Transcript
Into America
The Ghosts of Midterms Past
Trymaine Lee: The midterms are almost here, and this year, many of the issues that matter most feel especially personal to black voters like Minister Dominique Alexander of Dallas, Texas.
Dominique Alexander: The quality of education is in despair, violence, urban violence. So, those are the issues that I’ll be coming to the ballot with.
Lee: The economy is the biggest issue for Shenita Cleveland of Oak Cliff, Texas. She says a lot of black businesses were left out in the cold during the pandemic, so she’s looking to Democrats in her state who are prioritizing small business owners like her.
Shenita Cleveland: We had two rounds of PPP that did not last, of about two and a half to three months, and so that’s a huge problem. So, aid to small businesses and then also a universal basic income.
Lee: Shenita says criminal justice reform is also at the top of her mind.
Cleveland: Oak Cliff is the very bottom. It has the most prisoners in the State of Texas that come out of Oak Cliff go to prison, which is a huge, huge problem that truly we still need to address to Joe Biden.
Lee: And for Mary Bonaparte (ph), it feels like everything is at stake.
Mary Bonaparte (ph): This is about our future, our children’s future, our children’s children’s future.
Lee: Midterms are a chance for voters to send a message to the President and the party in power, but turnout tends to be lower in these off-year elections, so Democrats are counting on black voters, their most loyal constituents, to show up.
Archival Recording: So, midterms are going to determine the next two years of which party gets to lead the legislative process in Congress.
Lee: If Democrats lose the majority, even in just one of the chambers, their chances of passing any more significant legislation on issues like voting rights and abortion plummets.
Archival Recording: Black folks got a lot to lose in this midterm and the writing is on the wall. We don’t have to guess at what comes next.
Lee: We’ve seen throughout history that what happens in the midterms isn’t just a matter of short-term politics. The policy consequences can be long lasting.
Archival Recording: You know, History does not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee and this is Into America. Midterms are critical junctures for the black electorate, moments in time that have transformed the wellbeing of black America, for better and for worse. Today, we explored three midterm years that were pivotal for black America, what we’ve learned along the way, and what’s at stake in this election.
Every midterm election has its consequences, but three stand out for their long-lasting impact on black America, 2010, 1994, and 1962. Let’s start in the beginning of the ‘60s. Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy ran against then Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.
Fredrick Harris: The black vote was pretty much up for grabs. It in many ways decided national elections.
Lee: Fredrick Harris is a political science professor at Columbia University.
Harris: So, as a consequence of the black migration, you had African Americans moving to key electoral states, states like Illinois, states like Michigan, Ohio, which were rich in the sweet states of electoral politics.
Lee: And while voter suppression was still rampant, black Americans generally found it easier to cast a ballot up north. For decades, black voters tended to be loyal to Republicans, The Party of Lincoln, and Reconstruction, while Democrats were the party of slavery and segregation. But Professor Harris says that had been changing since the ‘30s.
Harris: It was because of the New Deal coalition, which brought together these midst interests of southern Democrats, some northern Democrats, and eventually African Americans who were increasingly important voters switched over during the presidency of FDR into the Democratic Party.
Lee: So, in 1960, Democrats and Republicans were competing for black voters whose allegiance was very much up for grabs. While Kennedy rarely talked about civil rights while campaigning, there was one incident that Professor Harris says really tipped black voters to the young senator. In October of 1960, less than a month before the election, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in DeKalb County, Georgia for participating in a sit-in.
Harris: Dr. King was in prison in Georgia, and through his connections, Kennedy was able to get Dr. King released from jail.
Lee: Professor Harris says Kennedy saw a political opportunity to win over black voters.
Harris: Dr. King’s father who was involved in these negotiations and a longtime Republican because, you know, Democratic Party in the south was the party of white supremacy and he was a Republican, he came out and endorsed Kennedy because of the efforts of releasing Dr. King from prison.
Archival Recording: In Illinois, still unfinished, Kennedy had 34,850 precincts in Illinois still out, 400 of them in Cook County, half in Chicago and one half in the suburbs. Very interesting fact that--
Lee: On election day, 70% of black voters went for Kennedy.
Archival Recording: The election as it stands now, really over, the only thing we’re waiting for is Senator Kennedy.
Lee: Professor Harris says, that may have given JFK the edge in states like Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
Harris: So, in many ways, he owed black voters for having to deliver his victory against Richard Nixon.
Lee: Even though Kennedy refused to push civil rights legislation for fear of alienating southern Democrats, many of whom were segregationists. Democrats still held on to the black vote in the 1962 midterms and retained majorities in both houses. This result proved crucial as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum.
