A little LBJ and a Lot of Panic for Obama

If you do EVERY­THING You’ll win

Lyn­don Johnson

Lyn­don Baines John­son only lost one elec­tion, that was a spe­cial elec­tion for Sen­ate in 1941. John­son cam­paigned hard and furi­ous, spent an incred­i­ble amount of money, used some bril­liant strat­egy and stole a fair amount of votes in cor­rupt coun­ties that his allies con­trolled, but as told by Robert Caro in the first vol­ume of his LBJ mag­num opus Lyn­don John­son the Path to Power, John­son made a rookie mis­take. He found him­self so con­fi­dent on elec­tion day that he gave per­mis­sion for some of the coun­ties he con­trolled to report results early. This telegraphed to the liqueur inter­ests des­per­ate to get Pappy O’Daniel (a pro­hi­bi­tion­ist) out of the Governor’s man­sion, the num­ber of votes they would need to steal in cor­rupt areas not con­trolled by John­son to win.

John­son would never let any­one out hus­tle or out steal him again. He ran his future elec­tions by his rule and would know only vic­tory from that point on until the pres­i­den­tial pri­maries of 1960. W

Which takes us to 2012…

I have stated for quite a while that Obama is going to lose spec­tac­u­larly and that con­ser­v­a­tives should be con­fi­dent not wor­ried (ride right through them they’re demor­al­ized as hell and all that). In that spirit I was pleased to see Kevin Jackson’s lat­est post (buy his book) sug­gest­ing Obama is panicking.

There are rea­sons why he should be pan­icked but look­ing at his list I have to dis­agree with Kevin on an impor­tant point.

Sup­port­ing Super Pacs, launch­ing Span­ish Web Sites, the Truth Teams and shift­ing right are all pru­dent things. Obama needs the money to win, the Span­ish vote is very impor­tant (par­tic­u­larly after his dis of the Catholic church), the “Truth Teams” no mat­ter how much they back­fire are a log­i­cal tac­tic and shift­ing right will hurt him very lit­tle since the left assumes that any such pro­nounce­ments (such as oppo­si­tion to gay mar­riage) are lies for pub­lic consumption.

Assum­ing he has the recourse he claims the invest­ment in all these groups is wise, to quote a coach accused of run­ning up a foot­ball score

“It’s not my job to stop me from scor­ing. It’s his,”

So none of those items in my mind con­sti­tute panic, they are instead a wise appli­ca­tion of LBJ’s elec­tion rule.

There is one item on his list that doesn’t just sug­gest panic, it screams it.

One might argue that Black Amer­i­cans might not be as moti­vated as they were in 2008. After all Obama’s re-​election would not be nearly as his­toric as his ini­tial elec­tion but even so the launch­ing of African American’s for Obama sends a very inter­est­ing signal.

If the black vote was his­tor­i­cally more evenly divided then form­ing such a group might seem pru­dent, but Democ­rats rou­tinely take nearly 90% or more of the black vote. If This pres­i­dent feels the need to form an “African Amer­i­cans for Obama” it is pretty telling.

Let’s do the math, Blacks make up 11% of the pop­u­la­tion. In 2004 Kerry took 88% of the black vote that accounted for 11% of the total vote. That 9.7% of the pop­u­lar vote for the demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date vs 1.3% for the GOP. A net 8.4% for the demo­c­ra­tic candidate.

In 2008 Pres­i­dent Obama took 96% of the black vote that con­sisted of 13% of the elec­torate, that adds up to in terms of the pop­u­lar vote.12.5 vs .5% for the GOP a net of 12% for the Democrats.

The dif­fer­ence between the two is a net 3.6% of the vote. Now in terms of The pop­u­lar vote 3.6% would still give Obama the edge if all things remain equal to 2008, but all things aren’t equal.

One can ratio­nally assume that even if this pres­i­dent is less pop­u­lar among the black com­mu­nity than he once was he would still eas­ily out­draw John Kerry among Black vot­ers. So lets say that the pres­i­dent gets 92% of the black vote this time 4 points bet­ter than Kerry but three points worse than last time and crunch the numbers.

If the black turnout is 11% the split is 10% Obama vs 1% Rom­neySan­to­rumGin­grich­Paul +9% for the dems
If the black turnout is 12% the split is 11% Obama vs 1% Rom­neySan­to­rumGin­grich­Paul +10% D
If the black turnout is 13% the split is 12% Obama vs 1% Rom­neySan­to­rumGin­grich­Paul +11% D

So Obama would nat­u­rally get a +9 to a +11 even if his pop­u­lar­ity drops with the black elec­torate by a full 3 points.

Or alter­na­tively if his pop­u­lar­ity doesn’t drop but the black turnout does, what are the numbers

If black turnout drops to 12% at 96% the split is 11.4% to .6% a dif­fer­ence of 10.8
If black turnout drops to 11% at 96% the split is 10.6% vs .4% a dif­fer­ence of 10.2
If black turnout drops to 10% (unlikely) at 96% the split is 9.6% vs .4% a dif­fer­ence of 9.2

Given these fig­ures and esti­mates at worst the black com­mu­nity will pro­vide a +9% for Obama and at Best +11 a dif­fer­ence on only 1 – 3 points of a vote that he won by 7.2 points.

Yet given these fig­ures the Obama admin­is­tra­tion finds the need to invest time and money in a “African-​Americans for Obama” orga­ni­za­tion where the return poten­tial return is from such a ven­ture is minis­cule sta­tis­ti­cally. That sug­gests one or both of the following:

1. Press reports about the weak­ness of the cur­rent GOP field not with­stand­ing the Obama admin­is­tra­tion under­stands the GOP is united in their dis­like of his poli­cies and their base, which was largely absent from John McCain’s cor­ner is highly moti­vated to turn out decreas­ing the over­all impact of the black vote.

2. The rumors of dis­sat­is­fac­tion of the black com­mu­nity with pres­i­dent Obama are not rumors but fact and even the pru­dent esti­mates I have given over­states his pop­u­lar­ity among African-​Americans requir­ing imme­di­ate action to moti­vate the unin­spired and pres­sure the waver­ing to make sure Black turnout doesn’t drop.

This means that for all the pro­pa­ganda dri­ven by the left the Obama admin­is­tra­tion knows it is in deep trou­ble and needs every vote it can per­suade, brow­beat, buy or steal to keep it in office after Jan 20^th 2013.

I don’t know what it tells you but I know what it tells me:

Ride Right Through them, they’re demor­al­ized as Hell!

Sim­ply amazing

Update: Insta­lanche, thanks Glenn helps me toward that Mil­lionth hit for next month hopefully.