There is widespread agreement that the Democrats are poised to lose a significant number of congressional seats in the 2010 midterm elections. This is largely due to high unemployment and a poor economy. The extent of the Democrats’ losses will depend on their ability to turn out their most loyal voters, and no voting bloc will be more important than African Americans. If they can mobilize a strong black turnout, the Democrats can reduce their losses.

An African-American friend told me that "Obama is not the African-American President. He's a black man who happens to be the President." Will that not-too-uncommon view, along with a still-struggling economy, keep African-American voters home in key states, and doom the Democrats along the way in the 2010 mid-term elections, or will the GOP's daily doses of racist and xenophobic commentary, advertising, and propaganda pushes on Fox and Right Radio cause a backlash that will change the pollsters' prognostications?
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In March, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that 74-80% of African-Americans polled by the nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies said that they would turn out to vote in November.

Read the Full Story at The Huffington Post.

Ron Walters was a man on a mission.

Whether working on a book about President Barack Obama, granting interviews about TV personality Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial or schooling reporters about the exacting details of interpreting polls and the real intention behind political machinations, the dedicated and highly respected scholar, strategist and teacher worked almost constantly to educate as many people as he could about the importance and practical consequences of public policy in the African-American community.

Constantly working, Walters seemed to be akin to the Energizer Bunny - just going and going, driven to complete every task he had assigned himself.

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“Dr. Ronald Walters was the nation’s preeminent scholar on black politics and, importantly, an influential practitioner and political strategist,” Ralph B. Everett, president and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said in a statement Sunday.

Read the Full Story at blackamericaweb.com.
 

President Obama’s deficit commission is a mess. Just for example, former Sen. Alan Simpson, the body’s 78 year-old co-chair, infamously compared Social Security to a cow with too many teats last week. Some of those sucking the cow dry need to get kicked out, he implied. That’s just for example.

Simpson’s remarks spurred an uproar on the left, and among Social Security’s defenders against Bush-style privatization and cutback. But sadly, his sentiments might as well be expected from a commission stacked with a whole bunch of old white men (angry ones, it seems). Of the 18 people on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, there are only two people of color. Just three members are women.

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Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, explains, “there are many ways to fix the system that are relatively painless overall.” For example, she says, “The current wage cap is $106,000, and all of the wages that people make above that line are not taxed for Social Security. But if wages above that are taxed, it would result in more than enough to pay for the program in the future.”

Read the Full Story at colorlines.com.

With 99% of precincts reporting, Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Florida) handily won his state’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, beating billionaire opponent Jeff Greene by 57% to 31%.

“Because the people of the state of Florida stood with me tonight through $26 million-plus being spent against us, we made history in this state, because the state of Florida was not for sale, will not be for sale, and we will stand up and continue to deliver,” Meek said Tuesday night.

Greene didn’t enter the race until April, vowing to spend however much of his own money it took to win—and he did. For a while, it seemed like a series of negative ads linking Meek to corrupt Miami businessmen would put Greene over the top. But after running what David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, describes as a “vanity campaign,” Democrats decided that Meek was the more serious candidate.

Read the Full Story at Black Enterprise.

From Barack Obama ’s election as president to a white Congressman fending off African-American challengers in a majority-black district, have Americans moved beyond race as a determining factor in their vote choice?

A couple of weeks ago, Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen , the white, Jewish incumbent, won re-nomination over former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who is African American. The district has a black voting age population of 59 percent and the percentage of black voters was even higher in the Democratic primary, but Cohen still prevailed with 79 percent.

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“I don’t believe there’s a post-racial America. Not even close,” said Dr. David Bositis, a long-time scholar of black politics and voting at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

This article was previously available at rollcall.com.

WASHINGTON — For many young civil rights workers in 1964, there was no better place than Mississippi to challenge a system that kept blacks voiceless and disenfranchised.

The state had one of the largest black populations in the South. Yet, less than 5 percent of blacks were registered to vote, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. In some counties, not a single black person was registered.

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”It was a major national event and it had an impact on shaping public opinion on civil rights nationally,” said David Bositis, a senior analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “Freedom Summer was important because it brought to the North what was going on in Mississippi.”

This article was previously available at clarionledger.com.

Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, and Roy Blunt, a Republican, have been meeting with members of the black clergy lately, not to save their souls, but to win one of the top political contests in the country, a U.S. Senate seat from Missouri.

Both candidates see African-American voters as important to their chances of becoming Missouri's next senator, and that road runs through the pulpits of black churches in Kansas City and St. Louis.
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More importantly, the black share of the overall voter turnout in Missouri rose to 13 percent in 2006, up from 8 percent two years before, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research center devoted to issues that affect African-Americans and other minorities.

This article was previously available at The Kansas City Star and Yahoo! News.

Obama has declined the pulpit Bill Clinton sought when he announced in 1996 that he would lead the country in a “national conversation” on race during what were, in retrospect, boom years for black Americans. One administration official, Attorney General Eric Holder, did briefly seek to revive that conversation in tougher times with a speech in the administration’s second month.
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“People who in the past would have been reluctant to express their feelings [now] feel free to do so,” said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the liberal Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington.

Read the Full Story at Politico.

This article was previously available at philly.com, TwinCities.com.

It has been more than two years since Sandra Hines got shoved out of her family's home of 38 years, but her loss still feels fresh and raw. She remains proud of her northwest Detroit neighborhood. Its streets are lined with stately trees and dozens of modest brick and concrete houses like the one her family called home for a generation. Today, the two story house sits empty, but through the window a ladder and can of paint can be spotted in the living room -- signs that the new owner has been here working.

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"It's easy for people at risk of foreclosure to keep spiraling and spiraling," adds Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Three years into that spiral, she says, "We still don't have the kind of infrastructure we need to help."

Meanwhile, the recessionary forces are compounding upon one another. Foreclosures stemming from the subprime schemes that swept communities of color have now been largely replaced by foreclosures caused by job losses. "Foreclosures are hitting people who had been doing okay," explains Leigh, "who hadn't gotten an adjustable arm and now they've lost their jobs."

Read the Full Story at colorlines.com.