You know, there was always something about George W. Bush that never did "sit quite right" for black voters. As Tony Montana might say: “We never trusted him.”
Maybe it was that many of us believed that we were at least as qualified to be president as he was. Maybe it was the way he seemed to try too hard to be “macho,” to be “Texan,” and to act like he was “in charge."
We never thought he’d make a good president; we didn’t think he liked us, and whoever ran against him wound up getting our vote, simply because he was the "other guy."
That’s how it’s always been, and it looks like, on the strength of President Bush’s two terms in office, black voters were right. We seem to have a sixth sense about politicians. You can look it up.
Barack Obama is now the first African-American president-elect in U.S. history and Americans, especially black Americans, appear to be absolutely ecstatic about the whole thing. Even yesterday, people were still wearing Obama buttons, tee shirts, hats, and stickers. Some folks don’t even say “hello” anymore, they simply smile from ear to ear, mumble something like, “Isn’t it great?” or simply say: “Obama!”
Clearly, Americans, and especially black Americans, made the right choice, but then, again, we generally do.
But here's the catch: It wasn’t just that President-elect Obama was clearly the superior candidate. It wasn’t just that he raised about $700 million for his campaign. It wasn’t just that African-American voters nationwide increased their turnout to an estimated record of 65 to70 percent in Tuesday’s election. It wasn’t just that voters aged 18 to 29 moved up to represent 18 percent of the total electorate.
No, the indisputable fact is that Barack Obama’s path to the presidency as a black Democratic candidate was eased considerably because George W. Bush did, in fact, turn out to be the worst U.S. president in modern history. Period.
Don’t take my word for it. Check out what Curtis Gans, head of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate, said, “Voters have not been as massively dissatisfied with their president, their economy, or the direction of their country since 1932.”
In 1932, Americans voted for a new president while still reeling from Prohibition, the 1929 stock market crash, and the Great Depression. That was the election wherein Franklin D. Roosevelt won by a 17.7 percent margin (Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election by about 6 %), against incumbent Herbert Hoover.
Without George Bush’s mishandling of the U.S. economy, the country probably would not be now immersed in the collapse of Wall Street and the destabilization of the nation's banking industry. We probably wouldn't have a national epidemic of mortgage foreclosures, a startling loss of home values and the potential loss of trillions of dollars in pension funds. We probably wouldn’t have nearly two million long-term unemployed people in the U.S., nor would we have 6.1 million people being forced to work part-time “for economic reasons rather than choice.”
Without George Bush’s absolute bungling of American foreign affairs, we probably wouldn’t have two debilitating wars dragging on in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor have the U.S. government spending $6 billion, to date, on private military service providers (mercenaries) to supplement our basic military capability. We probably wouldn’t have seen Russia boldly sending nuclear-capable planes and ships into Venezuela, nor would we have had to hear Russian president Medvedev announcing recently that he planned to re-fortify Russian missile systems along the Polish border as a counter to planned U.S. missile defense systems in that area. It’s hard to imagine that, without the foreign relations and economic ineptitudes of the Bush administration, the Chinese government would have been able to successfully convene 40 Asian and European countries last month to discuss, among other things, the discontinuation of the use of the U.S. dollar as the standard currency for international trade.
Despite all of that, Barrack Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, continued to carry George W. Bush’s political and policy "baggage" through all but the last two weeks of a 21-month-long presidential campaign. By that time, he had successfully established, despite his own feeble protests to the contrary, that he, too, was “George W. Bush.” As a result, Obama was victorious across virtually every demographic segment.
The president-elect won 56 percent of the women’s vote, 66 percent of the youth vote (18 to 29 years of age), 52 percent of 30 to 40 year old voters, 63 percent of those with no high school diploma, (who comprise just 4 percent of the electorate), 52 percent of the high school grads, 53 percent of college grads, and a whopping 69 percent of first-time voters (20 % of whom were black and another 20 % of whom were Hispanic).
He won 54 percent of Catholics (who represented 27% of election-day voters), 78 percent of Jewish voters (who constituted 2% of all voters). He earned support from 70 percent of big city voters (11% of the electorate), 50 percent of those in small cities, and even 50 percent of those in small towns.
When we look at the election results along racial lines, we see that President-elect Obama won in every category, except among white voters. White voters, who represented 74 percent of the electorate on election day, supported McCain, 55 to 43 percent. Given the horrible legacy of the Bush presidency, and McCain's strong ties to it, how does anyone logically explain that? But, on the other hand, 43 percent of the white vote for a black presidential candidate is “nothing to sneeze at." At the same time, Hispanic voters, who represented 9 percent of the electorate, gave Obama 67 percent of their vote. Asians, who constituted 2 percent of voters on election day, gave him 62 percent of their support.
Finally, black voters, who constituted 13 percent of all voters on that Tuesday, gave Obama 95 percent of their vote.
For black voters, it was part pride, and partly a reflection of the continuing, eight-year-long distrust of George W, Bush, a president we never supported, even when virtually all other Americans, including mainstream media and certain national black clergy officials, tried to convince us that he was a great leader, in 2000 and 2004.
No, for us, sometimes, our support is also a function of party loyalty. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Tom Ferrick, blacks in Philadelphia have also voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate, even when there was no “history” involved.
In 1988, according to Ferrick, black Philadelphians gave 96 percent of their vote to a notably unspectacular candidate named Michael Dukakis. In 1992 and 1996, we gave the same 96 percent to Bill Clinton. In the year 2000, we gave 97 percent of our vote to Al Gore and, then, we came right back and gave the same 97 percent to “stand-offish," elitist, John Kerry, because his opponent, too, was Bush.
The day after the election, the Rassmussen poll had already discovered that 24 percent of Americans believed that the country was headed in the right direction. While that doesn’t sound extremely encouraging, it does compare to just 14 percent, who thought the same thing the day before Obama was elected.
As long as President-elect Obama continues to make that kind of progress for the country, as a whole, and does not forget which of the 24 national voting blocs gave him 95 percent of its vote, I think he will do just fine.
I’ve got my fingers crossed.
###########
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment