[topfile]

With all due respect, you're wrong about that. "The Black vote" doesn't even know who Cain is yet.

IF he wins the nomination, I hope you're proven correct. You've made some very good points.

Can Cain resonant with black voters to the extent that their awakened conservative members pull the lever for him? I don't know now, but I like your optimism.

[BagCamAddict]

The pollsters right now are having a hard time giving numbers on “the black vote” right now because so few blacks are Republican or Republican-leaning. That's all they are polling right now, other than the national polls, which include Candidate X vs. Obama. But as I said, those polls are always going to lean towards Obama because people vote on name recognition. If you ask the average Democrat in Seattle, who would you vote for, Obama or Cain, they have never heard of Cain, but they know he's Republican, so they vote for Obama every time. With Romney, they may have heard of him (due to his liberal social record), but he still has an R by his name, so they vote for Obama. When asked TODAY.

There was a poll about a month ago, before the sexual harassment allegations, and it had enough of a percentage of black respondents to give some numbers for comparison. The poll separately compared:

Obama vs. Romney
Obama vs. (either Perry or Gingrich, I can't remember)
Obama vs. Cain

In the Obama vs. Romney and Obama vs. (Perry or Gingrich) polls, the not-Romney vote got 3-4 percent of the black vote.

In the Obama vs. Cain poll, Cain got 7 percent of the black vote.

I know that's small, but I found it to be telling. First, it was a month ago — before Cain is courting the black vote, before Republicans are even running against Obama. And second, the fact that there was any difference in the black vote at all in ANY Republican, at this stage of the race, indicates there is a huge potential to reach a much larger percentage of the black vote, once the effort is made to do so.

Make no mistake, Cain will visit these HBCUs, and a decent percentage of those college kids (who are all easily persuaded, because they are kids) will swing to Cain... and swing their parents... and start talking up Cain on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace...

And one more thing we know for sure: The black vote swings in a wave... They haven't made individual decisions in a long time. So if Cain gets a groundswell going in the black community, it will be like a domino effect. 1000 votes will become 100,000 will become millions.

Have faith my FRiend. (Speaking of faith — don't forget the impact Cain's church can have on the vote in the black community.)