Obama Is Losing Black Voters

Bob Herbert sees a growing "disenchantment" among black voters for President Obama and the Democrats. It's a real problem, he writes, even if it hasn't generated many headlines. "Most blacks are reluctant to publicly express their concerns about the president because they are so outraged by the blatantly unfair and often racist attacks against him from the political right," Herbert writes in the New York Times.

But the unhappiness is there, along with a sense that Obama hasn't fought hard enough to create jobs—blacks "have been hammered disproportionately by the recession," he writes—or policies to help the neediest "because of an excess of caution." Remember the Shirley Sherrod mess? "When you have to tiptoe around absolutely anything that has to do with blacks, it can leave the insidious impression that there is, in fact, something wrong with being black, something to be ashamed of." Democrats will likely pay for it with lower black turnout in November. (More President Obama stories.)