Diminishing Respect for the Black Vote

by WP

Mon, Nov 8, 2004 9:00AM

Democrats will wince at my metaphor, but I can't help thinking that black voters are the elephant in the room. The party talks about faring poorly with churchgoing people although 88 percent of black voters -- a religious group if ever there was one -- cast their votes for Kerry. Party officials fear that liberal values have acquired a "very upper-middle class flavor," to borrow author Thomas Frank's phrase, which undoubtedly confounds the many poor and working-class blacks who have supported the Democrats for decades.

...
It makes me suspect that Democrats haven't exactly decided to ignore the black voters who supported them so demonstratively on Nov. 2. Maybe they've simply concluded that they aren't the right kind of faithful. The hot demographic is white evangelical Christians, who made up nearly 25 percent of the electorate and voted 4-1 for Bush. Those numbers dwarf the black turnout. Although black participation went up 25 percent, it still accounted for only 11 percent of the electorate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33885-2004Nov8.html

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