Democrats Are Freaking Out About Pro-Trump Messaging To Occasional Black Voters

Democratic National Committee sources told BuzzFeed News the party is tracking a new set of loosely organized online movements that officials believe are trying to steer black voters away from the party or from voting altogether. The groups are varied in their approach, but share a common thread of deep suspicion of the Democratic Party and an apparent determination to seize upon the hypersensitive political moment in a country with a deeply troubled racial past.

The party is paying particular attention to the American Descendants of Slavery, or ADOS, a group that believes reparations should be paid solely to Americans who can trace their lineage back to people who were themselves enslaved (the group had previously been under suspicion being made up of bots); Blexit, a new outfit led by young black conservatives arguing a vote for Donald Trump is a vote against widespread immigration and abortion standing in the way of black middle class family values; and Foundational Black Americans, an ADOS rival founded by independent filmmaker Tariq Nasheed.

Democrats often repeat the refrain that the party would never take black voters for granted. Inside the party, though, political advisers think it’s likelier than not that most marginal voters (Obama voters who skipped the midterms) and sporadic voters (those who are harder to persuade) have had at least some exposure to an anti–Democratic Party message. In some cases, party officials said, black Americans' dim view of the job Democrats have done governing in recent decades is colored by a grim economic outlook and uncertainty about the future.

Na'ilah Amaru, a Democratic strategist and consultant, said it should come as no surprise that the new groups seem to be catching on. “My frustration as an operative who works in grassroots organizing is the DNC and the Democratic Party talking about policies at a very high level, and we lose the opportunity to talk about what values those policies are rooted in,” Amaru said. “People who don’t breathe and eat politics don’t give a damn about 30,000-foot level of public policy. They just want to know how it’s going to help them. And at the most fundamental level, the Democratic Party has struggled with answering that question.”