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Hijacking The Black Vote

THE 2004 ELECTION & THE BLACK CHURCH

TWENTY-NINE

“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13 Till we all come in F10 the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: 14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:.” —Ephesians 4:11-15

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Among likely Bush voters are two close friends of mine.

Black men. Ministers. Career military men with more then twenty years apiece of duty in the U.S. Army. Neither of them like the president. Neither of them think Bush has been a particularly good president. But, tomorrow, they and millions of men like them will vote to re-elect him.

“I'm not a Bush fan but I think Kerry is such a liar, I just can't bring myself to vote for him,” one told me. “And I never know where he stands. Every time I think I understand him, he switches positions again, and I'm lost.” “I agree with president on gay marriage,” the other friend told me. “Bush is right on social issues, on moral values. I really don't know what I'm going to do.”

I could probably talk to these men, close friends, until I am blue in the face and it wouldn't make any difference. The Republicans have gotten their message out. Both men are reciting, line for line, the Republican party line while not having a whole lot of information about who John Kerry is and what he actually stands for. And I have to blame John Kerry for that. Blaming George Bush for the 2000 election has been convenient fun for Democrats, especially black democrats. but the truth is, Al Gore's biggest problem was Al Gore. And John Kerry's major impediment in this trace has been John Kerry. He has not communicated well. He greatly underestimated how low the president's campaign would stoop (and they'll stoop pretty low). He has not adequately distinguished himself or his record from the president's. And, although I believe he has corrected most of those faults in the ninth hour, John Kerry and his team still speak in elitist Northerner tones while the president, like him or not, speaks with an inarticulate eloquence we used to call Straight Talk. Never mind that the president is lying most every time his lips are moving, my point here is about the power of communication, not necessarily the content. We know what Bush is saying, while we are guessing about Kerry, who is running on a platform of I Am Not George Bush. And the senator seems startled that that fact, in and of itself, is not sufficient to win him the White House.

A lot of black Christians, obsessed with gay marriage and abortion rights, will be voting for the president, who all but wrote off the black vote when he snubbed the NAACP earlier this year and with whom most black Americans are dissatisfied. Many black Christians are, ironically, following an agenda white Christian conservatives have set. Most black religious voters know almost nothing about John Kerry but know the president is against abortion and gay marriage, the only two issues the religious right seem to care anything about. It's an unexpected bonus for the Republicans: black votes by default. Black votes that come their way simply because the Democrats have taken blacks in general— and black conservative Christians in specific— for granted. It is a mistake from which the DNC may not recover.

Most black religious voters know almost nothing about John Kerry and are asking almost nothing about John Kerry. It's like we want the information to flow to us; we want the senator to do a better job of pursuing us. And that thought may actually be correct. It's entirely possible the senator has taken the black vote for granted, fairly assuming blacks will vote in large measure for the Democrat, so why reach out to us? It may be a fatal miscalculation. The poll numbers we are inundated with, week after week, are, like IQ and SAT tests, biased towards the white middle class, which is near universally considered the bench mark. I have never met a black person who has EVER been polled for election results Though, of course, black people have been and are being polled, my instinct tells me the numbers we see, the Likely and Register Voter Polls, are 80-90% white middle class.

Black folk change their phone numbers. Black folk hang up on computers and telemarketers and bill collectors. Black folk don't like their privacy invaded. There's been little or no poll work done in the black church community here in town— at least not that I or any of my dozen or so minister friends are aware of. Perhaps the pollsters think they know what we are going to do. But they'll be quite surprised to find many of us voting for the president— a man most of us disapprove of and most of us have been harmed by— simply because the commonly accepted beliefs about Senator John Kerry is the information being promulgated by the National Republican Committee.

We do not ask questions. We do not, statistically speaking, go online as much as whites. We do not seek out information. We wait for it to fly thru the air and hit us through television commercials and print ads. In the black community here, I am hearing an awful lot of parroting of talking points. Republican talking points. John Kerry Is A Liar. John Kerry Changes Positions Too Much. John Kerry is Pro Abortion. My efforts to counter this thinking are universally intercepted by a dismissive hand wave. I am cut off, waved off, blown off. The line is, We Don't Like Bush, but We Don't Trust Kerry.

