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WASHINGTON Joe Biden consolidated his gains as he races to the Democratic nomination, dominating a trio of primaries last Tuesday among voters male and female, rich and poor, white and nonwhite, college and high school graduates.

But there was one glaring exception: young voters.

Voters under 45 continued to support Bernie Sanders by huge margins in Florida, Illinois and Arizona even as other groups came around to Biden. The gap has been largest with voters in their 20s or teens, mirroring a problem that hurt Hillary Clinton in key states in 2016: a lack of excitement among the young.

I'm deeply concerned about the impact that a lack of enthusiasm from young voters could have in a general election, said Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy group that backs Sanders. The consistent concern has been that nominating Vice President Biden would be essentially a repeat of the 2016 election.

Failing to excite young voters in the primary has been a significant red flag for Democrats in recent decades, Sroka said: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who were backed by young people, went on to win the election, while Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore lacked that enthusiasm and ended up losing.

Bidens dilemma reflects a generational party divide between older moderates who were content with the Obama-era status quo, and younger voters hungry for the disruptive change Sanders represents as they risk becoming the first generation in U.S. history to be economically worse off than their parents.

Biden is winning the proxy war because older voters have turned out in larger numbers than younger ones. But to complete the job and win the presidency, Biden recognizes he has work to do he cant afford for young people to stay home or vote third party, as many did in the last election.

Voters under 30 made up 19 percent of the electorate in 2016 and in 2012, but Hillary Clintons margin of victory with this group was five points lower than Obamas, according to exit polls.

The numbers were devastating in swing states that decided the election. In 2012, Wisconsin voters under 30 backed Obama by 23 points; in 2016, that group dipped as a share of the electorate and Clinton won them by a mere 3 points. In 2012, Pennsylvania voters under 30 supported Obama by 28 points; in 2016 they favored Clinton by 9 points.

An Economist/YouGov trial heat survey this month between Biden and President Donald Trump found Biden leading by 4 points overall, and winning the same 55 percent of voters under 30 that Clinton won in 2016. Eight percent were unsure who theyd vote for, and another 8 percent said they would not vote, the poll said. Biden performed better than Clinton did with elderly voters.

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I think Biden needs to take this very seriously, both in terms of understanding that its a real possible problem for him but also a real opportunity," said Democratic pollster Andrew Baumann, who has studied the voting behavior of young people. "He's got some of the same challenges (that Clinton had) to make them understand that hes not an enemy of what Bernie is trying to accomplish. He clearly isnt, but he has some work to do convincing them of this.

Baumann said young voters can be moved if he conveys the need for fundamental change, with policies to back it up like anti-corruption measures, getting money out of politics and standing up to oil companies and Wall Street banks. He said that climate change is the No. 1 issue for many young people and that Biden could make it a larger focus of his campaign, perhaps even meet with Sunrise Movement activists to hear their concerns.

The Biden campaign sees three major differences with Clintons 2016 campaign, according to a source familiar with its thinking. The first is that Trump is president, unlike four years ago when many young people were complacent because they assumed hed lose. The second is that Bidens 2020 platform is more progressive than Clintons was in 2016. And the third is that Biden and Sanders like each other personally, which will make it easier to coalesce.

Biden has sought to address the problem by rolling out two new policy planks last weekend that would benefit young people: tuition-free public colleges and universities, and allowing Americans to clear out student debt in bankruptcy. At the debate last Sunday, he promised to pick a woman as running mate.

Let me say, especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders: I hear you, he said Tuesday in his victory speech. I know what is at stake.

Democratic pollster Margie Omero said Bidens strong support for gun control and his relatively early embrace of same-sex marriage could be valuable pitches to young people. She said his experience dealing with crises is also an asset as the coronavirus outbreak sends students home from college and forces them to self-contain amid the pandemic.

Younger voters, generally speaking, are less engaged. They are going to need to get reacquainted with Joe Biden, she said, adding that hell need surrogates to help him.

Others say the problem cannot be fixed with cosmetic tweaks.

Max Berger, a former aide on Elizabeth Warrens presidential campaign, said Biden suffers from a trust deficit with young voters who worry he doesnt understand their problems and is resistant to ideas that match their scale, whether its the Green New Deal or eliminating student debt.

My hope is they're smart enough to realize it's not a marketing problem, it's a product problem. They're selling the wrong product, he said. When he says I think Republicans will go back to normal, young people are like: Are you insane?

