Subscribe to Breaking NewsMcCain, Blacks, And The Four Year Dance
Every four years when madness for the White House begins in earnest, the Republican nominee will do the standard “I’m going to work hard to get the black vote” speech. There will then be a few stories, Republicans who happen to be black will get interviewed and offer advice, then when the votes have been counted everything returns back to what it was: the GOP doing nothing at all to make an argument on why its policies are beneficial to American blacks.
John McCain being a good Republican knows the above narrative arc and is doing his best to follow the script. The Republican nominee announced on Tavis Smiley’s PRI radio show late last month he was not going to concede the black vote to his eventual Democratic opponent; McCain also confessed he had a tough hill to climb. Last Friday, the Arizona senator was in Memphis to honor Martin Luther King and was booed briefly when he mentioned that in 1983 he voted against making King’s birthday a national holiday.
McCain’s fight for black votes might be even more difficult considering his past as an Arizona senator. From all accounts he hasn’t done the ground work it takes to have a base of black support in his own state. As a cynical optimist I hope the GOP is serious this time about making a sustained effort to garner black votes but I’m not holding my breath.
