SNEAKING OFF THE PLANTATION

My best friend is Black (no jokes, please.) She's also very religious. She goes to one of those few churches where the election wasn't really addressed much this year, but you can't stop folks from talking amongst themselves.

This weekend, she was talking to one of the mothers of the church (for you blue staters, they're the older women who are sort of relied upon to do a lot of the layperson's legwork for the pastorate.) The old lady leaned over and whispered something to her. It was the kind of thing you don't discuss in polite company in the traditional Black church, the kind of secret you have to be kind of quiet about, because you just know most folks wouldn't approve. She confessed--not a sin, exactly--but, clearly, a violation of Black church tradition. Here is what she said:

"Don't tell anybody, but I voted for Bush."

I don't know how many times this scenario was repeated across the country this past weekend, as newly red Black people begin to slowly reveal that they just couldn't stomach their masters in the Democrat party this time around. As they do, though, I think they will find that their act was not one of rebellion, but one of liberation.

This new ability to breathe will, over the next two years, be felt in several traditionally Democrat voting blocs, and, I suspect, be transmitted as well even to those who voted for Kerry, as they realize that the sky is not, after all, falling. The seniors' checks will still come to them. Children will still be educated--oddly, even better than before. Tax reform will actually improve the lives of everyone, from the least of these on up. And there will be no gay marriage, except in Massachusetts.

Traditionally Democratic Catholics voted Republican this year, to the tune of nearly 60% in some places. Women voted for Bush. Hispanics gave more than forty percent of the vote to the President, besting his showing with them as governor by an additional ten percentage points. Organized labor went for Kerry, but as they re-assess their wisdom, they will find that their rank and file is never very happy with far left social causes, and maybe there are a few organizations--like NARAL and Planned Parenthood and NOW and SEICUS and the ACLU and the gay rights groups--that should mysteriously drop off their Christmas card list this year.

It may be a secret now, but if the President fulfills his promise of compassionate conservatism and holds the line against the liberal-based destruction of our American way of life, there's a good chance it will be an open one by 2006.

Of course, then the Democrats will just have judges declare "separate but equal" polling places constitutional, to make sure that African-American voters who want to vote Democratic can go to a specifically Democrat and supportive polling place to do so. Or maybe they could rescind the law against the literacy clause.

After all, Europeans and liberals agree. 59 million Americans CAN be "dumb."