The editors of the Wall Street Journal whine about Democrats’ wooing African American voters:
President Obama and fellow Democrats have been obsessed with the African-American electorate of late, mindful that the party needs high black voter turnout Tuesday to keep the Senate. The implication is that every black American who votes will automatically pull the Democratic lever, and perhaps they will. What is becoming harder to explain is why black Americans would feel any gratitude for the results of Obama Administration policies.
Of course Democrats want to get black voters to the polls. African Americans are their most reliable voting block. That’s what you do in a get out the vote campaign: you try to ensure that your most reliable voters vote.
Here’s a wild idea: put up more African Americans for statewide offices. It’s a proven way of getting out the African American vote. To the best of my knowledge the only African American running for the Senate this election is Corey Booker in New Jersey. That’s too few by far.
Senator Tim Scott, Republican, is an African-American running in a special election in South Carolina after being appointed to replace Jim DeMint. His challenger is an African-American woman.
Hmm. I thought Tim Scott was in the next Senate class. My mistake. At any rate assuming that Booker is re-elected in New Jersey that will leave the next Senate with the same number of African American senators as the 113th Congress: two. Not very many when you consider the Democratic Party’s demographics:
African Americans: 22%
Hispanics: 16%
Non-Hispanic whites: 60%
Other: 2%
If only 10% of the Senate’s Democratic caucus were African American there would be five African American senators in the 114th Congress.
Scott is in the next Senate class, he gets to run again for the same seat in two years.
I’m not sure what the expected number of African-American Senators would be. In a fully race-conscious selection process, the number would be zero because African-Americans do not constitute a majority of any state. If it was entirely random process, then they would have 13 seats since they constitute 13.6% of the population.
By being Democratic Party stalwarts, they reduce their chances significantly because their numeric advantages are greatest in red states of the black belt. Blue states with over 20% African-American population are Maryland and Delaware.
The admittedly unrealistic assumption would be that the Senate Democratic caucus would look like the Democratic Party. That is, after all, one of the points the party makes in attacking the Republicans, i.e. that the Democratic Party looks more like America than the Republican Party does. It seems to me that if you’re going to portray yourself that way, it carries with it certain obligations. I agree with your analysis of the reason that African Americans aren’t helped by being such reliable Democratic voters.
Give ’em a break, Schuler. At least the Senate is Blacker than Obama’s Re-election HQ staff was.