Harris: Keep in mind, there was a very vibrant civil rights movement going on. There were people in the streets, there were people marching.
Archival Recording: Just before dawn, the marchers began to assemble here, first in a trickle of hundreds, then by the thousands still by 11:00 this morning. They stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder, nearly 200,000 strong, ready to make the long walk down Constitution Avenue to the Lincoln Memorial.
Lee: And Kennedy, reading the writing on the wall, began to push more seriously for sweeping civil rights legislation.
John Kennedy: One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons are not fully free. We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and a people. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your state, and local legislative body, and above all, in all of our daily lives.
Lee: Southern Democrats, the so-called Dixiecrats, were determined to make sure the Civil Rights Act never passed, but in 1964, everything changed.
Archival Recording: Good evening. The essential facts are these. President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. Lyndon Johnson is President of the United States.
Lee: Not long after assuming office, President Johnson set his sights on the Civil Rights Act. He used the tragedy of Kennedy’s death and his expertise as a longtime Senate Democrat from Texas.
Archival Recording: And he pressured southern Democrats and threatened them to vote for this critical legislation. You know, he said, “If you don’t vote, we’re going to (deform) the military bases in your state.” He told a senator from Georgia.
Lee: The Democrats were able to hold on to the majority in the House and Senate, and the 1962 midterms proved crucial to its passage.
Lyndon Johnson: This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.
Lee: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 solidified the Democratic Party as the political home for a large majority of black voters. At the same time, there was a backlash among southern Democrats, a wave of which switched their allegiance to the GOP. But for the next 30 years, Democrats maintained control of at least one House in Congress. But in the 1990s, that streak ended. In 1992, Bill Clinton, the Democratic Governor of Arkansas, ran for president against incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush.
Harris: There was a lot of promise.
Lee: Professor Harris says many black Americans felt this was the first time a presidential candidate had directly courted them.
Harris: A lot of perceptions of opportunity in the political realm because you had a president who seemed to be focused on pushing what many thought then as a black agenda. You had a president who was enormously popular among African Americans. He was a southerner. He spoke their language. He could probably give one of the best sermons that any white politician could give in a black Baptist church.
Lyndon Johnson: If you haven’t had Bishop Lindsey’s barbecue, you haven’t had barbecue (APPLAUSE). And if you haven’t heard Bishop Walker attacked one of my opponents, you’ve never heard of a political speech. (LAUGH) (APPLAUSE).
Lee: And the campaigning paid off. Clinton swept to victory, getting 75% of the black vote. And Professor Harris says, at first, black Americans benefited from the economic growth during his administration.
Harris: And you had some of the lowest numbers in black unemployment and also began to see respectable increases in black homeownership. But he also had the most diverse, probably still today the most diverse in terms of representation of African Americans’ cabinet in U.S. history. So, there were African Americans who were Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Energy, who are leading key governmental institutions that were not thought to be sort of stereotypical health and human services.
Lee: But the first two years of Clinton’s term were also marked by an undercurrent of rising contempt from Republicans in Congress. The GOP set their sights on the 1994 midterms with the goal of winning majorities in both the House and Senate. They had a plan, a unified campaign called the Contract with America, championed by House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich.
Archival Recording: Gingrich is sticking with the Contract with America, that huge document he unveiled with patriotic fanfare last month at the Capitol. It includes a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, welfare reform, including a work requirement, tax cuts for upper and middle income Americans, more anti-crime measures, more defense spending.
Newt Gingrich: I mean if this is not a mandate to move in a particular direction, I would like somebody to explain to me what a mandate would look like.
Lee: In the midst of all of this, Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democratic City Council member in Houston, Texas, decided to run for the House.
Sheila Jackson Lee: In 1994, we were focused on issues even then of civil rights, of the economy, of health care. Texas in 1994 and Texas in 2022 is the poster child for the uninsured. We didn’t have health care.
Lee: While Lee easily defeated her Republican challenger that year, Democrats on the whole, experienced a devastating election night.
Archival Recording: By 11 o’clock tonight, Bill Clinton is going to have (Excedrin) headache number 10.
Archival Recording: Republicans are very enthusiastic, spirited. Their turnout is up. Democrats have been dispirited and their turnout is down.
Lee: Republicans straight up dominated the ‘94 midterms, taking both the House and the Senate for the first time in four decades. People called it the Republican Revolution.
