blogger interrupted

Democratic presidential campaigns in Ohio spend a lot of money on radio ads in black communities, usually late, and usually without the express help of the stations’ prevailing commentary already on-air.   The amounts aren’t great per geographic target, the ads appear and then disappear, and the ads are just that - ads, not editorial.

Not this year.

Since Mr. Limbaugh first flexed his tonsils two decades ago, Democrats have publicly worried about their lack of an answer to him and his imitators, who have proven so adept at motivating conservative Republicans to go to the polls, especially for President Bush.

Now it is Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who has a harmonious chorus of broadcast supporters addressing a vital part of his coalition, feeding and reflecting the excitement blacks have for his candidacy in general. Mr. Obama is getting support from white liberal talk radio hosts as well, but the backing he is getting from black radio hosts could be especially helpful to his campaign’s efforts to increase black turnout and raise historically low voter registration enough to change the math of presidential elections in battlegrounds and traditionally Republican states like this one.

Since 2004, there has been a constant refrain that the map of winning Ohio for a Democrat has been changing, largely to the detriment of urban communities, and in favor of exurbia, where swing white voters abound.  The argument goes that Ohio is changing, and that for a Democrat to win the state, pandering to the exurbs and Appalachia with the likes of Ted Strickland at the top of the ticket is necessaary.  This dynamic has been largely true, to date.

To date, only.

If black voters get ginned up for months in the same way that white conservatives have been ginned up for decades, largely by talk radio, the resulting increase in turnout would dwarf any marginal increase in support from white exurbia or Appalachia.  

Dwarf it.

And the new map would be the old map.  On steroids.

There are black precincts in Cuyahoga County where George W. Bush got no votes in 2004.  ZERO.  VOTES.  The turnout in those precincts is usually around 10-20%.  If you merely double that turnout, to 20-30%, across the board, the numbers out of Cuyahoga would swamp everything downstate.  If you triple it, to merely 30-40%, as we just might do with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket in 2008, this thing is over.

That’s where black talk radio comes in.

Black radio, heard in the barber shops, the homes, the businesses of every black community, is the only equivalent Democrats have comparable to white conservative talk radio.  But it’s better.  

White conservative talk radio is pervasive because it has to reach a more widely spread demographic, which is largely rural and exurbian.  Black talk radio reaches a compact and readily targetable audience, which can be reached on foot, in large numbers, with minimal effort.

In addition, black talk radio reaches a demographic that doesn’t vote, and needs to be persuaded to vote. But if they do vote, they vote D, straight ticket.  White conservative talk radio reaches an audience that already votes in larger numbers compared to black voters, and needs to be persuaded to vote one way or another, and often splits their ticket.

In essence, black talk radio audiences are like found money.  It’s the golden goose.  And there are WAY more of them to be had than any single show’s white conservative talk radio audience.  

It has been the siren song of every GOTV operation in Ohio for decades - get out the black vote, you win.  But every year, turnout fails to meet any target, largely because black voters are not engaged long term, not persuaded long term, and not likely to respond to a quickly deployed GOTV effort once every four years.  There is no apparent investment in the audience, so the audience won’t pay the dividend.

This year, with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, that dynamic changes.  The black community is engaged, excited, inspired, the opinion leaders are cheering on, and the radio audiences are being ginned up on a daily basis.  All of which makes traditional GOTV in these areas, by phone and on foot, easier, and better received, than in previous years.

If this dynamic delivers that bump in turnout - the bump Democrats have been trying to create every single year for decades - it will not only swamp the exurbs and Appalachia downstate.   It will have lasting effects on the Democratic Party in Ohio.  In much the same way that white conservative talk radio has drawn the Republican base to the far right, black talk radio, through electoral power, can draw the Democratic Party toward its base too.  But faster, more reliably, and with a built in energy that can only come from having a black man at the top of the ticket.

That is, if it delivers.  

This year, it may deliver.  It may already be in progress of doing just that.

Pay attention, ODP.

Popularity: 7% [?]