Carol Platt Liebau: Not About Race, About Politics

Friday, June 02, 2006

Not About Race, About Politics

Here's a coda to my observation that the Democratic Party's supposed affinity for African Americans has little to do with race, and everything to do with politics.

Just as the entire Democratic establishment is reportedly going to Maryland to campaign against African American Republican US Senate candidate Michael Steele, "a group of influential black Democrats - including Ohio's only black congresswoman and the mayors of the state's two biggest cities - endorsed U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland for governor Thursday."

Strickland is a Democrat -- and a white guy. His opponent is Secretary of State Ken Blackwell -- a Republican and an African American.

Sounds like there are a lot of Democrats who "care" about African Americans, but only so long as they pledge to vote Democratic.

2 Comments:

Blogger Liam said...

Can you be at all honest, Ms. Liebau?

Just to be clear here, I disapprove of Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Ted Bundy and John Allen Muhammad, and wouldn't vote to put any of them into office.

It has nothing to do with their race, it has to do with their actions.

In the case of Ken Blackwell, he's pretty tightly intertwined with the extreme irregularities in Ohio's voting which led to at best a questionable result and at worst an outright theft of the Presidency.

While that may not rise to the level of the behavior of Hitler or Hussein or the rest, it definitely rises to the level of "behavior that we do not want in our elected officials". Add to that the Democrats who feel he wronged them (rightly or wrongly), it is YOU playing the race card, suggesting that all Democrats should support his bid for office entirely based on his race.

A truly non-racist person judges the candidate (for good or ill) based on his character, his deeds and his abilities. The reason to oppose Ken Blackwell is his character. Better yet, his positions, which are very conservative. His skin color doesn't enter in to it, either in his favor or against it.

To suggest otherwise is to display a level of racism which frankly makes me sick to my stomach.

Liam.

3:21 PM  
Blogger Liam said...

To clarify, it is not the fact that Mr. Blackwell's positions are conservative, per se. That's not a reason to reject him for everyone.

But for Democrats, that's a perfectly good reason, just as it's perfectly fair for a Republican to reject someone simply because they're too liberal.

Liam.

3:23 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Google