Berger said Democrats look like two parties an older moderate one represented by Clinton and Biden, and a younger progressive party that wants leaders like Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. He said that if Biden wants to excite the younger wing, he needs to make policy concessions to the ideas that motivate them and treat them like a coalition partner in a parliamentary system.

If you're under 35, you grew up under a botched war of choice, a recession, the Trump administration and now a pandemic and potentially another recession, Berger said. The expectation of the status quo does not make any sense if you're under 35. For people whose whole political outlook is just put Humpty Dumpty back together again that doesn't work.

In some sense, our generation wants normalcy, he said. We've just never experienced it.

After a string of defeats in the March 10 primaries, Sanders, who has vowed to support Biden if he's the nominee, suggested the former vice president can only win young voters though the power of his ideas.

Today I say to the Democratic establishment: In order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country. And you must speak to the issues of concern to them, he said.

Sroka said the nostalgic undertones in Biden's message won't resonate with millennials or the Gen Zers or those voters in between.

His campaign is essentially 'Make America 2015 Again,' Sroka said. For older resistance crusaders, the moment the world went off a cliff was the 2016 election. For folks under the age of 35, the world was going off a cliff long before Trump got there.

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Democrats sound the alarm on Joe Biden's young voter problem - NBC News

Illinois 3rd Congressional District candidate for Congress, Marie Newman, attends the Womens March in Chicago, Illinois, January 20, 2018. (Joshua Lott/Reuters)Congressman Dan Lipinski has been ousted by a progressive challenger who attacked him for failing to support abortion rights.

In Illinois last night, abortion-rights advocate Marie Newman unseated pro-life representative Dan Lipinski in the Democratic primary for the third congressional district. Based on ratings from anti-abortion groups, Lipinski was the last remaining stalwart pro-lifer among Democratic politicians in Congress.

It is a symbolic end to an era that really ended a long time ago, a time when Democratic politicians could vote against taxpayer-funded abortion and in favor of abortion restrictions without being ousted from their seats, and when the partys leadership acknowledged and welcomed pro-life voters whose views on other issues aligned them with the party.

With Lipinskis loss, there is no longer even the slightest bit of room for Democrats to give themselves cover on this issue, and they appear not to mind. The Democratic Party is, at the national level, filled with politicians who support abortion on demand, at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason, funded by the U.S. taxpayer.

This is dramatically out of step with most Americans, only 13 percent of whom favor allowing elective abortion in the last three months of pregnancy and nearly three-quarters of whom would limit abortion to the first three months or to cases of rape or incest, or not permit it at all. It is also out of step with most Democrats, only 18 percent of whom would allow third-trimester abortion. A full 30 percent of Democrats call themselves pro-life.

Instead of being accommodated or reassured, these Democrats are explicitly told by the politicians seeking to represent them that their views have no place in their own party a curious election strategy.

In 2017, Democratic leaders derided Bernie Sanders when he endorsed Heath Mello for mayor of Omaha, Neb., after abortion-advocacy groups dubbed Mello anti-choice for having backed a law requiring doctors to give women the option to view a fetal ultrasound prior to abortion (hardly a stringent anti-abortion law, though it is revealing that abortion supporters opposed it).

A lot can change in three years. Last month, Sanders declared during a town hall that being pro-choice is an essential part of being a Democrat. Former presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg made the same assessment in January, telling Kristen Day, director of the beleaguered Democrats for Life, that he would not budge an inch on the issue. (Day, for the record, did not ask Buttigieg to change his position on abortion but rather to support more-moderate platform language . . . to ensure that the party of diversity, of inclusion really does include everybody. It took him several minutes to get around to saying, in essence, Keep dreaming.)

What, then, is a pro-life Democrat to do? And what happened to the party that used to feature men like Dan Lipinski and his pro-life Democratic father Bill, one or the other of whom has represented the third congressional district in Illinois since 1983?

Here an anecdote might be helpful. In 1992, Pennsylvanias Democratic governor, Bob Casey Sr., was slated to speak at the partys national convention in New York City but in the end was not permitted to do so. Though Democrats have since contended that this was because he had not endorsed the presidential ticket, contemporaneous reporting shows that it was in fact because he intended to speak about his opposition to abortion, at a time when the party was beginning more uniformly to embrace abortion rights. It was Casey who went to the Supreme Court in 1992 to defend his states regulations on abortion clinics, losing in the landmark case Planned Parenthood v. Casey that currently governs abortion jurisprudence.

