The turning of the tide

This article - Steele gaining blacks' support highlights one of the problems that I see with the current media coverage of the fall election - they are telling the story based on old assumptions. They act like this will be 1994, that "all the same indicators are there".

Pardon me, but did they catch all of these "obvious indicators" the first time? I don't remember that - they called it a "temper tantrum" (Peter Jennings said that) and a fluke. 12 years later it's an obvious thing that everyone saw coming. 12 years ago, the contract with America didn't matter because noone really knew what it said - now the Dem's have to have one and there are articles written about it.

This trend of Republican African American candidates is a big story that people will start to look back at this first decade of the 21st century and say that's when it started. The problem for the Dem's is that there is no way to go for them with African Americans but down - how do you go up from 90%. And the fact is, all the ideas for moving minorities forward in our economy, etc. are on the Republican side. From Welfare Reform to Educational options to Empowerment zones in the inner city, like or not, we at least have a plan. The Welfare reform plan was even tried and it worked liked crazy - and had to be passed three times to get Clinton to sign it (now he takes credit for it of course).

The Democrat ideas are to complain and spend more on keeping minorities in poverty. Republicans are pushing programs for minorities to own their own homes - Dems are building new and prettier housing projects "now with yoga!". I think that many African Americans are waking up to realize that the Dem's shouldn't own their vote - the civil rights era is over and now they want to know that their kids are in good schools and that their 401k is going to be ok.

Watch out, Dem's. You might have to actually EARN the African American vote pretty soon.