Yoshie, sometimes you really surprise me in your apparent belief that saying the magic word will turn the tables in the US politics. The Republican or Democratic parties are not the causes of the Klan, conservatism, corporate grip or, conversely, the opposites of these vices. They are their effects, or expressions if you will.
The US politics look the way it does not because Republicans are shrewd manipulators or Democrats re dupes of traitors (make your own pick), but because US is a very conservative country in which:
- a big chunk (if not majority) of the population identifies itself with conservative causes, such as "small government" (meaning low taxes and limited public services), social/moral Darwinism (a belief that people get in life what their social/moral worth is), US exceptionalism (a belief that the US is the best country in the world that has a special moral mission, and that everyone else resents that), and "disciplinarian populism" (a tendency to conform to a conventional standard viewed as "mainstream" and disciplining those who do not fit that mold)
- the business interests are extremely well organized and funded, which enables them to get practically any special legal treatment and protection they want, to prevail over any opposition most of the times, and to define the agenda of most public debates by their tight control of the means of production and dissemination of ideas and images
- the interests that are opposed to the conservative and business agendas are scattered, mutually conflicting and often weak; therefore they cannot pose any serious threat to the well-organized business agenda or attract support of the conservative majority
In short, it NOT party politics that imposes conservative political agenda on an otherwise progressive country, but the other way around - a conservative population and organized business interests that impose their agenda on the country politics.
I would go as far as saying that if it were not for "undemocratic" or rather "un-populist" party politics - the US would still be an apartheid, if not slave holding society. Lincoln went to civil war and end of slavery against enormous popular opposition. Likewise, the civil rights agenda of the 1950s and 1960s succeeded mainly because of political maneuvering of northern liberals, but was opposed by the popular majority.
I think that African Americans understand quite well that their social advancement was immensely helped by party politics going against the popular will - and choose their party loyalty accordingly. In that respect, African Americans (if they can be put in a single group) are more realistic than many pampered, pie-in-the-sky college/suburban liberals.
Wojtek