Today, Caseys son, Bob Casey Jr., serves as a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, and in recent years has received a 100 percent score from NARAL Pro-Choice America for his voting record on abortion rights.

The Democratic Party has been on this trajectory for a long time, driven in no small part by its desire for the financial backing and public-relations acclaim of powerful actors such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the conglomerate of womens media groups that writer and former editor of Ladies Home Journal Myrna Blyth christened the Spin Sisters.

Reproductive rights is the issue that all women must care and agree about, Blyth wrote in her 2004 book Spin Sisters of these publications and their ability to drive public opinion. To keep the support of the Spin Sisters, politicians may not stray even a hair from the Planned Parenthood position.

Though the Democratic allegiance to unlimited legal abortion surely has something to do with the millions of campaign dollars that flow from abortion-advocacy groups, it has perhaps even more to do with the optics of the issue, with the fact that Planned Parenthood and its media allies could sound the death knell for a campaign by deeming a Democrat anti-choice for doing something as anodyne as supporting a womans right to be offered the chance to view an ultrasound. (It was, for instance, primarily these groups that funded and championed Newmans campaign to unseat Lipinski.)

State politics confirm this theory, where pro-life Democrats continue to reelect pro-life Democratic politicians who enact anti-abortion laws, out of reach of the national abortion-advocacy apparatus. In Louisiana, Democratic legislator Katrina Jackson sponsored a bill, currently facing a challenge at the Supreme Court, to extend existing safety measures to abortion clinics. That bill, along with a heartbeat bill banning abortion after six weeks gestation, was signed into law by the states Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards. In West Virginia earlier this month, Democratic lawmakers helped to pass a born-alive bill, requiring doctors to care for newborn infants who survive an abortion procedure.

These proposals have no hope of passing Congress, where the consistent leftward shift of the Democratic Party has left pro-life liberals like Dan Lipinski, and all the voters who valued his leadership, without a home.

View post:
Farewell to the Pro-Life Democrats - National Review

Rights advocates and Democrats holding state and federal elected offices across the United States are doubling down on demands for the release of "at-risk" inmates and more preventive measures in jails and prisons to prevent mass outbreaks of the new coronavirus, which has killed at least 473 people and infected over 35,000 nationwide as of Monday morning.

"The only measure that will meaningfully impact the spread and harm of Coronavirus in the jail-system is to depopulateto release as many as possible to continue their cases in the communitywith a focus on those at highest risk of complications." Dr. Jonathan Giftos

Three Democratic congressmembers from New YorkReps. Nydia Velzquez, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jerrold Nadlerjoined David Patton of the Federal Defenders, Anthony Sanon of the union representing corrections officers at the Metropolitan Detention Center, correctional medical experts Dr. Brie Williams and Dr. Jonathan Giftos, and New York City Councilmember Brad Lander for a virtual press conference Sunday.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our nation's jails and prisons into ticking time bombs," said Patton during the press conference. "This is no time for business as usual. Unless federal courts and federal prosecutors take immediate and bold action to reduce our federal prison population and limit the intake of new prisoners, we will face a humanitarian crisis of enormous magnitude."

A goal of the event was to pressure the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York to halt new arrests for nonviolent charges and release from federal jails inmates who are at risk of serious illness or death if they contract COVID-19.

The press conference came after House Judiciary Chair Nadler sent a pair of letters to U.S. Attorney William Barr in recent weeks asking how the Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service is repsonding to the pandemic. In the latest letter (pdf) Thursday, Nadler and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) called for considering the release of "vulnerable" inmates, such as "persons who are pregnant, who are 50 years old and older, and who suffer from chronic illnesses like asthma, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, HIV, or other diseases that make them vulnerable to COVID-19 infection."

President Donald Trump said Sunday that his administration was weighing the release of some incarcerated people following the first known COVID-19 case involving an inmatea man at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. California officials announced Sunday night that an inmate at California State Prison in Los Angeles County has also tested positive for the virus, after five cases among staff at three other state facilities.

Corrections experts and rights advocates have warned for weeks that, as Maria Morris of the ACLU wrote earlier this month, "prison and jail populations are extremely vulnerable to a contagious illness like COVID-19" because "conditions in correctional facilities are highly conducive to it spreading" and many inmates "are in relatively poor health and suffer from serious chronic conditions due to lack of access to healthcare in the community, or abysmal healthcare in the correctional system."

