Just how important has and is the black vote to either party in the grand scheme??

[Greed]

Latino groups to Obama: You owe Latinos the election, now pass immigration reform

Enjoy you place in the grand scheme.

Latino groups to Obama: You owe Latinos the election, now pass immigration reform
By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 5 hrs ago

In initially off-the-record comments to the Des Moines Register's editors in October, President Barack Obama said that if he won re-election, he would owe it to Latinos.

"Should I win a second term," Obama said, "a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."
Exit polls show the president's prediction was on the mark.

The national exit poll estimated that about 10 percent of those who voted in the presidential election identified as Hispanic, marking Latinos' highest-ever share of the electorate. Latinos backed Obama over challenger Mitt Romney a resounding 71 to 27 percent.

Gary Segura, a pollster for Latino Decisions and a professor at Stanford University, told reporters on Wednesday that he believes the exit poll understated Latinos' support for Obama by 4 points, and that the president actually won 75 percent of their vote.

Segura estimates that Latinos gave Obama an extra 2.3 percentage points in the popular vote. If Romney had managed to nab just 35 percent of Latinos, he would have won the popular vote, Segura said. (President George W. Bush captured at least that share of Latinos in 2000 and 2004, showing Republicans are backsliding with the group.)

Leaders of immigrant rights and Latino groups told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday that Obama owes his second term to Latino voters, and should repay them by passing comprehensive immigration reform. Obama promised to pass a law legalizing many of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country while he campaigned four years ago, and he's been chastised by Latino leaders for breaking his promise.

"Obama is going to return to the White House more energized to take these issues seriously," said Ben Monterroso, the director of Mi Familia Vota, a national organization that encourages Latinos to vote.

Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said Latino voters had sent a message to Obama. "We expect leadership on comprehensive immigration reform in 2013," he said. "To both sides we say: 'No more excuses.'"

The heavy pro-Obama Latino vote also sends a message to the Republican Party, which needs to make inroads in the fast-growing Hispanic community to survive. Ana Navarro, a Miami-based Republican political strategist who had warned Republicans to take a softer tone on immigration if they wanted to win the election, wrote on Twitter that gaining only 27 percent of the Latino vote is a "disgrace."

Most Latino voters said in the Latino Decisions poll that the most important issues to them in this election were the economy and jobs. Thirty-five percent of the voters listed immigration reform as their key issue.

"Our party needs to realize that it's too old and too white and too male, and it needs to figure out how to catch up with the demographics of the country before it's too late," Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union, told Politico. "Our party needs a lot of work to do if we expect to be competitive in the near future."

 

[geechiedan]

Re: Latino groups to Obama: You owe Latinos the election, now pass immigration reform

There is no single reason why Mitt Romney lost six in ten of electoral votes last Tuesday, but it probably starts with this graph: The bloc of voters that conservatives rely on is eroding and the bloc of voters that conservatives used to be able to safely ignore is growing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...s-gifts-and-takers-is-a-losing-vision/265324/

 

[Greed]

In a first, black voter turnout rate passes whites

In a first, black voter turnout rate passes whites
By HOPE YEN | Associated Press
1 hr 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — America's blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.

Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.

Census data and exit polling show that whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible voters for the next decade. Last year's heavy black turnout came despite concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the 2012 elections for the AP using census data on eligible voters and turnout, along with November's exit polling. He estimated total votes for Obama and Romney under a scenario where 2012 turnout rates for all racial groups matched those in 2004. Overall, 2012 voter turnout was roughly 58 percent, down from 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.

The analysis also used population projections to estimate the shares of eligible voters by race group through 2030. The numbers are supplemented with material from the Pew Research Center and George Mason University associate professor Michael McDonald, a leader in the field of voter turnout who separately reviewed aggregate turnout levels across states, as well as AP interviews with the Census Bureau and other experts. The bureau is scheduled to release data on voter turnout in May.

Overall, the findings represent a tipping point for blacks, who for much of America's history were disenfranchised and then effectively barred from voting until passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

But the numbers also offer a cautionary note to both Democrats and Republicans after Obama won in November with a historically low percentage of white supporters. While Latinos are now the biggest driver of U.S. population growth, they still trail whites and blacks in turnout and electoral share, because many of the Hispanics in the country are children or noncitizens.

In recent weeks, Republican leaders have urged a "year-round effort" to engage black and other minority voters, describing a grim future if their party does not expand its core support beyond white males.

The 2012 data suggest Romney was a particularly weak GOP candidate, unable to motivate white voters let alone attract significant black or Latino support. Obama's personal appeal and the slowly improving economy helped overcome doubts and spur record levels of minority voters in a way that may not be easily replicated for Democrats soon.

Romney would have erased Obama's nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004, according to Frey's analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

"The 2012 turnout is a milestone for blacks and a huge potential turning point," said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University who has written extensively on black politicians. "What it suggests is that there is an 'Obama effect' where people were motivated to support Barack Obama. But it also means that black turnout may not always be higher, if future races aren't as salient."

Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant who is advising GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible 2016 presidential contender, says the last election reaffirmed that the Republican Party needs "a new message, a new messenger and a new tone." Change within the party need not be "lock, stock and barrel," Ayres said, but policy shifts such as GOP support for broad immigration legislation will be important to woo minority voters over the longer term.

"It remains to be seen how successful Democrats are if you don't have Barack Obama at the top of the ticket," he said.

___

In Ohio, a battleground state where the share of eligible black voters is more than triple that of other minorities, 27-year-old Lauren Howie of Cleveland didn't start out thrilled with Obama in 2012. She felt he didn't deliver on promises to help students reduce college debt, promote women's rights and address climate change, she said. But she became determined to support Obama as she compared him with Romney.

"I got the feeling Mitt Romney couldn't care less about me and my fellow African-Americans," said Howie, an administrative assistant at Case Western Reserve University's medical school who is paying off college debt.

Howie said she saw some Romney comments as insensitive to the needs of the poor. "A white Mormon swimming in money with offshore accounts buying up companies and laying off their employees just doesn't quite fit my idea of a president," she said. "Bottom line, Romney was not someone I was willing to trust with my future."

