Monday, Barack Obama took the ceremonial presidential oath of office for the second and final time. The fanfare was again deafening. The expectations for his second term again outsized.  Black voters who supported President Obama by more than a 9 to 1 margin in 2008 and 2012 can now rest, assured that he will have plenty of time to cement his legacy.

But fast forward to four years from now. Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath to the 45th American president. At that moment, our first black president will officially become our first black former president. Who will be the second? Deval Patrick? Cory Booker? A newly ascendant member of the Congressional Black Caucus? Who’s got next?  And more important, how long will it take?

While black voters have proven that we can lead a diverse and powerful coalition to elect our preferred candidate, someone who actually looks like us, we continue to underperform in state, local, and midterm elections. This kind of inattention could mean another lifetime before we see a black face in the oval office again.

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Presidents rarely come out of nowhere like Obama appeared to do. Candidates who are not backed by tremendous power and money cannot persevere for extended lengths of time politically. They must see their moment and swiftly amass the resources to seize it. Though Obama did just that, his path to the White House can’t easily be replicated. To even consider a second black president, we have to develop the kind of institutions and tools that incubate black political talent. We have to be intentional.

How? Blacks can’t expect to compete for the White House every four years. At 12 percent of the voting population, we simply don’t have the numbers. So for starters, we don’t wait around for the next Michael Jordan to spring from the ether. We build a pipeline. The Congressional Black Caucus Institute is dedicated to training the next generation of political leaders and educating voters about political engagement. We need to support CBCI and organizations like it – the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and others – to ensure that they remain faithful to their missions and prepare our young leaders for public service at every level.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Since Barack Obama was inaugurated on the west Capitol steps four years ago, a dramatic 30-foot memorial to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. has been unveiled at the other end of the National Mall.

But a key part of the political landscape President Obama will survey as he is sworn in for a second term — that is, the number of black officials in top elective offices — hasn't changed a bit.

Obama's groundbreaking election in 2008 and his re-election in 2012 undeniably has affected the nation's racial politics, proving it's possible for an African American to win the nation's highest office and raising the aspirations of some black candidates. He sparked record turnout in two elections among African American voters.

"One of the many things significant that happened when this president was elected: It gave a much larger group of people an opportunity to be unburdened by who has traditionally done what," says Kamala Harris, who in 2010 became the first woman and first black elected attorney general of California.

"There's a bigger ripple than we tend to assign to it," says Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and president of the NAACP.

In the admittedly short four years since the 2008 election, however, the Obama effect hasn't been reflected in more black candidates actually winning election to the Senate, the House and the nation's governorships. At the intersection of Monday's events — the federal holiday honoring King and the public inauguration of a black president for a second term — the path to the top jobs in American politics seems as steep as ever.

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"If race weren't an issue in this country, the place you would expect to see African Americans elected to statewide office with African American votes would be Southern states with large black populations," says David Bositis, an expert on minority voting and representation at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "But it's becoming a white, conservative, Republican-dominated area of the country, which means that African Americans, with a few exceptions, are out in terms of statewide office."

Read more at USA Today.

In 2004, the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce found that "the civil rights movement of the 1960s ended the more visible racial and ethnic barriers, but it did not eliminate entrenched patterns of inequality in healthcare, which remain the unfinished business of the civil rights movement." Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher told Crisis magazine at the time that the health disparities that existed were a matter of life and death and a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering.

Fast-forward a decade and not much has changed.

Nearly 50 percent of African Americans suffer from some type of chronic disease -- including diabetes and certain cancers -- compared to 39 percent of the general population. The life expectancy of African Americans is five years less than that of whites due to conditions such as heart disease and stroke. Blacks have a higher prevalence of high blood pressure or hypertension than any other group. African Americans are twice as likely to have diabetes than whites and more likely to be overweight and obese than their white counterparts.

Even the nation's first black president has taken note of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as the striking health disparities between African Americans and other racial groups.

"We know that even as spiraling health care costs crush families of all races, African Americans are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anyone else," President Obama said in July 2009.

Currently an estimated 20 percent of African Americans are uninsured (pdf), contributing to the growing health disparities that exist in America's communities. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) introduced legislation to create an annual report on health disparities.

"Every person," said Davis, "should have access to high quality comprehensive health care that is affordable to them without regard to their ability to pay."

President Obama signed the historic Affordable Health Care Act in 2010, which extended health care coverage to 7 million African Americans.

"There's a lot in this law for people of color," said Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the health policy institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in an interview with The Root.