As COVID-19 outbreaks unfold within prisons and jails, officials should not use solitary confinement as part of the response. "When incarcerated people contract COVID-19, they need healthcare, not punishment. https://t.co/l5oEX0vpcd

The Appeal (@theappeal) March 23, 2020

Williams is a University of California San Francisco professor of medicine who focuses on healthcare in correctional settings, particularly for the elderly and chronically ill. "The possibility for accelerated transmission and poor health outcomes of COVID-19 in prisons and jails is extraordinarily high," she warned. "Coordinated, preemptive, thoughtful, and decisive action around decreasing the population in prisons and jails with public health at its center will save lives in prisons, jails, and in our communities. Business as usual will not."

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Noting that first known COVID-19 case involved an inmate in her district, Congresswoman Velzquez called for "rapid, proactive department-wide steps" to protect inmates and staff in correctional facilities, including the "compassionate release of incarcerated people who are elderly or have underlying health conditions, and who pose no risk to public safety."

"Unprecedented times call for rethinking the normal way of doing things, and in this case, it means releasing people who pose little risk to their communities for the sake of public health and the dignity of people who are incarcerated."Amol Sinha, ACLU-NJ

Velzquez also urged federal prisons and jails "to implement streamlined procedures to release individuals who have not been convicted of any crimes and are awaiting trial in prison or jail" and pressed the U.S. Attorneys' Offices to "exercise maximum restraint in terms of bringing additional individuals into the court and jail system."

As Giftos, former medical director of Correctional Health Services at Rikers Island, put it: "Jails simply cannot protect patients and staff from a viral pandemic affecting the city." Giftos, now the medical director at Project Renewal, which treats NYC's homeless population, added that "the only measure that will meaningfully impact the spread and harm of coronavirus in the jail-system is to depopulateto release as many as possible to continue their cases in the communitywith a focus on those at highest risk of complications."

Some courts and states have moved to prevent the spread of the virus in correctional settings. Cuyahoga County Court in Ohio ordered the release of certain inmates from the county jail earlier this month and the New Jersey Supreme Court on Sunday approved an agreement (pdf) among the state attorney general's office, county prosecutor's association, the public defender's office, and state's ACLU chapter to release up to 1,000 people in county jails beginning Tuesday.

"Unprecedented times call for rethinking the normal way of doing things, and in this case, it means releasing people who pose little risk to their communities for the sake of public health and the dignity of people who are incarcerated," ACLU-NJ executive director Amol Sinha said in a statement. "This is truly a landmark agreement, and one that should be held up for all states dealing with the current public health crisis."

Unprecedented times call for rethinking normal ways of doing things.

Now, that means releasing people who pose little risk to their communities, recognizing the public health need and the dignity of people who are incarcerated.

We're proud of NJ and proud to have played a role. https://t.co/lcjX3yTxZe

ACLU of New Jersey (@ACLUNJ) March 23, 2020

After a Sunday announcement that a correctional officer at Cook County Jail in Chicago tested positive for COVID-19, Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli was scheduled to present an emergency petition Monday demanding the release of "vulnerable" detainees, according to the local ABC News affiliate. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that "several" people deemed "highly vulnerable" to the coronavirus were released from the facility last week.

Local faith leaders planned a socially distanced prayer vigil outside the Cook County Jail for Monday morning ahead of the hearing. Rev. Rachel Birkhahn-Rommelfanger of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church explained in a statement from the Chicago Community Bond Fund that "our faith calls us to advocate for the release of people incarcerated in the jail whose lives are at risk because of COVID-19. We are in an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action."

Read more:
'Ticking Time Bombs': Democrats and Advocates Demand Release of At-Risk Inmates Amid Coronavirus Pandemic - Common Dreams

Former Navy SEAL Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) is calling on Americans to hold the Democrats accountable for having torpedoed a bipartisan COVID-19 emergency bill that provides funds to small businesses to help cover payroll and rent and other coronavirus-related expenses, expands unemployment benefits, and quickly puts cash in struggling Americans pockets.

The real reason House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intervened in the eleventh hour to derail the Senates emergency bill, Crenshaw suggested, was to push her own bill containing a series of non-crisis-related Democratic wishlist items, included some Green New Deal policies and collective bargaining powers for unions. The political stunt, he said, will not be forgotten.

