<p>Until lately, I have always maintained that the first black president will be a Republican. The Dems have never had anyone in their farm system that was a serious candidate - just the firebrands like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who besides being extremely divisive, each have a whole graveyard of skeletons in their closets. However, I must admit that Obama fits the bill as being a serious candidate - he can be quite impressive when he chooses to be so.</p>
<p>The 2008 elections could be very interesting. We could see two women and two blacks on the tickets: Hillary and Obama versus McCain (or substitute another white male) and Rice. For this to happen, Hillary would have to stop her hemorrhaging with the left (her support of the filibuster indicates a desire to do so and Bill’s sudden shift against the war is another signal to that effect). McCain’s biggest obstacle is getting the nomination, but he gained very valuable support on the right with his fervent support of the war and his diligent campaigning for GW. </p>
<p>Of course, if you believe Dick Morris, the Republican ticket will be headed by Rice, but I think that if she is at all interested in the presidency that she is willing to wait and ease herself into the job. However, if she does go for the brass ring, it would be interesting to see who her running mate would be - certainly not a McCain or Rudy.</p>
<p>That’s a pretty good summary, GB, but I have two fairly large quibbles:
The 19th century Dems were largely responsible for rollback of civil rights after Reconstruction, which fizzled out in the mid-1870s; It was a Republican policy, and actually had the effect of rolling back civil rights for ex-rebels, not former slaves.</p>
<p>I have no idea what, if any, significance should be attached to Reagan’s campaign announcement in Phila., Miss., but I don’t buy the idea that it was to send a message of support to unreformed Klan sympathizers. To the extent that you meant he demonstrated a tin ear regarding black voters (by not referencing the site’s history), you have a point, but not a “coded racist message.”</p>
<p>I don’t buy Willie Horton as a coded message, either. I submit that had he been a similarly horrible-looking, scary white guy–say an outlaw biker or a skinhead–serving life w/o parole for murder–who had been released on an unsupervised weekend furlough program from a Massachusetts prison, and then re-offended in such an awful way–the result would have been the same; Al Gore’s oppo-research would have dug him up in the primary, and GHW Bush’s campaign would have seized on it as a Dukakis=soft-on-crime campaign issue.</p>
<p>Driver, please clarify for me your statements about 19th century democrats and Reconstruction. Yes, the Radical Republicans disenfranchised many former rebels, including Democrats. But at the same time numerous former rebels in the south had their rights restored DURING Reconstruction, and relatively early on at that. They used their restored franchise to “re-conquer” their domain, politically. For example, ex-confederate (i.e. Democrat) opposition to newly exercised political liberty by White and Black Republicans was vehement and at times quite violent. Democrats were compelled to share power in the Reconstructed state legislatures (and local governments) and were not happy about it. Two notable and bloody coup d’e tats by Democrats were in Louisiana and North Carolina. The Louisiana incident occured in the midst of Reconstruction.</p>
<p>Yes, when the Republicans gave up on Reconstruction in the south, the envigorated southern Democrats brought the full force of political intimidation (Jim Crow) down upon Black Republicans.</p>
<p>As for Black allegiances today, it is a bit funny when one understands that Blacks continued to solidly remain in the Republican column from Reconstruction really through the new deal, despite the indifference of Republican presidents T. Roosevelt and W.G. Harding. FDR began to change that, and Eleanor Roosevelt was quite popular in Black America for her courageous stands. Some still credit her with pressuring FDR to use more African-American troops in combat in WWII. For many older folks, that war remains a touchstone as a moment when Blacks thought they would return home to a much more tolerant America, because of their service to their country. But of course, as WEB DuBois noted, the black community believed and hoped for the same thing at the close of WWI.</p>