The numbers show how population growth will translate into changes in who votes over the coming decade:

—The gap between non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black turnout in 2008 was the smallest on record, with voter turnout at 66.1 percent and 65.2 percent, respectively; turnout for Latinos and non-Hispanic Asians trailed at 50 percent and 47 percent. Rough calculations suggest that in 2012, 2 million to 5 million fewer whites voted compared with 2008, even though the pool of eligible white voters had increased.

—Unlike other minority groups, the rise in voting for the slow-growing black population is due to higher turnout. While blacks make up 12 percent of the share of eligible voters, they represented 13 percent of total 2012 votes cast, according to exit polling. That was a repeat of 2008, when blacks "outperformed" their eligible voter share for the first time on record.

—Latinos now make up 17 percent of the population but 11 percent of eligible voters, due to a younger median age and lower rates of citizenship and voter registration. Because of lower turnout, they represented just 10 percent of total 2012 votes cast. Despite their fast growth, Latinos aren't projected to surpass the share of eligible black voters until 2024, when each group will be roughly 13 percent. By then, 1 in 3 eligible voters will be nonwhite.

—In 2026, the total Latino share of voters could jump to as high as 16 percent, if nearly 11 million immigrants here illegally become eligible for U.S. citizenship. Under a proposed bill in the Senate, those immigrants would have a 13-year path to citizenship. The share of eligible white voters could shrink to less than 64 percent in that scenario. An estimated 80 percent of immigrants here illegally, or 8.8 million, are Latino, although not all will meet the additional requirements to become citizens.

"The 2008 election was the first year when the minority vote was important to electing a U.S. president. By 2024, their vote will be essential to victory," Frey said. "Democrats will be looking at a landslide going into 2028 if the new Hispanic voters continue to favor Democrats."

___

Even with demographics seeming to favor Democrats in the long term, it's unclear whether Obama's coalition will hold if blacks or younger voters become less motivated to vote or decide to switch parties.

Minority turnout tends to drop in midterm congressional elections, contributing to larger GOP victories as happened in 2010, when House control flipped to Republicans.

The economy and policy matter. Exit polling shows that even with Obama's re-election, voter support for a government that does more to solve problems declined from 51 percent in 2008 to 43 percent last year, bolstering the view among Republicans that their core principles of reducing government are sound.

The party's "Growth and Opportunity Project" report released last month by national leaders suggests that Latinos and Asians could become more receptive to GOP policies once comprehensive immigration legislation is passed.

Whether the economy continues its slow recovery also will shape voter opinion, including among blacks, who have the highest rate of unemployment.

Since the election, optimism among nonwhites about the direction of the country and the economy has waned, although support for Obama has held steady. In an October AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of nonwhites said the nation was heading in the right direction; that's dropped to 52 percent in a new AP-GfK poll. Among non-Hispanic whites, however, the numbers are about the same as in October, at 28 percent.

Democrats in Congress merit far lower approval ratings among nonwhites than does the president, with 49 percent approving of congressional Democrats and 74 percent approving of Obama.

William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, says that in previous elections where an enduring majority of voters came to support one party, the president winning re-election — William McKinley in 1900, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 — attracted a larger turnout over his original election and also received a higher vote total and a higher share of the popular vote. None of those occurred for Obama in 2012.

Only once in the last 60 years has a political party been successful in holding the presidency more than eight years — Republicans from 1980-1992.

"This doesn't prove that Obama's presidency won't turn out to be the harbinger of a new political order," Galston says. "But it does warrant some analytical caution."

Early polling suggests that Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton could come close in 2016 to generating the level of support among nonwhites as Obama did in November, when he won 80 percent of their vote. In a Fox News poll in February, 75 percent of nonwhites said they thought Clinton would make a good president, outpacing the 58 percent who said that about Vice President Joe Biden.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP, predicts closely fought elections in the near term and worries that GOP-controlled state legislatures will step up efforts to pass voter ID and other restrictions to deter blacks and other minorities from voting. In 2012, African-Americans were able to turn out in large numbers only after a very determined get-out-the-vote effort by the Obama campaign and black groups, he said.

Jealous says the 2014 midterm election will be the real bellwether for black turnout. "Black turnout set records this year despite record attempts to suppress the black vote," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/first-black-voter-turnout-rate-passes-whites-115957314.html

 

[thoughtone]

Re: In a first, black voter turnout rate passes whites


The thread avoider strikes again!

 

[Greed]

GOP has tough choices on Voting Rights Act

GOP has tough choices on Voting Rights Act
By BILL BARROW | Associated Press
55 mins ago

ATLANTA (AP) — When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act last week, it handed Republicans tough questions with no easy answers over how, and where, to attract voters even GOP leaders say the party needs to stay nationally competitive.

The decision caught Republicans between newfound state autonomy that conservatives covet and the law's popularity among minority, young and poor voters who tend to align with Democrats. It's those voters that Republicans are eyeing to expand and invigorate the GOP's core of older, white Americans.

National GOP Chairman Reince Priebus began that effort well before the court's decision by promising, among other initiatives, to hire non-white party activists to engage directly with black and Latino voters. Yet state and national Republicans reacted to the Voting Rights Act decision with a flurry of activity and comments that may not fit neatly into the national party's vision.

Congressional leaders must decide whether to try to rewrite the provision the court struck, but it's not clear how such an effort would fare in the Democratic-led Senate and the GOP-controlled House. And at the state level, elected Republicans are enacting tighter voting restrictions that Democrats blast as harmful to their traditional base of supporters and groups the Republicans say they want to attract.

States like North Carolina and Virginia provide apt examples of the potential fallout. An influx of non-whites have turned those Republican strongholds into battlegrounds in the last two presidential elections, and minority voters helped President Barack Obama win both states in 2008 and Virginia again in 2012. Nationally, Republican Mitt Romney lost among African-Americans by about 85 percentage points and Latinos by about 44 percentage points, margins that virtually ensure a Democratic victory.

Yet presidential math doesn't necessarily motivate Republicans who control statehouses and congressional districts in states most affected by the Voting Rights Act. Core GOP supporters in the region react favorably to voter identification laws and broad-based critiques of federal authority.

Against that backdrop, Southern Republicans celebrated Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion that effectively frees all or parts of 15 states with a history of racial discrimination from having to get advanced federal approval for any election procedure.

The so-called "preclearance" provision anchored the law that Congress renewed four times since its 1965 passage as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement for black Americans. The law contains an "opt-out" provision that allowed a jurisdiction to ask a federal court for release from preclearance if it has established a record of non-discrimination. Roberts said that process — never used successfully by an entire state — wasn't enough.