Democrats torpedoed a bipartisan emergency bill that:-Provides payroll & rent for small business-Credit to businesses across America to keep them afloat Cash in Americans pocketsunemployment benefits, the popular Texas Republican wrote in the first of a series of tweets starting Sunday (posts below). They have no good reasons. Just partisanship. Call your reps NOW.

Do Dems want a recession? A depression? How can they justify this? he asked in a follow-up post. This bill is critical for the livelihood of millions. Our country will be devastated without immediate help. Dems can lie all they want about helping workers but now they are destroying their lives.

I am not one to make hyperbolic statements, Crenshaw wrote in another post. But what Senate Democrats have done is truly awful. This bill was negotiated in good faith. Been monitoring its progress all week. It can save our economy. And they killed it. Out of spite and bitterness.Hold Dems accountable.

We will not forget this, Crenshaw wrote in response to a tweet by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blaming the decision to block the bill on its supposed inadequate protections. More businesses are closing tomorrow while you peddle this lie. You literally stopped a good bill because it *didnt have enough red tape*. You hate American businesses so much that you would sacrifice our economy out of pure contempt.

On Monday, Crenshaw retweeted a thread by journalist Rachel Bovard, who obtained an early copy of the 1,400-page Pelosi bill, that highlights some of the new Democratic bills provisions, including bailing out the post office, mandating risk limiting audits of elections, as well as same-day voter registration, and other non-crisis-related, long-time Democrat wishlist items, among them more strict fuel emissions guidelines for airlines, wind and solar tax credits, and collective bargaining powers for unions.

EVERYONE in America, Democrat and Republican, MUST read this thread, Crenshaw wrote. This is what Pelosi killed the rescue package for. Corporate diversity requirement, Airline carbon emissions, and the list goes on. Hold these people accountable. They are holding America hostage.

As The Daily Wires Emily Zanotti reported Monday, early reports on Pelosis bill show a piece of legislation packed with handouts, bailouts, and cash offerings to the Democrats top constituencies, as well as provisions demanding enforcement of the Green New Deal, easing voting restrictions, and strengthening union allies.

After killing the Senate bill, the Democrats blamed provisions that they said amounted to a slush fund for corporate bailouts, but which is, as Zanotti explains, is actually a zero-interest loan program designed to compensate businesses harmed by government lockdown and which contains clear restrictions on the $500 billion set aside to assist firms that have not recovered from the coronavirus lockdown within six months, including limits on funding corporate bonuses and stock buybacks.

Related:Are You Kidding Me?: Mitch McConnell SHREDS Democrats In Fiery Senate Floor Speech

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Dan Crenshaw Posts Info 'Everyone In America' Should Read About Why Democrats Killed Emergency Relief Package - The Daily Wire

Black Americans donated nearly $41 million last year to Democratic presidential candidates, with Bernie Sanders topping the list, according to a new report.

The total amount donated was nearly 13 percent of what all candidates collected through an online donor platform handling most donations made to Democrats.

The study, conducted by Plus Three, a minority-owned technology and fundraising firm, points to an electorate giving to presidential candidates at a level almost equal to their proportion of the American population and shows that those donations don't necessarily correlate with how those same donors have voted in the primary season.

Described as a first of its kind tally of black political contributions, the report shines a light on a party and presidential candidates dependent on black voters, open to their donations but deficient in diversity when it comes to influencing campaign strategy, policy priorities or spending decisions.

The disparity in black donations, and in overall fundraising, between Sanders and Biden was highlighted in Sunday night's presidential debate, when Sanders at least twice drew attention to an outside group spending large sums to run attack ads against him and in support of Biden. Biden, in turn, insisted that he, the front-runner for the nomination, really has not raised that much.

Plus Three researchers examined more than 1.94 million donations from black donors and found that the average amount given to presidential candidates was $21.03. Latinos contributed almost $23.7 million to Democratic presidential candidates last year, often in small-dollar amounts averaging $15.75, according to an earlier Plus Three analysis.

The newreport commissioned by the Collective PAC, an organization working to boost the number of black officeholders examined more than 13 million donor records from Actblue, an online donations platform that, in recent election cycles, collected about 95 percent of all donations made to Democratic candidates. But unlike individual campaigns, which are only required to report donations of $200 or more to the Federal Election Commission, ActBlue captures details about those giving as little as a dollar.

