The strong showing from blacks and Hispanics at the polls on Tuesday that helped re-elect President Barack Obama and boosted several Democrats into office across the country will force the Republican Party to change its strategy in the future, says Dr. David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

“This was not simply a re-election, but 2012 will be the last campaign where one of the major parties seeks to get elected, solely with the white vote,” Bositis said during a briefing today on the Role of African American voters. “A successful political movement will have to appeal to a broader swath other than non-Hispanic white people.”

The 2012 election was a clear showing that America is now multi-racial, multi ethnic country, he said.

According to the Joint Center, when Democrat John Kerry faced George W. Bush in 2004, 79 percent of American electorate was non-Hispanic white. By 2008, that percentage had dropped to 74 and this year, it was 72 percent.

At the same time, the share of African American voters and the share of Hispanic voters increased.

The share of African American voters has grown from 11 to 13 percent, while the share of Hispanic voters has grown from 6 to 10 percent, Bositis said.

Read more at Black America Web.

The Grand Old Party is still asking why and engaging in Presidential Election post mortem after their candidate Governor Mitt Romney lost the election. Over the weekend some Republicans began blaming a possible loss of momentum on Superstorm Sandy. Since Wednesday morning, they are simply pointing fingers. For many the answer is clear; the GOP walked away from their prior umbrella approach to include the nation’s minority populations.

The Party walked away from something former RNC Chairman Michael Steele made a priority while leading the RNC. Steele included outreach to those in “Harlem” and to those in “Little Havana” as well as other minority communities.

President Obama, prior to the election, told White House reporters Romney would “lose” because he did not reach out to the Latino population.

David Bositis, Senior Fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, contends “One of the big stories of this campaign is how much Hispanics were alienated by the Republican Party.” Stories on the black vote are not as newsy. Bositis contends, “African Americans were already alienated before the campaign started.” Translation from the media mindset; that was nothing new.

Read more at AprilDRyan.com.

In some ways, the hardest thing President Obama had to do was get reelected.

Ezra Klein, a business columnist for The Washington Post, wrote Wednesday that “President Obama’s reelection, ironically, isn’t about hope and change. The hope is largely gone, but the changes are already happening.”

Klein pointed out that health care reform had passed and that just by being reelected Obama had managed to confirm that it would become the law of the land when most of the remaining elements of Obamacare take effect in 2014.

The Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as the alternative minimum tax and the payroll tax cut. The president already has said he will not sign legislation extending all three tax cuts.

If that’s the case, then part of the problem of raising revenue is somewhat resolved and the legislation is already on the books.

Add to that the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, which will set new regulations for Wall Street and has already passed into law.

The resolutions to three sticky problems are already on the books and Obama doesn’t have to fight with the Republican-led House of Representatives again to get any of it passed.

“So while in 2008 his election was a vote for hope, in 2012 his reelection carries a guarantee of change,” Klein wrote.

One also may argue that it simply was more of the smart planning that Obama and his team have been known for.

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The GOP’s strategy was to rely largely on white men and shave off small chunks, 5-7 percent of black and Latino votes, a significant percentage of women, although not a majority, to put Romney over the top.

It clearly didn’t work.

“2012 will be the last campaign where one of the major parties seeks to get elected solely with the white vote,” David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said Wednesday in a forum to discuss the impact of the black vote during this year’s campaign.

Bositis said the black vote was crucial in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida, the latter where votes are still being counted and Obama maintains a narrow lead—and Romney today conceded the state to Obama.

In Ohio, particularly, the percentage of black voters increased by 4 percentage points, from 11 to 15 percent of the total turnout, compared to 2008. And Obama won 96 percent of the black vote on Tuesday.

“That’s where President Obama’s margin of victory came from, the black vote in Ohio,” Bositis said.

Read more at the Atlanta Black Star.

The impending and dreaded so-called fiscal cliff is a deadline on a group of bills and legislative acts that currently govern almost all facets of the federal government, with many of the current laws, tax codes and more set to change or expire simultaneously.

This is a deadline that if not avoided by timely and effective congressional action, will trigger severe and nearly immediate funding cuts—sequestration—in federal programs and services along with tax increases estimated in the $650 billion range, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The major portion (approximately $500 billion) would be caused by increased taxes when the Bush and other tax cuts expire, combined with Congress’ refusal to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

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Many in the nation’s economic community feel these actions, or Congress’ lack of action, by midnight Dec. 31, 2012., could possibly trigger another deep recession.

Economist Wilhelmina Leigh said this impasse is not due to any one thing, nor is it attributable to recent economic shortfalls, but has been brewing for years. Leigh is a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.

“The U.S. has been on a collision course for the last decade or so, where we’re spending more and taking in less in revenues,” said Leigh. “We haven’t been able to change that pattern of behavior because members of Congress weren’t really willing to, and now all sorts of things have converged—our deficit each year has been adding up over time, so now we have a huge debt.”

Read more at Our Weekly.

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.

If Republicans and Democrats don’t reach a 12th hour deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” many lower-and middle-income families will feel deep pain, according to analysis by economists and respected think tanks.

The Budget Control Act, set to expire at the end of the year, will usher in draconian social spending and defense cuts along with tax hikes on all Americans if lawmakers can’t get a deal done. Much of the impact of such a decision –or non-decision – will come later in the year, some changes will be immediate.

“The most immediate one is the payroll tax,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a fiscal policy and public program research group. “That’s going to come right out of your paycheck, your first is one going to change.”

