Posted on 08/02/2004 2:37:43 AM PDT by Warrior Nurse
By a new election-year poll of black American voters intrigues. Only one in four says he or she is "enthusiastic" about John Kerry's candidacy, according to the survey, conducted by Black Entertainment Television and CBS News.
And roughly half say that, if the Democratic presidential nominee supplants the Republican now in the White House, opportunities for blacks will stay the same (if not get worse).
Yet, no matter the tepid black support for Kerry, the Massachusetts senator will garner nine of every 10 black votes come November. That's because blacks slavishly vote Democratic every presidential election.
And it has been that way since 1964, when blacks cast nearly all of their ballots for Lyndon Johnson, signaling black estrangement from the Republican Party.
Indeed, just one election earlier, Republican Richard Nixon managed to capture a third of the black vote in his race for the White House against John F. Kennedy.
And in 1944, nearly half of blacks considered themselves Republicans, a legacy of Abraham Lincoln's emancipation of their ancestors.
It is easy enough to understand black de-alignment from the party of Lincoln following the 1944 presidential election. The black population benefited from programs created by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
It is also easy to understand black realignment with the party of Johnson in the 1964 election. Democrats were viewed by blacks as being more supportive of the civil rights movement.
But it is hard to fathom in 2004 why so many blacks remain so blindly allegiant to the Democratic Party, why they continue to give such a disproportionate share of their votes to Democratic candidates.
Maybe blacks judge Kerry's record on issues of highest concern to their population – jobs and the economy, followed by education, according to the BET/CBS News survey – to be better than that of George W. Bush.
But surely not 80 percent better – the gap between the Democrats' black support and the Republicans'.
Indeed, over the past year, the nation's economy has been growing at its fastest rate in nearly two decades. It has added some 1.5 million new jobs, most of which are higher paying.
Bush's support for small business enterprise, his promotion of what he calls "the ownership society," has been particularly beneficial to black entrepreneurs. In fact, Small Business Administration loans to blacks are up 75 percent from last year.
On the education front, Bush has increased K-12 funding by a whopping 49 percent since he took office. And on his watch, funding for historically black colleges is at an all-time high.
The Republican also signed into law legislation creating a taxpayer-funded voucher program for disadvantaged students in predominantly black Washington, D.C., who are mired in the city's underperforming public schools.
If Bush were a Democrat, many if not most blacks would find his record commendable. But because he is a Republican, he gets no credit for the positive initiatives he has undertaken that have benefited black Americans.
That dichotomy is attributable, in part, to the black leadership, which has sold itself to the Democratic Party, which slanders blacks who vote Republican as traitors.
It also is attributable, in part, to the media, which is biased against the GOP, which continues to portray Bush and his fellow Republicans as hostile to the aspirations of black Americans.
After a half-century of unconditional fealty to the Democratic Party, it is time that the black population get a little more sophisticated in its voting habits.
In a nation where Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, most of the governorships, and a number of state legislatures, it makes no sense to be so uncivil toward the majority party.
During his appearance last week at the National Urban League's annual conference, President Bush posed several questions to black voters that bear consideration.
"Does the Democrat Party take African-American voters for granted?," he asked. "Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party?
"How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete? Have traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American community?"
Those are questions that black voters really ought to ask themselves as they look forward to November's presidential election. And if they answer honestly, they will not automatically give John Kerry nine out of 10 of their votes.
PING
There's a solution to the conundrum: Bush can become a Democrat and he will win 9 out of 10 black votes.
There was an excellent column in the WSJ a couple of weeks ago. (I forget the author's name -- William Ryan, maybe? -- something like that. In any case, he was identified as a senior editor.)
It made the point that Dems spend huge amounts advertising directly to the black market -- BET and drive-time radio in black areas, for example, while Republicans seem totally unaware of these markets, thus Dem charges go totally unrefuted.
I devoutly hope someone in the White House or RNC read the column and took it to heart.
Yes, Bush should just BECOME a Democrat since he spends like one.
I'll wager that you're right - if they switched the (R) and the (D) on the ballots, Bush would get 90%.
"I'll wager that you're right - if they switched the (R) and the (D) on the ballots, Bush would get 90%."
Sad, but true! I wouldn't touch the other side of that bet for any odds you care to name.
Yhe black vote is gone, as far as the R's are concerned. I believe it is unrecoverable. Considering this, I strongly urge the R's to aim for the hispanic vote and asian vote - without openly pandering to either bloc.
Democrats are still the party of slavery. The GOP is still the voice of freedom. People are beginning to see that. More and more blacks are taking an underground railroad to the republicans-the party of independant thought.
Its slow, but it will happen.
Heard an interesting statistic that Bush can win with only 10% of the black vote, but Dems can't win without 90% of the black voters.
Don't know if that's true, but aside from that, I just don't get the fact that one of the only Presidents to place blacks in prominent positions of leadership can be viewed negatively by blacks.
One might be surprised by the younger educated black voters though. I've mentioned it before, but in my son's college speech class, the only other speeches given supporting Bush (other than his) were given by black kids.
Yes that is true it was on Foxnews over the weekend a well done history of how blacks went from swing voters to slaves of the Democrats.
Irving Slosberg was arrested in Miami buying votes from the bums with an Al Gore voting machine in his car. He was arrested by a State trooper IN THE ACT! It's public record but you never hear the DIMS bringing THAT up. I love to slap them in the face with that and then direct them to read about it. It's always an ice-water enema for them to read it!
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