Three things happened in the past couple of weeks that should set off loud alarm bells and whistles in the White House. Two were real surprises, and one was predictable. The first surprise was Valma Hart. In measured and even deferential tones, Hart flatly told President Obama at his economic townhall in Washington DC that she was "exhausted" at defending him. Hart is not a Tea Party cheerleader, GOP audience plant, or a chronic malcontent. She's a respected middle-class, agency administrator, a one-time fervent Obama supporter, and she's black. The fact that Hart in a crucial public forum on national TV had the audacity to confront the President with a perfectly legitimate concern speaks volumes about the level of unrest among some core Obama supporters. This would have been unthinkable a year ago.
The second surprise is the recent Gallup Poll that found that liberals and progressives are poised to desert the Democrats in droves in November. The Gallup Poll did not break down the percentage of discontented Democrats by ethnicity. It didn't have to. Blacks traditionally are the most loyal, and politically the most liberal of Democratic voters. It's no stretch to say Obama would not have bagged the White House if black voters had not voted in record percentages and numbers and with passion that hadn't been seen in presidential politics in decades for Democrats and especially Obama. The more than 15 million black voters made up a sizeable percent of the overall Democratic vote in 2008. They gave Obama 96 percent of their vote. This was an all-time high for a Democratic presidential candidate.
The finding that liberals and progressives feel such a disconnect with Democrats was amply reflected in yet another Gallup poll in early September that found that whites by a bulging 2-to-1 gap are far more revved up by the November elections than blacks.
This was predictable. The party in power almost always loses votes and offices in mid-term elections. The reasons are many, voter burnout, disenchantment with the policies of the party in power, unfulfilled promises, and complacency. This mid-term election is no different. But that's no consolation for the Obama. He knows the high stakes that are involved with the election. The mortal danger to Obama administration legislation and initiatives if the GOP takes back the House, or substantially increases its numbers in Congress, would be devastating. A GOP House takeover would effectively stymie, even cripple, Obama legislation and political initiatives in the run-up to the 2012 election.
The slight cooling by black voters to the Obama presidency has been evident for some time. In July polls showed that though blacks gave Obama a comfortably high approval rating, it was not the off charts numbers that he got from them in the weeks immediately after his inauguration.
The cool down in Obama support from blacks was in part attributed to grumbles over the White House's rush to judgment in initially dumping Shirley Sherrod from her post at the Department of Agriculture. There were also the private, and occasionally public, grousing by the Congressional Black Caucus that Obama and the Democrats weren't saying and doing enough about the mountainous job and education crisis among young blacks, not to mention the mounting anxiety over the economy's slide.
Obama made a kind of backdoor acknowledgment of the peril to his program and indeed administration from restless and unmotivated black voters in his impassioned speech at a black tie dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus. In near pulpit exuberance, Obama thundered "I need everybody here," he said, "to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back your workplaces, to go to the churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops. And tell them we've got more work to do."
This was neither an understatement nor the words of a desperate president. It simply reflected the harsh political reality that Democrats have little hope of retaining their gaping majority over the GOP if there's any substantial defection of black voters from the polls in November. The black vote has been the Democrats' trump card in every election for the past half century, win or lose. 2010 won't be any different, and neither will the 2012 presidential election.
Black voters realize that Obama is in a war with a party that has made it clear in word and deed that it will stop at nothing to get him out of the White House. A party that will obstruct, hector, bash, and subvert any and every meaningful initiative that comes from the White House. Blacks have and will continue to cheer the president on and implore him to hit back, and hit back hard, against his enemies. They also know that though the president has not done anything explicit to deal with black problems, the handicap of race and the strictures of the presidency prevent that, they know his initiatives on health care, the stimulus, financial reform, and extending unemployment benefits are measures that give some aid to distressed black communities.
But they also know that black America faces a profound economic crisis, and they look to the man in the White House for help in combating that crisis. They won't desert the president but if enough feel that Democrats and Obama haven't fought hard enough to help and stay home from the polls in any sizeable numbers, that spells trouble for the White House.