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Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, an independent research group in Washington, D.C., said that uncertainty about the direction of the country’s economic policy is just as bad the specter of the fiscal cliff, because it becomes harder for businesses, domestic and abroad, and American families to plan for the future.

“You don’t know exactly where the shortfall will hit you,” said Leigh. “It’s going to show up in a lot little ways.”

Read more at the Greene County Democrat.

In Bibb County, Ala., on Tuesday, a Democrat named Walter Sansing was in a race for county commissioner against a Republican named Charles Beasley, who was on the ballot despite the inconvenience of having died several weeks earlier. Mr. Beasley won.

That is what kind of Election Day it was in the South. Elsewhere Republicans may be wailing and gnashing teeth, but in the mid- and Deep South states, they had yet another cycle of unchecked domination.

For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans took over the Arkansas legislature, and won the state’s last United States House of Representatives seat held by a Democrat. North Carolina elected a Republican governor and took over at least three Congressional seats. The last Democrat in a statewide office in Alabama was defeated. In most Southern states, the margins of victory for Mitt Romney were even larger than the lopsided margins for John McCain four years ago.

“It was kind of weird on Wednesday for Republicans here,” said Jason Tolbert, a conservative blogger and a columnist for The Arkansas News Bureau. His conclusion: “In Arkansas, we’re a right-of-center state in a nation that’s drifting further and further to the left.”

Despite the local victories, Republicans in the South are aware that many of the post-election analyses have found the party’s image problems to be in the approach and the appeals that have led to its near total victory here. Southern Republican politicians continue to cruise smoothly to victory on the votes of white, socially conservative evangelicals. While some leaders have succeeded with a more centrist platform, like Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, a large part of the Southern electorate still rewards politicians who promise to crack down hard on criminals and illegal immigrants, assume a defiant tone when speaking about the federal government and dismiss the idea of gay rights out of hand.

Nationally, this approach has been putting up diminishing returns.

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“If the Republicans don’t adapt and the Democrats become the dominant party, the government is going to start imposing policies on the Southern states,” said David A. Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Read more at The New York Times.

The American people have decided that President Obama should be given another term in office to continue leading the nation toward economic recovery and expanded opportunity for all. Amid the rancor of the 2012 campaign, an electorate that was focused on the economy – and presented with two starkly different visions for fixing it – chose to support the President’s program aimed at balanced deficit reduction, job growth, health care reform and public investment in education, technology and infrastructure.

While Governor Romney fell short of creating a winning coalition, we commend him and his family for their spirited and enduring commitment to public service and to the very highest ideals of our nation during this hard fought campaign.  We hope and trust that his party will continue its quest to establish a vision and message that will resonate with people of all races and from all segments of society.
 

View the entire press release by clicking the link below.

Before coming of age as a student at Hampton University, Carl Gray was a staunch, frequently lone defender of his conservative values. Ask him to recall a specific time where classmates or friends really challenged or debated him on his politics, he can’t remember one -- because a teacher or administrator always got in the way to defend liberal policies and the fellow students that believed them.

“That in itself was discouraging to know that teachers and professors wouldn't even allow for students to have their own discussions regarding political beliefs,” said Gray. “It was 'My way or the highway' in those classes. You either agree with the liberal philosophy or face the wrath. I often felt that I was being indoctrinated rather than taught. I actually learned more on my own, by reading both sides and making my own conclusion.”

Gray’s story is a common one on historically black college campuses around the country. As terms like "redistricting," "job creation" and "equal opportunity" hover around the culture of African Americans and their vote, a growing number of HBCU students and young alumni are supporting conservative values. It is a counter-cultural revolution in the face of traditional politics championed by black college students, but a throwback to the values that conservative HBCU students and alums say aren’t far from what black colleges have always promoted, and need for future progress.

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The increase of HBCU students and alums identifying as conservative or Republican is consistent with an uptick in black participation within the Republican Party overall.

In an August 2012 study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the number of black delegates participating in the Republican National Convention increased 20.5 percent from 2008, with 47 delegates comprising 2.1 percent of the total delegation and up from 39 delegates who appeared at the 2008 RNC Convention in Minneapolis.

According to The Joint Center, which has surveyed black Republican participation since 1984, conservative partisanship dropped from nearly 15 percent in 2004 to just over seven percent in the 2008 presidential election.


Read more at The Huffington Post.

While pundits and Obama supporters were moaning Thursday morning about how Mitt Romney gained momentum by aggressively going after the president in their first debate, fact-checkers were busy sorting out the truth from half-truth from outright inaccuracies.

Romney, it appears, certainly had more swagger, but Obama had stronger command of the facts.

The Republican nominee rejected parts of his own tax plan, denying he intended to increase tax breaks only for the rich. He also failed to respond with details when asked where he would get the money from to cut taxes for all Americans, increase defense spending and not increase the deficit.

His quick answer was he would put more Americans to work in better paying jobs, which would mean more people paying taxes, which would help close the gap.

Romney’s advisers before the debate essentially told him to stick with jabbing the president, tagging Obama with the still struggling aspects of the economy and not get mired down in the details. Leave the policy wonk patter to Obama and appeal to emotion.

Clearly, the plan worked, at least for a night.
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In an interview last month, David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said that Obama and the Democrats had not done a good job of making clear how the Romney plan would hurt Americans, especially the poor and people of color, even during Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic Party’s nomination at this year’s convention.

The Democrats, Bositis said, did a terrible job, “including Obama—his worst performance is not talking about how much he’s done…”

Read more at the Atlanta Black Star.