Tales of two electorates, why Blacks don't get elected(to high offices like Senate or Governerships)
One is the usual middle of the road muddle from the TNR, "DURHAM DISPATCH Code Blue" by Jason Zengerle. It records the travails of a black state representative in North Carolina who lost the speakership and doesn't get much support for his bid for Jesse Helm's old US Senate seat.
"Perhaps this decade," political analyst William Schneider predicted in 1990, "we'll have a black on the national ticket."
Not only has that not happened, but by some measures black political power has actually regressed since Schneider's words. While black Democrats continue to win city, county, and down-ticket statewide offices, there are currently no African Americans in governor's mansions or in the U.S. Senate. And it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.
I know nothing about this man or North Carolina politics, maybe he is a victim of subtle racism. But the article misses the main point. Blacks won't get elected to high offices as long as racial rabble rousers and spoil seekers dominate the spotlight. Since a majority of Americans are dead set against any slave reparations and all but the smallest doses of affirmative action, the Black caucus mentality of John Conyers, Cynthia McKinney, and Maxine Waters is a dead issue. The Black caucus's international endearment with our Islamic and Communist enemies is an utter disgrace, regardless of one's feelings on domestic issues, which guarantees any patriot will revile them, race or not. Add to that disgraces like Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson and you got zilch appeal outside a fringe of Rainbow leftists. The worse, of course, is Al Sharpton, chief scumbag of the Afro political scene. He commands an enormous amount of power here in the Evil Empire State's Democratic machine, where his lock on Black primary voters is strong. A great article in the NRO, "Professional Spoiler: Don’t underestimate Al Sharpton." By Edward Blum exposes this malcontent's evil machinations:
There are two unique features that characterize black voters in America and Al Sharpton will use of both them to his advantage: First, in national elections blacks are a near-monolithic vote. Second, using census data, blacks voters can be identified household-by-household and targeted on the precinct level. If Sharpton bled 80 percent of the black vote away from Moynihan, he could do the same against Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry or any of the Democrat leading lights. Throw in a handful of Hispanic and white voters and Sharpton could win or be runner-up in most of the critical primary states. Since the Democrats are likely to frontload their primary-election schedule this cycle, it is not inconceivable for Sharpton to actually win New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. If he doesn't outright win these states, the racial arithmetic earns him a close second.
This is not theoretical political physics either. Some well-regarded political analysts believe that in many states black voters could constitute between 30-40 percent of Democrat primary voters in 2004 because black-voter participation at the polls has never been higher. And therein lies the problem for the other Democrat presidential hopefuls: how do they distinguish themselves among primary voters if they probably won't be successful attracting any black voters? Do they out-Sharpton Sharpton by defending racial preferences? Should they follow his lead and endorse reparations for slavery? Or do they remind voters of Sharpton's none-too-subtle anti-Semitism and the Tawana Brawley fiasco? Can they criticize — personally and politically — the candidate of choice of most black primary voters and expect the same voters to return in sufficient numbers in November to vote for them and against George W. Bush?
Nuff said! Figure that if the worse comes true, Al and his buddies completely swamp the Democratic party, figure a mass defection to the Republicans or third parties. It is sad that the Democrats can't offer any more reasonable alternatives to the GOP, thanks to pandering to racial demagogues like Al Sharpton or Maxine Waters. No one I know wants reparations or any more affirmative action. Notice the racial preferences of Blacks, where anyone sharing the same color as them get a vote regardless of their qualities. John Perazzo dissects the double standard in his book, "The Myths that Divide Us". He proves beyond a doubt that Whites will vote for a Black much more readily than Blacks for a White in a mixed election. This counters the oft repeated lie that only Whites cast racially biased votes.
