Hillary is pointing out that, while Obama is winning elections, he has to make do with fewer white votes than she is getting. This is a common complaint of many politicians and pundits, who often point out that an election would have turned out quite differently but not for the fact that black voters have this pesky tendency to vote in their own best interests. In fact, to the dismay of Republicans particularly, they often seem to have a better idea of where their interests lie than white voters, who tend to worry about things like flag pins. This is not good in a country that counts on delusional voters to keep the entrenched entrenched.
Still, as a white person, I can’t help feeling some sympathy for Hillary and the position she is espousing. What were they thinking when they let a black vote (assuming the black person in question was allowed to vote) count as much as a white vote? Surely there is a better way.
In fact there is. Why not follow the lead of the exalted Founding Fathers? We needn’t deprive black people of the vote altogether, though certainly there’s merit in that suggestion. We should simply count their vote as worth three-fifths of a white vote, just as the Founders would have done, had they let them vote at all. The Democrats should lead on this, and make the rule retroactive for this primary season, so Hillary can get the nomination to which she is surely entitled.
Some might argue that this solution is not so simple as it might seem. How, for instance, do we count the vote of a person who has, for instance, a white mother and a black father? Someone like Obama, for example. Not to put too fine a point on it, how much black blood qualifies a person for three-fifths status? Again, let’s look to the Founders, original intent and American custom for the answer: One drop will do.
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