Sharpton: ‘We will never have this opportunity again’
Final Call
We’ll never have this opportunity again,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, taking to the streets for what appeared to be an emergency cross country tour in September.
He hopes to rejuvenate the Obama excitement that some say has waned since the Democratic National Convention last month.
“What we’ve got to tell people is what’s at stake; that we’re dealing now with the new unemployment. Unemployment is higher than it’s been in four years, we are seeing the education and health care of our people as worse than it ever was. We cannot afford to not vote,” Rev. Sharpton said in an interview with the NNPA News Service.
“On top of that, we’ve never been this close. As African Americans we’ve never been this close to a qualified African American who represents the right thing. If he didn’t represent the right thing and he wasn’t qualified, there wouldn’t be anything to be excited about. But, we will never have this opportunity again in our lifetime and we can’t flow with being complacent.”
Rev. Sharpton took that message on a bus tour campaigning for voter turnout in Black communities of key swing and battleground states—including Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
In North Carolina alone, more than a half million qualified Blacks are not registered to vote, Rev. Sharpton said.
“I think we could lose it. When you see 600,000 unregistered in North Carolina and when you look at about the same in Georgia, the amount of those voters registered and turning out could turn those states,” he said.
In America’s Electoral College system, the presidential candidate who gets the most votes in a state wins the state and electoral votes assigned to the state.
“We could, by not coming out, cause the electoral votes to go to McCain and he could become the next president,” said Rev. Sharpton.
Perhaps the best example of this was the fight over Florida’s 25 electoral votes in the 2000 election. Al Gore had more popular votes. But, with the Supreme Court’s decision to give George W. Bush the win in Florida, he took the presidency with more electoral votes.
Rev. Sharpton, calling his tour the “Not This Time” voter education and registration campaign, said his aim is also to eliminate voter fraud.
Going into the Democratic Convention, Sen. Obama was running well ahead of Sen. McCain.
Some polls showed him fluctuating between five-seven percentage points ahead of the GOP nominee. However, Sen. McCain’s nomination of vice presidential running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a charismatic speaker, added fire to his once dry campaign. Polls numbers remain extremely tight.
“I think that the dynamics of the campaign has changed and there needs to be a lot more of a grassroots effort. A lot of the excitement seems to have waned,” said Rev. Sharpton. “And I think that there must be some real efforts from the bottom up to energize the base and bring the base out.”
Rev. Sharpton said he will not get into personalities or partisanship on the road. Rather, he will mainly stick to a message about the issues as he travels through grassroots communities.
Wild Thing’s comment……….
Yes Al you may never get another chance to elect a Marxist, race pimping, power hungry, part black man that throws his mom under the bus, limp wristed democrat, I sure pray you never get that chance!!!!
These voter registration drives piss me off. These people are too lazy to register to vote so they wait till someone comes to them. Jerks like this don’t need to be voting.
The right to vote was bought and paid for by the blood of America’s finest young men, and now women, on battlefields throughout the world. The least these worthless creations can do is get off their lazy butts and go register. The real pisser is come election day, they’ll have to be transported to the polling places.
Poor Al needed some news time. He has been out of the news lately. So he thought it was time to rouse the rabble. To Al, everything is race based. I wonder how many White Democrats he will turn to McCain.
How much is the going fee this year paid per Democrat registrant to buy their vote? When I was a pup, right after I quit working for my uncle Sam I had the joy of living in an all black neighborhood, not a problem, I’d spent the previous two years living like an animal, this was tame. Three years of the Sunday morning coffee sessions with the neighborhood wives bitching about their lazy husbands, the drug and prostitution problems on the block shaded in comparison by the occasional murder and yep there were the Democrats and their buy the vote campaign. It was like Bob says, too lazy to go get their welfare checks so they’d send their wives to do it, then they’d spend the funds on booze, drugs and a good time, the women were trapped with the duties of raising the kids and trying to make ends meet. It was a rough neighborhood and I was no stranger to the police over a couple of incidents. If Obama fails, Sharpton will be glowing along with that other racist poverty pimp Jackson, they will have had their power returned.
Here is a unique idea, lets round up Al, Jesse and O’Vomit and discreetly fly them to Darfur where they will be dumped at 35,000 feet w/o parachutes. Now that would be a thing of beauty.
BobF, AMEN to every word you said.
Tom, I think your right.
I know of 5 people in Nicholas’s family that are registered Democrats that will be voting for McCain. Thank you God. Nick has been working on them for years haha and finally this election has them voting for a Republican. Everyone in my family has always been Republican.
There are also 3 girls at the gym that finally decided to vote Republican after McCain picked Palin. They are Dems that like guns and have been against abortion so I am not sure how strong Democrats they were to being with. But they are all excited about Palin and they liked what McCain said at that Saddleback thing.
Jack, thank you sooooo much for sharing about that.
Didn’t the dems pay or wait….. I do remember one of the things the dems did. It was when Bush ran against Gore, they were picking up the homeless, getting them registered and buying them coffee and donuts and driving them to the polls to vote.
Cuchieddie, hahha….but….but Obama is the messiah or was that a vampire and he could fly hahaha