I remembered what scripture teaches in the book of James, Chapter 2, Verse 18: ‘Yea, a man may say thou hast faith and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works and I will show thee my faith by my works!’ That is my text for today.”For the Republicans, there is both a threat and an opportunity. The black vote has largely gone to Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, and was buttressed by the party’s role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The Republicans scooped up disaffected white voters in the south as a result, creating the foundation stone for its electoral recovery in the 1980s and 1990s.But that “southern strategy” has now been dented. White voters, even in the south, are less polarised on the race question; and the Democrats have proved that they can bring out black voters in larger numbers.In the 1998 elections, the Democrats scored some striking victories across the south. There were dramatic increases in black turnout in Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and smaller ones in Alabama and Ohio. In those eight states, said the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (JCPES), “black voters were critical in electing or re-electing four Democratic governors and two Democratic US Senators”.

If they can repeat that, several southern states which should be rock solid for Bush may go Democrat.The 1998 push was no accident. The Democrats mounted a huge, hi-tech effort to boost black turnout. It was led by Donna Brazile, the black woman who now runs Gore’s campaign.”In Georgia each African-American household in the state received two pieces of mail, two recorded telephone calls, and a personal phone call from a campaign worker,” says Hastings Wyman of the Southern Political Report. “As a result black voters, who made up 19 per cent of the turnout in 1994 were a whopping 29 per cent in 1998.”The weakness may be Gore himself, who has a less compelling appeal to black voters than Clinton does. A study last year showed that Gore was viewed favourably by 69 per cent of African-Americans (well below Clinton’s rating of 87 per cent), and Bush by 43 per cent. Gore’s rating was essentially unchanged since 1997; the support for Governor Bush was up eight percentage points from his 1998 rating.Clinton got 83 per cent of the black vote in 1992, and 84 per cent in 1996. Gore’s support among African-Americans runs in the mid to high 70 per cent range; Bush is around 15 per cent, but wants to push for 20 per cent.

That could dent the Democrat vote in several large industrial states, such as Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, which Gore needs to win.And Bush may have some important weapons in his armoury. Colin Powell, the much-respected general who was formerly chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, may well be an official in his cabinet; so will Condoleeza Rice, a black former official in the National Security Council.Bush has made a concrete effort to redirect the Republican party, bringing in black and especially hispanic voters. “For my party, there’s no escaping the reality that the party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln,” said Bush.No one has forgotten that Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican nominee, refused to address the NAACP. In his own state of Texas, Bush nearly doubled his share of the black vote to 27 per cent in 1998, up from 15 per cent in 1994.And there is some evidence that black identification with the Democrats is declining. “But the partisan shift among blacks is toward political independence and not toward the Republican party,” noted the JCPES. “Republican support was down from 1998.” Bush made few friends with the black community in the primary campaign.Notably, he refused to endorse calls from the NAACP for South Carolina to take down the Confederate flag from its state house because he needed the conservative white vote, and that may come back to haunt him.”Bush’s willingness to snub African-Americans probably won’t matter in the primary, but it will hurt him in the general election,” wrote John Judis in the New Republic earlier this year. “He got 27 per cent of the black vote in his last gubernatorial election, but he won’t get half that with the Confederate flag around his neck.”.

If there is one person who is responsible for raising the salience of race in the 2000 elections, then it is Donna Brazile, who as Al Gore’s campaign supremo is the first black woman to lead a major US presidential campaign. If there is one person who is responsible for raising the salience of race in the 2000 elections, then it is Donna Brazile, who as Al Gore’s campaign supremo is the first black woman to lead a major US presidential campaign.
Brazile has often been compared to James Carville, the house-trained attack dog who led Bill Clinton’s first campaign. Like him, she is from Louisiana, a place where politics is played for keeps and governed by as few rules as a bar-room fight. But Brazile has a place in American politics which may eclipse even Carville. If she wins – and it is still a very big “if” – she may be more comparable to Lee Atwater, the sinister genius from South Carolina who helped to get both Ronald Reagan and George Bush to the White House.Brazile is controversial within her own party, let alone with the opposition.

“The four pillars of the Democratic Party are African-Americans, labour, women and what I call ethnic minorities,” she told the Washington Post, in comments that shocked the party’s reformist wing. “Having the support of African-Americans will enable Al Gore to lock down the nomination and begin to take on the Republican nominee.”When Gore decided to take his campaign out of Washington and down to Nashville last year, it was Brazile who was credited with the decision. She cut the staff in half and savagely reduced the salaries of those who remained behind, disembowelling what she scornfully referred to as “Goreworld”.The daughter of a New Orleans janitor and maid, she is now a veteran political operative. She worked as a youth organiser for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, before she could vote; aged only 20, she led a march on Washington, DC, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 1963 civil rights demonstration.