<p>Do you know the joke about Daddy King and J.F. Kennedy? MLK Sr. famously said in 1960 that he intended to vote for Nixon because Nixon was a protestant as well as a Republican. After an exaggerated account of a JFK phone call to the King family when MLK Jr was sent to a notorious and dangerous Georgia prison, Daddy King changed his mind, an act to which some responded with “I didn’t know MLK’s father was a bigot!” Daddy King’s warming to the ‘national’ Democrats was just another step in the march of blacks to the contemporary Democratic Party, the segregationist attitudes of Democrat powers like Senators Bilbo and Eastland notwithstanding.</p>
<p>Today something truly interesting is happining and the Republicans need to decide if they are going to appeal to more objective Black voters. For years I thought one of the few Conservative Republicans who understood the dynamics of black political opinion was George Will. Will argued that many Blacks were a natural fit for the modern Republican party because blacks especially cherished economic opportunity, were in the main socially conservative, and frankly were most often the victims of both crime and obtrusive government regulations. At times, other Republicans have modified their appeal in order to capitalize on the commonalities; Governor Carroll Campbell (by no means a liberal) of South Carolina and Tom Kean of New Jersey. However, Campbell’s (the political father of the late Lee Atwater) strategy was to maintain a monolithic white vote and draw just enough Black voters to preclue any chance of a Democrat victory. Look what happened when Campbell’s successor demonstrated some interest in some symbolic concerns of many Black South Carolina residents; his party tossed him out in the very next election. The moral is, Republicans in the south are afraid to expand and alienate white voters who maintain very problematic views regarding race relations.</p>
<p>I’l concede the first point. I didn’t mean to equate the rollback of civil rights for former slaves with Reconstruction; I meant to associate Reconstruction with the enactment of that civil rights legislation, not with the rollback. (And yes, Reconstruction meant temporarily depriving those who had been in rebellion against the United States from “civil rights” such as the right to vote or hold public office.)</p>
<p>But I won’t concede that Reagan’s was merely guilty of nothing more than a tin ear when he chose to travel to a town of 7,000 people that was nationally known for precisely one thing, and announce, “I believe in states’ rights”. </p>
<p>And yes, Al Gore brought up Willy Horton in a debate with Dukakis, to portray Dukakis as soft on crime. But there’s a world of difference between playing the “soft on crime” card, the way Gore did, and playing the “race card” the way Bush’s ads did in 1988.</p>
<p>My statements regarding post Civil War Reconstruction were addressed to Greybeard’s statement:
which was ambiguous. I read it to mean that the Democrats were responsible for a program known as “Reconstruction,” which rolled back civil rights (which it did, for many white southerners). In re-reading it, I see that it could have meant (and probably did): The Democrats were responsible for the rollback of a civil rights program known as “Reconstruction.” I think that Reconstruction entailed quite a bit more than a civil rights program, but that makes more sense.</p>
<p>Re Gore/Horton: While Gore’s people dug up Horton, I don’t think his campaign ended up using it (there is dispute as to this). However, I stand by my opinion that it would have been used by Bush, with perfect justification, whether Horton had been a horrible white man or a horrible black man.</p>
<p>It’s encouraging to see interesting Black candidates like Lynn Swann, but just why does a young Republican up and comer like J.C. Watts retire from Congress?</p>
<p>There are other signs of encouragement, like Black Congressman Sanford Bishop in Georgia representing a majority-white and rural district (he’s still there, isn’t he. However, my dissapointment is furthered by the polarized congressional districts across the country, particularly in the south. And these districts were the concept of African-American Democrats and white Republicans that sought to become a majority in the 1990s. Are these districts a problem? Who is to blame?</p>
<p>“Unfortunately we select candidates who can win, not necessarily who can lead.”</p>
<p>I don’t follow what you are saying, itstoomuch. </p>
<p>If you are speaking for the voting public, you underestimate the intelligence of the American ppl to elect their leaders. If you talking about African Americans, that says they go where the tides lead them. Again it has no substance as historically African Americans have voted democrat overall as a group.</p>
<p>It’s now official. Seeing the writing on the wall, former Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton has withdrawn from the PA Republican gubernatorial primary, meaning that we’ll have one of the most interesting races in the country coming up…Lynn Swann vs. Ed Rendell.</p>
