(ThyBlackMan.com) Black voters will again give President Obama a sky high percentage of their vote in 2012. That was never in doubt. What is in doubt is how many will make up that percentage. It is the number, not percentage of black voters that turn out that will again ease the President’s path back to the White House or make that path rocky. The 2008 election decisively proved that the presidential reelection bid is a pure numbers game.
If black voters had not turned the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries into a virtual holy crusade for Obama, and if Obama had not openly in the South Carolina primary and subtly in primaries thereafter stoked the black vote, he could easily have been just another failed Democratic presidential candidate. Through its voter education, awareness, and mobilization campaigns, the NAACP played a huge role in galvanizing and boosting the numbers of black voters, nearly all votes for Obama. It was part race, part pride, and all sense of history in the making and being a part of Obama’s epic win.
The mass rush by blacks to the polls was the single biggest reason that Obama carried the traditional must win states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and broke the GOP presidential grip on North Carolina and Virginia. There’s no certainty that will be the case this time around. The GOP dominates the state legislatures in North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Virginia. Four of these five states have GOP governors and there’s warfare between the GOP and the Democrats over GOP concocted remapping plans in Florida and Ohio, and other states. The plans would virtually insure a spate of redrawn GOP friendly voting districts in the 2012 presidential election. The GOP aim is to gain greater dominance in the House and win majority control in the Senate. But the biggest prize is the White House, and the more GOP controlled districts in the states that Obama won in 2008, the greater the odds are of rolling those states back into the GOP win column. GOP strategists almost certainly will spend massive sums and mount a relentless, intensive blitz in these states to paint Obama and the Democrats as the cause of the economic woes of the middle-class, with the always subtle undertone of soft pitch racial code language to prick the lingering unease of many conservative white voters toward Obama and the Democrats.
This political ploy is even more worrisome. Obama’s centrist appeal to independents played a significant role in getting many of them to punch the Democratic ticket and augment the huge black vote he got in 2008. But a repeat of that in 2012 is questionable. Polls consistently show that a majority of independents are disappointed, dismayed, or hostile to Obama’s handling of the economy, always the Achilles Heel for any incumbent who wants to keep his presidential job.
The good news is that polls are showing the enthusiasm level for Obama is still as high as it was in 2008 among a majority of black voters. Polls also show that blacks are the most optimistic that the country is heading in the right direction. That’s due almost exclusively to their backing of Obama. This is the key factor in getting numbers of voters to show up at the polls on Election Day.
Obama has done two things to keep the enthusiasm level high. In November, he held a black leadership conference and unveiled what is as close yet to a white paper the White House has issued on race. It ticked off a checklist of initiatives from health care, job stimulus and small business aid that have benefited blacks. The position paper was an obvious counter to the shouts from some black activists, and on occasion the Congressional Black Caucus, that he hasn’t said or done enough about the chronic high unemployment, failing public schools, high incarceration rates, and worries about home foreclosures, and poverty crisis facing black communities.
Obama strategists recognize that the novelty of his history making election has worn off with many blacks. This realization and in some cases, frustration and impatience, set in among many blacks, caused far more second guessing about Obama’s priorities then the White House found comfortable.
The backstabbing, infighting, and clownish antics of the pack of GOP presidential contenders and the constant hectoring of them as weak and ineffectual at this stage of the election game should not be cause for the Democrats to uncork the champagne and declare the 2012 election a cakewalk for Obama. Despite fielding arguably one of the weakest GOP presidential tickets in recent history in 2008, the GOP contenders still got the bulk of the white vote. There’s no guarantee that this can’t happen again. The GOP will rally its fractious base when the Election chips are down. The black vote is still Obama’s trump card, but only if the numbers are there.
Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
One can find more info about Mr. Hutchinson over at the following site; TheHutchinson ReportNews.
Also feel free to connect with him through twitter; http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
President Barack Obama’s reelection, in part depends on how many black voters actually vote for him. There are some vocal detractors among a few negroes, who question his performance for the past two years, that’s not supprising, there is one in every crowd. However, would some one please tell me, why comments on this article turns into campaign endorsements for Ron Paul’s run for the Republican Presidential Candidacy.
The majority of all voters, not just blacks, are not aware of the issues.
Please consider voting for Ron Paul, he’s the only hope for true change. Obama unfortunatley is controlled by the bankers, and is not looking out for us little people.
Ron Paul fights for our personal rights and liberties, unlock other GOP candidates.
You can say what you want, but it is not as simple as you make it sound. There are fractious arguments all around Black dinner tables across this country, about the ineffective policies of this President as evidenced by our historically high unemployment rates for THE LAST THREE YEARS. It is Black men who will be the hold outs, I think for the most part. Black women, it appears are enamored with him. Ironically, the thing this President has going for him is negativity. By that I mean, the alternative to Mr Obama is worst. You know it would not hurt, if the brother added a couple of Black male advisors to his inner circle and I don’t mean the yes men from the NAACP, the Urban League or CBC. If he thinks the Black vote has been locked down in the numbers he needs, he will be sadly disppointed come November. http://www.sslumpsum.com
Ron Paul is going to win Iowa and quite possibly, New Hampshire too. That will shake things up and really get everyone’s attention for a true conservative.
RON PAUL 2012
Clear. Consistent. Honest. Responsible.
http://www.whatthehellbook.com/the-book/
Unfortunately the majority of Black people are ignorant or ambivalent about the important issues of our day like freedom and liberty which is under assault as much it was during the Bush administration. The overthrow of foreign governments continues and the wholesale destruction of their infrastructures as we saw in Libya, the most developed nation in Africa, that is before Obama and NATO bombs got through with them. While the Obama administration tells Congress to give him the power to give the military power to come on American soil and lock up indefinitely anyone the Commander and Chief labels an enemy combatant, black folks busy fawning over a Black family in the White House.
If Black politicians raise the issue of high black unemployment with him, he says shut up Negroes and get to the back of the bus. As he announces that he is bringing the troops home from Iraq, after the Iraqis kicked them out actually, they are gearing up to start a war with Iran and all the while Negroes bow and pray to their collectible porcelain plates bearing the the image of the first Black President chanting Yes We Can.