Archival Recording: This is truly a wildly historic night.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Archival Recording: Get used to the name Newt Gingrich. He is in line to be the first Republican Speaker of the House since 1954. He will have sweeping control over Congress with enough Democrats crossing over to vote with the GOP. He could command 2/3 of the House. And he wants to change the political landscape in this country in 100 days’ time.
Lee: Congresswoman Lee said, the consequences were catastrophic for her black constituents.
Jackson Lee: Newt Gingrich led the Contract with America. I renamed it the Contract on America. It was a burden on America. Progress was not made in civil rights. Progress was not made with the expansion of education and the funding of education. We did nothing about health care and the uninsured. We were not as sophisticated about climate change then. But I can assure you that there was little talk about that.
Lee: In order to keep his agenda going, President Clinton moved to the right and began to work with the Republican leaders in Congress. One of the laws to come out of this bipartisanship was the Welfare Reform Act of 1996.
Archival Recording: He wanted to end welfare as we knew it, get more people working, less dependent on welfare, leave it up to the states. All these things led to a much more fragile safety net that disproportionately affected poor African Americans.
Jackson Lee: And the Welfare Reform Act was a bill gladly so that I voted against, continuously proud that I did so. And it was a trajectory of what the legislation and the legislature was like in ‘94. It was taking away rights, taking away power, taking away economic opportunity, and it was attacking the impoverished. There was no sympathy, no sympathy to the idea that these Americans needed the resources to be treated as fairly as anyone else.
Lee: Was there a moment as a freshman, Congresswoman, you know, so hopeful to push for change that you realized that, you know what, this is why elections matter, right, and this is why we fight so hard? Was there a moment when you realized you were up against a force?
Jackson Lee: You know, I’m so glad that I was trained that way, that a whole high school, college, early life, I was in the mix, in the fight. I was out in the streets during the Bobby Seale trial in New Haven, Connecticut. I was fixing groove, all the students that came down to be part of the revolution, if you will. I just felt it in my blood. But when I got there, you’re right, the Contract on America could be very despairing.
I think the despair was compounded by the inability to move our ideas to be able to be working with chairpersons who agreed with you that health care was important, who agreed with you working for seniors, low in prescription drugs, things that this could have been done in the ‘90s when I first came in could have been done in the early 2000s. But the Congress at that point did not want to do anything but tax cuts that ultimately got nowhere but to the top 1% and hurt everyone underneath.
Lee: To this day, Congresswoman Lee says, the policies and political climate that came out of the ‘94 midterms still impact the black family she serves.
Jackson Lee: That’s what’s happening under Newt Gingrich, and that is what will happen prospectively if in a catastrophic happening, they will take over completely the House and the Senate in this 2022 midterm election.
Lee: When we come back, how these crucial off-year elections continue to shape the lives of black Americans in the 21st century and what’s at stake today.
The 21st century brought the historic presidential election of 2008. Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States, winning the popular vote in several states that hadn’t been won by a Democrat since the ‘60s and ‘70s (CROWD CHEERING).
Barack Obama: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible (CROWD CHEERING) who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer (CROWD CHEERING).
Lee: That year, Obama received the largest share of the popular vote by a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 election, and he flipped nine states that voted Republican in 2004. Ted R. Johnson is the Director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center, a public policy institute based in New York City.
Ted Johnson: He’s winning places that Democrats thought were gone forever, like North Carolina and even Virginia at the time, and it felt like there was a new coalition that Democrats had a lead on.
Lee: At the time, the Democrats had full control of Congress, and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee says those majorities were crucial to their biggest legislative accomplishment under Obama.
Sheila Jackson Lee: And we were able to give him two good years that caused a massive, serious work on the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans did nothing. They stood by the wayside.
Lee: The Republicans might have done nothing for Obamacare, but behind the scenes, they were planning for something else, another revolution. The Tea Party, a radical offshoot of the GOP, began to take shape in direct response to Barack Obama’s leadership and many argue, his race.
Ted Johnson: It’s not a referendum on his governance. It’s not a referendum on the bills he signed, the way he’s protected the country. It is about who is this black dude with a funny name who, some people say wasn’t even born here, leading the country, becoming the face of America. And it was a rejection of the idea that the Obama family had replaced the traditional white Christian family as the face of the country.
Lee: The Republicans also played to growing frustrations amongst conservatives, around spending and social sectors like health care and financial relief programs that happened to also benefit black and other minority communities. So, when the 2010 midterms came around, Republicans cleaned up.
Jackson Lee: To our dismay, and that’s a plight word, we lost the majority and lost it in a big way.