<p>Black political support was largely a meaningless concept from the late 1800s through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, because blacks were not allowed to vote in the South except during a very brief 25 year period during the first reconstruction.</p>
<p>Black voting in the South had a brief spike during Reconstruction, when the Republican party needed their votes to hold their national majority coalition. In fact, the Republicans disenfranchised white voters who had fought for the Confederacy, thus giving black voters the majority in many southern states. This explains the election of many high ranking black officials, including two black US Senators from Mississippi (Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce).</p>
<p>Two decades later, the Republican party no longer needed the South for a national majority due to the new heavily-Republican western states coming into the union. So they walked away from the black voters en masse.</p>
<p>With no national political support for their interests and Courts that stepped back and watched it happen, black voters in the South literally had their right to vote beaten out of them with a combination of intimidation tactics (KKK) and Jim Crow voting laws (poll taxes, etc.). Black voting dropped from very high levels shortly after the Civil War to essentially zero by the 1890s and remained at zero for 70 years. Black voting in the north increased as the black population migrated from farms in the south to factory jobs in the northern cities. This group became a part of Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.</p>
<p>According to Richard Valleley, it is the only time in Western history that a group of voters has gone from no voting rights to having full voting rights to being completely disenfranchised again. He views the 1960s as a second reconstruction, this time driven largely by the Democratic party’s need for black voters to assemble a national majority coalition and a Supreme Court that jumped into the fray to aggressively enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments.</p>
<p>Great commentary on the upcoming Swann/Rendell race, by one who spends a great deal of time studying such things Pennsylvanian. Get your popcorn and pull up a seat, as he says.</p>
<p>and his his book on JFK and the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, Benno Schmidt also referred to that time as “the Second Reconstruction.”</p>
<p>From a 2003 Christian Science Monitor article on lobbying:</p>
<p>"Some of the top Republicans in the 107th Congress are about to see their one-year statute of limitations on lobbying former congressional colleagues expire. These include former House majority leader Dick Armey and Republican Conference Chairman J. C. Watts of Oklahoma. Some say they expect to do much the same work they did in the Congress, but for a lot more money.</p>
<p>“Mr. Watts has set up his own public affairs and lobbying practice with two former aides.”</p>
<p>Well JC Watts can replace Abramoff. What progress! Equal opportunity for African American Lobbyists. </p>
<p>I think it is time for Colin Powell, too, to cash in after all the water he carried for the neocons. Perhaps that is why Colin has not come clean like his top aid about the lies they told about Iraq and wmd.</p>
<p>“Perhaps that is why Colin has not come clean like his top aid about the lies they told about Iraq and wmd.”</p>
<p>Hey, wait a minute. He was the one doing the lying, remember? (Just like he had in 1991 about the destruction of the missile launchers.) Colin’s got a track record, and it ain’t pretty.</p>
<p>But there won’t be any more Black Demos. Take a look at the Band of Brothers. 56 candidates and not a black male face in the whole bunch. Maybe they didn’t serve in Iraq? </p>
<p>That’s an interesting (and open) question. Bob Woodard’s book about the lead-up to the Iraq invasion paints a picture of Powell being very careful in vetting the information he was asked to present to the UN. However, it is clear that Powell was a major source for the book, so it is difficult to assess how self-serving the portrayal may have been.</p>
<p>Overall, I would say that he was pretty comprehensively thrown under the bus by the neocons in the Bush administration. They smeared him about like the Swift Boat Veterans smeared John Kerry.</p>
<p>Well, he was either dumb beyond belief, or a lying shil. (Very careful? Pictures of Kurdish military headquarters passed off as central chemical weapons depot to the assembled world community, and identified as such within 48 hours by an amateur journalist? What you smokin’?)</p>
</p>