Most of the Voting Rights Act is permanent, which means that, notwithstanding Mr. Holder's scaremongering, elimination of outdated provisions like Section 5 will not threaten the black franchise or leave the U.S. on the cusp of a return to Jim Crow. Asked why the administration of the first black president is so keen on keeping racial issues on the front burner, Ms. Thernstrom replies that "they obviously think it's good politics. If they looked at the data, though, they would see that it's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.' The picture is so heartening, even in the South. In fact, the South is in some ways the vanguard."
Ms. Thernstrom believes that the administration's identity politics may be a miscalculation if Mr. Obama's race is no longer foremost on voters' minds. "My sense is that when Americans look at the president today, they look at a man who has not exactly solved our economic problems, who has gotten us deeply in debt, and who used up a tremendous amount of time and political capital on legislation—ObamaCare—that Americans don't want," she says. "But I don't think they look at him as a black man who has done these things."
