All Blog Posts Tagged 'election' (36)

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

An AP poll on election week eve sent up red flags on the Presidential election. The poll found that more Americans expressed anti-black attitudes as well as anti-Hispanic bias than four years ago. Certainly few blacks and Hispanics, and many whites, have any illusions that racism has somehow been magically banished from American life or politics. The relentless battering of Obama and at times First Lady Michelle Obama with nooses, watermelons,…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

At first glance their numbers are pathetic. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein registers 3 percent of the vote nationally. Peace and Freedom Party candidate Roseanne Barr registers about the same. Justice Party presidential candidate, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is seemingly too insignificant to even rate any numbers count. But the numbers don’t tell the potential danger they pose to…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

It’s clear from the series of emails that the White House was informed that the attack on the American embassy in Libya may have been a planned, organized terrorist attack. President Obama’s critics jumped on this again supposedly as smoking gun proof that the White House engaged in a massive cover-up to keep the truth from the American people. But what was the truth? And what proof is there that Obama…

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders on Wednesday, October 10 demanded that the Romney Election Campaign Committee denounce the violently racist anti-Obama display of a watermelon and a hanging noose by prominent Romney supporter Blake la Beck on his Morgan Hill, California property. The display is not just an isolated example of one man’s bigotry but is prominently displayed near a public road and a…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The instant the Supreme Court decided to again tackle affirmative action, President Obama wasted no time. His Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. filed a straight forward brief that was signed off on by five federal agencies and the Justice Department that flatly called on the High Court to not scrap race as a factor in education. The court will decide the issue in that Fisher v. University of Texas the…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney drew much of the attention and heat for knocking President Obama for allegedly not talking and acting tough enough in response to the Cairo and Libyan embassy attacks.  But Romney’s anti-Obama blast was only the tip of the GOP onslaught. A pack of GOP senators, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and  the usual suspect legion of cackling right…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The Democratic Convention was pitch perfect in publicly showcasing Democratic Party unity. Speaker after speaker made the case why President Obama should get a second term. But there is still the nagging worry among Democrats that more than a few Democrats will be MIA from the polls on November 6. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened.  For years registered Democrats have far outnumbered registered…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, GOP political guru Karl Rove, and the parade of Hispanic and black speakers at the Republican National Convention either said or were testament to one belief and that’s GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney can’t win with just white votes. The rationale is simple he doesn’t have enough of them. The supposed standard break point for GOP presidential candidates to bag the White House is…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll registered what had to be a first ever for any candidate in any presidential election in modern times. The poll put GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s share of the black vote at 0 percent. At first glance that seems about right. Romney and his VP running mate Paul Ryan have singlehandedly done what few GOP presidential tickets have done and that’s actively…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On August 3, 1980 then GOP Presidential contender Ronald Reagan picked his campaign starting point and his audience deliberately. The spot was the Neshoba County Fair, near Meridian Mississippi. The virtually lily-white, wildly enthusiastic throng that lined Reagan’s motorcade route waved Confederate and American flags.…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney predictably jumped all over the jobs report for July which saw joblessness tick up slightly. He called it a hammer blow for the middle-class.  Certainly much has been made of the fact that no president has won reelection since World War II with the…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The Reverend William Owens is banking that anti-gay marriage sentiment among blacks is so strong that it will put a crimp in President Obama’s near solid black voter support. He’s founded a group called the Coalition of African-American Pastors and he and his undetermined sized group are so confident that…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Two reports issued the same day told of two appalling realities. One report on poverty was based on an AP survey. It found that the poor are getting poorer, and more numerous than at any time in the last half century. The other report from the Tax Justice Network found that the super-rich are getting richer, and they are…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A black Republican advocacy group wasted no time in hitting the airwaves moments after GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney addressed the NAACP convention. The group touted Romney’s alleged triumph in getting more than a few of the hostile crowd to cheer him at times. Their national radio ad taunted Obama like…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson  

The GOP’s relentless war on alleged rampant voter fraud targets, not thousands, as many critics have noted, but millions of eligible voters. To no surprise, the Brennan Center for Justice found that the majority of the five…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

GOP Florida Representative Allen West’s shoot from the lip, borderline crackpot quips, digs, and insults at women, blacks, Democrats, and especially President Obama have become the virtual stuff of legend. West always manages to grab headline attention every time he moves his lips to take his off-beat,…

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



Every Democratic or Republican president or presidential candidate since 1920 has either directly addressed the NAACP annual convention or sent a warm message. The ritual is even more imperative for the nation’s top politicians to follow during a presidential election year. Former President George W. Bush was almost the lone exception. He…