Smedley pointed to many provisions that are already in effect. For example, insurance companies can no longer deny claims based on pre-existing conditions, and young adults can now stay on their parents' health care plan until they reach age 26. That means 230,000 black women and 180,000 black men between the ages of 19 and 25 can continue to have health insurance under their parents' plan. The legislation also raised the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, providing 4 million more African Americans access to health insurance coverage. Seniors will now be able to get annual wellness exams, diabetes screenings and colorectal cancer screenings.

Read more at The Root.

African-American members of the U.S. House of Representatives recently held its special inauguration ceremony with new members, a new chairman and a renewed sense of commitment to continue the fight to ensure equality for blacks.

More than 300 people packed the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center's Congressional Auditorium to witness the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's biannual "A Ceremonial Swearing-In" on January 3. The two-hour event attracted spouses and family members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), leaders of national think tanks and corporate leaders, as well.

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who assumed the helm as the chairman of the CBC, said the organization will not be shut out of the national discourse on the economy and other vital issues.

"As the Congressional Black Caucus, we recognize the unique role that we have to play," said Fudge, 60. "We are not just the conscience of the Congress but of the country."

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David Bositis, the senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Northwest, said that despite the CBC's power among Democrats, they will have problems getting their agenda through Congress.

"They are in the political minority in the House and the House is run on a very short rope," Bositis said. "It is a very partisan place and the CBC will be on the losing end of most votes."

Read more at The Washington Informer.

Virginia’s Third District Congressman Robert “Bobby” Scott, a Democrat, joined the chorus of Representatives who voted against the recently pass legislation which allowed the Congress and the White House to avoid going over the fiscal cliff on New Year’s Day.

Scott said the legislation would add trillion of dollars to the existing federal deficit and may force legislators to cut the budgets of various social safety net programs supporting the poor and elderly to pay for the continuation of the Bush era tax cuts for people earning below $450,000.

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Not only does the legislation end the Bush era tax cuts for people earning above $450.000 a year, it also ends the federal tax holiday so there will be higher payroll taxes. There will be a delay in the automatic and drastic cuts to social programs or the defense budget for at least two months and it does not raise the debt ceiling, which President Obama wants the Congress to tackle on its next month.

It does extend the federal unemployment insurance for another year for some of the 12 million people still looking for work.

Scott outlined his position, highlighting that it adds some $3.9 trillion dollars to the national deficit.

“So how are we going to pay for all these new tax cuts,” Scott told the New Journal and Guide the day after the House voted to pass the bill.  ”The only option we have is to cut funding for Social Security, Medicaid, education, transportation and defense.”

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Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior research assistant at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies agrees that restructuring the Social Security and Medicare programs would be an option to bolster fiscal standing, but she does agree with privatizing it.

“I think that the Congressman took a principled plan,” said Leigh. “Once they revisit this issue they should consider raising taxes or changing how Social Security is funded and administered to strengthen it.”

Read more at the New Journal and Guide.

During the Congressional Black Caucus legislative week in 2004, there was a fundraising reception held for a young black politician from Chicago who hoped to represent his state in the U.S. Senate. The honorary chairs of the fundraiser were Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), Artur Davis (D-Ala.) and Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.). They helped raise money for Barack Obama, who went on to win the Illinois Senate seat. We all know how the story ends. In 2008 Obama became the first black president of the United States and in November was elected for a second term.

The young black politicians who helped raise funds for Obama were known as the "the New Breed." They arrived in Washington during the mid- to late 1990s and early 2000s and were part of the hip-hop generation, the generation born between 1965 and 1984. Jackson became a member of Congress in 1995. Ford joined him in the House two years later. In January 2003, Meek and Davis were sworn in. And just two years earlier, in 2001, Kwame Kilpatrick became the youngest mayor of Detroit when he was elected at age 31.

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But what happened to these young men who came into office with such ambition? Unfortunately, their aspirations met reality, Gillespie said.

Ford and Meek, both from political families, ran for Senate in their respective states and lost. Davis, a Harvard graduate and former assistant U.S. attorney, wanted to be the first black governor of Alabama but failed to secure the Democratic nomination in his state.

"The younger generation actually thought that there were greater opportunities for them to be able to act upon their ambition, and because of that they took risks that older black politicians and earlier cohorts of black politicians didn’t take. Unfortunately they [the risks] didn’t pay off," said Gillespie. "In Artur Davis’ case he miscalculated. He took the Obama moment and hoped that it would transfer to success in the Deep South."

The tragic disappointment of Jackson and Kilpatrick is another story. After 17 years in Congress, Jackson resigned from his seat on Nov. 21 to "focus on restoring" his health. Jackson was diagnosed with bipolar II depression this summer. The former congressman remains under federal investigation for misuse of campaign funds. Kilpatrick resigned as mayor of Detroit in 2008 after a corruption trial that included a sexting scandal. He served jail time and is currently in court again facing more corruption charges.

