Tyler Bilbo, Contributor
Ideology: Partisan Democrat | Writing from: Georgetown University
In an ailing economy that features an extraordinarily high jobless rate, Democrats will struggle to build on the gains of 2006 and 2008. As Republicans look to capitalize on the fluidity of the suburban electorate, Democrats need to re-energize core urban constituencies in order to re-elect Barack Obama.
2010 is going to be ugly for the Democrats. While Republicans will likely fall short of recapturing the Congress, they are almost guaranteed to gain seats for the first time since 2004.
The Republican resurgence will almost exclusively occur in rural and suburban areas. Although many of 2010’s contested rural districts are in conservative areas that never vote for Democratic Presidential nominees, Republicans look to take back a variety of suburban districts that are especially fluid at the national level. From Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania’s 8th district to Jerry McNerney in California’s 11th, suburban pockets throughout the country enabled the Democratic resurgence of 2006. In 2008, these areas remained Democratic and facilitated Obama’s comfortable victory.
As the legacy of the Bush economy fades into history, however, Democrats have assumed ownership of a stagnant economy. The fluidity of suburbia has persisted as Democrats have replaced Republicans as the target of middle class suburban angst. In addition to possibly delivering 2010 to the Republicans, suburbia is in a position to seriously endanger Obama’s re-election if the economy continues its sluggish recovery.
In all of this, however, inner city voters remain largely committed to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Despite their support of the President, a lack of enthusiasm threatens to keep these voters away from the polls. Amidst a hostile environment in most rural areas and an increasingly frustrated suburban electorate, Democrats need their loyal inner city base now more
Photo Credit: Boston Globe
than. In order to re-capture the enthusiasm of this constituency, the Democratic Party must re-style itself to appeal to urban voters.
Even as Republican Scott Brown pulled off a monumental upset in one of the nation’s most Democratic states, he did not win any of the state’s largest cities. In conjunction with his strong performance in the state’s suburban towns, Brown owes his election to low turnout in Massachusetts’s inner cities.
Although Coakley carried Boston by almost 40 points, turnout in the state’s largest city was only 43%. Likewise, Springfield, the state’s third largest city, opted for Coakley by a similarly high margin of 24%. Springfield’s turnout was even lower at 34%.
It is impossible to assess the effect that higher inner city turnout would have had on the ultimate outcome of the election. Nonetheless, while turnout was especially low in Coakley strongholds like Springfield and Boston, Brown performed best in towns where turnout hovered around 70%. In Walpole, a suburban community south of Boston, 69% of registered voters turned out to vote and 68% of those votes went to Scott Brown. Without such high levels of turnout in towns like Walpole, the imbalance of voters in more populated base could have been enough to prevent Brown’s election.
As Democrats move forward, they must re-establish an identity that appeals to the average inner city voter that eagerly voted for Barack Obama. Urban voters are decidedly more racially diverse than their rural and suburban counterparts. Despite pockets of middle class and wealthy neighborhoods, most inner cities are marred by a seemingly insurmountable presence of poverty. Because the unique identity of such areas is nothing like the rest of the country and in tailoring an urban-centric message, Obama must effectively balance it with his campaign in the rest of the country.
The election of Scott Brown teaches us that Democrats cannot take urban voters for granted. While Democrats desperately need to survive a GOP onslaught in 2010, the midterms should not emerge as the Party’s singular focus. The 2012 campaign is just around the corner and it is time for the party to start re-energizing its base.
Part two of this column will explore specific ways that Democrats can re-enthuse urban constituencies.