Democrats fearing big losses in the South and a poor turnout from typically strong constituencies are digging up racial scars to motivate black voters who might be considering staying home on Election Day,
The New York Times reports.
Their racially charged messages invoke the names of Trayvon Martin, segregation and the recent uproar in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed teen was shot by a police officer — an incident still under investigation but one that has stoked a national racial divide, the Times noted.
The ad spots on radio and television are targeted for black audiences and are being paid for by national Democrat organizations — not some underground PAC where money sources are difficult to identify, the Times pointed out.
In Georgia, for example, a flyer offers up the screed that by casting a vote in this year's midterms, participants "can stop another Ferguson." The mail piece bears a photograph of two children with raised cardboard signs that read "Don't shoot," the Times noted.
Wrote the Times of the strategy: "One way to hang on is to increase the share of the black vote that typically turns out in a midterm election. To do so, Democrats are seizing on racial mistrust and unease, the same complicated emotions often used against them in the South."
Such tactics have led some Republicans to call them out as race-baiters, willing to try anything during an election cycle where Democrat losses are projected by some experts to pile up big in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia, the Times said.
According to a study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Democrats must have black turnout on par with 2008, when Barack Obama surged to victory, to hold onto some Senate seats in the 2014 midterms,
the Christian Science Monitor reported.
Said Republican party chairman Michael Steele to the Times of the ads and Democrats' apparent desperation: “They have been playing on this nerve in the black community that if you even so much as look at a Republican, churches will start to burn, your civil rights will be taken away and young black men like Trayvon Martin will die. The reality of it is, the Democrats realize that their most loyal constituency is not as loyal as they once were.”
Understanding the backlash against the president, who has struggled, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have taken up his campaign role, hitting the trail to drive support from minority voters in the South,
Politico reported.