Few predict that Barack Obama will generate the Black turnout that propelled him to victory in 2008. “A small but growing number” of Black former Obama enthusiasts “have grown weary of the charade and know they have been played for fools.” Race pride motivated them the first time around, but that is harder to muster for “a man who never saw them as anything more than saps who would vote for him no matter what he said or did.”
by Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“In November 2012 it is almost certain that black turnout will be lower.”
Black Americans’ devotion to Barack Obama during his 2008 run for the presidency was unparalleled in American political history. From the moment he won the Iowa caucus and proved that white people would vote for him, any and all questions or concerns raised about Obama were promptly forgotten. The opportunity to see a black president created a level of enthusiasm previously unseen, and unfortunately a blind devotion too. A group of reliably progressive people changed their political religion and coalesced nearly unanimously around the only kind of person the system will allow to compete, a corporatist and imperialist with no inclination to put black people anywhere on the agenda of the day. Continue reading »
