In aswer to Marvin Gandall's "millions of blacks and workers can't be wrong" argument:
Let's take an example from the pages of history. FDR (as you may or may not know) refused to support an anti-lynching bill in Congress for fear of offending the Dixiecrats (this was in1939, I believe). Around the same time, however, Eleanor Roosevelt organized a concert for the black opera singer Marion Anderson on the Capitol steps after the DAR had refused to let her sing at their convention. This gesture, historians of the period say, was important in cementing black loyalty to the DP.
Was this a case of "being more responsive to the needs of black people?" Well, it's true that the Republicans or Dixiecrats (on their own) wouldn't even have made such a gesture. Roosevelt needed black votes. But it's also true that this was part of the Eleanor and Franklin show. It was an attempt to distract attention from Roosevelt's refusal to act against a horrendous ongoing anti-black crime with a concession that was insignificant by comparison.
But a lot of blacks bought it. They didn't perceive the connection between these two things. They thought of Roosevelt as the president whose wife played hostess to Marion Anderson rather than as the president who refused to stop lynching. For similar reasons, many black people liked Bill Clinton because he felt comfortable around them socially, rather than hated him for abolishing welfare. They support Obama because he is black, regardless of anything he has done or will do for them (and no doubt despite many things he will do to harm them). The small things understandably carry a great deal of emotional significance in a country with a 300-year history of vicious racism, but they are consciously manipulated.
Yes, Marvin, people, especially in the US, are very naive politically. They don't ask for very much from politics because because they are used to getting little. They are grateful for the crumbs. They are gullible and susceptible to manipulation, especially at the hands of people who specialize at it. Not to grasp this is not to understand the essence of bourgeois electoral politics, which is to maintain the rule of a minority under conditions of political democracy, in which the non-capitalist majority possesses the right to vote. If this majority can't be ignored politically, or coerced, it must be deceived. That is why we have evolved political parties that have polished deception into a fine art.
This doesn't mean that that the majority would be seething with rebellion if not successfully gulled. But the dominant political discourse, supported by millions of dollars, bars the way for dissenting voices, which might contribute to making the majority more conscious of their own interests.
Jim Creegan