[DoodleDawg]

They have to convince the black middle class to return to the Republican party...

You make it sound like the GOP ever had them to begin with.

[Wallace T.]

At one time, the Republicans had a majority of black voters, in the era of segregation and restrictions on black voting rights in the Southern states. Franklin Roosevelt and machine politicians in the Northern cities moved a portion of the black vote into the Democrat column in the 1920s and 1930s. However, when, under Kennedy and Johnson, the Democrats turned into advocates of civil rights while the Republicans, notably the Goldwater wing of the party, rejected Federal civil rights legislation and opposed expanded welfare programs, black voters mostly abandoned the party of Lincoln. The black middle class benefited from affirmative action; the black underclass benefited from entitlement programs.