Posted on 12/29/2008 5:33:54 AM PST by Kaslin
What does Caroline Kennedy have in common with black America? If your answer is not much, I'd tend to agree with you.
When I think of Caroline, I think of Manhattan and Park Avenue, not the Bronx and Brooklyn. I think of Brentwood and Beverly Hills, not Watts and South Central Los Angeles.
But there is something that Caroline and black America do have in common. The Democratic Party.
Whether Kennedy succeeds in her effo rt to slide into Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat will have little to do with her Democratic Party bona fides. Per her policy positions ticked off the other day, she is in perfect and predictable liberal alignment with party boilerplate. If she fails, it will be for reasons other than her views.
So what exactly is the common political ground that Kennedy bluebloods share with the 90 percent of America's blacks who vote for Democrats?
A careful look shows the deep internal contradictions of the Democratic Party and the complexity of the political psyche of black Americans.
Ironically, despite Democratic Party rhetoric about economic inequities and wealth and income gaps in America, those gaps are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one.
According to exit polls from November's election, Barack Obama captured the vote of America' richest and America's poorest. Fifty-two percent of those with incomes over $200,000 voted for Obama and more than 60 percent of those earning under $30,000 did.
Our wealthiest senator, John Kerry, is a Democrat, as is our wealthiest House member, Jane Harman.
The nation's two wealthiest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are both, by all indication, Democrats.
What political aspirations can black Americans, whose median income lags the nation's share with these multimillionaires and billionaires?
There is little common ground regarding values.
Church attendance correlates reliably over time with party affiliation, and this remained true in this last election. Those who attend church frequently vote Republican. Those who don't usually vote Democratic. Except blacks.
Blacks, in fact, have the highest church attendance in the country. Seventy-six percent of black Democrats attend church at least monthly. Sixty-seven perce nt of Republicans do and 50 percent of white Democrats do.
A recent Gallup poll shows blacks more aligned with Republicans than Democrats on social issues -- moral acceptability of homosexuality, abortion, and sexual promiscuity.
On energy and environmental issues, blacks poll more closely with conservatives than with liberals. It's because these are pocketbook issues. Working blacks have little interest in paying the higher taxes and bearing the higher costs that will result from chasing global warming windmills and displacing cheap hydrocarbon energy with exotic government-subsidized alternatives. Lower energy costs also put blacks on the side of offshore drilling for oil and gas.
How about education? Wealthy liberals, despite having their own kids in private schools, oppose school choice. When a black family is given the opportunity to pull its child out of a failing public school and send him or her to a church school or another alternative, they are grateful.
So where's the common ground? Income redistribution. A recent Zogby poll shows 80 percent of Democrats, 90 percent of liberals, and 76 percent of blacks supporting taxing the weal thy to give money back to low-income Americans.
Despite everything else, blacks vote to stay on the liberal plantation. Pop psychologists would call the relationship between wealthy liberals and blacks co-dependence.
Republicans are wrong if they think they'll win blacks on social issues alone. They need to help blacks understand that lim ited government provides the economic mobility and opportunity they need and that the welfare, redistribution state does the opposite. They must help blacks gain self-confidence so that they can enjoy the benefits that can only come from freedom.
So far, Republicans have failed to do this. Which is another reason why they now sit on the outside looking in.
“the awkward co-dependence of blacks and liberal democrats”
should read “the awkward position of blacks as they are turned into a herd and contiually exploited by liberal democrats”
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but the mindset seems pretty simple to me: “They are black like me. They understand me and they will give me free stuff.”
Why would anyone vote for the Democratic Party?
DEMOCRATS: Supported slavery
REPUBLICANS: Abolished slavery
DEMOCRATS: Created Jim Crow Laws
REPUBLICANS: Abolished Jim Crow Laws
DEMOCRATS: Voted barely 50% to pass Civil Rights Act of 1964
REPUBLICANS: Voted over 80% to pass Civil Rights Act of 1964
DEMOCRATS: Continue enslavement via the narcotic welfare plantation for votes
REPUBLICANS: Color blind and judge people by individual erit and effort.
