This is a good thing

Maybe now the Democrats will stop taking the black vote for granted. I won't hold my breath though.

Donna Brazile is uneasy. She has noticed something highly threatening to her party, and she's sounding the alarm. In a column for Roll Call newspaper, Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager, warns her fellow Democrats that Republicans are seeking to make inroads into the African-American vote. "Once they (black voters) start listening to Republicans, some may even like what they hear." Egad.

Brazile notes that in "many key states, including Ohio, Florida and Michigan, the GOP increased its percentage of the black vote by making a modest investment of resources, reaching out consistently to ministers and polarizing the black community with divisive wedge issues such as same-sex marriage."

Leaving aside Brazile's interpretation (who is polarizing, those who push gay marriage or those who push back?), the numbers are certainly intriguing. While Republicans gained a relatively modest 3 percentage points in the overall black vote between 2000 and 2004, going from 8 percent to 11 percent, the party's performance in several large states was more substantial. In Texas, the GOP won 15 percent; in California, 18 percent; and in Ohio, 16 percent.

Fighting dirty for the black vote