Racially Motivated Electorate

I began writing this article about the upcoming election to see where the not so easily broached subject of ‘race’ would lead me. I got this uncomfortable revelation from an article I just read.

Famous black civil rights leader John Lewis, of Georgia, has just switched his endorsement from Hillary Clinton to Barrack Obama and will cast his Super Delegate vote to Obama. Lewis said he was following the lead of voters in his state that voted three to one in favor of Obama, and nine out of ten black voters voted for Obama as well.

Why does Obama garner ninety percent of any one group of voters? What’s his secret? Is it just because he is black, or is he offering something for blacks that Hillary isn’t? I don’t think so.

I began thinking, how come Hillary doesn’t get ninety percent of women voters? Will McCain get ninety percent of Veteran voters? Can either Hillary or McCain expect to receive ninety percent of the white voters?

Are we talking some kind of racism here? Democrats, historically, have won ninety percent of the black voters just as they have won an overwhelming percentage of labor voters, Hollywood voters, media voters, teacher voters, and poor voters, but ninety percent of black voters for Obama? Something is wacky.

History in politics teaches us a lot, like trends in voter sentiment, voter apathy, and voter expectations. Four years ago half the country voted against Bush for President, he became President anyway. But ninety percent of the black vote went to Kerry. Kerry wasn’t black, but African Americans believed Kerry offered them more of what they wanted than Bush did so nine out of ten voted for Kerry. Is Bush's economic, social, and military policies so much more damaging on blacks than Kerry's would have been?

What do black Americans really want? Hillary offers pretty much what Obama offers, a socialistic, economic style government, a very tightly reined in military, and it sounds like both Democrats will be offering a soft hat-in-hand foreign policy. (Sorry, my conservative leanings crept in there.) So what's the difference? Certainly not a nine to one difference.

I think that Obama, and/or McCain should address this issue of ninety percent of blacks voting for Obama as being wrong. I can’t conceive of any one President or Senator or Representative reflecting the all the views and interests of any one group of his constituency ninety percent of the time.

I don’t think this seemingly herd instinct to follow the Democrats or a black candidate into the voting both can be good for the black voter, history says it just can’t be. It seems racially motivated and against all the things that have brought race relations this far, or am I wrong?