Same story as everyone else. There's a consistent move to keep the entire Democratic base - blacks, Latinos, women, gays, enviros, health care reform advocates, and more - at a distance. And there's no one senior in the White House who represents many of these groups.
A year ago, members of the Congressional Black Caucus openly wept at Barack Obama's inauguration. Slowly, that euphoria has given way to frustration that his administration has not done more for black America. Questions about how to elect him have been replaced by questions about how to prod him.
For many, it is the surprise of a political lifetime that they find themselves wrestling with such quandaries. Alternately puzzled and disgruntled, CBC members say key people in the Obama administration have taken them for granted, in the belief that black members of Congress have no stomach for a fight with the country's first black president.
"We concluded they were just kind of listening to us and that then they would go back [to their offices] and conclude that we would do nothing," Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), the vice chairman of the CBC, said of one dispute. "Because they had concluded there's a black president in the White House and that, to some degree, the Black Caucus, you know, was constrained in expressing its desires. After a while, we said, 'Hey, we see what's going on and it's nothing.' "
Members point to the CBC's four committee chairmanships and 18 subcommittee chairmanships as proof of its clout in the House. But several members said they have few African American contacts with substantial sway in the White House.
