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ORIGINAL: truckinslave

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

1. And it is "non-existent" because you claim it to be.99% (or whatever the actual number is) of black voters casting their vote for the Democratic candidate,whether black or not is actually immaterial,says different.
2. The parties courting of the "teabaggers' says different.
3. The parties demonizing of minority voters, and any effort to register same,says different.

I numbered the drivel.

1. The fact that 99% of Americans aren't Libertarians doesn't make the Libertarian Party exclusive.
2. Learn English. "Courting" any group is an act of inclusion, which is somewhat different from exclusion.
3. Far from demonizing minority voters, we have done everything we can to attract them, including in far too many cases becoming D-lites. Our efforts continue, and as their economic futures continue to improve, so will the results of our efforts. Few mired in the choices that lead to (semi) permanent poverty vote R. We are against illegal, phony registration.....

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ORIGINAL: truckinslave

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The Tea Party may be a greater threat to Republican incumbents than Democratic incumbents.

I'm starting to wonder/worry about that myself.

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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda

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ORIGINAL: AnimusRex

But back to the topic- poll numbers are fickle things- notice the 7 point swing in popularity of HCR within a few days. the November elections are a few hundred news cycles away- I wouldn't lay money on much of anything.

Not to mention the Teabagger Factor. The way things are looking now, the Tea Party could peel off a lot of votes from moderate Republicans in many key districts, effectively splitting the conservative vote and giving  a lot of Democratic candidates a deceptively easy 45-30-25 victory. It's way too early to call that wild card now, but we can definitely say that it will at least be  in play come November. The Tea Party may be a greater threat to Republican incumbents than Democratic incumbents.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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On several levels this is theatre so bizarre that its almost pointless to speak the obvious

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

Hey ,there you go Brainy...another factoid in support of my old republican stripe(which Popeye has hinted is so much bullshit)I was one of those "split" Republican voters...I voted for the little guy.Vowed I would never throw away my vote again....a vow which led to some regrettable voting in 2000 and 2004 ;-(

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ORIGINAL: truckinslave

"His appeal to blacks is an interesting phenomenon."

Well, maybe at the margins, as the article suggests. But it would shock me to find any amateur student of American politics who was unaware of the clearly racist and pro-Democrat voting patterns of African Americans.

Isn't it a requirement under the Voting Rights Act that minority voting strength in any given district not be reduced by redistricting? I know I read something to that effect some years ago. It's just an observable fact that if A-As stayed home for even one cycle there would be a veto-proof Republican House, three years would result in a large, possibly veto-proof Senate, and there might not have been a Democrat elected President since Kennedy save for overwhelming A-A support.

That's just another chicken that may come home to roost in the Obama coop.

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On the 100th day of the first term of the first black president of the United States, lawyers for a small utility district in Travis County, Texas, walked up the steps of the Supreme Court Building to ask the nine justices of the court to dismantle a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ironies abound.

Without the Voting Rights Act, there would be no President Obama. When it was passed, the Voting Rights Act, known as “the crown jewel of the civil rights movement,” began the process of fully realizing the promise of the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, which in 1870 extended the right to vote to African Americans, or at least to African-American men. In the years between 1870 and 1965, however, the vast majority of blacks were largely disenfranchised by Southern legislators and jurisdictions that used intimidation, arcane registration practices, gerrymandering, poll taxes and violence to keep the black population from exercising the franchise. The Voting Rights Act was a result of the literal blood, sweat and tears of civil rights activists, among them Medgar Evers; Fannie Lou Hamer; Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner; and a young John Lewis, who nearly lost his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

The current challenge to the constitutionality of certain aspects of the Voting Rights Act is ironically timed but certainly not unexpected. Even as Congress—by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and a nearly unanimous vote in the House—reauthorized its provisions in 2006, forces opposing the Voting Rights Act were planning a legal challenge. Several made little effort to conceal their hopes that a Supreme Court anchored by conservative justices would undo what Congress did when it passed the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendment Acts in 2006.

I can recall testifying in favor of the reauthorization in the summer of 2006, when Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) alluded (snidely, it seemed to me) to a hypothetical future legal challenge to the act’s constitutionality. It’s perhaps then no surprise that a mere eight days after Congress reauthorized the act, a case challenging its constitutionality was filed in Texas.

Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Attorney General Eric Holder (formerly Mukasey, and before that Gonzales) challenges the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The most controversial and hard-fought provision of the act, Section 5 requires certain jurisdictions in the U.S. to seek authorization from the Department of Justice or from a federal court whenever they seek to make changes to voting practices or procedures. These “voting changes” can range from changing the location of polling places to increasing the number of city council seats, or switching from electing judges to appointing them. The jurisdictions covered by Section 5 are those that were historically characterized by deeply depressed (and in many cases deliberately suppressed) voter registration and turnout among minority voters. Most of these jurisdictions are in the states of the former Confederacy. But jurisdictions in Arizona and New York are also covered by Section 5’s pre-clearance requirements because of their history of depressed voter registration and participation among language minorities.

The requirement that covered jurisdictions seek approval or “pre-clearance” of voting changes enables local minority communities to learn about any changes planned in their jurisdictions, and, more important, to provide their input on whether such changes are likely to adversely affect voting strength in the minority community. If any of the changes would diminish minority voting strength, or if it is intended to discriminate against minority voters, the Justice Department may object to it.

Prior to reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act in 2006, Congress heard testimony for more than a year and compiled a record of over 15,000 pages before concluding that “the vestiges of discrimination in voting continue to exist.” The evidence before Congress included discrimination against Native American voters in South Dakota and Latino voters in Arizona and Georgia, and against black poll workers in South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and a host of other states. Texas, in fact, was specifically identified as having among the worst records of voting discrimination. The forms of discrimination in various states included the promulgation of racially discriminatory redistricting plans, discrimination against minority poll workers, illegal citizenship challenges to Latino registered voters, discriminatory registration practices and a variety of efforts to diminish minority voting strength in covered jurisdictions.

Since the act was last reauthorized, the Department of Justice has objected to some 620 instance of voting changes proposed by covered jurisdictions under Section 5, and over 600 voting rights lawsuits have been brought by minority voters who successfully challenged discriminatory election practices under Section 2. And there can be no way of assessing the scores and perhaps hundreds of instances in which the requirements of pre-clearance under Section 5 deterred jurisdictions from attempting to implement discriminatory voting changes.