CBS News: Blacks Unsatisfied with Obama

Much as we on the right like to carp about how sold-out the Old Media is to Obama’s reelection effort and how the media establishment is loathe to say anything negative about Obama, sometimes it does publish a piece that raises troubling concerns for the President. 

This week it was CBS’ turn with a piece that notes that Obama has a “complicated relationship” with black America. According to CBS, blacks are largely unsatisfied with Obama.

CBS does a pretty good job, giving a myriad of examples of that dissatisfaction, even while, in nearly every other paragraph, CBS reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell mentions how, dissatisfied or not, they are all still voting for Obama.

But that constant reassurance aside, the piece is filled with example after example of the grumbling from black community leaders and politicians all essentially saying how disappointed they are that Obama has done so little for them.

The piece leads with complaining from Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), both of whom are annoyed that black unemployment is so much higher than that of other communities.

Obama is also criticized for not showing much leadership on other issues that affect the black community. The piece notes, for instance, that Obama has done little about the violent crime that plagues big city black communities, and he’s also criticized for not speaking before any of the nation’s African American organizations like the NAACP or the National Urban League.

All in all, it seems that many in the African American community feel that Obama has failed to live up to his “unique role in history,” and that he’s allowing “political expediency” to rule the day.

Some feel this dissatisfaction may lead to a dampening of the overwhelming turnout of African Americans that Obama enjoyed in 2008. And, indeed, some polls reflect that. On July 13, Gallup reported that black enthusiasm is “lower now than it was in the fall of 2004 and 2008.”

There have been other signs that Obama hasn’t been able to sustain that “hope and change” mystique. In her CBS piece, though, Caldwell avoided discussing these even harsher criticisms of Obama. Just recently, actor Morgan Freeman said that Obama didn’t qualify as the first black president because he had a “very white” mother.

Only weeks ago, during an interview with NPR, the popular actor dismissed Obama as the first black president saying, “…Barack had a mama, and she was white — very white American, Kansas, middle of America. There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet. He’s not America’s first black president — he’s America’s first mixed-race president.”

If Obama was as wildly successful as the African community had hoped, this grumbling would not be so pervasive, for sure. But kudos to CBS for at least giving them some attention.