Southern Black voters to the rescue in the Senate?
If you haven’t already read Nate Cohn’s excellent story in the New York Times on the potential power of the black vote in this November’s midterm elections, you should. He makes the same prediction I have been making for months now. “If Democrats hold the Senate,” he writes, “they will do so because of Southern black voters.” But my forecast is always tempered by the fact that African American voters, like most voters, stay home in non-presidential election years. Cohn gives me a little more hope that this time will be different.
“The trends increasing the clout of black voters reflect a complete cycle of generational replacement in the post-Jim Crow era,” Cohn notes. “White voters who came of age as loyal Democrats have largely died off, while the vast majority of black voters have been able to vote for their entire adult lives — and many have developed the habit of doing so.”
When it comes to the Senate map, the toughest and closest races Democrats face are in southern states. As The Post’s Aaron Blake reported in April, “Six of the 16 states with the highest black populations are holding key Senate contests in 2014.” Three of those states — Louisiana, North Carolina and Arkansas — “are widely considered to be the most pivotal when it comes to the GOP’s hopes of winning the majority.” Cohn adds Georgia to the list. “Black voters will most likely represent more than half of all Democratic voters in Louisiana and Georgia, and nearly half in North Carolina."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/07/18/southern-black-voters-to-the-rescue-in-the-senate/
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm fired up, and ready to go for 2014. 
