How Ga. Republicans might hold off a demographic decline
The shrinking white vote that doomed Mitt Romney on Tuesday has sparked a sobering national debate over who should be allowed inside an expanded Republican tent – and what the invitations should look like.
According to exit polling, white voters made up 72 percent of the U.S. electorate, another step in a well-documented decline.
We won’t have a racial breakdown of the statewide vote for several weeks. But among all those registered, white voters for the first time made up less than 60 percent of the Georgia electorate.
With the right candidate, some Democrats think Georgia can be a player in the 2016 presidential contest. Realistic contention in a race for governor could require more time – though not much.
Georgia, like the rest of the country, is quickly entering a period in which every demographic group will have to form an alliance with another if it is to succeed politically.
So what can be done to extend the 10-year Republican reign in Georgia? Curiously, the first move goes to 60 Democratic members of the 180-member House, who gather Monday at the state
Capitol to select their officers. Stacy Abrams of Atlanta will remain House Democratic leader.
Party elders are worried that the caucus, now comprised of a large African-American majority, won’t recognize the need to include white lawmakers in its leadership.
It is a subtle question – the public does not care. But those who still finance and otherwise prop up the beleaguered party understand that when Democrats put on a segregated face, they allow Republicans to do the same.
The second move may belong to Gov. Nathan Deal. But don’t take my word for it. This comes from Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, who on Thursday unveiled a poll of 1,400 African-Americans in four states, taken in the days leading up to the election. Georgia was one of those four.
President Barack Obama earned 45 percent of the Georgia vote on Tuesday, only a point or so off his 2008 performance. According to the NAACP poll, enthusiasm for re-electing the country’s first black president accounted for about 5 percentage points in Georgia this year.
Democrats “must quickly figure out how to motivate these voters who – if Obama is not at the top of the ticket – simply go away,” Jealous said.
Republicans in Georgia, on the other hand, must find a way to appeal to a significant number of black voters if they’re to thrive long-term.
That may sound futile. When it comes to issues such as civil rights and equality, 87 percent of African-Americans polled declared that GOP concern was either “just talk,” or simply didn’t exist.
But Jealous pointed to one chink in the Democratic armor. When it came to reducing the “mass incarceration” of black men in America, only 30 percent thought Democrats were putting much effort to the issue.
This is the Republican opening, Jealous said, pointing out that two governors, Deal in Georgia and Rick Perry in Texas, have taken the lead in this area. They prefer to call it “criminal justice reform,” and have approached it largely as a cost concern.
The problem, according to Jealous: “The Republican party hasn’t done a very good job of talking about an issue on which they’ve led.”
If you talk to Democrats in Georgia, what keeps them awake at night is the possibility that Republicans might have time to snatch victory from the jaws of demographic-driven defeat.
Deal stands for re-election in 2014. Odds are that Democrats will be unable to offer anything more than token opposition. Once he’s past a Republican primary, Deal would be free to maneuver – and Democrats fear that he might take aim at their African-American base, and skim off enough black voters to stave off GOP decline for a few additional years.
It is a topic that makes Deal aides nervous. The governor’s close relationship with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has already become a source of conversation within the GOP base.
But Deal appears to recognize the possibilities of 2014. “There are things that are considered to be important by the electorate that do not necessarily hinge on whose idea it was. For our state, criminal justice reform is a classic example of that. It certainly bridged the party divide,” he said Thursday. ”I’m going to encourage the [Republican] party at the state level to do that.”
By itself, whether called “mass incarceration” or “criminal justice reform,” the topic isn’t a barn-burner likely to change 50 years of voting habits among black voters. But add education, and you may have the start of something.
On Tuesday, Amendment One passed with an ease that surprised even Deal, taking two out of every three African-American votes in metro Atlanta. This despite official opposition to the charter school measure from the state Democratic party and stalwarts like the Rev. Joe Lowery.
That has the makings of a new wedge issue. Look for Republicans to use it.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
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63 comments Add your comment
Top School
November 10th, 2012
6:19 pm
The changing face of our country. HONESTY, TRUTH AND ETHICS…will eventually return to our leadership.
In the meantime … many unethical people still hold positions of authority keeping the us spinning in the same OLD corrupt rhetoric.
http://www.TopPublicSchoolCorruptionAtlanta.com
Kris
November 10th, 2012
6:21 pm
cc…Big Bird says Thanks.
HamiltonAZ
November 10th, 2012
11:47 pm
One in eleven black adults was under correctional supervision at the end of 2007 – 2.4 million people. This is more than the total enslaved in 1850 in the US. (according to research referenced by Michelle Alexander in her article titled, “The New Jim Crow.”
HamiltonAZ
November 10th, 2012
11:50 pm
As for the charter issue, look for the politics of the implementation to crash that bus.
S
November 11th, 2012
12:22 am
Republicans, what’s to like. Their anti Women, anti immigration, anti Gay, anti education, anti Health-care, anti Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, their anti regulation and we saw what that led to, they run on failed policies that have been proven not to work, their anti Tax the Rich who can most afford to pay taxes, their candidates are either crooks or wacky, or just plain dumb, their not conservatives, they have spent like drunken fools for the last 30 years when they were in charge leading to the fiscal crisis we have today. I mean really, whats to like?
Mary Elizabeth
November 11th, 2012
10:31 am
S, 12:22 am
Below are the remarks I posted on Jay Bookman’s blog on Friday, November 9th, which will explain why, imo, Republicans have “spent like drunkenn fools for the last 30 years. . .”:
======================================================
“ ‘But the system itself has changed in ways that permit fewer and fewer people to make that journey. That’s just a fact, and the causes driving that change are economic and technological in nature, not political.
