white flight

Now this is ironic. Conservative GOP Lieutenant Governor and wannabe Senate candidate Michael Steele of Maryland might lose some core Republican support because he's black and his Democratic opponent is white.

Gosh, fancy that -- a political party that created and used the frankly racist "southern strategy" of appealing to southern whites who didn't like the (northern and midwestern and western) Democrats' support for civil rights now find its own (rare) black candidates suffering for its cynical use of racism.

Unfortunately, white Democratic voters are also more likely to vote Republican when their candidate is black and the GOP one white...