If we were to build the perfect example of an individual borrower squeezed by the foreclosure crisis, they would line up somewhat favorably with the attributes of the average voter that the Obama campaign is hoping will turn out in large numbers to put him over the top in this election. First of all, you [...]

Mitt Romney spoke before the NAACP today, and the response was, shall we say, mixed. Vowing to repeal Obamacare in front of an African-American audience may have been a miscalculation. But Romney’s core argument to the NAACP is worth scrutinizing a bit. He basically made the case that he would be better for African-Americans on [...]

It never becomes the top-shelf, salient issue in American elections until after one or two get stolen. But the permanent discriminated class we’re building out of voter suppression laws should be the headline story to the party that stands to lose the most from the situation. Voter registration among Hispanics and African-Americans has dropped significantly [...]

I have heard about a growing discontent inside the Democratic House with the President. This has started to bubble to the surface. Here’s Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): U.S. House Rep. Maxine Waters is asking black voters who are struggling with an unemployment rate nearly twice the national average to “unleash” her and other members of [...]

I want to highlight the absolute trouncing given by Ron Sparks in the Alabama Governor’s race to Artur Davis, an African-American candidate who thought it would be a good idea to try and run the general election in the primary, amassing the voting record of a Dixiecrat and ignoring the black political leadership in the [...]

Joe Sestak has basically just started in the last few weeks to introduce himself to Pennsylvania voters on television. He horded his campaign funds for this purpose and now he’s flooding the airwaves. And it appears to be paying off, according to this new tracking poll of the Senate primary between Sestak and Sen. Arlen [...]

This is kind of strange. I jumped on a White House conference call with Barbara Lee (D-CA), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, yesterday. The topic was the youth summer job program, which the House has passed but the Senate has yet to take up. I get an advisory in my inbox that there’s another [...]

A big issue in the Arkansas Senate primary is Blanche Lincoln’s relationship to the African-American community. She has been going around the state touting her “A” rating from the NAACP. But someone has a problem with that – the President of the Arkansas NAACP. “If I had to grade her even on health care reform [...]

Today, President Obama met with top African-American leaders at the White House to discuss the economic crisis in minority communities and upcoming jobs legislation. Attendees included Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP, and Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League. Later, they joined reporters on [...]

A poll from Bloomberg today shows a path for Democrats to recapture the populist mantle – by spending on jobs and taxing wealth. Yes, the poll shows that “tax and spend” is the policy favored by the majority right now, to get us out of the economic downturn. However, the poll shows that people also [...]

Since Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) called for Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers to step down this Wednesday, the question has become a part of the political conversation. Republicans predictably took the opportunity to attack the Obama economic team, but progressive Democrats have started to get the question as well, a sign of things to come. [...]