"The court recognized that states can fairly design our own (district) maps and run our own elections without the federal government," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a statement.

Citizens can still sue to overturn state laws, but they'll likely have to prove discrimination after the fact, rather than local authorities having to convince federal officials in advance that a law wouldn't discriminate.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican running for governor, said: "I do not believe we have the institutional bigotry like we had before."

GOP officials in Texas and Mississippi promised within hours of the decision to enforce new laws requiring voters to show identification at polls. The U.S. Justice Department's civil rights lawyers had frozen the Mississippi law while they considered effects on minority voters, while a panel of federal judges in Washington blocked the Texas law because of its potential to harm low-income and minority voters. North Carolina Republicans said they'd enact their own voter identification law. Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed new congressional district maps — tilted to Republican advantage — that federal authorities would have had to review.

But in Washington, Republicans like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia embraced the nuances of Roberts' ruling. The court didn't actually strike down preclearance, instead tossing rules that determined which jurisdictions got oversight. Congress is free to rewrite those parameters and revive advance review, Roberts wrote.

"I'm hopeful Congress will put politics aside," Cantor said, "and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected."

The white Republican recalled his recent trip to Alabama with black Democratic Rep. John Lewis on the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, was beaten repeatedly as a young civil rights advocate during the 1960s. The commemoration, Cantor said, was "a profound experience."

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who helped lead the law's latest reauthorization when the GOP ran Congress in 2006, said the court "disappointed" him. Lingering discrimination, he said, compels Congress to update the act, "especially for minorities."

"There's no easy answer" for the GOP, said Henry Barbour, a high-profile member of the Republican National Committee. The Mississippi native conceded his personal views demonstrate the complications.

Barbour helped write the national party's post-election analysis calling for better outreach to minorities and urged fellow Republicans that "our tone is important, on this and any other issue." But he's clear in his support for the decision and what it means in Mississippi.

Blatantly racist laws like poll taxes and literacy tests once made preclearance necessary, Barbour said. "But when you have to go hat-in-hand to Washington every time you want to move a polling place," then it's evolved into "federal harassment that's gone on way too long," he added.

Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia said Congress is capable of writing a new national formula based on the latest voter registration and turnout data "if everyone will sit back and take a deep breath."

Barbour disputed that forecast, but not because of opposition from Southerners. Rather, he said, "People in these other states don't want this scrutiny coming to them."

That frustration reflects part of the 2006 renewal debate in Congress. Despite fewer than three dozen dissenting votes, some Southern members said the extra scrutiny should apply nationwide or not at all.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who supported ending preclearance, said Republicans should emphasize parts of the act still in use. Besides a general discrimination ban, the feds can invoke preclearance for jurisdictions with new patterns of mistreating minorities. That "opt-in" rule has affected Arkansas, New Mexico and some cities and counties.

Others in the GOP say election results form a defense. Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina party chairman, noted that Gov. Nikki Haley, of Indian descent, appointed then-Rep. Tim Scott as the modern South's first black U.S. senator. He'll seek a full term next year.

"We're walking the walk," Dawson said.

Of course, Southern states also produced the widest margins among white voters in favor of Mitt Romney and John McCain in their losses to Obama.

Chris LaCivita, a Republican consultant in Virginia, offered one more potential comfort for Republicans: The relationship between Democrats and whites. Republicans need more minority votes in presidential years, but Democrats need more white Southerners if they want to regain control of Congress or many statehouses.

"Democrats might want to think long and hard about making a racially based argument," LaCivita said, "considering voters they need don't like having to pay for the sins of their fathers."

http://news.yahoo.com/gop-tough-choices-voting-rights-act-151906183.html

 

[Greed]

Why New Jersey and Virginia matter to the GOP - and its future with black voters

Column: Why New Jersey and Virginia matter to the GOP - and its future with black voters
By Reihan Salam | Reuters
Fri, Nov 1, 2013

Next week's election will be an important one for the future of the GOP. In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie is up for re-election, and by all accounts he is set to defeat his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Barbara Buono, by a wide margin. Christie is widely considered a serious candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and his ability to win support among independents and Democrats in his home state will be a central part of his appeal.

But in Virginia, it increasingly looks as though Terry McAuliffe, an entrepreneur and investor best known as a political ally of former President Bill Clinton, will defeat Ken Cuccinelli, a staunch conservative much admired by the Tea Party right. At least some conservative activists saw Cuccinelli, who as Virginia's attorney general played a leading role in constitutional challenges against the Affordable Care Act and other Obama administration initiatives, as a potential presidential contender. A bruising defeat against McAuliffe will put an end to such talk.

There are many things that separate Christie from Cuccinelli. Having served as governor for the better part of the last four years, Christie is a familiar figure. He began his tenure with a series of polarizing confrontations with New Jersey's powerful public employee unions, yet he has spent the last year on a more conciliatory note, motivated in part by a desire to help his state recover from the damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy. In a heavily Democratic state, Christie has distanced himself from congressional Republicans, and he has framed himself as a pragmatic reformer who stands above the political fray. This position is particularly valuable in light of parlous state of the GOP brand. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that the Republican party now has a 22 percent positive rating and a 53 percent negative rating across the country, and it's a safe bet that the picture is even worse in New Jersey.

Cuccinelli, unlike Christie, has long been an unapologetically ideological conservative, and in the wake of the government shutdown, Democrats have succeeded in characterizing him as politically extreme. Whereas Virginia's current governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, fought his Democratic opponent to a standstill in northern Virginia's populous suburbs, Cuccinelli is running far behind Cuccinelli in this same all-important region.

There is one difference between Christie and Cuccinelli that has yet to attract enough attention, and that is how both Republicans are faring with African-Americans. A new survey of Virginia voters from the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy finds that while Cuccinelli wins a plurality (44 percent) of the white vote, he has the support of only 4 percent of black voters. Meanwhile, recent polls have found that Christie attracts around 30 percent of black voters. Even if Christie doesn't perform quite as well with African-Americans on Election Day, there is little doubt that he'll break into double-digits.

