Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Jesse Helms is back! And this time he's black.
According to this Newsmax article, that's a line that Vernon Robinson from Winston Salem is using in his bid for Congress. In fact when I visited his site, a pop up window showed Vernon posing with Helms with that caption.
The article discusses the increasing number of blacks running for office as Republicans. It offers several possible reasons for this trend including improving economic conditions for black households, social issues (blacks tend to be more socially conservative then the typical Democrat when it comes to issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and faith based initiatives)1, and Nixon's southern strategy falling into distant memory (not explicitly named, but that's ultimately what is being referred to when it discusses civil rights issues and younger black voters).
dramatically, then the massive state programs traditionally associated with the Democratic party become less attractive.2
While no big movement can be expected in this election (demographic forces are traditionally quite slow), look for some party realignments in the black community in the future (not a reversal, but a more even distribution between the parties).
Footnotes
1. My co-blogger would be an exception to this generalization.
2. I have no idea why the font changes between the text in the post and the text in the table. I don't see a font switch anywhere in the formatting I copied over from FrontPage. Meh. Update Disregard this point. What showed up in my preview screen (wrong) is very different from what blogger finally rendered (right).
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The article discusses the increasing number of blacks running for office as Republicans. It offers several possible reasons for this trend including improving economic conditions for black households, social issues (blacks tend to be more socially conservative then the typical Democrat when it comes to issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and faith based initiatives)1, and Nixon's southern strategy falling into distant memory (not explicitly named, but that's ultimately what is being referred to when it discusses civil rights issues and younger black voters).
| To expand upon the first point, the improvement in economic conditions for black households is so broad that it turns up in all sorts of unexpected places. For instance in this report (link via econopundit) that compares the economies of the US and Europe, Table 3.1 highlights the tremendous improvements that blacks have made rising out of poverty, going from 55% in poverty down to just 24%. Frankly, this improvement is astounding. In light of this discussion, if the number of blacks in poverty is decreasing |  |
While no big movement can be expected in this election (demographic forces are traditionally quite slow), look for some party realignments in the black community in the future (not a reversal, but a more even distribution between the parties).
Footnotes
1. My co-blogger would be an exception to this generalization.
2. I have no idea why the font changes between the text in the post and the text in the table. I don't see a font switch anywhere in the formatting I copied over from FrontPage. Meh. Update Disregard this point. What showed up in my preview screen (wrong) is very different from what blogger finally rendered (right).
Comments(0) |
