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Sunday, February 11, 2007

Peach Pundit: For black Democrats, what now?

A good post over at Peach Pundit (I call it the Georgia version of Illinoize). Blacks in Chatham County and the State of Georgia are at a crossroad with regard to their support of the Democratic Party. In Georgia, unlike in Illinois, Republicans are in control of the state legislature. I want to refer you to this post that I made two years ago called the "Disenfranchisement Canard" and I promise you'll find it interesting.

Anyway every now and then you might read articles in newspapers or even online about how blacks are starting to believe that the Democratic Party is taking black votes for granted. The flipside of this is that the black vote is written off by Republicans because Republicans don't think that blacks will vote for them anyway. According to Peach Pundit writer Adam Fogle 85 to 90 percent of blacks in Georgia have historically voted Democrat. Here's some points pulled from the Savannah Morning News article...
But [the Rev. Benny Mitchell, the politically active pastor of Connor’s Baptist Temple Church] also knows that many Republicans tend to write blacks off because they figure few of them are going to vote for them anyway. And he’s equally aware that, after appropriate lip service, Democrats often ignore them because they figure they have nowhere else to go.
...
The bottom line is that, under the GOP ascendancy, black-oriented measures, such as those dealing with racial profiling, find it harder to gain traction.

Every now and then I ponder this. Should blacks continue to vote almost exclusively for one party. And even if we do should black politicians be more willing to build coalitions across party lines. This is the art of politics after all, different groups coming together for various reasons.

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