A Black South Carolina Primary

If anything good comes out of this year's presidential election process, I believe we're going to get to a deeper level of uniting the black and white electorate- with the Hispanic, Asian, and other culture electorate. It's really an American electorate that will decide who our next president is to be. And maybe, just maybe we're getting that understanding even if the press is not.

As the result of what we're now seeing, the Democratic party just may be losing their exclusive grip on the black vote- which they've largely given lip service to, but not done as much as is written from the loving liberal press. Ever since we got into the thick of the presidential race, reporters, anchors, pundits, columnists and writers have spent a considerable amount of time on the fact that nearly 50 percent of the people who will vote in the South Carolina primary are black.

What about the 50% white vote? Wouldn't Martin Luther King, Jr. want unity?

Why has Hillary gone off to other states to raise money? Has she written off the South Carolina primary? Of course not because she's sent the other candidate that Barack is running against (Bill Clinton) to do the mopping up work. Oh yes, and then there's John Edwards. Who?

Obama represents far more than just a black candidate. As I've written, Barack brings to the table a unifying factor unseen in American politics- ever! He is the message of HOPE and unity that King spoke. Barack Obama is really half white (mom) and half Kenyan (dad), but identifies himself as African-American. Top that!

When is the last time you've seen journalists spend so much time interviewing whites and blacks with such intensity Stories have focused on black preachers, the tough choice facing black women, and whether young black voters come to the polls. The dynamics have the pollsters like Rasmussen and Zogby scratching their heads to come up with the proper dynamics. And as we saw in New Hampshire, they are sometimes getting it all wrong!

South Carolina is the first state where black voters will play such a critical role. And in the next two months, we're likely to see a similar focus in Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia and Tennessee, where black voters range from 20 percent to 50 percent of the Democratic electorate. I can't wait to see how th so-called experts do in these primaries.

But this is a dangerous game to play, because it's wrong to ignore half of the electorate in a state. We also should be analyzing the white vote to better understand about what may happen in other states.
With that in mind, I reached out to CNN political analyst Bill Schneider, and he shot me an e-mail with the results of an ARG poll taken January 17-18. That poll revealed that among whites, Clinton is attracting 56 percent of the vote in South Carolina; Obama, 20 percent; and Edwards is polling at 16 percent.

Obama is running a campaign that isn't based on race, and is trying to connect with people across the political spectrum, as he seemingly did in 98% white Iowa. Most voters are saying that they don't care about race or gender; that the issues trump everything. Really? I'm not convinced and I don't think we'll know the whole story after South Carolina votes: but, we'll know more.

This is not just about black-on-black politics!

The South Carolina primary isn't a black primary, nor a white primary, but just the enxt installment into the American political psyche that is, pardon the use of the over-worked word- CHANGE!