President Obama’s campaign strategists are receiving a lot of richly deserved praise in the wake of the president’s victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Nov. 6.

Obama, who lost the majority of the White vote for the second time, won the election by assembling a progressive Democratic coalition pioneered by Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988.

I covered Jackson’s 1984 campaign for the Chicago Tribune and witnessed Jackson laying the groundwork for what would become two Obama victories.

“America is not like a blanket – one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size,” I heard Jesse Jackson say more times than I care to remember.

“America is more like a quilt — many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The White, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.”

The concept was more frequently expressed in terms of a rainbow.

The organization Jackson heads is known as Rainbow PUSH, the result of a merger between Operation PUSH, the organization Jackson created in 1971, and the Rainbow Coalition, an apparatus he developed following his 1984 presidential run.

In his stirring speech at the 1984 National Democratic Convention in San Francisco, Jackson spoke at length about the Rainbow Coalition.

“…We cannot be satisfied by just restoring the old coalition,” he said. “Old wine skins must make room for new wine. We must heal and expand. The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Arab Americans…

The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Hispanic Americans…The Rainbow Coalition is making room for the Native American…The Rainbow Coalition includes Asian Americans…The Rainbow Coalition is making room for the young Americans…The Rainbow Coalition includes disabled veterans…The Rainbow Coalition is making room for small farmers…The Rainbow includes lesbians and gays.”

According to exit polls, Romney won the White vote 59 percent to 39 percent for Obama, which was 3 percent lower than the president’s 2008 outing. Like Clinton before him, Obama demonstrated that a candidate for national office does not need a majority of the White vote in order to win.

Blacks, who made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2012, favored Obama over Romney 93 percent to 6 percent. Latinos, who made up 10 percent of the electorate, preferred Obama by a margin of 71 percent to 27 percent. Asians, 3 percent of the electorate, supported Obama over Romney 73 percent to 26 percent. The remaining non-White groups, with 2 percent of the electorate, backed Obama by a margin of 58 percent to 38 percent.

Obama won the 18-24 category – 11 percent of the electorate – 60 percent to 36 percent for Romney. He also won the 25-29 age-group, which is 8 percent of voters, 60 percent to 38 percent.

Those describing themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual – 5 percent of voters – favored Obama over Romney 76 percent to 22 percent, compared with straight voters – 95 percent of the electorate – who were evenly divided, with Obama and Romney each receiving 49 percent.

Fifty-eight percent of union households – 18 percent of the electorate – supported Obama this year, down just one percentage point from four years ago. They supported Obama at even higher rates in the swing states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada.

Despite Jackson’s early coalition-building efforts, it’s no secret that relations between Obama and Jackson are as chilly as the temperature was on the day Obama was first inaugurated as president.

The friction was exacerbated in July 2008 after Jackson had been interviewed on Fox News. When the television interview was over, Jackson, apparently unaware that his microphone was still live, told a fellow guest, “See, Barack’s been talking down to Black people…I want to cut his nuts off.”

Not surprisingly, the relationship between the two immediately went south, so to speak. An understandably miffed Barack Obama has since kept his distance from Jackson.

But as Obama reaches out to Republicans whose stated goal was to make sure he didn’t get re-elected, perhaps it’s time for Obama to have détente with Jackson.

The legendary civil rights leader has done his penitence. Because of what Jackson later described as his “crude and hurtful” comment — made at a time African Americans were hoping to elect their first Black president — many Blacks mentally shipped Jackson off to a political Siberia, a never-never land where they didn’t care if he was never heard from again.

As Obama extends the olive branch to his ardent political foes, he should invite Jackson to visit him in the White House.

If nothing else, President Obama can thank Jesse Jackson for paving the way for his two memorable victories.

Honoring Frank Tanabe

A recent news report tells of a 93-year-old World War II veteran named Frank Tanabe who was diagnosed with an inoperable liver cancer. During World War II, he was interned in California and Idaho as part of the government’s decision to detain and isolate Japanese Americans who were suspected of having divided loyalties.

He said once in an interview, "I wanted to do my part to prove that I was not an enemy alien, or that none of us were — that we were true Americans. And if we ever got the chance, we would do our best to serve our country. And we did," He was honored with a Congressional Gold Medal for his wartime service to his country.

Just as he had always done, Mr. Tanabe exemplified his life-long commitment to America on October 17th when he cast his absentee ballot from his hospice bed. His grandson posted a photo of him doing so and the photo inspired and captured the hearts of all those who saw it. Mr. Tanabe died a week later.

Under the law of Hawaii, an absentee ballot cast by a citizen who dies prior to the election is not counted. What a tragedy that would be. Here was a man who was fully aware, alert, of sound mind, and carrying out an act that was legal at the time he performed it. In fact, the photo taken attests that no one stole his identity to vote!

The purpose of an absentee vote is to allow people to exercise their right when they must take a trip or is unavailable to go to the polls on election day. This humble and patriotic man has indeed taken a trip and we wish him Godspeed. We also would do well to copy his patriotism.

