Obama: another Dinkins?

In an interesting article at American Thinker, a black writer named the Drive-By Pundit says that Romney will win the election. His reason is blacks’ loss of passion for Obama. Significantly fewer of them will turn out to vote, and this will spell Obama’s defeat. The author’s evidence is not polling or other statistics, but the way blacks look and sound when they talk about Obama.

The article has some persuasiveness to me because it reminds me of the 1993 mayoral election in New York City. David Dinkins had narrowly defeated Rudolph Giuliani to become mayor in 1989, and Giuliani narrowly defeated Mayor Dinkins in 1993. The difference was simply a drop in black turn-out. Dinkins was not exciting enough for the blacks. He was not enough of a race man.

Similarly, says the Drive-By Pundit, blacks are disappointed in Obama, feeling he has not done enough for them:

[He’s] the newest in a long line of black would-be-messiahs/hucksters who were also at first described as charismatic, inspirational, visionary, and eloquent…. Each failed miserably, and though black people are loath to acknowledge that fact out loud, deep down, they know it…. Their shtick is all the same: lofty rhetoric, pretensions of divinity, charm that inspires unquestioning, religious-like devotion (sound familiar?)….

Polls are largely not picking up on blacks’ massive loss of passion for Obama. All of their turnout models assume that in November, blacks will vote for Obama in the same numbers as they did in 2008—13 percent of the national vote versus 11 percent in 2004, which is more traditional. No longer motivated by passion, you can expect 2 million fewer blacks to pull the lever for Obama this time around, spelling doom for his re-election prospects.

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Andrew B. writes:

Obama beat McCain by 10 million votes (69,456,897 to 59,934,814). It’s hard to see how losing two million black votes would produce a different outcome. That would be 100,000 fewer votes in Pennsylvania, 150,000 fewer in Illinois, 300,000 fewer in NY, a million fewer in the deep South, which Obama lost. None of these changes would affect the outcome.

Sounds like another theory to put in the wishful thinking category.

LA replies:

Excellent points, especially your added point that the lost black vote would be spread among various states and not affect the electoral vote of those states at all. Thanks for that correction.

LA continues:

However, as Dick Morris points out, it’s not just blacks that are less enthusiastic for Obama this year, but several key Democratic groups including youth and Hispanics. That, combined with the fact that Undecides break against the incumbent, means that it’s really Romney who is ahead despite polls showing him behind.

My own intuition continues to tell me that not only the ideological weakness of the Republicans and Romney which I’ve discussed before, but the overall shape of events, the shape of America’s current downward course, are leading to an Obama victory. But I am not sure of that. It could be that in this election the downward course of America will be slowed for a while and we won’t leap into the leftist abyss quite yet.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 21, 2012 09:14 AM | Send