Since the New Deal era, Democrats have tended to outperform among black voters, compared to Republicans. Yet the gap has become particularly pronounced over the past decade. In 2004, George W. Bush won 11 percent of black voters, roughly in line with how Republicans fared with African-Americans since the late 1970s. In 2012, however, Mitt Romney won a mere 6 percent of the black vote. Jamelle Bouie of the Daily Beast has thus argued that Republicans would be well-advised to focus on wooing black voters, as doing so would greatly damage Democratic prospects in swing states like Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida.

And while Republican political strategists have tended to focus on the growing Latino electorate, it is important to keep in mind that while African-Americans represent a smaller share of the U.S. population than Latinos (13.1 percent compared to 16.9 percent), they represent a slightly larger share of the electorate. This reflects the fact that African-Americans are more likely to be eligible to vote than their Latino counterparts, a disproportionately large share of whom are not citizens, and turnout rates among eligible African-American voters are higher than turnout rates among eligible Latino voters. So while blacks represented 12 percent of the population of eligible voters in 2012, they represented 13 percent of the voters who turned out that year. Latinos represented 11 percent of the eligible population and 10 percent of the voting population.

The harder question is how Republicans might appeal to black voters. The party has embraced a wide array of conservative African-American candidates in the hope that they would have crossover appeal. After Jim DeMint resigned from his U.S. Senate seat, he was replaced by South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott, an African-American aligned with the South Carolina GOP's Tea Party wing. Former congressman Allen West and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson have also garnered great enthusiasm in conservative circles, and the retired corporate executive Herman Cain was briefly one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. So far, at least, black Tea Party candidates have failed to make deep inroads among black voters. For example, Cuccinelli's running mate, E.W. Jackson, is an African- American Christian minister known for his apocalyptic tone, and the Wason Center finds that he has the support of only 1 percent of black voters in Virginia, a number well within the margin of error.

Christie's re-election effort offers a different model for appealing to African-Americans. Rather than rely on surrogates, Christie has spent considerable time campaigning in New Jersey's heavily-black urban cores. His praise of President Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy earned him the respect, if not the support, of many black Democrats last year, and he's won at least some of them over to his side by championing school reform, criminal justice reform and other measures that will have a palpable impact on African-American communities. And though Christie has often emphasized the importance of spending discipline, he has been open to state and federal policies, like the new Medicaid expansion, that are seen as beneficial to low-income households.

It's not at all clear that a Republican presidential candidate could win over African-American voters across the country quite as successfully as Christie has won them over in New Jersey. But Christie has demonstrated that shifting to the center can pay off.

http://news.yahoo.com/column-why-jersey-virginia-matter-gop-future-black-193613358.html

 

[Greed]

Eye on 2016, Clintons Rebuild Bond With Blacks

Eye on 2016, Clintons Rebuild Bond With Blacks
By AMY CHOZICK and JONATHAN MARTIN
Published: November 30, 2013

Inside Bright Hope Baptist Church, the luminaries of Philadelphia’s black political world gathered for the funeral of former Representative William H. Gray III in July. Dozens of politicians — city, state and federal — packed the pews as former President Bill Clinton offered a stirring eulogy, quoting Scripture and proudly telling the crowd that he was once described as “the only white man in America who knew all the verses to ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing.’ ”

But it was the presence and behavior of Hillary Rodham Clinton that most intrigued former Gov. Edward G. Rendell: During a quiet moment, Mrs. Clinton leaned over to the governor and pressed him for details about the backgrounds, and the influence, of the assembled black leaders.

Since Mrs. Clinton left the secretary of state post in February, she and her husband have sought to soothe and strengthen their relationship with African-Americans, the constituency that was most scarred during her first bid for the presidency. Five years after remarks by Mr. Clinton about Barack Obama deeply strained the Clintons’ bond with African-Americans, the former first family is setting out to ensure that there is no replay of such trouble in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton used two of her most high-profile speeches, including one before a black sorority convention, to address minority voting rights — an explosive issue among African-Americans since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in June. A month after Mr. Gray’s funeral, Mrs. Clinton and her husband both asked to speak at the service for Bill Lynch, a black political strategist who is credited with the election of David N. Dinkins as mayor of New York, and stayed for well over two hours in a crowd full of well-connected mourners. And there have been constant personal gestures, especially by the former president.

“I think that this is an effort to repair whatever damage they felt may have been done in ’08,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton “know that there are some who have lingering questions, if not antipathy, towards them,” Mr. Sharpton said.

This task has taken on new urgency given the Democratic Party’s push to the left, away from the centrist politics with which the Clintons are identified. Strong support from black voters could serve as a bulwark for Mrs. Clinton against a liberal primary challenge should she decide to run for president in 2016. It would be difficult for a progressive candidate, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to rise if the former first lady takes back the black voters she lost to Mr. Obama and retains the blue-collar white voters who flocked to her.

Her appearance before the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta in July, which she opened by offering condolences to the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was killed in Florida last year, and her voting rights address to the American Bar Association in August drew significant attention among black leaders.

“That speech that she gave regarding voting suppression was very, very significant and meaningful,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress. Mr. Clyburn, who clashed sharply with Mr. Clinton in 2008, said Mrs. Clinton was “now in a very good place with the African-American community.”

Tavis Smiley, a black commentator, argued that this was because “they have now learned the important lesson that there’s a distinction between a coronation and an election.”

The Clintons appear to be taking nothing for granted. Mr. Clinton did not just attend the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington on the National Mall in August, but also showed up at Arlington Cemetery in June to honor Medgar Evers on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. In May, Mr. Clinton was the commencement speaker at Howard University in Washington, posing for pictures with all who asked and sitting on stage next to one of the school’s best-known graduates, L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor from Virginia, a longtime friend and rival of Mr. Clinton’s.

In private, Mr. Clinton is frequently in touch with black leaders. Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and the ranking member on the House panel on government oversight, got a handwritten note from the former president over the summer commending him on his leadership on the committee.

“He has made an effort to reach out over and over again through the years,” Mr. Cummings said.

The congressman recalled Mr. Clinton’s visits to his church in Baltimore and a phone call he got from the former president inquiring about the health of his mother, whose name Mr. Clinton recalled.

Such personal touches, for which the Clintons are famous, have never been more important as Mrs. Clinton considers a second presidential bid.

