Natural Allies: White American Conservatives And Black Democrats

Today's Telegraph piece, on which comments are welcome over there:

On the same day as California and Florida gave their Electoral College votes to Obama, they voted to reaffirm that marriage is only ever the union of one man and one woman. That is in fact Obama’s own view. He even had an ex-gay activist on his campaign team, much to the disgust of the Clinton camp. But it was certainly not the view of the Democratic Party’s machines (especially in California) and media allies (in both states). Yet those who tipped the balance for traditional marriage also tipped the balance for Obama in the swing state of Florida, and ensured his landslide in California, which, after all, has a second-term Republican Governor.

They were black voters.

The family-centred, God-fearing blacks, hideously misrepresented in their own and other people’s popular culture. The immigration-sceptical, insistently English-speaking blacks. The blacks, whose concern it is to protect blue-collar jobs from foreign undercutting. The blacks, who, like the Irish and the Scots-Irish, see their young men industrially harvested in other people’s pointless wars, indeed now see their men and boys subjected to a triple genocide in the womb, on the streets and on the battlefields. The blacks, proper conservatives. And therefore, a no go area for the Republican Party, to which they once adhered.

Just how black is the Democratic Party in South Carolina? I am betting that it is very, very black indeed. And I am also betting that in 2008 all those politicised preachers did plenty of work at the grassroots to secure the nomination of a man who shared their own and their congregants’ views on protecting blue-collar jobs, on immigration, on English as America’s national language, on war, on abortion, and on the nature of marriage.

That man was Bob Conley. He had had quite enough of the Republican Party’s completely closed attitude to conservative views on trade, immigration, war, and actually doing anything about abortion or in defence of marriage. So that South Carolina Ron Paul activist and traditional Catholic changed his registration. He became a Democrat. Classy.

But then he went, not one, but two better. He entered the Democratic Senatorial primary. And, against a liberal Democrat from central casting, he won it. Narrowly. But he still won it. Okay, so he did not win the general election, at his first attempt and against a very well-known incumbent. But he managed a creditable showing.

Is there any state in which no such black-conservative alliance could be forged? Are there not many in which it could be decisive? And there are other alliances that white conservatives could forge - with labour unions, for example, which are sound on job protection and many other issues.

Do American conservatives ever want to get anything done on trade, immigration, the status of English, corporate power, corporate welfare, big lobbyists, the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, a realistic foreign policy, and a strong defence capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose? Who could disagree with you on those issues?

The Republicans, that’s who. Only on abortion and on marriage do they even so much as make the right noises. And noises are all that they are.

Yes, you would have to put up with some things that you did not want, but your allies (the preachers, the unions, whoever) did. And yes, you would have to do without some things that you wanted but they did not. To be in that position would indicate your acceptance as part of the coalition, as part of the family. As things stand, you are forced to accept everything that you do not want and to forego everything that you do. You are part of no coalition. You are part of no family. You are cast out.

It is high time to come in from the cold. Come into the party of those who, on the same day as they gave their Electoral College votes to Obama, voted for traditional marriage in California and Florida, voted to end discrimination against working-class white men in Colorado, voted not to liberalise gambling in Ohio or Missouri, and did all these and so many other things as pillars of (especially) the black and Catholic churches from coast to coast.

Come into, come home to, the party of Bob Conley. The Democratic Party. Why not?