04 Speaker_06
Or people who don't think a woman could be president.
00:36:07 Speaker_04
That's not true of me, because the message is, if you don't vote for Kamala, then you're voting for Trump. If you're not voting for Kamala, then you are voting against me.
00:36:22 Speaker_09
Have you talked to them since?
00:36:23 Speaker_04
No. I don't plan on it. I mean, I don't, I'm not holding a grudge. I just need this election to be over. We'll have conversations after the election, you know? So...
00:36:44 Speaker_06
Does your mom know about your reticence over Harris? Have you told her?
00:36:50 Speaker_04
I haven't really told her. She knows a little bit. I think she knows that I'm not as excited as she is. And I kind of think her excitement is a little misplaced. I think she knows that about me, but I think that's about as far as it goes.
00:37:07 Speaker_04
I haven't had a real conversation about politics with her.
00:37:10 Speaker_06
And why not?
00:37:12 Speaker_04
Probably three months. I just don't want to. I don't want to have to argue my points. And I know she would feel disappointed.
00:37:24 Speaker_06
Why would she feel disappointed?
00:37:30 Speaker_04
I'm someone who has been raised with understanding the importance of voting, with understanding how many people sacrifice for us to have this right to participate in the process.
00:37:43 Speaker_04
And so to give that vote away, to use that vote in a way that could possibly hurt a candidate, like Kamala Harris, you know, it kind of goes against what my people have decided
00:38:00 Speaker_04
majority of my people have decided that this is, you know, what we're doing. And for me to vote against Harris would be a little bit of a betrayal. It would be.
00:38:17 Speaker_07
At this point, you either have hope or no hope. And if you have no hope, you know, I mean, what can I say? I can't give you hope at this point. Because, like I said, you have to see it. You really have to see it. But you still have hope? Yeah.
00:38:46 Speaker_07
I have to have hope. Yeah.
00:38:56 Speaker_06
It felt like in all the conversations we had with Irma and Michael, we were listening to two generations talk past each other about hope and where you find it.
00:39:06 Speaker_06
For Irma, hope is fused with the Democratic Party, this vessel through which Black people achieve something that had felt almost impossible in her lifetime.
00:39:15 Speaker_04
I think I was just very disillusioned with politics in general.
00:39:19 Speaker_06
And she hears this disillusionment with politics, like Michael is expressing, as a kind of abandonment of that hope. But Michael sees it differently.
00:39:30 Speaker_04
I'm wanting more. I'm wanting to see more. I'm wanting to see a lot more. I'm expecting more. As a generation of a recipient of those hard-won victories, we should expect beyond symbolism. We should expect more.
00:39:46 Speaker_09
Is that a sign of progress, then, to want more?
00:39:49 Speaker_04
I would think so. Yes, I would say that it is a sign of progress, that you would want more, that we should expect more in the actual way of wielding that power. It's one thing to have the office.
00:40:07 Speaker_04
It's another thing to actually use that office for the benefit of people.
00:40:12 Speaker_06
Michael's hope is that that disillusionment can eventually spark change.
00:40:16 Speaker_09
It seems like from all the conversations we've had with voters, people are looking for that change in different ways. They're voting for Trump. They're voting Republican. They're voting third party. They're not voting at all.
00:40:29 Speaker_09
Do you think those defections from the Democratic Party are also a sign of progress?
00:40:37 Speaker_03
Hmm. I don't know. That's a good question. I guess in some ways you could see it as a sign of progress. I guess in some ways that, you know, you're saying we want to change some things.
00:40:52 Speaker_04
We're not able to affect that change within this organization. So we're going to try to start, we're going to engage in a different organization. We're going to move differently. That sounds like the desire to make change.
00:41:09 Speaker_06
But in this election, having that kind of hope is a high-stakes gamble.
00:41:13 Speaker_04
— It also could lead to Trump winning. — Very, very, very easily could lead to Trump winning. And especially in a state like Georgia, that's a tough call. And you want to respect the elders, you want to respect their sacrifices.
00:41:33 Speaker_04
You don't want to see rights taken away from people. For me personally, that's a tough call. That's a real tough call. I don't, I might not make that decision until I'm literally in the booth.
00:42:04 Speaker_06
We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. Vice President Kamala Harris tried to distance herself from President Joe Biden after he made muddled remarks that appeared to insult supporters of former President Donald Trump.
00:42:39 Speaker_06
Biden was responding to remarks made by a comedian who spoke at Trump's rally on Sunday night and referred to Puerto Rico as, quote, a floating island of garbage.
00:42:49 Speaker_06
In a video call with Hispanic supporters on Tuesday night, Biden tried to denounce that language, but garbled his words, saying, quote, The White House later argued that he was describing the racist language as garbage, not Trump supporters.
00:43:09 Speaker_06
But the remarks went viral and drew intense criticism from the Trump campaign, which tried to tie them to Hillary Clinton calling some Trump supporters deplorables in 2016.
00:43:23 Speaker_06
Today's episode was reported by Lindsey Garrison and Sydney Harper, with help from Maya King, Carlos Prieto, and Claire Tennesketter.
00:43:33 Speaker_06
It was produced by Lindsey, Sydney, and Carlos, edited by Rachel Quester, with help from Ben Calhoun, Paige Cowett, and MJ Davis-Lynn, fact-checked by Susan Lee.
00:43:46 Speaker_06
contains original music by Alishaba Etoop, Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemesto, and Leah Shaw Dameron, and was engineered by Chris Wood and Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.
00:44:11 Speaker_06
I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.