Liberal leaders at the Young & Powerful Group’s inauguration roundtable Saturday attributed President Barack Obama’s reelection not to a well-run campaign, rather to the Republican Party’s failure to choose a candidate that appealed to minority voters.
“There were are a lot of poignant things that came out of this recent election and one of them was the token white male ticket is not going to guarantee you a win in an election,” said Natalie Cofield, a panelist on the organization’s political forum Saturday at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
“I think that [Obama] winning again a second time in office really has demonstrated that minorities across the board, not just African Americans, need to be incorporated into policies, need to be incorporated into conversations and not just as your token but real integrated members of the team,” Cofield, who is also the president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce in Austin, Texas, continued. “I think that’s one of the biggest things that came out on the Romney-Ryan ticket.
Malia Lazu, the executive director of Future Boston Alliance agreed with Cofield, and said the Republican Party not only “messed up” the 2012 election, but the GOP messed up in 2008, as well.
“I think the Romney-Ryan ticket and I think the Republicans this year messed up so bad and I sort of felt the same thing in 2008. I sort of felt like if the Democrats didn’t win in 2008, we’d [Democratic Party] have to close up shop.
“I don’t want us to start just believing our own press,” she warned the audience. “This is still America. This is still American capitalism,” said Lazu, who is a supporter of socialism.
The entire panel was fearful that the Democratic Party would become complacent after its recent electoral victories and that it could lose power if the Republican Party gets its act together.
Insiders within GOP have already acknowledge that the minority vote is the GOP’s Achilles heel. Former Speaker of the House and 2012 presidential candidate told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien the morning after the presidential election that Republicans, and particularly Republicans in Congress, need to understand “there’s a difference between outreach and inclusion.”
“Outreach is when five white guys have a meeting and call you. Inclusion is when you’re in the meeting, which inherently changes the whole tenor of the meeting,” he said. “The question is do they [House Republicans] want to, in a disciplined way, create a schedule and a program and include people who are not traditionally Republican order to grow a party that in 2016 is competitive?”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who still identifies as a Republican despite the fact that he endorsed President Barack Obama in the last election, said on ‘Meet the Press’ last Sunday that Republicans “look down on minorities.”
Luckily for the GOP, as Gingrich pointed out, it has several years before the next presidential election to rethink its approach to minority outreach.