Mr. Clinton has a rich, if occasionally fraught, history with African-Americans. He was a New South governor and a progressive on race who would eventually be called “the first black president” by the author Toni Morrison. But he infuriated blacks in 2008 when, after Mr. Obama won a big South Carolina primary victory, he seemed to dismiss the achievement by reminding the press that the Rev. Jesse Jackson had won the state twice and calling Mr. Obama’s antiwar position “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”

Many African-Americans took Mr. Clinton’s fairy tale comment to mean that Mr. Obama’s candidacy itself was a hopeless fantasy.

“It did get a little strained at times,” Mr. Cummings acknowledged. “I will never forget when President Clinton made that comment about the fairy tale. That was a painful moment for a lot of African-Americans, because we didn’t see it as a fairy tale.”

He added, however, that he believed most African-Americans had moved on from their hurt, in no small part because of Mrs. Clinton’s willingness to join Mr. Obama’s administration and her loyalty therein. Indeed, her most important implicit endorsement among blacks may come from Mr. Obama himself.

His joint “60 Minutes” interview with Mrs. Clinton this year helped ease lingering doubts about tensions between the former rivals. And Mr. Obama’s silence in recent months as some of his former aides have aligned themselves with Mrs. Clinton suggests that he will not try to help clear the way for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. if he decides to run.

For other black leaders, Mr. Clinton’s showstopping speech at last year’s Democratic convention was equally important.

“The defining moment for me was both when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state and Bill Clinton’s tremendous speech on behalf of President Obama,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat who backed Mr. Obama in 2008. “Those both occurred when a lot of people in the community were paying close attention.”

The renewed connection between the Clintons and African-Americans was on display as Mr. Clinton campaigned for his close friend Terry McAuliffe in the closing weeks of the recent campaign for governor of Virginia. At a high school in a black neighborhood in Richmond, the former president received a booming ovation, punctuated by church-style shouts of “Yes!” and “All right!”

“I hope all the people of other religions in the audience will forgive me, but on this Sunday, in the parlance of my native state and my culture, I’m fully aware that I am just preaching to the saved,” Mr. Clinton said to cheers and applause.

He then praised Mr. Wilder, who endorsed Mr. Obama in the 2008 race and was also at the McAuliffe campaign event, beaming.

In an interview at the rally, Mr. Wilder recalled a long chat he had with Mr. Clinton in May. While Mr. Clinton professed not to know his wife’s intentions, Mr. Wilder felt otherwise: “I’d be less than honest if I didn’t tell you I came away convinced that there’s no question about her running.”

Of the tensions of 2008, the former governor said all was forgiven: “I don’t think anybody is looking back. If Hillary runs for the nomination, she gets it. Period.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/u...wanted=2&_r=1&ref=todayspaper&&pagewanted=all

 

[Greed]

Dems, GOP looking for black, minority turnout

Dems, GOP looking for black, minority turnout
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
19 hours ago

BOSTON (AP) — With control of the House and Senate up for grabs, Democrats are looking to minority voters — especially black voters who heavily supported President Barack Obama — to turn out and help them forestall a Republican takeover of Congress this November.

Democrats are pushing hard and early to encourage black and Hispanic voters to show up in November, driven in part by fears of a drop-off since Obama won't be on the ballot. Republicans, meanwhile, are seeking to elevate their party's profile in minority communities to let voters know that the GOP is a viable option.

The leaders of both parties appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists' convention in Boston this week to make their case.

"Races all across the country are going to turn on whether we can get particularly our base vote out to vote," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair, told the gathering on Friday. She appeared via Skype and telephone from Washington because of House votes on immigration prior to its August recess.

At the NABJ convention on Thursday, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus touted the GOP's "full-time engagement program" geared to black, Latino and Asian voters. On Friday the GOP launched a Virginia Hispanic Advisory Council to help with recruitment in that state, and has similar efforts underway in California, Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"Instead of getting 6 percent of the black vote in this country, if we get out there and fight and talk to people, can we get 15 (percent)? Can we get 20? And then two years later, can we get 22 and 23?" Priebus said.

Republicans are looking to take a majority in the Senate and increase their advantage in the House, with the president's party usually losing seats in Congress in off-year elections. Democrats, without Obama on the ticket to help boost turnout, hope increased efforts on their part will blunt the Republicans' advantage.

"We have a unique challenge in offsetting drop-off with African American voters, with Hispanic voters and with young female voters and we're tackling those challenges head-on," Steve Israel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told a group of black reporters in Washington earlier this week.

Getting minority voters will be key. Midterm elections typically draw fewer than half of those eligible to vote. For example, in the 2010 congressional and statewide elections, 47.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 40.7 percent of blacks, 21.3 percent of Asians and 20.5 percent of Hispanics voted.

The only groups to increase their numbers were blacks and Hispanics, who voted at 38.6 percent and 19.3 percent respectively in the 2006 congressional and statewide elections. The white and Asian participation rates dropped during that same time period, from 50.5 percent and 21.8 percent.

And black participation in off-year elections has been steadily increasing since 1994, when it was 37.1 percent. In 1998, it was 39.6 percent, in 2002 39.7 percent and a slight dip in 2006 at 38.6 percent. No other group showed a similar increase.

The dynamic may have changed for minority voters following Obama's election, where black and Hispanic voters had an obvious effect in helping elect the first black president, said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

"We got comfortable after 1964, and we haven't been voting again until a black president was elected in 2008 and 2012," Ogletree said. "We now know our votes count, and we know we can carry an election. People just have to get out and actually vote."

Democrats say they welcome the challenge and are confident that minority voters will vote their own interests.

"We can't just become lazy and complacent in reminding people how important they are to us and why our agenda is a better fit," said Mo Elleithee, the communication director for the Democratic National Committee.

http://news.yahoo.com/dems-gop-looking-black-minority-turnout-201724858--election.html

 

[Greed]

Would black voter turnout matter in key Senate races?

Would black voter turnout matter in key Senate races?
BY MICHAEL BARONE
AUGUST 31, 2014 | 6:21 PM

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times reports on how Democratic Party strategists are hoping to maximize black turnout in order to preserve their Senate majority. One might question whether this really counts as news, given that black Americans have been voting overwhelmingly Democratic for a half-century: It always makes sense for Democrats to mobilize black turnout. But the fact that Democratic spinmeisters are evidently pitching this line carries a whiff of desperation. For the fact is that there are relatively few blacks in most of the states with seriously contested Senate races.

