Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress from Carter to Obama

6. President Obama and Black Political Incorporation

107 Chapter 6 President Obama and Black Political Incorporation It is important that there be a rich political diversity in the Black Caucus because there is a rich diversity in America and within the black community. —Rep. Robert Scott (D-VA) and CBC member “The caucus is now of an age in which the policies it is promoting are becoming the law of the land. It takes a minute to reflect on that because for far too long that wasn’t the case,” said Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). “It was more like we had viewpoints, but we weren’t always in a position to see them through. We’ve moved that from the complaint window to the claims window.” —“For the New Black Caucus, New Power and an Urgency in Using It,” Washington Post, September 26, 2009 The election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president represented a watershed event in American race relations. For many African Americans it was an emotional moment; their struggle for the ballot in the South had been bloody and lengthy, and participants in that struggle were living witnesses now to the election of this biracial U.S. senator who considered himself Black. During the 2008 Democratic primary, even as some remained undecided, more CBC members initially supported New York senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton than Obama for the presidential nomination (Murray 2007). Founding CBC member Charles Rangel, a fellow New Yorker, for example, supported Clinton. Civil rights veteran and Black lawmaker John Lewis (D-GA) supported Clinton, as did relative newcomer Kendrick Meek (D-FL). Privately, support was based on 108 • concordance electability. Clinton was deemed more electable. That view changed as the nomination contest proceeded. Obama beat Clinton in the Iowa Caucus by a good margin. By Super Tuesday, some CBC members, such as Lewis, had switched from Clinton to Obama. Obama had also won the lion’s share of the Black Democratic vote over Clinton. Unexpectedly, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio, a CBC member who stuck by Clinton until she ended her campaign, died before the November election. Clinton had won Ohio by about 10 percentage points. Obama entered office with an ambitious agenda in very difficult times. He acknowledged these challenges in his 2008 inaugural address, stating that he would confront them in his administration. The Democratic Party had regained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2006, after having been out of power legislatively during much of the last administration under a Republican president. Obama’s extraordinary leadership , Democratic Party control, and strong party discipline all worked to give his administration the highest legislative success record in 2009 since President Lyndon B. Johnson. Over 97 percent of the legislative initiatives that Obama pursued in his first year in office were enacted. This measure of presidential success was the highest ever achieved since 1953, although most presidents generally earn between 80 percent to 89 percent success rates in the first year of their presidencies. The landmark legislation Obama won included the 2009 stimulus bill and 2010 landmark health care legislation. No Republicans in the House voted for the 2009 stimulus bill in the House, and only three Republicans did so in the Senate. No Republicans in either chamber voted for the health care legislation that mandates that every American have health insurance coverage in 2016. However, the November 2010 midterm represented a stinging rebuke to the Democrats in Congress under Obama. Republicans regained majority control of the House. Democrats were able to maintain control of the Senate, but their party still lacked its supermajority of 60 votes. They had lost this supermajority in December 2009 when a Republican won the special election held to fill the seat of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, who had died while in office. The Clinton and Bush administrations had achieved record levels of diversity , which Obama matched, appointing Eric Holder, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, to become the nation’s first Black attorney general. In addition to Holder, Black appointees included Lisa Jackson in the Environmental Protection Agency, Ron Kirk as U.S. trade representative, Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations, and Margaret A. Hamburg as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. President Obama and Black Political Incorporation • 109 Latinos were represented by Ken Salazar, secretary of the Interior Department , and Hilda Solis, secretary of the Labor...