Ted Johnson: And something like 50-plus seats are lost in the House of Representatives alone from Republicans winning those seats over Democrats, which means that, you know, remember when Obama took office, Mitch McConnell said, “Our job for the next four years is to make sure he accomplishes nothing.” Well, the midterm in 2010 made that legislatively possible.
Jackson Lee: And it was a mountainous, catastrophic incident, maybe even of biblical proportions. It was like a raging flood where we saw nothing but water around us, like we were drowning.
Ted Johnson: All of the fixes to Obamacare that became apparent once Obamacare was implemented didn’t happen. Things around environmental justice, criminal justice reform, all that stuff gets stonewalled because he doesn’t have a Congress that will even put a bill on his desk to sign.
Lee: The 2010 midterms ushered in a new era in politics led by the Republicans, where bipartisanship was nearly impossible and compromise was a sign of weakness. Even though President Obama won reelection in 2012, the Democrats never controlled both Houses again while he was in office. And soon, the Tea Party gave way to Trumpism, full of explicit and implicit racist language that Ted says resonated with swathes of white Americans who’d been stewing in racial resentment during the Obama years.
Ted Johnson: And then they’re stopping his ability to govern well from 2010 essentially through the end of his presidency. And then what happens at the end of his presidency and really the year before his presidency ends is Donald Trump comes on the scene, and he starts saying all of the things the Tea Party folks probably said in their homes, he says it out loud, “Mexicans are coming into our country, and they’re rapists, and they’re drug dealers. And, you know, black folks living these crime and rat-infested cities. Laziness is a trait in black people.” You know, these are things he said out loud.
Donald Trump: They’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.
Lee: After two years of President Donald Trump, Democrats took back the House. And in 2020, America elected President Joe Biden, who can partly thank black voters for his victory. Now, two years later, Ted says, “We’re at another midterm election that’s crucial to the future of black America, one that could have broad political implications.”
Ted Johnson: Yeah. So, for black voters, this is going to determine what laws get a chance to see the latter day. Black folks care about voting rights, and a Democratic Congress the last two years brought forward a number of voting rights bills, the Freedom to Vote Act before the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. None of those bills ever get introduced on the floor if Republicans control the House or the Senate.
So, if you care about voting rights, if you care about choice when it comes to abortion, if you care about funding for public schools, if you care about gun violence prevention, these are the kinds of bills that a democratically controlled Congress are going to put forward that a Republican Congress either won’t introduce or will introduce laws that make a national ban or abortion or that allow more gun rights, which is to say more people with guns with less regulation.
And if you care about those issues as a black voter then you need to be voting in the midterms because whether or not your issues get addressed at all will depend on the outcome of this or whether or not your issues get rolled back, like voting rights being rolled back in the name of voter security or election integrity, whatever phrase they’re using now, this is literally about whether or not the civil rights protections currently in place remain there or advanced or if they’re rolled back. So, lots at stake here.
On the racial resentment question, the Republican Party, their base voters typically register high levels of racial resentment, which is to say, it doesn’t mean that they hate people of color, it just means that they don’t want government helping people of color unless they get helped first.
Lee: I don’t hate you. I just really resent anything that helps you.
Ted Johnson: Yeah, exactly. On immigration, hey, I don’t mind if you get here legally, but I resent any time you try to move into my neighborhood or speak Spanish in my schools. I’m all for people voting, but I resent when your turnout changes the presidential election outcomes or puts two Democratic Senators from Georgia in the U.S. Senate. So, this level of resentment is basically, they don’t want people who aren’t like them to have an outsized voice and what the shape of the country looks like.
Lee: There’s this narrative that even comes from black folks that I’ve talked to all around the country. You know, “We voted Biden and we didn’t get anything for it.” What is the actual reality, because Biden has gotten a bunch of his agenda through, and I wonder what the gains were for black folks.
Ted Johnson: Yeah. And so, even the symbolic stuff, I mean, like, Biden was the president to sign an anti-lynching law. Congress says presidents, elected officials have been trying to do this for over a century, and it happened, not under Obama, under Biden.
Lee: Mm-hm.
Ted Johnson: A black woman on the Supreme Court, that happened under Biden. And so, people may not think these are meaningful things because it doesn’t change the reality when they wake up on a Tuesday to go to work, but these are not nothing, like these are significant accomplishments. Never mind addressing COVID, he tried to do things on infrastructure, he tried to do things on jobs, he did do something on giving student loans. So, he’s ticking things off the list that he said he was going to do.
But when people wake up on just a regular weekday, do they feel different? Do they feel better about the country than they did? And most folks will say, “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Lee: Mm-hm.
