Will the Black Vote Save the Democrats?

In the lead up to the 2104 midterm elections, the Republican candidates have campaigned as much against Barack Obama as they have against their actual opponents.  Why?  I and other suspect because they believe it will motivate the increasingly visible white supremacists in the GOP to get out to the polls tomorrow.  Here in Virginia, racism is a live and well in the Republican Party and with some regularity GOP officials find themselves forced to resign after disseminating racist jokes and statements.   One would think that the GOP racism would not be lost on black voters who, if they were like me, would make a point of voting just to flip the bird to the GOP.   A column in the New York Times speculates whether or not blacks will show their support for Obama by getting to the polls tomorrow.  Here are excerpts:

As Gallup pointed out last week: “We find very little change in the support given to Obama among his strongest demographic subgroup: black Americans.” The report continued, “In fact, if anything, the trend is for relatively higher support among blacks” when measuring the gap between black support for Obama and the national average.

The president is now playing to those black folks in a last-ditch effort to help Democrats maintain Senate control, even as much of the betting money is on the real possibility that Republicans will wrest control away.

According to a New York Times analysis of voter data earlier this month: “African-Americans could help swing elections in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and possibly Arkansas,” but, the article says, “only if they turn out at higher-than-forecast rates.”

So, the president has been making direct appeals to this group on black radio stations across the country. Obama’s appeals appear to be working, at least as measured by the composition of early-voting tallies. As The New York Times’s Nate Cohn pointed out last week in The Upshot:

“The turnout among black voters is particularly encouraging for Democrats, who need strong black turnout to compete in racially polarized states like Georgia and North Carolina. In those two states, black voters so far represent 30 percent of the voters who did not participate in 2010. By comparison, 24 percent of all those who voted in those states in 2010 were black.”

It’s not clear whether President Obama can energize enough black voters to save Democratic control of the Senate, but he seems ever more reliant on this group to give him “the benefit of the doubt” and ride to his rescue.  

Personally, I do not understand those who do not vote in midterms, especially black voters.  The GOP has made it clear that it is their enemy and seeks to disenfranchise them whenever possible.  Getting out and voting against one's enemies would seem to me to be the only logical thing to do.