In the 2010 Census, 13.6 percent of Americans classified themselves as “black or African-American alone or in combination.” (Barack Obama, who made much of his biracial parentage, classified himself as black alone.) The black percentages, rounded off, in 13 states with seriously contested Senate races are shown in the table, together with the percentage of whites’ votes cast for Obama according to the exit poll in 2012 (in the states with exit polls that year) and 2008 (when exit polls were conducted in every state). The eight states with below-national-average black percentages are grouped together, as are the five states with above-national-average black percentages.

It's apparent that even the most vigorous black turnout effort in the eight states with low black percentages is not going to make much difference. Democrats there must hope that their candidates can maintain levels of support from whites at or above the levels achieved by Obama in 2008 and 2012. In addition, Democrats in Colorado must hope they can maintain something like the 75 to 23 percent margin Obama won among Hispanics there in 2012 according to the exit poll. (Note: I have been skeptical, just based on instinct and observation of county vote totals, about the Colorado exit poll, which I suspect understates Obama support among whites and overstates it among Hispanics.)

In the five states with above-national-average black percentages, there’s obviously good reason for Democrats to try to bolster black turnout. But to win a Democratic candidate must also do significantly better than Obama did among whites in Arkansas, Georgia and Louisiana and somewhat better than in North Carolina. Black turnout was very robust in North Carolina, thanks to both the Obama organization and to spontaneous enthusiasm. And it was robust in the three other states as well, due to spontaneous enthusiasm and despite laws requiring voters to show photo identification, a measure which some have likened to the police dogs and fire hoses that Democratic National Committeeman Bull Connor unleashed on peaceful blacks in 1963.

In sum, if blacks vote 90 to 10 percent Democratic, increased black turnout helps Democrats in Senate races. That’s simple arithmetic. But increased black turnout by itself is unlikely to make the difference except in very close races this year. If that's all that Democrats have to fall back on, they're in trouble.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/would-black-voter-turnout-matter-in-key-senate-races/article/2552679

 

[Greed]

Dems pin hopes on black vote

Dems pin hopes on black vote
By Justin Sink and Alexandra Jaffe
10/29/14 06:00 AM EDT

Democrats say their efforts to bring black voters to the polls are succeeding and could save their Senate majority on Election Day.

Early voting by African-Americans is outpacing the 2010 midterms in many of the key races the party must win to hold the Senate, Democratic operatives say, with new registrations up among that segment of the electorate.

If black voters turn out at the same level as a presidential election year, it could turn the tide in a number of close Senate contests — but that’s a huge if.
Turnout typically falls in midterm years, particularly among black voters. While blacks represented 13 percent of the electorate in the presidential years of 2008 and 2012, their vote share was 11 percent in 2010 and 10 percent in 2006.

In Arkansas, black voters increased as a proportion of the electorate by 1.9 points between 2010 and 2012, according to a study released last week by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. In Louisiana, their share rose by 2.5 points. And in North Carolina, the swing between 2010 and 2012 was 6.7 points.

Those numbers could help explain why President Obama — whose approval rating among African-Americans is 85 percent — has devoted much of his campaign efforts to bringing out the black vote.

In recent weeks, Obama has sat for radio interviews with black hosts Al Sharpton, Steve Harvey, Rickey Smiley, Russ Parr and Yolanda Adams and taped at least a dozen robocalls and radio ads for Democratic candidates on urban stations.

The Democratic National Committee is advertising in black newspapers with a “Get His Back” ad campaign featuring Obama. And on Tuesday, the president kicked off the final week of campaigning with a rally in an overwhelmingly black Milwaukee ward where he won 99 percent of the vote in 2012.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) says it has made an “unprecedented investment” in its turnout operation.

“We’re already seeing very encouraging signs in early vote numbers among African-Americans and across the spectrum of the electorate,” DSCC spokesman Justin Barasky said.

DSCC executive director Guy Cecil pointed to a series of encouraging signs in a recent interview with Bloomberg’s “With All Due Respect.”

Cecil said in Arkansas, where Sen. Mark Pryor (D) is locked in a tough reelection battle, Democrats had registered 95,000 new African-American voters.

“We think we’re going to be successful increasing their turnout,” Cecil said, predicting an overall increase in voting of 5 percent.

In Louisiana, where Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is fighting for her political life, Cecil said that the African-American early vote was the “highest that it’s ever been.” According to the Louisiana secretary of State’s office, African-American voters made up 47.5 percent of voters added to the rolls in October.

“Unlike what most people think, we have the largest number of African-Americans registered, over 900,000, more than pre-Katrina,” Cecil said.

Still, it appears unlikely that any candidate in the Louisiana race will earn more than the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff.

“The runoff is going to be on a Saturday instead of a Tuesday, and Democrats are hopeful that a Saturday vote will be more amenable” to turning out black voters, said University of Virginia Center for Politics analyst Kyle Kondik.

Democrats also see promising signs as they seek an upset in the traditionally red state of Georgia, with The Atlanta Journal Constitution finding that the number of black voters on the rolls has increased nearly 67,000 from 2010.

The president has paid particular attention to the Georgia Senate race. During a recent interview with Atlanta’s V-103, Obama told black voters to get out to the polls for Democrat Michelle Nunn while invoking the civil rights records of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

“You think about what the civil rights movement meant in Georgia, the notion that less than half of your people vote doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Obama said.

Kondik said, “there are some good anecdotal signs” across the country for Democrats. But ultimately, he said, it’s “hard to quantify” whether black voters will do enough to propel Democratic upsets.

Part of the reason is that Democratic turnout would truly need to defy historical trends.

In pivotal states like Arkansas, Kansas and Kentucky, black turnout was below 40 percent in 2010, according to the Joint Center study. That suggests Democrats might not have the necessary campaign structure in place.

In other Senate battlegrounds, such as Colorado and Kansas, the study found, targeting black voters alone won’t be enough to help Democrats win. They’ll need to mobilize high proportions of white voters and non-black minority voters as well.

“Assuming black turnout is consistent with recent midterm elections and current polling data, Democrats will find it hard to put together winning coalitions, even with overwhelming African-American support,” the authors wrote.

Moreover, Republicans have worked hard to court black voters themselves.

