The NAACP issued a statement on the midterms that failed to mention the victories of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Rep.-elect Mia Love of Utah.

Both are African Americans whose electoral triumphs have historical significance. But both are also Republicans, which likely accounts for the “nonpartisan” NAACP’s refusal to acknowledge them. 

Scott, who was appointed to fill former senator Jim DeMint’s old seat, won re-election Tuesday, becoming the first African American elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction. Scott is also the first African American to be elected to both houses of Congress. Love is the first black Republican woman to win election to Congress.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People apparently cares not for the advancement of African Americans such as the independent-minded Scott and Love but for the advancement of a particular political agenda.  That’s their right of course, but it is worth noticing.

Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP, is quoted saying, “This election was not about who won but the rather the citizens who lost their right to participate.”

First of all, elections are about who won—even if you don’t like the winners—and, second, nobody has lost the right to participate.

The left lives in a perpetual yesterday in which nothing has changed since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Instead of recognizing the historic achievements of Love and Scott, the organization instead promotes the idea that black vote is being suppressed and calls for sixties style voting laws that are simply no longer necessary. In the states of the old Confederacy, African Americans vote at higher rates than whites.

The idea that votes are being suppressed fits in with the NAACP’s reliance on victimhood to try to remain relevant. Geraldo Rivera, hardly a man of the right, has tweeted that the NAACP won’t acknowledge Scott and Love because Scott and Love refuse to see themselves as victims.

Tweeted Rivera:

The NAACP refuses to embrace the success of Republicans Senator Tim Scott and Rep elect Mia Love because though black they are not victims.