Mediaboss Marketing

Details Written by By George E. Curry NNPA Columnist Published: 10 November 2014

The midterm elections are over, the final numbers are in and they dont look pretty if youre a progressive. So, I am going to propose something our national African American leaders should have suggested a long time ago: Its time for us to switch. No, not to the Republican Party. That would be tantamount to drinking Jim Jones Kool-Aid (Young people, Google Guyana Massacre). Its time to switch our emphasis from politics to economics.

I remember Al Sharpton,speakingat the 2004 Democratic convention, saying Blacks had decided to ride the (Democratic) donkey as far as it would take us. Well, Al, that donkey has taken us as far as we can go in politics, even into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, its time to park that old, tired pack animal on a farm and try a new mode of transportation.

Even when we have given it our best, politics have never delivered the expected results. I am old enough to remember how exuberant we were with the election of the first wave of Black big city mayors: Carl Stokes in Cleveland, Richard Hatcher in Gary, Ind., Ken Gibson in Newark and later, Tom Bradley in Los Angeles, Andrew Young in Atlanta and David Dinkins in New York. We saw Doug Wilder elected governor of Virginia, the cradle of the Confederacy. The outgoing governor of Massachusetts is another African American, Deval Patrick. In January, we will have not one, but two Blacks in the U.S. Senate (Cory Booker and Tim Scott), the largest African American contingent ever in the upper chamber.

And the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), which bills itself as the conscience of Congress, has behaved as though it was unconscious the last six years, too afraid to evencritiquePresident Obama for fear of facing a backlash back in their home districts. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, stated: Well, Im supposed to say he [Obama] doesnt get a pass, but Im not going to say that. Look, as the chair of the Black Caucus Ive got to tell you, we are always hesitant to criticize the president. With 14 percent [black] unemployment, if we had a white president wed be marching around the White House.

The undisputable truth is that Obamaneededpressure from Blacks and progressives to make him a better president. When he offered his version of Ronald Reagans trickle down economic theory if you take care of America as a whole, it will trickle down to what Jesse Jackson calls boats stuck at the bottom. How has that worked out for Black America?

And instead of being grateful for the silence of the lambs, Obama has an inexplicable need to criticize his supporters even more than his opponents. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) canshout you lie during a State of the Union speech and ice cool Obama could essentially ignore the public slight. But appearing at a 2011 CBC dinner, the president urged his audience to Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. Weve got work to do.

Even before his partys butt kicking last week, President Obama was doing what he always does blame his most ardent supporters. On April 10, less than seven months before the midterm elections, theWashington Postgave this account:

President Obama said at a fundraiser Wednesday night that Democrats suffer in midterm elections in large part because black and Latino voters among other groups dont turn out to vote.

Our voters are younger, more unmarried women, more African-American and Latino voters, Obama said at an event in Houston. They get excited about general elections; they dont get as excited about midterm elections.

Read more here:
I remember Al Sharpton, speaking