Tag: african-american

So. Who DOES get the African-American vote in the primaries this cycle?

I’m forced to ask a question in response to this thesis by Josh Kraushaar: “Hillary Clinton is a near-lock for the Democratic nomination for many reasons, but among the most significant is that her challengers have minimal appeal to the party’s base of African-American voters.” …All well and good; but what’s her appeal to those voters, exactly? I mean, don’t get me wrong: I understand that, lacking an obviously good choice, many voters default to the front-runner; but what’s going to get African-American voters off of their couches and into the voting booths to vote in the primary?

This is not a trivial question: while Josh does note at the end of the essay that “if [Hillary Clinton’s] winning non-white voters in the primary by default—running against old white men with limited ties to the rising Democratic electorate—she could face a rude awakening next November” it still doesn’t mean that Clinton’s going to get enthusiastic support in the primaries. In fact, it really is arguing that Hillary Clinton can expect not to get enthusiastic support. And probably not much turnout. Continue reading So. Who DOES get the African-American vote in the primaries this cycle?

Will the African-American vote save troubled Democratic Senate incumbents?

Michael Barone is… dubious.

It’s apparent that even the most vigorous black turnout effort in the eight states [of thirteen with contested Senate races, including Georgia and Kentucky] with low black percentages is not going to make much difference. Democrats there must hope that their candidates can maintain levels of support from whites at or above the levels achieved by Obama in 2008 and 2012. In addition, Democrats inColorado must hope they can maintain something like the 75 to 23 percent margin Obama won among Hispanics there in 2012 according to the exit poll. (Note: I have been skeptical, just based on instinct and observation of county vote totals, about the Colorado exit poll, which I suspect understates Obama support among whites and overstates it among Hispanics.)

In the five states with above-national-average black percentages, there’s obviously good reason for Democrats to try to bolster black turnout. But to win a Democratic candidate must also do significantly better than Obama did among whites in Arkansas, Georgia and Louisiana and somewhat better than in North Carolina.

Continue reading Will the African-American vote save troubled Democratic Senate incumbents?

#obamacare decides Black Californian media outlets not currently worth the advertising revenue.

I am not really surprised, mind you:

A state-run outreach campaign designed to educate Californians about the federal Obamacare program has failed to include Black media outlets in the mix, Black activists say.

The campaign, which starts this week, is expected to spend millions on marketing materials slated for various media outlets in San Diego, Sacramento and Chico but Black outlets have so far been virtually ignored, said Darcel Lee, executive director of the California Black Health Exchange.

“It is somewhat disturbing that the African-American community is not a part of the test outreach campaign,” Lee said.

…After all, the Democrats have pretty much hit the saturation point when it comes to getting African-American votes.  Why bother keeping African-American media outlets happy with advertising revenue?  What are they going to do: start supporting Republicans?

Moe Lane

Gallup: Obama slips with African-Americans, Hispanics…

…unexpectedly.

Gallup mentions the most obvious point – the President has slipped from his historical approval rating among African-Americans (usually around 92%) all the way down to 85%* – but it kind of obscures a detail on the graph with regard to Hispanic voters. They acknowledge that the President is currently at a low with 54% of those voters, but Gallup does not point out that Obama’s approval rating dropped by double digits with those voters over a year ago and hasn’t really come back since. For that matter, the real story from that graph is that the President has a 39% approval rating among whites; his approval rating among those voters at the beginning of his term was somewhere just above 60%.

Andrew Malcolm is right to couch all of this in terms of it merely being worrisome for the President; after all, it’s early days yet. But he’s also right that Obama should be worrying about this, given that hyper-enthusiasm is precisely what his campaign needs if they seriously plan to raise a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign. In fact, i think that the billion-dollar number is going to end up being a bit of an albatross for the President: it will require a constant, probably grueling, emphasis on fundraising in order to work, and it has already forced the President to formally re-enter the electoral arena months early. In other words, the President may have been better off if he had decided not to try to beat his high score. Continue reading Gallup: Obama slips with African-Americans, Hispanics…