Kesher Talk

What Artur Davis' victory yesterday symbolizes: A post-script to Hilliard's loss: From the Birmingham News, a view quite contrary to the Council on American Islamic Relations'...:

What's going on? Watkins calls it a "maturing of the black electorate."

Certainly, more and more voters from Birmingham to Montgomery to the Black Belt are showing they no longer heed the marching orders of the political bosses who once called all the shots.

They don't need a sample ballot to tell them how to vote. They don't listen to out-of-state big wigs to tell them how to vote. They don't respond to race-baiting and other dirty political tricks to tell them how to vote.

Instead, they look at an elected official's track record and pay attention to core issues such as education, economic development and health care. They also are willing to weigh, and vote for, candidates who didn't earn the endorsement of the Citizens Coalition, the ADC or the Alabama New South Coalition.

This is a very good thing. Voting as instructed, whether it's being done by African-Americans or white conservative Christians, isn't democracy. It's nothing more than machine politics.

Although few Alabamians these days even bother, voting is a hard-earned freedom too important to turn over to political bosses. Against the wishes of those bosses, voters no longer willing to toe the line on Tuesday kicked out some longtime politicians who richly deserved it.

More power to them.

posted by Howard @ 6/27/2002 09:55:07 AM