To pinpoint the nearly 2 million donations likely made by black donors, Plus Three tallied only contributions coming from people with the 162,255 most common surnames used by black people in the United States, according to U.S. census data. Then the study's authors culled this group down to those who also live in a ZIP code where census data indicates 20 percent or more of all residents are black. This method is similar to the way that advertisers target customers, campaigns target voters and regulators have attempted to monitor fairness in lending.

When it comes to presidential candidate fundraising, Sanders whose campaign looks to be in trouble after sweeping loses in Tuesday's primaries has proven to be the most effective of all the Democratic candidates, raising $132.56 million from all donors on ActBlue by the end of 2019. Biden in comparison raised just $68.28 million. That pattern has continued through 2020 fundraising.

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Among black donors, Sanders raised $10.5 million, almost $4 million more than Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Pete Buttigieg collected $6.07 million, while Biden's $3.65 million put him in fourth place. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, at $2.99 million, was in fifth with black donors, followed in ninth by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, with $1.24 million.

"Sanders performed better with Latino and African American donors because of the sheer scale of his base of fundraising," Juan M. Proao, Plus Three CEO and co-founder, who conducted the study, said. "Biden will begin to do better now that he is the front-runner and his fundraising numbers should increase accordingly. However, Biden still has a major fundraising problem because he does not have the team or the email list needed to capitalize on this sudden success."

In 2019, Sanders raised 14.77 percent of his donations from black donors on ActBlue. Biden collected 13.29 percent of his donations from black donors using the platform.

"At the presidential level those not immediately in love with a candidate will take a wait-and-see approach, especially in 2019 when there were 20-plus candidates," said Marvin King, an associate professor of political science at Mississippi State University, who researches political donations and their impact.

"The same happened really in 2008. The polling with black voters and the donations from black donors shot up for Obama after Iowa," King said. "They were like, we will get on your train but show me something first."

Black candidates often experience fundraising difficulties due to vast differences in the average income between white and black households, King said.

Case in point: Mississippi. There, 40 percent of all residents and about 66 percent of all Democratic voters are black. Black candidates have seen some success at the local level but no black elected official has held a statewide office since 1890. In 2019, Republicans controlled the Mississippi House, state Senate and governor's offices, both U.S. Senate seats and all but one of the state's four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

That is one reason that Quentin James helped found the Collective PAC in 2016. James, the group's president, wanted to find a way to pool resources and elect black, progressive candidates, including those running in red states.

"Cory and Kamala said that it was money that was the biggest problem for their campaigns," James said. "We commissioned this study because we wanted to see where is black money going in this cycle and also continue to evaluate how it is being used."

In the 2018 election cycle, the more than 200,000 black donors on Collective PAC's contact list funneled $7.5 million into campaigns and elected 55 candidates across the country.

The study's findings call into question the investments that political candidates and parties routinely make in pursuit of black voters, James said. Together, black and Latino donors contributed about $100 million to Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.

Studies released by the political organization Power Pac Plus found that in 2012 and 2016, the Democratic Party's three major election arms spent 98 percent of their campaign dollars with white-owned companies.

"People of color are giving substantially despite the systematic challenges around wealth and well being in this country," James said. "We are still not seeing or hearing enough from the candidates and their campaigns from a policy perspective or a spending and investing perspective."

Campaigns continue to invest large amounts in television and other ads, which also funnel money into almost all white-owned firms. And they tend to spend comparatively little with the get-out-the-vote operations and other types of political businesses owned by black and Latino consultants with proven expertise, said Proao, who has worked on four Democratic presidential campaigns.

That might have closed the gap in a recent spate of narrow races, he said, . He pointed to several races, including in 2018, when Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, lost the Georgia governor's race by 1.4 points (some, Including Abrams, insist voter suppression was a significant factor); and then-Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat, lost a Senate race in Texas by 2.6 points.

What campaigns continue to do as they fundraise, James said, is think in terms of a short and fairly static list of black billionaires and business owners.

"The immediate thing, to this day is, let's call Oprah and Tyler," he said, referring to Tyler Perry, the movie mogul, "not the grassroots person who can give $5 a month. There's a lot more out there to be tapped."

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Black donors gave $41M to 2020 Democrats last year, with Sanders topping the list - NBC News