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Black Female Voting Bloc Not Receiving the Respect it Deserves

Nearly three weeks after Election Day, they are counting ballots in Alaska and five House races remain undecided.

Still, the 2012 election cycle is underway. Democratic strategists are meeting, planning and plotting.

Black women are also meeting, planning and strategizing. They are determined to change the conversation and demand a seat at the table.

Dr. Boyce Watkins of AOL Black Voices recently interviewed me about black women and the midterm elections. I would like to share some excerpts:

What is the event you’re planning and what is the reason for holding the event?
The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation Black Women’s Roundtable is holding a Power of the Sister Vote post-election briefing. The reason is captured by a Ghanaian proverb, “Until the lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Given the lack of diversity in the mainstream media, we have to tell the story of black voters and the 2010 election. And the story is, black voters turned out.

Pundits blame low black turnout for Democratic losses. They compare 2010 turnout with 2008, but that is like comparing apples and oranges. Turnout is always higher in a presidential election year. The relevant comparison is 2006, the last midterm election.

Exit polls show black voters made up 10 percent of the electorate, the same share as in 2006. We won’t know the turnout rates until the U.S. Census Bureau releases its report on registration and voting in the 2010 election (in about a year).

Today, Dr. David Bositis, a senior research analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, released a report, “Blacks and the 2010 Midterms: A Preliminary Analysis.” And guess what, y’all -- black voters were in the house.

The bottom line: There was a modest increase in black turnout nationally. There were “impressive increases” in California, Delaware, Illinois, New York, Ohio and Texas. In Pennsylvania and Nevada, there were “small increases.” To be sure, Democrats were hoping for a presidential-year surge of black voters but that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because Democrats did nothing to make it happen. As National Newspaper Publishers Association Chairman Danny Bakewell wrote, the Democratic National Committee did “too little, too late.”

[…]

What do you expect to see in the next presidential election? How will it affect our community?
I expect President Obama will receive 95 percent of the black vote. That’s a pretty safe prediction given that Democratic candidates typically garner 90 percent of the black vote. It remains an open question whether there will be a record turnout of black voters. Even if 100 percent of eligible black voters turned out and gave Obama 100 percent of their vote, that would not be enough to get Obama reelected.

Obama will have to shore up his base at the same time he reconnects with independents. He has his work cut out for him. A new Politico poll found that only 26 percent of Americans thinks he will be reelected. If the overall unemployment rate is hovering around 10 percent and most Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction, then Obama will be one and done.

[…]

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our AOL Black Voices audience?
I would like to share the words of wisdom of soul singer-turned-philosopher James Brown: “Get up, get into it, get involved.” Too often our civic engagement begins and ends with voting. But voting is an event. To have a measurable impact one must stay engaged and get involved. It doesn’t mean that one has to become an activist. I do it because it’s in my DNA.

The Tea Party movement is a model for civic engagement. They made their voices heard at town hall meetings, letters and phone calls to Congress, rallies, etc. They vowed to hold members of Congress accountable to their agenda. And they did.

Read more: http://aol.it/98NF33

Republican Revolution 2.0

Change was in the air this midterm election.

Republicans captured control of the House and picked up at least six Senate seats, including President Barack Obama's old seat.

It is an open question whether Republicans will "make it better than the first time" when they took control of the House in 1994.

Obama Voters are T-I-D-E

Election Day is 41 days away.

While tea partiers are partying like it’s 1994, Democrats are disappointed, dispirited and disillusioned.

President Barack Obama heard an earful during yesterday’s town hall meeting.

It could not have been music to Obama’s ears to hear Velma Hart, a veteran and chief financial officer at a nonprofit organization, say she’s “exhausted” defending him.

Hart is not alone. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes:

It’s no secret that the president is in trouble politically, and that Democrats in Congress are fighting desperately to hold on to their majorities. But much less attention has been given to the level of disenchantment among black voters, who have been hammered disproportionately by the recession and largely taken for granted by the Democratic Party. That disenchantment is likely to translate into lower turnout among blacks this fall.

Herbert continued:

Most blacks are reluctant to publicly express their concerns about the president because they are so outraged by the blatantly unfair and often racist attacks against him from the political right. But many blacks are unhappy that Mr. Obama hasn’t been more forceful in the fight to create jobs. And there is disappointment over the dearth of black faces in high-profile posts in the administration.

In plain English, Obama’s supporters are tide, T-I-D-E, of being taken for granted.

Life of the Tea Party

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 40th Annual Legislative Conference is history.

I am a 20-year veteran of Caucus Week. Given the number of CBC members under scrutiny, I expected some fireworks. With the exception of Rep. Maxine Waters’ ubiquitous street teams, this year’s conference was fairly low-key.

I am a policy wonk so I flitted from session-to-session at the Washington Convention Center. I left most after a few minutes. I stuck my head into Room 143-B, where Rep. Al Green was hosting a discussion ripped from the headlines, “Is the New Right Wrong for People of Color?” I decided to stay.

The panelists included Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity and Timothy F. Johnson, PhD of the Frederick Douglass Foundation.

The formatting of the session title suggests that Green thinks the Tea Party movement is just plain wrong:

It’s not about Republicans versus Democrats. Rather, it’s whether the new right is good for people of color. The question is whether you are for or against policies that can have an impact on people of color.

I have known Wade for a long time so his characterization of the Tea Party as a “shill for the Republican Party” is, well, characteristic.

As Johnson observed, Wade placed blame for “all of the ills of the last two years on the Tea Party.”

Johnson, a proud Republican and tea partier, said:

Don’t keep blaming the Tea Party. It’s not a party, it’s a movement.