Ted Johnson: And it’s because of that sort of pocketbook politics of when I sit at the dinner table, am I stressing over my next paycheck, or do we feel comfortable and good? And if they’re stressed, people tend to blame the president in power, whether it’s his fault or not.
Lee: What are you paying attention this midterm election, are there states, are there races, what are you keeping your eye on?
Ted Johnson: So, I’m really watching Georgia and North Carolina. Georgia, of course, it’s Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker running for a Senate seat there, two black men. Then you also have Stacey Abrams, a black woman, running against the incumbent Brian Kemp there. So, the outcome of those two races I’m watching. And especially when it comes to black folks, how many black people split their vote? Will they vote against Herschel Walker but for Brian Kemp? And the polling suggests that there’s some of that happen now.
In North Carolina, there’s a black woman running for Senate. And North Carolina in 2008, Obama wins it, and people think this may be a change for the state, just like people thought about Georgia in 2020 when they went for Biden. But immediately, the Republicans in North Carolina hoarded power and started changing the rules to make it more difficult for folks to vote and even disempowering the Governor’s Office when a Democrat is in it and then giving them the Governor’s Office more power when a Republican is in it.
Lee: Crazy.
Ted Johnson: And so, I’m looking at Georgia to see if it’s a replay of 2008 North Carolina where you get this surprising victory for Democrats and then there’s a backlash to that from the Republicans at the state level. And in North Carolina, I’m looking to see if there’s a recovery from all of the attempts of the conservative Congress or state assembly.
Lee: And what could all that mean? That scenario that you just played out, what could that mean for black folks in this country?
Ted Johnson: So, if you think voter suppression is an issue now, hold on, because all the things that made those voting measures illegal before are being wiped off the books. So, the Supreme Court got rid of part of the Voting Rights Act, which allows states to pass voter suppression laws, and that’s going to ramp up. So, we are going to lose our voice if we don’t show up and vote in this midterm and vote for the people, the candidates that are prodemocracy. Black folks got a lot to lose in this midterm and the writing is on the wall.
We don’t have to guess at what comes next. We’ve seen it play out in the states. These next four years are going to be really important to protect the gains of the civil rights generation that came before us and to ensure that we leave something in place for those that come after us to ensure they get a better shot at life in this country than we experienced.
Lee: The upcoming midterms come at a pivotal moment in American history. Just like ’62, ’94, and 2010 before it. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has seen a lot in her nearly three decades in office, always fighting for our constituents and for black America.
Did the 2022 midterms remind you of any other midterms that you’ve experienced in your almost 30-year career as a Congresswoman?
Jackson Lee: Absolutely not. The tone of divisiveness is frightening. The threat on members is stupendous. The ideas are nonexistent on the part of my Republican friends, and I call them that. The only idea they have is grabbing power. And our African American community should know that because I know a lot of times it is said that African Americans are taken for granted by Democrats. But we are Democrats, those of us who are your fellow sisters and brothers.
Being in leadership, I can tell you every time we’re in meetings is how can we make life better, how can we end black maternal mortality? What can we do about adding a dental coverage to the Affordable Care Act? What can we do about adding mental health? All of that costing money. What can we do about Brittney Griner who’s being held in a cage without mercy by (inaudible) one of the most despotic and vicious men in the world? We talk about these things. What can we do to move H.R.40, the commission to study and develop reparation proposals? I can assure you that that will be dead, dead, dead if Republicans take over. What can we do more?
Lee: The biggest question ahead of the midterms might not be, who will control Congress, but, how do we move forward? As both political parties fight for control, black Americans, like all Americans, want their rights protected, democracy secured, and the pursuit of happiness to be more than just a cliché. For Congresswoman Lee, there’s just one thing we need to do.
Jackson Lee: We have to overcome this fear that is going on in this 2022 midterms and we have to overcome the divisiveness, the contempt of four people who don’t agree with you. That is what I think is most important. America can’t stand on that. It must stand on the respect for all of our values.
Lee: Through the ballot, Americans can choose where their country is headed. The midterm elections are this Tuesday, November 8th, and it’s your right to vote and to be heard, so use it. For everything you need to know about the voting rules where you live, including registration, mail-in voting, changes since 2020, and more, visit nbcnews.com/planyourvote.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook using the handle @intoamericapod or you can tweet me at Trymaine Lee, that’s @trymainelee, my full name. And if you want to write to us, our email is intoamerica@nbcuni.com. That was intoamerica@nbc and the letters U- N-I.com.
Into America is produced by Sojourner Ahebee, Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, and Max Jacobs. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our Executive Producer is Aisha Turner. I’m Trymaine Lee. Will see you next Thursday.
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