While pundits continue to carry on about white male voters and bitter gun-owners and their importance to the election, there is one thing that stands out as being the big non-issue of Election 2008.
That would be the problems of urban America. If you live in a big city, you’ve been virtually ignored in the election so far, kicked to the proverbial curb by the issues of who else…white men. Yet the Democratic Party is probably more dependent on the 80 or more percent of African-Americans who routinely vote Democrat and will do so again, if the demographic breakdown for Obama in predominantly black Philadelphia (almost 90 percent of blacks in the city went for the Big O) is any indication. Apparently, the Democrats don’t feel they have to compete for a vote they already have. But what that means is that things that should be on Senator Obama’s agenda, as the man still does have a day job aside from Presidential candidate, are being completely ignored by both campaigns.
For example, the recent violence in Chicago has been virtually ignored by both candidates, despite the fact that it’s Obama’s stomping grounds. The inner-city ills of crime, housing, poverty and education have disappeared in this election while the woes of blue-collar white men in Rust Belt towns have become a focal point. No surprise there, as existing government policies from No Child Left Behind, to the sub-prime fallout to the cutting of welfare benefits, education funding and police have left the hood feeling like they’d better fend for themselves. Yet it’s that same hood that is likely to bring in the largest, most loyal Democratic vote in the general election. Well, they say those same white men vote against their economic interests every time they put a Republican in the White House. Maybe black folks, especially those in the inner cities, are doing the same when we put a Democrat in. -Hellifiknow