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Or, are minority voters a political help in the sense
that minority voters have a tendency to vote (in today's
political climate) in mass for the Democratic Party?
Without a doubt the demonizing of black and minority
voters by President Trump guarantees a sure bet that in the
upcoming mid terms and the presidential election to be held
in 2020 that black voters and other minority bloc of voters
will vote for the donkey and not the elephant.
President Trump has done everything possible to
alienate and incur the wrath of black voters with his
brainless denunciations of all things black including black
men who play professional football.
Calling those grown men, "SOB's" and that they should
lose their employment for protesting the senseless killing
of black men by white police officers is the product of a
racist and demented mindset in spite of eyebrow raising
claims of his son that since his father met or meets with
black rappers, he can not be a racist!
Black people have never been able to sit at the dinner
table and eat at will for a long period of time before
someone gets upset at their presence and their demands which
initiates the process of converting black folks into special
interest groups as opposed to full-fledged participants in
this fragile experiment called democracy.
It was not too long ago, from 1867 to 1936, that the
majority of blacks voted Republican but then came along the
New Deal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the tide
quickly turned Democratic and still is to this current date.
However when that southern white president, Lyndon B.
Johnson, signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he lamented
that with such a significant civil rights bill, "We (meaning
the Democratic Party) have just lost the South."
That statement was prophetic insofar as southern
whites, in droves, dropped the Democrats like a hot sweet
potato and pledged their allegiance to all things
Republican.
President Reagan, President Nixon and the first Bush
presidency took that shameful tack and continued the acerbic
rhetoric against people of color and black people were
suddenly the scourge of the earth; and were debased as being
unwanted baggage and those presidents were able to win with
their appeals to the white voter...aka: Reagan Democrats.
President Obama faced the venom of the GOP when its
leadership openly stated that their goal was to make Obama a
one-term president and they continuously blocked and
countered his domestic agenda in order to fulfill their
racist tinged commentary.
Enter President Trump and you have what many observers
and political pundits have noted is a man who is politically
illiterate, a man who shreds the safeguards of a democracy
and has a "chip" on his shoulder when it comes to debasing
women and clawing away at anything black or minority.
Trump pulls no punches when it comes to his scathing
rebukes of minorities and his exoneration and uplifting of
all things white, including lauding Neo Nazis as being
"fine" people.
His recorded verbal nonsense and outrages about his
opinion of people of color are both recorded and are replete
with ugly gibberish about blacks and Mexicans but yet his
core of white voters exult in those commentaries.
Instead of his commentary of "Make America Great
Again", that slogan can be easily interchanged with, "Make
America White Again."
Black voters, loyal to a fault, are led by a ring in
their nose when it comes to making political choices that
will benefit them and not caring about the political
"fallout" if they come to the political dinner table of
either party with a full appetite and with expectations of
slacking that hunger.
But no. That is not to be. Both parties are nervous
and jittery about the optics of caving in to "those" peoples
demands for economic and political and social justice...even
though it is the right thing to redress long held grievances
from the very people that make the difference of winning and
losing elections!
Even the Bible says: "Don't muzzle the ox while he is
treading out the grain!" In other words, the work horse that
brought you the ability to make bread from the grain should
be allowed to eat the product of its brain and brawn.
Both political parties do a complicated dance with
minority voters. They do not want to be seen as enjoying the
dance for fear of not getting another dance partner and at
the same time, they want to be engaged with that dance
partner so that when the band strikes up another tune, they
will still have a compliant dance partner!
That is the conundrum that faces the all too-loyal
black voters. They also need to dance to their fiddler but
you (the political party) pay for it as you have paid so
many times for the white fiddler and his music. What is good
for the goose is also good for the gander!
It is decision time. Does the black voter stay loyal to
the marriage with either party or does the minority voter
play the field, stay single and only wink and nod at the
best suitor who has both a job, car and a house?
According to the quote that started off this
commentary, black voters and other minority voters should
consider forming a third political party and only give their
blessings and goodies to those suitors who will take their
concerns seriously and not view them as a temporary alliance
out of which only they (white voters) maintain the top
policy slots for their (white voters) interests and
benefits.
If black voters want to continue to grin and dance for
either of the dominant political parties in the remote hopes
that they will be treated as full participants, that will be
a long, cold wait.
But, if the minority voters and a bloc of independent
voters were to convene their own convention and issue policy
statements that are needed to move this country forward,
political parity could finally be a dream come true; and
such a political movement could the power shaker and breaker
that will have both dominant parties come calling, hat in
hand and with a wallet packed with cash...not coins.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
tolliver@juno.com |
