With all due respect to Gustaf, Realpolitik, and the other international folks here, and as much as I admire your knowledge of American politics which far exceeds my knowledge of Britain and Sweden, I think you'd have to live here in order to see things the way we see them.
Blacks DO vote Democrat by reflex. That's not racist, that's just the statistics. It's not a racial characteristic -- whites used to vote reflexively Democratic in the south and even more so than African-americans do today. NHPolitico isn't trying to be racist at all, he's just stating what the facts are so that we can deal with them.
I was an election worker last year and an African-american lady came in and asked "where the button was" that she could vote all Democratic -- she didn't even want to spend the time to mark an x next to the candidates of her choice. I had asked one of the election commission officials about the partisan makeup of the workers and she indicated that all I had to do was count the whites and blacks because she couldn't think of that many cases where you had a white Democrat or a black Republican election worker.
I've seen the black electorate here vote in droves for an admitted crack addict (D) while the white electorate was more than happy to cross racial and party lines vote for our well-respected black Democratic county Mayor. And if you think the crack addict thing was just a white perception, let me burst your bubble... I was a guest on a black radio station talking about the election and the black host and black callers all said they couldn't believe that there was a crack addict on the ballot and surely wouldn't vote for him but did anyway.
However, like I said - its not in any a racial characteristic and whites used to do the same thing. It sucks in either case. It does send a big message to my party though: Even with all of the outreach work that we have done, we are still no better than a crack addict to the average African-American voter. We have to address this problem with more than just platitudes and token appointments... we must make serious policy changes and make our case more effectively that the Republican Party is the party that will help all Americans.
I know exactly what you mean htmldon, this happens in Britain too. In some northern towns you could pin a red Labour rosette on a chimpanzee and it would still win!! A lot of ethnic minorities (and many whites) here vote according to ethnic/religious bigotry which is also disgusting. At the 1997 election Labour nearly lost the seat of Bradford West because the Labour candidate was a Sikh and 40% of the electorate are Muslim. Virtually all the Muslims voted Tory, just out of hatred for the Sikh candidate. Disgusting! Blacks in Britain also tend to vote Labour regardless of whether the candidate deserves to be elected or not. Personally I switch my vote Lab/Lib Dem/Green/Independent depending on policies. I've never voted Tory yet as I've never agreed with their policies, but that's not to say I would never vote for them in the future.