In a National Journal piece, Mark Meckler, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, reportedly the largest national Tea Party group, underscored Johnson’s remarks:

Essentially what we’re doing is crowd-sourcing. I use the term open-source politics. This is an open-source movement. Every day, anyone and everyone is modifying the code. The movement as a whole is smart.

The day before Green’s session, I ran into Hilary Shelton of the NAACP. I asked Hilary why the NAACP is wasting time tracking signs at Tea Party rallies.

Hilary regurgitated Media Matters talking points and added the NAACP is having an “impact.” Oh really, with whom?

As the National Journal piece notes:

Leaderless groups also have trouble protecting their brand against impostors, opportunists, and extremists who act in their name and sully their reputation -- a vulnerability that the tea party’s adversaries are currently doing their utmost to exploit.

Meanwhile, there’s little sign of life among Democratic voters of color.

Terrible Tuesday

I spent Labor Day Weekend in Maryland.

Although I lived in DC on-and-off for more than 20 years, I did not know the day after Labor Day is known as “Terrible Tuesday” because of the increased traffic with folks returning from vacation and kids going back to school.

For Democrats reading today’s headlines, it is indeed a terrible Tuesday.

From the Huffington Post to the Wall Street Journal, the writing is on the wall: Democrats are in for a terrible beat down the first Tuesday in November.

Criticism Raining Down on NAACP

When it rains, it pours.

And as blogger Gina McCaul noted, “It’s a monsoon over at NAACP headquarters these days.”

In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod debacle, criticism has rained down on the NAACP.

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous has been in hot water ever since he pushed through a resolution condemning “the bigoted elements within the Tea Party.”

Jealous’ stewardship of the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization is being questioned by old media columnists, including Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd.

TheRoot.com’s Lynette Holloway asked, “Does the NAACP Have a Leadership Problem?”

A number of bloggers, including Gina and Amy Alexander, have put Jealous on blast.

Gina wrote:

On Wednesday, I called for the resignation of NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. I did so not because he was “snookered.” I did so because I believe at this juncture in his personal development and the current political and technological environment he is unfit to lead as demonstrated by his inability to accept complete and total responsibility for his organization’s bad acts. Nobody made the NAACP condemn Shirley Sherrod before speaking to ITS OWN MEMBERS who were present at her speech. No one made the NAACP condemn Shirley Sherrod before getting its hands on a tape of her speech shot by ITS OWN MEMBERS. Nobody forced them to pick a fight with a foe they are CLEARLY too inept to respond to in a strategically sound and competent way. The NAACP took the path of LEAST RESISTANCE and when they were called on it they tried to deflect responsibility for their own BAD ACTS. Leaders take responsibility. LOSERS make excuses.

And it’s not just New York Times columnists and bloggers piling on. When a mathematician starts talking, you know you’ve got a problem.

Dr. Jonathan David Farley graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford University.

Jonathan, a lifetime member of the NAACP, recounted his own “Shirley Sherrod moment” in a recent blog post.

In the age of social media, don’t start folks talking because they have a platform to tell everything they know.

Ain’t No Party like a UNI-TEA Party

Those words were spoken by rapper Jericho Saliz, who performed at Saturday’s UNI-TEA rally in Philadelphia.

David Webb emceed the event.

Webb said the idea for the rally pre-dated the Shirley Sherrod debacle:

It’s not a reaction to the recent news cycle. It’s a proactive move conceived by the idea that we need to show what the Tea Party is all about...This movement has blown up.

UNI-TEA attracted roughly 300 people. Like most conservative events, there were nearly as many African Americans on the stage as in the crowd.

During an appearance on Fox News’ “Geraldo At Large,” Webb said it was not about the numbers:

I didn’t realize there was a minimum number of black people to legitimize it.

I interviewed several of the black tea partiers. They share Webb’s commitment to “limited, efficient and effective government.” They were there to “send a message to America that this is [their] movement.”

The NAACP’s resolution was on people’s minds. While noting he doesn’t want to belabor the issue, Webb added:

We must address the issues where they stand. We must defend an American movement.

The blogger at the center of the latest racial dust-up, Andrew Breitbart, was one of the speakers.

During an interview with Newsweek , Breitbart said he would like to speak with Sherrod in private. I caught up with Breitbart in the middle of a media scrum.

I asked Breitbart what he would say to Sherrod if she were here. His response, “I’m not talking about that today.”

Breitbart had a lot to say about the allegation that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were called the n-word:

These people were there to provoke a YouTube moment. And when the good people of the Tea Party, 40,000 strong, did not provide them with that moment, something really rotten happened. They made it up.

Breitbart blasted the mainstream media:

These people overplayed their hands in our new media world. Why do we have a new media world? To a great extent because we don’t trust the mainstream media. So we are armed with cameras and we are on the lookout for their lies…They would have gotten away with it 10 years ago. They would have gotten away with it 15 years ago…We are watching you. We are the mainstream media now because we don’t trust you.

A number of speakers, including Breitbart, read verbatim Dr. Mary Frances Berry’s post to Politico:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

Tea partiers feel vindicated by Berry’s truth-telling, as well as recent reports that liberal journalists were prepared to play the race card in 2008 to help then-candidate Barack Obama survive the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.

As this sign from an earlier rally makes clear, tea partiers fully intend to push back against accusations of racism.

So playing the race card is as inconsequential as throwing water on a duck’s back.

Tea partiers’ anger is boiling over, but the true measure of the movement will be whether their candidates win in November.

UPDATE: Event organizer Jeffrey Weingarten left this comment on my Facebook wall: “Our estimates show there were over 1,000 different folks who visited UNI-TEA during the day.”