This is one of the dumbest posts I've read on the site.

"Black voters initially gave the Clintons the benefit of doubt..."

Uh... What have black voters ever had to doubt about the Clintons?

i totally agree with this post, with the exception of black voters voting for McCain. If Hillary is the nominee, after voting for her husband twice in years past....i will not vote for president (leaving that option blank) or write in Obama. black folks are very good at reading white folks. we knew even when the clintons were in power that their support of our community was opportunistic....we just liked his style at the time...and what other choices did we have....i can name no concrete policy that benefitted black folks that bill clinton ever implemented...he was a republican light and the economy was good......
i have been shocked at her ruthlessness, duplicity and self serving playacting.....i could never, ever vote for her, even as a VP.

I know I am not alone, as an African-American in the way i feel. they have lost the "black" vote forever....it will never come back.

This is why HRC needs Barack as VP or she's toast.

What Obama supporters in their hermetically sealed thought bubbles don't seem to realize is that the venom cuts both ways. In fact, for every Obama supporter who swears he or she will vote for McCain in the fall if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, there are at least two Clinton supporters who won't vote for Obama if he is the nominee.

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1254

I have yet to see any Obama supporter address this reality in any coherent way.

An astute post. I know its hard for the likes of Billy to understand or believe that there is a very good possibility that Black people will finally leave the Democratic Party Plantation (or that not all Black people are "poor" ---- that notion that seems to comfort more than a few white liberals.) This is especially true of marginal, young or first time voters, Blacks who who don't have any memory of the Party's sacrifice of its southern hegemony in exchange for desegregation. Not to speak of Blacks -- again especially young people -- who consider themselves Independents.

All of this is predicated on McCain not picking some nutbag racist for the VP slot. I'm not holding my breath, but this could be the biggest opportunity for Republican small government, social liberal moderates and even principled conservatives to make some inroads into the Black community which they have written off for the last forty years.

Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton with his ease around Black people and his genuine familiarity with the community. I mean no insult to white women here or anywhere else, but in Black social networks, Hillary Clinton is not nearly the object of Black affection and fondness that her husband is, to put not too fine a point on it. When she speaks with Black audiences she comes off as stiff, disingenuous, uncomfortable. The vibe is that she is speaking to "the other", which her husband never gave off.

And now she has sunk to using the lowest, most vile racist tactics to scare white people into voting for her. Tactics which Black people have assumed they would never under any circumstances see coming from a candidate from "their" party. As some of my older relatives say she's "torn her drawers" with a lot of Black people. In other words, we're done with her.

Of course there is going to eventually be a realignment of some sort. That's the history of American politics. Democrats were the party of working class people including working class southerners. State sanctioned discrimination was abolished in 64 and in the south at least, whites left the party in droves as Blacks entered.

Billy has yanked some 70% of Black voters "still like the Clintons" from god knows where. Even if you except it on its face, that is a good deal less than the 90% of Blacks that typically vote for the Democratic candidate in national elections. The difference is much more than enough to hand this election to the Republicans. A lot of Black people will sit this one out if she wins after the depths she has sunk to if for no other reason than McCain just doesn't elicit the same degree of hatred that Bush does.

And by the way Billy I'm really Black and you're really patronizing.