Renee Glover
Contributing Writer
African-American News&Issues
November 2012 is right around the corner. Six months is not a long time to capture the hearts and minds of citizens of the United States for a second time. No one knows what this pressure feels like other than the gentlemen who has ran our Country.
President Obama has been under scrutiny since day one. Whether it was questioning his citizenship, his decision to take-out Osama Bin Laden, health care reform, people refuse to respect him because he is our first Black president. Just last week, the FBI arrested five “anarchists” after they allegedly conspired to blow up a Cleveland-area bridge and wage similar attacks in Chicago in coordination with the NATO summit. Someone has shot at the White House, flew a small model airplane over the White House gate, etc.
There has never been so much negative activity surrounding people trying to do something at the White House until President Obama took office. Why? People are ready for him to get out of office. I just can’t sit here and say that it’s just White people because that would absolutely be a lie. While it is mainly them, it’s some of us too. We feel that he has not done anything during his first run.
Rome wasn’t built in one day, and Obama certainly cannot fix or resolve all of the nation’s issues in one four-year term. Thus far, he has managed to: appoint the more women than any other incoming president; push through and sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act otherwise known as “the stimulus package” that stimulated the economy 3.5% which created and sustained 2.1 million jobs (more than Bush did in eight years); created the Making Home Affordable home refinancing plan to help millions of Americans avoid foreclosure and provided tax credits to first-time home buyers; ordered 65 executives who took bailout money to cut their own pay until they paid back all bailout money; advocated for and signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which made it a federal crime to assault anyone based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. I could go on and on about other things that our President has done for the Country. Whereas there are many that says that he has done so much, there are some that believe that he has done nothing. I hate to say it, but 9 times out of 10, they are only saying this because of the color of his skin.
Many political astute people are saying that the 2012 Election will be a close on between President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. According to national polls conducted by the Post-ABC, President Obama was said to average 47.6 percent among registered voters while Romney averages 47 percent. Only twice in the those 12 polls has either candidate secured a majority of the vote or held a lead outside the margin of error; Obama had a seven-point edge in April 2012 and a six-point lead in February. In another survey, The Washington Post/ABC News showed the two candidates were tied, with 49% of Americans backing Obama. Many are looking at the fact that he has openly endorsed gay marriage. Of course its being felt that he only did this to gain votes from the GLBT community.
Mitt Romey is determined to be the 45th President of the United States, by any means. He has hired Republican operative Tara Wall as a senior communications adviser. She will also work on coalitions outreach. Wall will be one of the most senior African-Americans on Romney’s team as he tries to defeat our first Black president. After working in Detroit as a television journalist,Wall has had stints as an adviser at the Republican National Committee, columnist and editor for the Washington Times and as a CNN contributor. In an interview with theGrio’s Perry Bacon, Jr., Wall said her “role would not be just outreach to Blacks, but women and other groups, as well as shaping Romney’s overall communications strategy.” She joined the campaign a few weeks ago and is likely to be a frequent pro-Romney voice. Wall compared her work as an adviser with President Bush’s campaign in 2004 to the role she is playing in the 2012 Election by saying, “Yes, it is a bit harder this time. We have a Black president. But we can’t go in with the mind-set that we aren’t going to win any people over to our side. From a messaging standpoint, we need to be able to communicate and relate to these communities about how they are being impacted by Obama’s policies. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s an important part of the process. It’s not a ploy, it’s not a tactic, it’s part of who we are. We have to show up.”
What do we have to do to keep Obama in office another four years? Simply put, just go to the polls and vote. The stigma that “my vote don’t count because they are going to put who they want in office” is a lie.
If we sit around instead of going to the polls in November, it shows that we don’t have a voice and we do not want to be heard. Black people need to get out of the mindstate that voting leads to nothing. That is what “they” want us to believe so they can take over and run this country the way they see fit. Perhaps we all forgot the fact that African-American slaves built the White House and the U.S. Capital. Jesse Holland, author of “Black Men Built the Capital” said, “The Inauguration of Barack Obama as the president of the United States “closes a circle in American history to have an African-American taking the oath of office, and becoming the most powerful person in the United States, and yet still live in a building that was built by some of the least powerful people in the United States, African-American slaves.”” How ironic is it that? Do your part. Be sure to cast your vote in November.
