Obama Election Watch

Most people think that every eligible black voter in the country will quite automatically flock to the polls to become part of a historic election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president of the United States. This is not so. Despite the excitement of a ticket headed by Obama, this year’s primaries revealed a huge reservoir of unregistered and non-voting blacks in the United States. A staggering amount of black voter apathy persists.

In the current 2008 election there may be no state where the black vote is more important than Michigan. With its 17 electoral votes, Michigan is the No.1 target in John McCain’s efforts to turn this historically blue state into a red state. President Bush came close to carrying Michigan in the 2004 election. Current polls show Obama with a slight lead in Michigan. But the race has narrowed within recent weeks so that Obama’s lead in some polls is within the margin of error. For Obama there is danger too in the fact that in recent years some counties in the northern part of the state have become increasingly Republican.

The Michigan vote is pivotal to the outcome of the national election. Without its 17 electoral votes, Obama will need to add Florida or Ohio and other smaller states won by Bush in 2004 in order to assemble the necessary 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.

There are more than 1 million eligible black voters in Michigan. They make up 14 percent of the total electorate in the state. Black voters in Michigan are overwhelmingly Democrats. John Kerry took 94 percent of the black vote in Michigan in 2004.

But estimates are that there are at least 300,000 unregistered black voters in Michigan. A large majority of them live in the Detroit metropolitan area. Tens of thousands of additional blacks were registered to vote in Detroit in 2004 but they declined to cast a ballot.

Obama’s chances to carry the state of Michigan may turn on efforts to register this large reservoir of black voters and get them to the polls on Election Day.

But Obama faces very big hurdles in this effort. OEW sources on the ground in Detroit report persisting and widespread black voter apathy despite the huge attraction of a black man heading the Democratic ticket. Many cling to the belief that Obama, as a black man, simply can’t be elected president. Others feel that the economy in the area is so bad that even if Obama is elected, nothing will change. There are African Americans in Detroit who see in Obama a serious loss of the force of Jesse Jackson as a single-minded defender of the life chances and opportunities of black people.

For most blacks in Detroit, the sky is falling. They see no glimmer of hope.

An article in Forbes magazine this year called Detroit “America’s Most Miserable City.” And a huge 82 percent of the population of Detroit is black.

But this isn’t the end of the problems in mobilizing African-American voters in Detroit. OEW’s inquiries show that many blacks in Detroit, particularly the large numbers of them who are from low-income families, have lost enthusiasm due to recent perceptions of condescension in Obama’s lectures on the irresponsibility of young blacks. These African Americans see Obama as an elitist who is far removed from the desperate problems of the inner city. African Americans in Detroit are struggling with high unemployment, poor quality schools, and high neighborhood crime rates. Many are losing their homes due to the mortgage crisis. Food, gasoline, and home heating costs are skyrocketing. Many black Detroiters are unaware of Obama’s solid track record in helping blacks in poor neighborhoods of Chicago.

To counter this apathy Obama must bring his powerful message of hope and change directly to the inner-city Detroit community. A large Obama outdoor rally in a low-income Detroit neighborhood would help energize black voters. Without a direct and compelling appeal, blacks in Detroit will not engage to the point of delivering the huge vote that Obama will need to offset the expected advantage of McCain among white voters in Michigan.

Obama can repeatedly tour inner-city areas and broadcast his deep commitment to community development, and to improving urban schools, raising the minimum wage, and providing job training. Obama’s proposal for creating “Promise Neighborhoods” in inner cities should have broad appeal in Detroit. This plan would provide a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts, and after-school activities to impoverished urban areas.

Severely hampering the Obama effort is the fact that the political machine of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been significantly weakened due to the indictment of the mayor on perjury charges. The city council has called for the mayor to resign. At the very least, the Kilpatrick political organization will be preoccupied with holding on to power rather than turning out black voters for Obama.

The essential point is that there is a huge bloc of potential black votes in Detroit that is sufficient to ensure a victory for Obama in Michigan. Staff, money, the candidate’s time on the ground, and a smart and well-executed campaign in Detroit can make it happen.