"Jesse Jackson, he wanted to break into the higher level offices that African Americans seldom win -- governor, senator," said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Kwame, he said, "was a young man who didn’t view the world as a potentially dangerous place. I think to some degree, he thought he could pretty much do what he wanted."

Read more at SC Black News.

As the nation's first African-American president, Barack Obama benefited from and expanded his party's enormous advantage among minority voters.

But as he prepares to start his second term, Obama hasn't managed to usher in behind him many Democrats who are minorities to top elected office. Conversely, Republicans — despite their highly limited support among non-Anglo voters — have managed to elevate more top politicians from minority backgrounds.

"It's just an objective, empirical fact that more members of minority groups have done well winning in the Republican Party," says Artur Davis, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who has switched allegiance to the GOP.

"The Republican Party has proven welcoming to minorities, and its voters will elect minorities as long as those minorities share their worldview, as long as those minorities are conservatives," Davis says.

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Still, reaching the top rungs can be difficult for African-American politicians in particular — because the vast majority of those holding elected office are in the South.

Neither Davis nor Ford was able to win election, and other blacks nominated to statewide posts in the South have done even more poorly.

In addition to the region's conservative nature, in the Deep South, "in terms of statewide elections, there's high racial polarization," says David Bositis, an expert on black politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Read more at NPR.

President Obama won a second term last week, but it wasn’t a great week for other African-American candidates.

Despite Obama’s big win, there remain no black senators, only one African-American was even nominated for major statewide office, and black candidates lost seven of eight competitive House races — six of them by very close margins.

The end result: the number of African-Americans in the House will likely remain the same in 2013 as it was this Congress.

As of this weekend, three of the eight House races that had yet to be called featured black Republicans. All of them appear to have lost.

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David Bositis, an expert on African-American politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said despite the close losses, there is reason for hope.

“Most years, black candidates get either large votes — 75 percent-plus — or small votes –10-30 percent,” Bositis said. “This year, there were quite a few black candidates who lost but got between 45 and 50 percent of the vote, which is very respectable.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

When black voters gave President Barack Obama 93 percent support on Election Day in defiance of predictions that they might sit it out this year, black leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief.

That encouraged those leaders to try to leverage more attention from both Obama and Congress. Although they waver over how much to demand from the president — particularly in light of defeated GOP challenger Mitt Romney's assertion that Obama gave "gifts" to minorities in exchange for their votes — they are delivering postelection wish lists to the president anyway.

"I think the president heard us loud and clear. The collective message was, 'Let's build on where we already are,'" the Rev. Al Sharpton told reporters after a White House meeting last week with a collection of advocates representing largely Democratic constituencies.

Specifically, Sharpton said, that means keeping the brunt of the looming "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts off the backs of the middle and working class.

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Nationally, Obama's share of the black vote was down slightly from four years ago. But in some key states, turnout was higher and had an impact, said David Bositis, an expert on black politics and voting at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Blacks made up 15 percent of the electorate in Ohio, up from 11 percent in 2008. And 97 percent of those votes went for Obama, leading Bositis to say Obama's margin of victory in the state came from black voters.

In Michigan, the black share of the vote grew from 12 percent in 2008 to 16 percent in 2012, according to exit polls.

"Michigan was one of the states the two parties jostled around, and eventually Republicans decided they were not going to win, and one of the reasons was the big increase in the black vote," Bositis said.

Read more at U.S. News and World Report.

One month after the re-election of President Barack Obama, more than 40 Black leaders convened this week to begin crafting what appears to be a strategy by which to hold politicians accountable to a suffering Black community that has given overwhelming political allegiance to President Obama and the Democratic Party.

“We just concluded a historic four-hour discussion about the state of the nation, the state of Black America, the challenges and problems we face, as well as the excitement we feel about our ability to impact the challenges of now and the future,” National Urban League President/CEO Marc Morial began the afternoon press conference Dec. 3. “We embrace our historic role as the conscience of the nation and we are united in our mission to support and protect the well-being of the African-American community, low income and working class Americans across the nation.”

Immediately, Morial read a joint statement from the group, focusing on what politicians and economists are calling the “fiscal cliff”, a year-end convergence of tax hikes that could throw already economically destitute people into a tail spin.

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The meeting, led by Morial at a Washington, D.C. hotel, was convened by him, Melanie Campbell, president/CEO, the National Coalition of Black Civic Participation; the Rev. Al Sharpton, president/CEO, the National Action Network; and Ben Jealous, president/CEO of the NAACP. A string of other stalwart Black organizations were also represented, including the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies; the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the National Congress of Black Women; the Black Women’s Roundtable; the Hip Hop Caucus; and the Institute of the Black World – 21st Century.

Read more at Politic365.