Forget about the first 'A' for a minute -- just assume they're 'normal' Americans, as that LA police chief memorably said. Assume they're answering these pollsters based on the same media representations of reality as their melanin-challenged cousins. 'What's the matter with Harlem?' doesn't seem to me a harder question to answer than 'what's the matter with Kansas' -- in fact, it's probably the same answer, don't you think?
[WS:] And what is wrong with that assumption? What makes you think that most "normal" AAs do not want the same things as the white folks do: access to decent schools, crime and drug free neighborhoods, good jobs, and decent quality of life? I find it really peculiar, to say the least, when some people on this list (e.g. Miles) seem to assume that being on welfare or in prison is somehow "African American" or at least more AA than "normal" A. Quite frankly I have not met a single "normal" AA - and I do live in a predominantly Black neighborhood - who would advocate for more welfare, for less law enforcement, or against charter schools or school reform. Clinton's "welfare reform" was decried mostly by white liberals, but most "normal" AAs I met tended to be supportive.
So unless somebody shows me otherwise, I tend to believe that all that bitching about AAs supporting Dems supposedly against their interests is nothing more than shedding crocodile tears and scoring a cheap point by pulling a race card out of the sleeve.
As I see it, "normal" AAs have every reason to vote Democratic instead of pursuing radical college kid political fantasies.
Another thing - as Charles aptly observed, Repugs are thinly veiled racists and appeal to closet racist prejudices of their constituencies. We all know that, but that knowledge has very different effects on white liberals (such as myself) and AAs. For the former, it may be morally repulsive but otherwise inconsequential, since they will not be the ones directly suffering from the consequences or Repug racism. For the latter, it evokes a very unpleasant memories of past, if not an imminent direct threat. It is, in a sense, like the word "gas" - it has a very different emotive content to, say, an Eastern European like myself than to most "normal" Americans.
Wojtek