Yes friends, you read that right. Obama is losing support among black Americans. He's at a mere 58% approval with a group that supported him in 2008 by something like 90%, according to a recent Washington Post poll. (1) If I was the President, I'd start losing sleep. For the record, I expect Obama to do better than 58% of the vote in 2012 from black voters. That said, this dip is astounding for Obama, considering the black vote is about as in the bag for Democrats in general and Obama in specific as the military vote is for Republicans.
So why would this happen? The answer I believe is based on a couple of factors. One, the unemployment rate for the nation overall is 9.1%, but the unemployment rate for black Americans is 16.7%. That's a full 7.6% higher. Two, in my experience black Americans tend to lean farther to the left than other demographics. Liberals have been on the record complaining that Obama hasn't been MORE liberal than he's been, as frightening as that may be.
The latter may not seem to present a real problem for Obama in 2012, because, just like conservatives voted for John McCain in 2008, liberals aren't going to vote for Mitt Romney or Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann out of protest to Obama failing to be liberal enough. However, there is the potential that these voters will vote with their feet…by putting them up on a coffee table on Election Day. Obama's failure to come through is going to lose him a lot of the unlikely voters who showed up in 2008 to support him.
So now he's losing the black voters. They aren't going to vote Republican en masse, but they may not vote at all…and that's going to hurt Obama badly in 2012. He's losing liberals who are angry that he's not liberal enough (which I personally can't fathom), and while he won't lose their votes in 2012, he might lose their donations and their volunteering. And that's going to hurt Obama too.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Obama is in deep trouble in 2012. Losing his support from black voters is just another nail in the coffin of the Obama Presidency.