And I can hold only one man responsible for that: John Kerry.

The Democratic National Committee has all but ignored us as a demographic, seeing hegemony where none exists. The African American community in this nation is, as all others are, a plurality. The DNC has, however, terribly underestimated the moral backbone of the black community. By not speaking to moral issues, or perhaps by not speaking loud enough to moral issues, they have left many blacks out in the cold, stuck between a political decision and a moral one.

We are not any more ignorant than conservative Christian whites, whose agenda this truly is— this Re-Elect Bush Or Kerry Will Make You Have An Abortion nonsense. The Republican platform is based entirely on scare tactics. Their mission is to make us afraid. And the black Christians who have told me they may vote for the president have expressed, to a person, that they may reluctantly vote for Bush because they are AFRAID of what Kerry might do.

It's the Republican message. We, the black community, have heard it. from the Republicans, from our brothers and sisters in the religious right. And we now accept it as Gospel because the Democrats have made almost no effort at all to properly inform us, their core base, about their core beliefs and core values.

Is George Bush the moral choice?
Christian conservatives certainly want us to think so. Many of us reluctantly conclude that he is. Regardless of whether you think the president is a decent or moral or chummy guy, the fact is neither Bush nor Kerry are likely to have much impact on the moral issues the Christian right are most obsessed with at the moment: gay marriage and abortion. Regardless of who is elected, there will be little or no change in these issues. The notion that the president will ban abortions and gay marriages is a patent lie, Anyone who believes otherwise, even in a visceral fashion, is foolishly casting a vote— for a desperate and unscrupulous man who has ruined this economy and led us to war— just because you think he can stop abortions (he can't) or end gay marriages (he can't).

Are doubts about John Kerry enough to justify a vote for George Bush?
That's up to you. Trillion-dollar surplus turned to trillion-dollar deficit. Using 9/11 to justify a war he intended to start all along. Billion-dollar no-bid contracts to his friends and former business associates. Eleven hundred dead, eight thousand wounded and climbing. Millions of manufacturing jobs lost. Millions of jobs outsourced to India and other nations. Millions without health care. Skyrocketing gasoline and home heating prices. Families having to choose between heat and food. Constantly-shifting justifications for the war and the desperate state of our economy. And this president has never, and I mean never, admitted having made even one mistake. Ever. But he's anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. And that's apparently enough for Christians to vote for him; turning a blind eye to three dozen sins to support the president's opposition to two. That's the bill of goods we've been sold by this administration and by the religious right.

By the time you read this, the voting may be all over. If things are as close as they seem to be, the end of voting will trigger the lawsuits and squabbling until the U.S. House of Representatives or Supreme Court inevitably awards the presidency to George W. Bush. The fix is most definitely in, and thousands of ballots are being lost, invalidated, burned and discarded— most of which in key battleground areas and among minority voters. The president's allies are the chief vote counters (secretaries of state) in most key battleground states. Voter suppression efforts targeted by racial profiling in key states overwhelmingly favor the president, as thousands upon thousands of minority ballots disappear or are invalidated. Thousands of lawyers have been dispatched to these battlegrounds to file immediate lawsuits in an effort to not count black votes— votes more likely to benefit challenger John Kerry. In the unlikely case of a tie in the electoral college, the election would be decided by the U.S. House of Representatives— where the Republican party enjoys a majority and a certain win for George Bush. Legal challenges will inevitably lead to the U.S. Supreme Court— which awarded the presidency to Bush the last time.

The one hope we actually have is neither in Bush nor in Kerry but in Christ. Seek His will for the choices you make, and seek the anointing of discernment to know the difference between a man who claims Christ and a man who knows Christ. People of good will and good faith and real fellowship with Christ can make every difference tomorrow.

It's up to you.

Christopher J. Priest
1 November 2004
editor@praisenet.org
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