[TonyB06]

A Political Booty Call: Democratic and Republican Outreach to Blacks
Date: Monday, Dec. 29, 2003
Author: Deborah Mathis


It’s that time of the decade. A presidential election is rounding the bend and, right on cue, the Republican and Democratic parties are beginning to squabble over which deserves the black vote come Election Day._

The GOP’s “big tent” rhetoric has been dusted off and reworked new millennium style, with keywords to appeal to young adults, 18-35, who are black. The Republican National Committee has a media blitz in the works just for them._

The Democrats are marshaling their troops, fearful once again of desertions or mutinies by a black constituency that has been the party’s mainstay ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt made government beholden to ordinary folks. The Democratic National Committee knows that black defections – or inaction – will kill whatever faint hopes it has of defeating George W. Bush next November.

The GOP has concluded that young black Americans are the party’s ripest prospects because they are turned off by politics-as-usual and see the world differently than their parents who, statistically, lean Democratic._

Republicans say the typical young black voter is not a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton disciple, is tired of the old guard in general and craves new leadership. So they’re going to march out some fresh black Republican faces and offer them as the great black hope. Who knows? Some may even have dreads.

This premise appears to be modeled on the young white American, whose rebellion against “the establishment” necessarily includes his or her parents, whereas young black Americans’ disaffection for the old world order usually exempts their parents, who were never really part of “the establishment,” and, indeed, have their own issues with the status quo.

For most of us, race is not incidental to experience, particularly not our political choices. Race is the prime dynamic that informs our traditions, habits and beliefs. Ancestral experiences are not dismissed as irrelevant or obsolete.

While each generation brings its own flavor to black American life, an appreciation for old school ways and old school wisdom is timeless. I don’t care how much airtime it buys or how many Condoleezzas it parades, no political party can tool a message that beats what Mama knows.

The Democratic and Republican parties’ dueling courtships are not entirely wasteful nor will they be fruitless. Republicans will win over some souls with their flash and dash, the allure of change, the carrot of membership in a party with muscle and fuzzy promises of power-sharing._

Democrats will persuade most of its base to hang in there by exaggerating its fidelity to black sensibilities and glossing over the shortage of blacks in the party’s upper echelons and persistent complaints that black candidates and officials get short shrift from headquarters. The DNC can only thank its lucky stars that the only viable alternative is no longer affiliated with Lincoln and a precious proclamation, but with Bush and a purloined presidency.

Certainly it is nice to be noticed, nice to be wanted. Only, one cannot help but catch the whiff of opportunism that wafts over both parties’ attentiveness. The timing is too nifty. The come-on is overdone. The pleading is too urgent.

For all the flattery, it is nothing more than the political equivalent of a booty call. Sweet nothings tonight, home alone in the morning.