The Democratic Party has a horrific history and continue that record even today.
Professing Christians who vote Democrat are a pet peeve of mine. I worked with a gal who read her Bible daily in the break room and talked about her love of Jesus all day. She is black and when politics came up she said "I'm sorry, Bush is not my President, Bill Clinton is MY President!". And went on to say how sorry she was that he got caught "with all his women".
NYC=A King for Mayor, an unelected Gov. and an unelected Senator.
funny thing about CK is her dad. what would the democrat power structure do if she started espousing her dad’s policies?
JFK didn’t like unions and busted up a strike, IIRC it was steel workers(?), much like Reagan busted the ATC strike, JFK was s supply-side economist, much like Reagan, and JFK didn’t care for communists, again like Reagan. JFK beleived in getting the government off the backs of the people, much like Reagan.
He also was a bit of a ‘cowboy’, especially in relations with cuba, for example, a la GWB.
Since Hillary helped put Obama in the spotlight and got bitten when he didn’t wait his turn for the presidency, methinks that should the ny gov annoint her highness with hillary’s seat, CK could certainly cause the socialist dems some heartburn should she take up her dad’s policies...;-)
Where most Republican politicians chicken out.
Insulation from life through government requires a kind of social novocain. Welfare satisfies this requirement. And like all narcotics, addiction sets in at an early stage. Blacks were the first to suffer this addiction, but now it is spreading into the majority with alarming rapidity. The addiction numbs the patient into passivity so long as the drug keeps coming in it’s various forms: welfare, of course, and government medical, government schooling, government retirement, government cradle to grave, etc.
Eventually, government will be unable to meet the requirement. Cold turkey detox will occur, and this is a dangerous thing. It isn’t going to happen any other way, because the numb keep voting for the pushers, and the opposition keeps siding with, or refusing to oppose them.
You could be right and make a good point but that would only be if CK had a backbone and could stand up to the other dems. Having no experience and being void of personality, as far as I can tell, would make me believe otherwise.
WTH does that mean?
I tend to agree that CK doesn’t have the cojougles to stand up to the party, but what a frankenstein’s monster she COULD be!;-)
the dims like the blacks just where they are: dependant on government. what would kennedys do (and more importantly) how would they maintain power, if their dependant blacks succeeded, and moved on?
the dims are just another type of drug dealer, keeping their customers hooked up, alive, but barely.
This is the truth. The problem is that the "Great Society" sucked in a very vulnerable population at a very vulnerable moment, that is, just as all the hideous legal restrictions were falling and when blacks could really have made a surge ahead, and made them believe that all good things came from the hand of government. It destroyed black responsibility, black families and black initiative.
During segregation, my town in the south had a very busy black business district - note, I'm NOT saying that segregation was good, but simply that even in the face of terrible adversity, blacks were entrepreneurial, hard-working, solid members of the community. Everybody thought that the end of segregation was going to mean more economic freedom and possibility for blacks; but then the government came through and paid people to be dysfunctional, and many of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren (probably almost all illegitimate) of those same shopkeepers of 50 years ago are probably unemployed, maybe in jail, and certainly going nowhere. But they've become the sole property of the Dem party, which gave them federal dollars like heroin.
Notice that their lodestone is always raising marginal tax rates. This is meaningless to the very wealthy, since their assets remain untouched and such income as they have is heavily sheltered.
But for the middle class and especially the upper middle class, this is devastating.
For the blacks, the everyday whites they come into contact with get screwed by raising marginal tax rates, which must be highly satisfactory for them. The blacks get a slice of the money.
And the wealthy win both ways - everybody, including them, stays in their place. And they feel virtuous.
It will never happen. Free stuff wins over theoretical arguments every time. The GOP needs to give up on "trying to win over blacks." It ain't gonna work. They should spend their time on something more productive.
A real mistake here. How is taking money from the wealthy
to “give money back” to low income people? It was not taken from them in the first place.
A co-dependence purposely constructed by the RAT party to breed the appropriate voting segment to keep them in power. The trouble grows deeper.
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