If that man, dying, could be so conscientious to vote for the welfare of his country, what excuses can we offer for not voting?

Our right to vote was paid for by the blood of people who fought for the right. Throughout the world, people can only dream of the privilege we have to cast a vote and peacefully express our will to our elected officials. It is not only a privilege and right. It is a duty we hold, to appoint the people who will serve us in the legislature, courts, and offices high and low and to direct the policies of this nation.

Even a losing vote tells the winners of the election something important they need to hear and bear in mind when they carry out their duties. It reminds them that they represent all people, all points of views, and yes, even the people who didn’t vote for them. It lets them know what our will is for the governance of this great country.

So often we hear people complain about the leaders who lead, the public servants who serve, about the state of our government. That is understandable but misguided. We as a people have a precious right to vote. We as an entire nation regrettably fail to exercise often enough. If we fail to vote, we have no right to blame those who enter office without the benefit of our vote.

Every vote counts. Please yours to state your views. Then you can justifiably feel glad that you have stood up to be counted. Use this precious right granted to you by God and your government.

At Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, we serve 1,700 people a day, among them veterans of our military forces and homeless people who lack a residence. They are all citizens and entitled to vote. We don’t tell them how to vote but we do encourage them to vote.

We also encourage you to do your part to honor Mr. Tanabe for casting his vote from his death bed. And may the State of Hawaii perhaps not be successful in issuing his death certificate and matching it to his absentee ballot that represents his last great patriotic act. May his last vote count. 

Dear President Obama

Congratulations on your election to a second term. You no doubt know how much we black people appreciate the historical significance.

President Obama pauses as he speaks at his election night rally in Chicago. (Carolyn Kaster - AP)of both of your successful presidential campaigns. If you don’t, all you have to do is Google the numbers.
 
In 2008, according to several exit polls, you captured 95 to 98 percent of the black vote. On Tuesday, the estimates are between 94 and 96 percent.
 

We understand a broad coalition elected you president both terms, not just us. But we have had your back at a rate much higher than other slices of your coalition, and you know it.
 
Now, Mr. President, how about some payback?

This is not an unreasonable request. Just ask women, gays and immigrants.
 
For women, your first day in office you signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Later came your birth control mandate that guarantees women access to free contraceptives.
 
For gays, you announced on ABC your support for same-sex marriage.
 
For immigrants, you stopped deporting younger undocumented immigrants — most of them Latino — and began granting work permits for some of them.

 
Noticeably missing from the list is any demonstrable policy change — or change of mind — aimed squarely at the black members of your coalition. Some of your black supporters raised that issue even as they celebrated your victory on Election Night and the morning after.
 
“Now, he’s got to do something for us,” Reginald Miles, a professor at Howard University, said minutes after networks began declaring Obama’s win. “We should get our reward.”
 
Wednesday morning at a school bus stop in suburban Maryland, parents dropping off their children exchanged greetings and “relief,” as one woman put it, that you were reelected. “Let’s see what he’s going to do,” said the woman, who did not want to be named because she is a supervisor in a federal government agency. “He has no excuse not to do something for us.”
 

A friend who worked in the Clinton White House heard about this line of thinking and dismissed it. “Which one of those groups does not include black people?” she asked. “There are black women. There are black gays and black immigrants. And what about his health-care bill? Don’t blacks benefit from that?”
 
I understand her point, Mr. President, but she did not hear what I did from different people in different places in less than 12 hours after your victory: Something for us.
 
Many blacks who supported you in 2008 adopted a stay-quiet-and-wait posture. They wanted a second term for you. We understood that meant you had to camouflage your blackness.
 
A few blacks did challenge you, Mr. President, and urged you to reach out more to blacks and to the poor. You know, people like Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. But your unofficial wingmen, radio hosts Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey, shot West and Smiley down with nasty verbal assaults.
 
It was safer to stay quiet and wait. In the meantime, you served up trinkets to your black supporters.
 
You granted interviews and allowed yourself to be videotaped playing basketball, that black game.
 
You said Cambridge, Mass. police acted “stupidly” when they arrested your buddy Henry Louis Gates in front of his own home and reminded the country of its ugly history of racial profiling by law enforcement.
 
You sympathized with anger generated by the slaying of the black Florida teen Trayvon Martin, saying, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
 
But no policy changes. Nothing for us.
 
Mr. President, many of us got the wait-until-a-second-term message earlier this year. In March, media reported you were “caught” on an open microphone telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to pass some words on to Vladimir Putin. “It’s important for him to give me space,” you said. “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
 
You could have been speaking to your black supporters, Mr. President. Now, you earned the second term, and the flexibility that comes with it.
 
Your legacy is secure. The first African American elected president of the United States. One of only three Democratic presidents to be elected to a second term in the past century. Now, sir, you can work on the third, fourth and fifth paragraphs of your story. Something for us.
 
“We need to decide what we want,” Miles said. “Make calls. Write letters. Send e-mails. And just like F.D.R. told A. Philip Randolph, we need to make Obama do it.”
 
Keith Harriston teaches journalism at Howard University, where he edits Howard University News Service.