Cain: Americans don't care Obama was the first black president
Just days after President Obama ruffled some Democratic feathers for telling members of the black community to "stop complaining" and "put on your marching shoes," Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain - the only other African-American candidate in the presidential race - argued that voters were "over" Mr. Obama's stature as the first black president.
"I think that they're over this first African American president thing," Cain said, of voters in the black community. "I think that is behind them."
Speaking in an interview on Fox News Monday, Cain, who won this weekend's Florida straw poll despite polling nationally at only five percent, suggested that it was he who had the black vote locked down.
"I believe, quite frankly, that my campaign, I will garner a minimum of a third of the black vote in this country and possibly more, especially after what the president did recently when he was addressing the Black Caucus," Cain said. "That didn't go over well with a lot of people in this country."
In a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on Saturday, Mr. Obama urged members of the African-American community to stop griping and throw the full weight of their support behind him.
"I expect all of you to march with me and press on," Mr. Obama told the CBC. "Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on."
CBC member Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., called Mr. Obama's remarks "curious" and said she wondered who Mr. Obama had in mind when he made the comments.
"I don't know who he was talking to because we're certainly not complaining," Waters said Monday on CBS' "Early Show." "We're working. We support him, and we're protecting that base because we want people to be enthusiastic about him when that election rolls around."
"Some of his words were not, I think, appropriate and surprised me a little bit," she said." "I was curious about it."
According to the Labor Department, the unemployment rate among African Americans rose to 16.7 percent in August -- the highest rate since 1984 -- even as the jobless rate for whites fell to 8 percent. Overall, the unemployment rate was just 9.1 percent. And among black youth, the unemployment rate was 46.5 percent in August, according to the government.
In an interview with BET on Monday, Mr. Obama argued that targeting one community for aid was not "how America works" and disputed the notion that he wasn't doing anything to help struggling African Americans - or that black voters were disproportionately losing faith in him.
"That is not what people are saying," the president said, when it was suggested that, "You won't even say, 'Look, I am going to help you,'" to a hypothetical black voter struggling to get by.
"Emmett, that is not -- first of all, that is not what people are saying," Obama said to BET host Emmett Miller. "What people are saying all across the country is we are hurting and we've been hurting for a long time. And the question is how can we make sure the economy is working for every single person?"
Mr. Obama also argued that it was only "a handful of African Americans" who have criticized his efforts toward the black community.
"The other thing I want to make sure you don't just kind of slip in there is this notion that African American leaders of late have been critical," he told Miller. "There have been a handful of African Americans who have been critical. They were critical when I was running for president. There's always going to be somebody who is critical of the president of the United States."
"What has always made this country great is the belief that everybody has got a chance," he added. "Regardless of race, regardless of creed."
Recent polls suggest the existence of some cracks in the black community's support for Mr. Obama, although his support has dipped in all demographics. While the president still generally polls in the 80th percentile on favorability among blacks, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that the strength of that support appears to have receded: In April, 83 percent of African Americans said they had "strongly favorable" views of Obama; by September, that number had dropped to 58 percent.
Cain argued that Mr. Obama's economic record would help him clinch the black vote.
"Because the unemployment rate for black people is nearly 17 percent, instead of the 9 percent, they're looking for something that's going to boost this economy," Cain said. "That's what's going to peel off the black vote: results, not rhetoric."