{"id":38059,"date":"2014-11-03T18:37:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T18:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38059"},"modified":"2014-11-03T18:37:29","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T18:37:29","slug":"blacks-obama-and-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38059","title":{"rendered":"Blacks, Obama and the Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/03\/opinion\/charles-blow-blacks-obama-and-the-election.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Blacks, Obama and the Election<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2014-11-02<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CharlesMBlow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Charles M. Blow<\/strong><\/a>, Visual Op-Ed columnist<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama\u2019s<\/a> name won\u2019t be on any ballots Tuesday, but he will most certainly be on them in spirit \u2014 a fact that many Republicans are trumpeting and some Democrats are hoping to downplay.<\/p>\n<p>The president is not particularly popular at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/video\/179039\/trend-line-obama-ahead-bush-midterm-job-approval.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Gallup\u2019s Frank Newport<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cPresident Obama\u2019s job approval rating is 42 percent. If that holds up until the day before the election, it will be the second-lowest job approval rating for a president before a midterm election going back to 1982 when <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ronald_Reagan\" target=\"_blank\">Ronald Reagan<\/a>, of course, was president of the U.S. What was the lowest of all? That was <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_W._Bush\" target=\"_blank\">George W. Bush\u2019s<\/a>, whose job approval rating was 38 percent back in 2006.\u201d&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;This is the great immeasurable when it comes to this man. <strong>Race is a construct that, unfortunately, is woven through the fabric of America.<\/strong> Of course, it has some bearing on our politics, but it\u2019s nearly impossible to calculate the degree of the effect for a particular politician. And there can be benefit as well as detriment \u2014 pride and prejudice as counterweights.<\/p>\n<p>As Obama himself <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2014\/01\/27\/going-the-distance-2\" target=\"_blank\">told <em>The New Yorker<\/em><\/a> in January: \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that there\u2019s some folks who just really dislike me because they don\u2019t like the idea of a black President.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He continued: \u201cNow, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I\u2019m a black President.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Gallup pointed out last week: \u201cWe find very little change in the support given to Obama among his strongest demographic subgroup: black Americans.\u201d The report continued, \u201cIn fact, if anything, the trend is for relatively higher support among blacks\u201d when measuring the gap between black support for Obama and the national average&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/03\/opinion\/charles-blow-blacks-obama-and-the-election.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blacks, Obama and the Election The New York Times 2014-11-02 Charles M. Blow, Visual Op-Ed columnist President Obama\u2019s name won\u2019t be on any ballots Tuesday, but he will most certainly be on them in spirit \u2014 a fact that many Republicans are trumpeting and some Democrats are hoping to downplay. The president is not particularly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[15263,15262,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-38059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-charles-blow","tag-charles-m-blow","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}