A Debate Black Voters Should Heed

Just in case you missed it -- and no doubt many did -- the best debate of this campaign season occurred during the summer and featured President Bush and Al Sharpton. (Sorry, Senator Kerry.) It was not a head-to-head contest, and the only time the two men were even in the same room was during Bush's opening salvo. "Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party?" Bush asked a predominantly black audience at the National Urban League convention in July. "How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete?" Those were trick questions, of course. The issue was not whether Democrats took blacks for granted but why Bush, after promising a more compassionate social agenda, reneged on that promise. He went so far as to appropriate a slogan from the Children's Defense Fund, "Leave No Child Behind," then proceeded to abandon children by the millions. You had to wait almost a month for Sharpton's rebuttal, which hit hard at what he saw as an attempt by desperate Republicans to sway black votes in the absence of any policy that might win them over. "Mr. President, you said would we have more leverage if both parties got our votes, but we didn't come this far playing political games," Sharpton said in a speech delivered in prime time at the Democratic National Convention. "It was those who earned our vote that got our vote. . . . Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred. This vote can't be bargained away. This vote can't be given away. Mr. President, in all due respect, Mr.
President, read my lips: Our vote is not for sale." [more]