Red, Black and Blue

If you squinted, the precincts in East Cleveland on Tuesday looked more like high school sporting events than voting stations. The lines were long, sure, but the mood was light. People gossiped and gabbed while they waited for their cousins to finish voting. They held spots in line so strangers could step out for quick cigarettes. They bumped into old neighbors and caught each other up on family news. One guy saw the whole thing as a chance to pick up dates and business. He flashed his cards to young women as they filed in and invited them to come get their nails done at his salon.

“I got calls from P. Diddy, Mary J. Blige – that's my girl – and Spike Lee,” one woman joked as she hung out in front of her precinct, smoking in the rain with a gaggle of neighbors. She'd been one of millions targeted by a massive get-out-the-black-vote campaign. From P. Diddy to 50 Cent, artists signed up to give hip hop heads the message in classically blunt language: Vote or Die.

Much of East Cleveland – one of the city's most African American neighborhoods and a heavy target for the voter mobilization effort – had an almost carnival air to it Tuesday. One canvasser strapped an amplified bullhorn to his car's roof and put a drum machine beat behind the pro-Kerry chant he belted as he drove the neighborhood.

In short, people felt good. And why shouldn't they? I was one of the hopeful black fools back in January 2001. I was exhilarated by watching one defiant Congressional Black Caucus member after another refuse to help a chamber full of white men gavel the nation to order – and George W. Bush into his first term. “My objection is in writing,” Rep. Maxine Waters growled, “and I do not care that it is not signed by a member of the Senate.” What glorious hubris!

Just weeks later, there was the awesome sight of a CBC delegation marching into the White House to put the new president on notice that they'd be watching him. Black people, it seemed, were going to impact Washington, D.C. in ways America hadn't seen in decades. Sure, we had nursed Bill Clinton's public appearance back to health. But we hadn't played such overt roles in White House politics since the days when civil rights delegations regularly pigeonholed Democratic presidents into stronger, bolder positions.

Bush never invited the CBC back to Pennsylvania Avenue, of course, but that was no matter. Black Democrats and affiliated activists took it to the streets, registering millions of new voters to drive him out. While the Democratic “527” group America Coming Together worked the suburbs, the community revitalization group ACORN led the urban effort. ACORN says it registered more than 1.1 million new voters in low income black and Latino neighborhoods. The group's 10,000-plus canvassers walked the streets of those same neighborhoods on Election Day and knocked on 2.2 million doors, it says, reminding people to vote. That's after making repeated contact with a list of over 1.2 million potential voters in low income, urban areas over the last month.

The campaign was an awesome spectacle of civic engagement, driven by the anger Rep. Waters personified in January 2001. And the votes the effort drudged up are the ones upon which the Democrats hung their hopes, to the last. Exit polls estimate that African Americans made up 11 percent of the electorate this year, up from 10 percent in 2000 (that's a significant jump when you're counting in the millions); 88 percent of it went for John Kerry.

The real impact can be seen in the battleground states. In Pennsylvania, the black vote nearly doubled, from seven to 13 percent. In Michigan, it climbed from 11 to 13 percent. But in Ohio, it only inched up from 9 to 10 percent, and in Florida, it tellingly dropped from 15 to 12 percent. In those states, while the number of black voters surged, the climb was offset by Republican get-out-the-vote efforts in rural, white counties.