BARACK'S BIGGEST PROBLEM? BLACK PEOPLE

I know what your thinking. How could Senator Barack Obama have a problem with black people who are supporting him 90 to 95 %? Isn't that his strongest base? Absolutely. But Barack can not win this election with black people alone. He needs to have a decent chunk of the biggest group in the U.S., working class white people. And these are the people that are the most fickle constituents that Obama has in his stable. Ask your average white person if there is a disadvantage to being black and the majority of them will say "yes". Ask the same group what to do about it and they split into fractions. Race politics divides. Every since the Reverend Wright videos surfaced on youtube and all of our T.V.s and radios, Barack's support among white people, particularly white males, has fallen. I now believe that the biggest threat to Obama's campaign is the very people who have shown him the most steadfast support.

After the Reverend Wright videos, Barack's support among white people fell off considerably. In fact, Hillary Clinton actually got more of the Democrat's votes afterward. Is that the fault of white people? The mostly white media? No, and I'll tell you why. With the advent of the Internet, it's virtually impossible for the Main Stream Media to ignore a story that big. It's the introduction of the story that is the problem. Afterward, Reverend Wright went on to make even more outrageous statements, dragging poor Barack's misery out even further. Is it the media's fault that they responded to the Reverend's requests? If they didn't allow him his voice wouldn't the argument that Hill made of media bias be even more sound? Of course.

Later, when Jesse Jackson made his infamous, "I'd like to cut his nuts off." statement, was it the media's fault, or Jesse Jackson's? More recently, when Ludicrous, a black rapper, sang about painting the White House black, was it wrong for white people to be stunned? What if a white person became mayor of Washington D.C. and white people started saying it was time to "Whiten-up the place." wouldn't black people be equally stunned?

The truth of the matter is; Barack doesn't need to have race brought into the race at all.

Part of the problem is that black people are not used to black politicians avoiding the issue of race. Far from it. Black politicians usually thrive on it, it's their oxygen. Without it they can't survive or win in their mostly black districts. Obama avoiding the issue seems to black people the same as not caring. That's simply not true. Barack just understands white people far better than the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of old. The reason both Jesse and Al couldn't make their campaigns work as well as Barack's is because they cast themselves as a "black candidate", centering on black issues. With the possible exception of a very few guilt-ridden white Liberals, most of the white people ran to the white candidates as fast as they could. That is not how you win a Presidential election folks. You win by forming a constituency that is bigger than your opponents.

If these prominent black figures continue to inject race into the election, either through gloating or out of concern that it's being left out, Barack Obama will lose this race. Every time they bring up anything racial in nature, Barack's opponent's will seize the opportunity to make the election a racial issue and Obama loses the support among white middle class voters that he so desperately needs. The right will simply say, "We didn't bring it up." and they'll be right. Black advocates need to take a page out of the Republican hand book on this one. When the conservative right started showing up at functions and making statements, the Republican Party suffered. Now they are kept in the backfield. They still have as much influence, just not so publicly. Black people need to make a choice; do you want to have your problems heard during the race, or do you want influence and win. It's your choice, and I promise you can't have both. H.C.