While official tracking events around Charlotte focused on the TV, this presidential watch party was more like a, well, party. The Historic Excelsior Club on Tuesday night lived up to its reputation as a social and political meeting place for African Americans.
The televisions (tuned to MSNBC) acted as background noise, with some in the standing-room crowd leaning in close to hear results slowly trickle in but most heading to the dance floor or moving in place as Fly Ty of 105.3 played the classics. When the Al Green staple “Let’s Stay Together” filled the air, some of the patrons tried to sing a few notes, though none matched President Obama’s own sampling of a few bars.
Four years ago, election night at the Excelsior was a scene of exhilaration and excitement. America elected its first black president, and the club’s owner, civil rights attorney James Ferguson II, paid tribute to pioneering politicians — from Harvey Gantt to Congressman Mel Watt – who had come to share the moment.
This time around, the club watched early results with anxious confidence. Vindication spread over the crowd when the president’s second-term victory was called. “That’s the beauty of it,” Ferguson told me. “Before long, a lot of the haters are going to come around and admit that an African-American president can serve two terms and do a great job.”
There was a feeling in the room that President Barack Obama might finally get the respect he has earned.
“It’s a great thing to celebrate for the second time,” Fly Ty said during a break. “As much as we advance, racism is still out there,” he said, citing the obstruction that met Obama’s attempts at bipartisanship. “It’s very sad in this day and time.” He predicted a “no-holds-barred” second term. The president, he said, “is going to go all out and make an impact.”
Francis Pendergrass, 57, of Charlotte, called Obama “a man of character. He cares about people.” He dismissed the talk before the election that the president’s support of same-sex marriage would cost him the votes of black religious conservatives. “I don’t want to tell people what they can do.”
Local and state officials who won their races stopped in, and Mayor Pro Tem and city councilman Pat Cannon gave regular updates to the crowd. While he celebrated Obama’s win, N.C. Rep. Rodney Moore lamented the “trifecta” that put Republican Pat McCrory in the governor’s seat and retained GOP majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed a bill passed last session that would enact voter-ID legislation in North Carolina, and Moore said if Republicans resurrect it, “We’re going to block it, even if we have to go to court to do it.”
But before the political fights begin, Tuesday night at the Excelsior was a chance to, as the Kool & the Gang song rang out, “Celebrate.” Earnestine Kasey of Charlotte said, “I am feeling so much joy.” Kasey, 55, who lost her job, said she plans to go back to school and open up her own business in interior design and insurance (“I can decorate your home and insure it”). She’s positive, though, and “so glad to be in his history.”
That’s Obama’s history.
Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning Charlotte-based journalist, is a contributor to The Washington Post‘s “She the People” blog, The Root and theGrio. Her “Keeping It Positive” segment airs Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. on Fox News Rising Charlotte, and she was national correspondent for Politics Daily. Follow her on Twitter
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2012.
The monolithic support President Obama enjoys from the black community indicates that there is virtually no dialog going on about how his economic policies are really affecting them. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports show that the socio-economic stats for many blacks are worse now than 4 years ago. President Obama’s Keynesian demand side policies have failed utterly and he admitted it half jokingly when he said, “I guess those shovel ready jobs weren’t so shovel ready.” This president’s “rob Peter to pay Paul” economic policies have weakened the country’s economic viability and 4 more years of the same do not bode well for plight of some his most loyal admirers, notwithstanding the rest of us.
At some point the black community should judge the president on his record…not on personal regard. Sorry…it isn’t racist in the least to point that out.
I have to hand it to Tony. When life gives you sour grapes make whine.
African Americans support the President’s economic policies because they benefit from those policies, as do all Americans. Obama’s policies have been successful, as the rescue of GM clearly shows. Congressional Budget Office reports show that the stimulus increased both GDP and employment.
The President’s stimulus plan averted a far greater economic catastrophe – a catastrophe brought on by Conservative policy which favors tax cuts for the wealthiest sector who do not contribute to economic growth and massive deregulation of a reckless and criminal financial industry which drove the economy over the cliff. Obama’s stimulus plan would have been even more effective if had been larger, but such a plan was continuously rebuffed by an obstructionist Republican controlled House of Representatives.
Moving forward to the fiscal cliff, which is actually a slope because the expiration of the Bush tax cuts as well as spending cuts that include the military roll out over time, all the President has to do is offer a sensible economic plan that includes tax increases and spending cuts. He has already made similar proposals that have been shot down by Congress, so there’s no reason to believe that the Republicans will not block him again.
If that’s the case, the President can use the bully pulpit to paint the Republicans into a corner. House Conservatives can either play ball, or face a drubbing in 2014. Obama holds all the cards. Sure, Republicans can claim that the President needs to move to the center, but Obama is the center, as the last election clearly proves.
With all due respect Pat, whining? More like lament for irony and the end of the country. On the other hand your comments sound like the opinions of someone who has spent too much time in Obama’s Choom Room.
Obama’s grandiloquence about “freedom,” “fairness,” and “opportunity” sound nice but his actions reveal a very strong streak of antipathy for those terms, the private sector and for democracy itself when it proves inconvenient. His economic policies are hardly grounded in empirical economic theory, let alone to be defended with strong empirical facts and the last 4 years prove it. It can only be said that a puddle is a lake by looking at it through the end of a narrow tube.
If you are a racketeer and a thief you might appreciate the political values behind the auto bailouts. Without Congressional approval or proper debate Obama just “took” 85 billion dollars of the taxpayer’s money, that’s 1 million a day, every day for 232 years. He took money that was legislatively earmarked for financial companies at risk under TARP and gave it to Chrysler and GM. Then he gave them massive tax credits that allow them to avoid paying their “fair share” of taxes for years to come. What company wouldn’t look successful 3 years later in the state of Ohio after that kind of windfall? And you point fingers at Republican tax cuts? That’s what you call 24k hypocrisy.
To date the American people have lost 30 percent or about 25 billion on the investment. Shareholders, creditors, and non-union retirees lost all their assets. Tens of thousands of non-unionized salespeople, mechanics, managers, etc., lost their jobs when hundreds of showrooms were forced to close…but the sweetheart deal took very good care of Obama’s politically favored cronies in the UAW. All-in-all, it was a small price to pay to be able to campaign in Ohio on “saving” the auto industry. Était-ce pas ?
President Obama bought an election by means of the most egregious violation of contract law and property rights in American history and he subverted democracy doing it by using taxpayer money. Apparently, a lot of people are ok with that and they will get the government they deserve.
Even though there is immense pride in the black community over the first black president, and rightly so, his policies haven’t staunched their disproportionate loss of income, employment, or net worth. Four more years of constitutional lawlessness and graft gift wrapped in moralizing language to justify it won’t improve the plight of the underprivileged but it will eventually make us all indigents at the hands of the state. The seeds of first financial collapse took 30 years to come to fruition because liberals in government decreed everyone should have a house…the next collapse will come quick, sudden and will be worse.
“their disproportionate loss of income, employment, or net worth”
But the other team was promising to turn Medicare into a voucher system, dump Medicaid back onto the states, and change future Social Security benefits, which they like to call “entitlements” because it sounds more derogatory.
If you were struggling to live paycheck to paycheck, which team would get your vote?