c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ Richard Nixon was elected to the presidency twice on a”southern strategy”: win the South for the Republican Party by taking advantage of the Democrats’ alliance with blacks.

It was not exactly an appeal to racism as it was a taking advantage of the racism already there. The once Democratic”Solid South”would become solidly Republican. Nixon’s bet was that Democratic gains from black voters would be cancelled out by the flight of whites to the Republicans.

The strategy was remarkably successful.

In the election last week, however, the tide seems to have turned in the other direction.

The Democrats did better than the experts expected them to and, indeed, better than a presidential party has done in an off-year election for half a century, in substantial part because of black voters in the South.

The defeat of candidates like Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., who maneuvered Kenneth Starr into the special prosecutor’s job, resulted from much higher black turnout than ever before.

In Illinois a substantial black turnout almost salvaged Carol Moseley-Braun from her own self-destructiveness.

Conservative columnist Robert Novak protested in dismay over the black performance in the election. He has perhaps just now noticed that if it were not for the Democratic alliance with African Americans there really would have been a political realignment in this country: the Republican Party would have become the majority. In the tradeoff of Southern whites for African Americans, the Democrats broke even.

However, the black electoral sophistication which we witnessed last week was ethnic, not racial voting. Like every other American group, African Americans are voting for those candidates that have been on their side. They do not vote against white people because they are white, save when there is a black candidate running. Historically, has there been another ethnic group which did not tend to do the same thing?

Even more striking than the black turnout _ which still has a way to go before the Democratic majority is firm again _ were two elections in Illinois which demonstrated that dark skin is not a bar to important victories for an African American.

Ten years ago no one would have believed an African American could be elected president of the Cook County Board against a Polish candidate, especially a Polish woman. Aurelia Puchinka, the daughter of a legendary Polish alderman, seemed a shoe-in, even this year. Nonetheless John Stroger won a solid victory. His racial identity didn’t mean a thing to perhaps half the white voters in Cook County.

Even more impressive was the election of African American Jesse White to be Illinois Secretary of State, the second most powerful political position in the state. His race was irrelevant to an awful lot of downstate white voters. Since the secretary of state frequently becomes governor, White now has a good chance of becoming the first African American governor of a large urban state.

I am not suggesting that all the voters in Illinois are colorblind. I am arguing, rather, that enough of them are so that an able candidate will not lose either in Cook County or the state simply because of his race.

That may not be quite so spectacular as what happened in South Carolina and Alabama, but it does show that racism has less political effect than it used to. No one should dismiss such progress as unimportant.

Am I happy about the Democratic gains which are clearly a repudiation of Speaker Newt Gingrich’s strategy of running against the president’s moral faults?

No, I’m not.

In August I began to predict the Democrats would take control of the House of Representatives when most folks were saying they would lose at least 20 seats. I was wrong, not by much, but still wrong.

It didn’t take much skill at reading the polls to know the conventional wisdom about off-year elections was wrong, no matter how often the experts and talking heads mouthed that wisdom. One did not have to understand much about American politics to suggest President Clinton would not be a burden to Democratic candidates. For that prediction, however, one gets no points.

On my big bet _ Democratic control of the House _ however, I lost, though no cash!

The Democratic candidates waited too long to realize Clinton was an asset, not a liability. I couldn’t believe they’d be that dumb. Still, I was wrong. Not as wrong as many others, but wrong. I don’t like being wrong. I feel embarrassed and humiliated by being wrong. I apologize.

DEA END GREELEY