Louisiana state Sen. Elbert Guillory (R) said his goal is to convince at least 20 percent of black voters in Louisiana to go for the GOP.

“We want to show African-American voters that they don’t have to be bound by their history, that there are other options,” he said of his efforts.

Guillory cut a video telling African-Americans in Louisiana that, to Landrieu, they’re just “a means to an end,” and accusing her of failing the black community.

Conservatives hailed the video as a “game-changer” in their efforts to reach out to African-Americans, and on Monday, Guillory released another video in conjunction with a North Carolina super-PAC hammering Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) with the same message.

Orlando Watson, the RNC communications director for black media, said Republicans have presented an agenda “suited to close economic and educational disparities.”

Democrats, Watson said, are scrambling “to make last-minute appeals to black voters by relying on divisive radicalized rhetoric and ignoring their record of policies that limit the avenues to upward mobility.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/222157-party-pins-hopes-on-black-vote

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Just how important has and is the black vote to either party in the grand scheme?

But what have the republicans done for Black farmers?


source: Huffington Post


Obama On $1.2 Billion Black Farmers Settlement: 'Brings Us Closer To The Ideals Of Freedom and Equality

President Barack Obama called a judge's approval of a $1.2 billion government settlement with black farmers who for decades had been denied loans and assistance from the Agriculture Department, a step forward in "addressing an unfortunate chapter in USDA's civil rights history."

This is the second round of settlements in a case filed in 1997, which alleged that thousands of black farmers had been discriminated against between 1983 and 1997. This round is directed at farmers who were not awarded payment because of missed filing deadlines. The judge said payments would likely be dispersed in a year or so, after neutral parties reviewed the individual claims.

"This agreement will provide overdue relief and justice to African American farmers, and bring us closer to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on," Obama said in a statement.

"So many farmers had given up hope that this would ever come to pass," said John Boyd, the head of the National Black Farmers Association, according to CNN. "It's gonna take about a year to run all the farmers through the system. Each case will have to be looked at in a forum that's also looked at by the court. Once the cases are checked, then the farmers start to get their money."

And during a briefing this afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that the settlement helps "African-American farmers to focus on the future and brings us one step closer to giving these farmers a chance to have their claims heard."

Blacks now make up about 1 percent of the nation's farmers and ranchers, according to the USDA. In 1920, blacks made up roughly 14 percent of the nation's farmers.

The federal government has acknowledged historic racial bias and in 1999 settled a class-action lawsuit that alleged discrimination in government loans.

Earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) called the settlement a waste of federal money. King likened the settlement to "modern-day reparations" and said that much of the settlement "was just paid out in fraudulent claims." King went on to criticize the Obama administration's plan to resolve separate lawsuits filed by Hispanic and female farmers.

"That's another at least $1.3 billion," King said during a news conference after the pair toured flooded area in Iowa near the Missouri River. "I'd like to apply that money to the people that are under water right now."

Bachmann seconded King's criticism, chiming in that, "When money is diverted to inefficient projects, like the Pigford project, where there seems to be proof-positive of fraud, we can't afford $2 billion in potentially fraudulent claims when that money can be used to benefit the people along the Mississippi River and the Missouri River."

 

[Greed]

White Democrats dwindling in Alabama Legislature

White Democrats dwindling in Alabama Legislature
Associated Press
By KIM CHANDLER 18 hours ago

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — State Sen. Billy Beasley says it was the highest of compliments when a friend recently called him a "true Democrat."

The 74-year-old pharmacist also might soon be the only white Democrat left in the Alabama Senate, unless 30-year veteran Sen. Roger Bedford can make up a 60-vote deficit in an anticipated election recount.

White, Deep South Democrats have been on the decline for years, and none remain in Congress after Rep. John Barrow of Georgia was defeated Nov. 4. Their demise was perhaps nowhere more apparent than at the Alabama Statehouse, where the number of white Democrats in the 140-member legislature was cut in half from 14 to 7 on Election Day.

"They are not extinct. You can find some examples, but you really almost need a magnifying glass to find the Caucasian Democratic candidate," Jess Brown, a political scientist at Athens State University, said.

Democrats dominated the so-called Solid South from Reconstruction to the middle of the twentieth century.

The realignment began with Southerners' opposition to the Civil Rights Act 1964. What followed was a Goldwater-wave of several Southern states voting for Republicans' presidential nominee for the first time. It was sped along with the popularity of President Ronald Reagan and Southerners' identification with the GOP's stances on issues from abortion to guns.

"Democrats, when they were winning, would often say to voters, we're not like those national Democrats. But there was no alternative," said Natalie Davis, a political scientist and pollster at Birmingham-Southern College.

Southern voters identify themselves with the Republican Party on issues across the board, from education and social issues to disdain for President Barack Obama's signature health care law, said Alabama Republican Party Chairman Bill Armistead.

"The core of the Democratic Party has gotten more liberal, said Sen. Gerald Dial, a Lineville legislator who switched to the Republican Party.

Dial represented his east Alabama district as a Democrat for 20 years before switching to the GOP in 2010. He said the Republican Party better reflected the views of people in his district, which sweeps through east Alabama's farms and textile mills.

"Our communities are just more conservative, very patriotic, very religious oriented - I guess we've got more churches, I know I have a lot in my district. Add to that the philosophy of smaller government and low taxes," Dial said.

Beasley said Republicans have successfully made state elections about national issues that legislators can't do anything about. "They ran against Obama. They ran against (House Minority Leader Nancy) Pelosi and (Senate Majority Leader Harry) Reid. Those are national figures," Beasley said.

He said state politicians should be talking about health care, education and jobs.

Even as white Southerners began voting Republican in presidential and statewide races, statehouses had remained a Democratic stronghold until recently. Republicans won their first GOP majority since Reconstruction in 2010. More Democrats abandoned their party to be part of the new ruling majority.

The fall of white Democrats has resulted in parties that have become increasingly divided along party lines.

"Now we've got down to a situation where you have blacks in the Democratic Party in the Legislature, at least in the Senate, and you have whites in the Republican Party. What that does it take us one step closer to the past, and that's not good in my point of view," said Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, who is black.

Sanders said the result is that African-American voters feel the sting. The percentage of black legislators is roughly proportionate to the general population. But their party's dwindling numbers means fewer opportunities for minority legislators to exert influence, he said.