(The cause is also not moral in nature. . . .”
———————————————————————————————–
I will never agree with your assertions, above. Not because you keep making them, but because I simply do not perceive the above assertions to be truth. I will keep speaking truth, as I see it, regardless of how small the circle of influence I might have. Truth stated is better than silence, imo, for silence implies concurrence, and this is too important to disregard in silence.
ALEC was created in the mid-1970s for political purposes. One of the purposes of ALEC has been to ’starve the beast of government.’ In my opinion, and in the opinion of Paul Krugman, the Bush administration – for ideological reasons – deliberately ran up the deficit to the tune of 10 trillion dollars – through tax cuts that favored the wealthy and through two unfunded wars and Medicare D that favored Big Pharma – for the deliberate purpose of creating financial difficulty in this nation so that entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare would, by necessity, have to be cut drastically. If that purpose was not political and if that purpose was not ideological, I do not know what is. Imo, doing that, deliberately, was also immoral in terms of the hardships it has created on the American people. Just think how much lower our deficit would be now, had 10 trillion not been run up during Bush’s tenure as president.
Krugman: ‘Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit.’
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html?scp=1&sq=Paul%20Krugman,%20The%20Bankruptcy%20Boys,%202/22/10&st=Search&_r=0
I keep repeating this truth, as I see it, because I believe that effective – and just – solutions to American’s financial deficit problem will not be forthcoming, if one of the major underlying reasons for this problem is not acknowledged as truth, unorthdox as that truth may appear to some.”
Mary Elizabeth
November 11th, 2012
10:42 am
I also posted the following on Jay Bookman’s blog on November 9, 2012:
—————————————————————————————
“I should, also, have stated (within my previous post), that ALEC has been, and is now, composed of, and funded by, billionaires such as the Koch Brothers, as well as wealthy corporate CEOs, who have worked stealthily with Republican legislators in Republican dominated states, to advance a financial agenda which favors the wealthy of this nation over interests of the middle and working classes. The middle class has lost ground for decades not simply because of global technological changes, but also because of the financial framework design and intent of these wealthy ideologues. I am grateful that an astute president will be working to realign this out-of-balance financial framework in our nation to make it become one that is more equitable for the working and middle classes.”
—————————————————————————-
To reinforce this point-of-view, please view the following video clip:
http://vimeo.com/2048111
Ellen
November 11th, 2012
10:52 am
As a black woman it’s really very simple. For the GOP to be relevant to blacks–and women–and people of various or no religion:
1) It’s fine to be personally anti-abortion. Just recognize that codifying your religious views into policy/law is patrionizing, demeaning, insulting and wrong. Not everyone agrees with you that life begins at conception, that a fertilized egg is a person. Accept that and move on.
2) Stop categorizing minorities as LAZY. All we want is a level playing field for economic fairness.
3) Stop coddling the 1% and start crafting policies that address issues facing the middle class and people aspiring to the middle class. It’s tragic when hard work is rewarding with stagnating wages, corporate serfdom, and the inability to get ahead or send your kids to college.
4) Drop the idea that white Americans are somehow more American than everyone else. Or that answers to problems lie in the what-used-to-be. Learn how to talk to women, minorities, people of all faiths with respect.
Do those things and you’ll win the presidency again–and the Senate. Otherwiswe you’ll be a regional party with only members in the House.
Mary Elizabeth
November 11th, 2012
11:05 am
To readers: I apologize for the defective video clip which I posted in my 10:42 am post, today. Below is another video clip with no deflects. It is a little longer, but it bring out the same points I had made in my 10:42 am post. In fact, I like this longer video clip more than the earlier defective one because it explains in greater detail why “the CEOs have gotten tax breaks and million dollar bonuses, and the workers have gotten nothing (when companies go belly- up).”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9qteFEeXg&playnext=1&list=PL086F92F3C10B98D6&feature=results_main
Scooby
November 11th, 2012
12:04 pm
“…has sparked a sobering national debate over who should be allowed inside an expanded Republican tent – and what the invitations should look like.”
You are wrong. The problem with this election was that over 3,000,000 Republicans sat it out and did not vote. We put forth some of the most accomplished minorities this country has to offer. The Republican Party has more elected Hispanics serving in office than the Democrat Party has. And yet what is said about Republicans? Racist, sexist, bigots, and homophobes that discriminate and so forth.
How Georgia Republicans might hold off a demographic decline … « Articles « Local Tea Party Central
November 11th, 2012
12:46 pm
[...] Local Teaparty Excerpt From http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2012/11/10/how-ga-republicans-might-hold-off-a-d... < Think Democratic control of Gwinnett and Hall Counties, significant Hispanic turnout in many [...]
Joy Walter
November 11th, 2012
1:18 pm
To Ben jealous-of course African Americans are going to slip away!!! Obama or not African americans are a disappearing minority!!! I am a life long democrat and I an pro abortion but our abortion rate is horrible. We freely abort about 1.2 million babies a year, 450,000 of those babies are black!!!!! About 50 million black babies since roe vs. wade!!!!! Oh, yes planned parenthood, good job!!!! Let’s give them more of our taxpayer ’s money!!! Wake up NAACP!!!!! You done been had!!!! Hispanics are on the move, any thet are going to march right over the Afriacan American minority!!! Sad! Sad! Sad! That next aborted black baby well could of been a great president or great senator!!!
Cindy
November 11th, 2012
1:35 pm
If nothing else I hope this election has crystalized for minority voters their enormous political power.An election can no longer be won without their votes.It’s about damn time.