Beasley likely survived because he represents a district that is 60 percent black, as African-Americans are a reliably Democratic voting bloc.

Democrats say they see hope for regaining ground in the region that spawned Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Part of the answer is getting beyond the presidency of Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular among white voters in the South, said John Anzalone, an Alabama-based pollster and consultant. Anzalone has worked from Democrats ranging from President Barack Obama to Jason Carter, the grandson of Jimmy Carter who unsuccessfully ran this year for Georgia governor.

"There are a lot of non-college-educated, white Southern voters that agree with Democrats on a lot of issues like the minimum wage and access to health care, as long as you don't call it Obamacare ," Anzalone said.

The GOP dominance means primary battles push some candidates further to the right, he said, which could provide an opening for Democrats if Republicans become even more conservative than their voting base.

But as Democrats look for ways to regain white voters, Republicans are trying to court black voters.

Several black Republicans ran for office this year, though all lost. Still, it's likely an African-American Republican will be elected in the near future, predicted Phillip Brown, chairman of the Alabama Republican Minority Party. Brown ran for a seat on the state utility regulatory board and lost.

"We overcame a milestone this year, and that was to actually have a substantial number of minorities run under the banner of the Republican Party," Brown said.

http://news.yahoo.com/white-democrats-dwindling-alabama-legislature-152921923.html

 

[Greed]

You Can't Shame Me Into Voting

You Can't Shame Me Into Voting
By Stephen L. Carter
Nov 5, 2014 4:48 PM EST

“Who you vote for is your secret, but whether you vote is public record.” This was the creepy message on the postcard we received just days before Tuesday’s election from the illiberal authoritarians who call themselves America Votes. Similar cards, as press reports have noted, were sent to voters in lots of battleground states, and included, as ours did, a printout of the recipient's voting record in recent years -- that is, whether we’d voted or not -- and a comparison with “neighborhood” voting patterns. The project has a Saddam-esque feel to it, and serves as a reminder about how poorly the right to vote is understood, and how fragile are the norms that protect it.

An editorial in the Hartford Courant called the America Votes report cards “an abuse of power,” adding that “voters might well assume they are under Orwellian surveillance.” If this keeps up, the editorial contends, some residents might decide not to vote rather than to put up with this intrusion. There might also be pressure, the Courant said, to make the lists of who voted and who didn’t confidential, which actually strikes me as a pretty good idea.

But America Votes -- along with several other organizations that do similar work -- doesn’t care about such niceties as privacy or the right of individuals to make up their own minds. America Votes, which has been up to this same mischief before, prefers to make up our minds for us. Its tactics build on academic studies suggesting that worry about the opinions of one’s neighbors may actually provide a strong incentive to vote.

But why is such social pressure a good thing? Despite clever arguments to the contrary, the right to vote also subsumes a right not to vote. To call voting a responsibility of citizenship, as many do, is at best imprecise. Participation in governance might be said to be obligatory, but voting is only one form of participation, perhaps not the most important one. Democracy at its best rests on a thoughtful, reflective dialogue among the citizenry. It’s the dialogue, not the vote, that matters most. In an ideal democracy, voting isn’t a measure of participation at all -- it’s the outcome of participation. If before we vote we skip all the dialogue in favor of gorging ourselves on partisan screeds about the awful crimes of those who disagree with us, we are already a long way from serious democracy.

One might argue that voting represents a shared sense of responsibility for the working of the democratic process itself. This is what Anthony Downs had in mind when he wrote in “An Economic Theory of Democracy” that “the return from voting per se is not the same thing as the return from voting correctly.” In this vision, the obligation to vote is entirely unrelated to the desire to win. By voting, we help preserve democracy -- even if the other side prevails.

But organizations like America Votes have nothing so abstract in mind. They don’t seem to think everyone should vote. They think those likely to support the causes they like should vote. The website of America Votes boasts of the group’s expertise with using “a robust range of data and targeting tools” in order “to advance progressive policies.”

Well, America Votes is entitled to its opinion. I’m also entitled to mine. And I’m with the critics. Trying to shame people into voting isn’t just creepy -- it’s wrong. It seeks to deny the individual the basic liberal freedom to choose his or her own version of the good life. Worse, the activity it seeks to coerce is involvement in electoral politics -- easily one of the sleaziest and most degrading aspects of modern American life.

According to the Pew Research Center, many fewer voters reported receiving robo-calls this time around than in the 2010 off-year election, and printed mailers, too, were down. Instead, this year’s money went into television advertising, with a record $2.4 billion spent on what is, basically, an organized effort by all sides to treat voters like idiots. Connecticut, where my wife and I live, had the highest percentage of negative ads of any gubernatorial race in the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were plenty of voters who wished both sides would lose.

The ubiquity of the negative campaign is an important reason to protect and even respect the decision of a citizen not to vote. It is neither irrational nor contrary to the civic spirit to refuse to participate in a project of such unmitigated viciousness. It’s the politicians and their wicked familiars, the campaign consultants, who have abandoned any pretense of belief in serious dialogue. Voters who refuse to reward candidates for reducing politics to sloganeering and trash-talk aren’t the ones who have something to be ashamed of.

Thus pressure to vote is simply wrong. It’s wrong for the same reason that compulsory voting laws would be wrong. In his 2011 book “Rethinking American Electoral Democracy,” the political scientist Matthew J. Streb argues that we should not require voting in the absence of empirical evidence that such pressure would make people “more engaged and informed.” We must find ways instead “to increase the benefits citizens see in voting.”

Precisely. Voters who stay away -- or who feel driven away -- are skeptical about the benefits. Put otherwise, the cost of voting might be too high for them to stomach. I don’t mean the cost in resources of getting to the polls. I mean the cost involved in rewarding a political class that, in its campaigns, has largely forgotten that a high road ever existed. If groups like America Votes want more people to come to the polls, they might try to do something about the real problem.

But that isn’t who they are.

Our America Votes postcard concludes with a silky threat: “In the future, we hope to send you an updated Voter Report Card before each election.” In other words, shape up, or everybody will know.

Well, I have a better idea. I promise, guys: As long as you keep sending out your creepy anti-democratic postcards, I will never cast a vote for or contribute a penny to any candidate unwilling to condemn your tactics. If that means I have to stay home on Election Day, well, there are a lot of good books waiting to be read.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-05/you-cant-shame-me-into-voting