Go tell it on the mountain.

In national politics, black and Latino voters are, on average, more liberal than white voters.

But in Los Angeles, not so. The Los Angeles Times poll of 1,500 registered voters in the city, released this week, shows 40% of white voters describing themselves as liberal, 36% moderate and only 22% conservative.

White L.A. voters are also more likely to call themselves liberal than are either black or Latino voters. In the Times poll, 27% of black voters and 29% of Latino voters identified themselves as liberal, while 28% of black voters and a third of Latinos described themselves as conservative.

We fully realize that this is just a sampling from a single geographic area, albeit, a heavily urban one but it would suggest the folly of many of our country-clubbing friends in the G.O.P. to abandon social conservatism as a way to attract minority voters.

And here are some highlights from a poll taken by the Wilson Research Stategies:

* 76 percent of African American adults believe that securing America’s economic recovery should be the top priority, even if it means delaying action in climate change.
* 56 percent of African American adults think our federal and state policy makers fail to adequately take into account economic and quality of life concerns when considering new anti-global warming laws.
* When asked if the federal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could increase unemployment, 38 percent of survey respondents said they felt African Americans would proportionately lose more jobs while 49 percent felt that federal action to reduce greenhouse gas emission would hit all races equally.
* Only 15 percent of survey respondents said they would be willing to pay one dollar more for gasoline due to greenhouse gas legislation. The numbers dropped to 5, 3, and 4 percent if gas prices increased by two, three or four dollars a gallon.
* Only 11 percent of survey respondents said they would be willing to pay one hundred dollars more a year for electricity in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The numbers dropped to 6, 4 and 1 percent when respondents were asked if they would be willing to pay an extra two hundred, three hundred, or six hundred dollars a year for electricity.

Of those polled, 3% identified themselves as “strong republicans” and 67% as “strong democrats".


So, what’s the deal? How is it that the G.O.P. cannot peel-off more of these votes as the numbers suggest more commonality between the two entities than the conventional wisdom holds? Are Republicans just that incompetent that they cannot tailor their message to this country’s two largest minority groups? Or, is there a decades-old political/cultural association stigma of which they have yet to overcome?

We used to run around with a guy, “Jimmy” that would chide us: “What is it with you white people and camping and the great outdoors?”

Us: “Dunno. Just a chance to get away from the normality of everyday civilization, stretch the legs and take in some beautiful sites.

Jimmy: “Whatever. You’ll never see any of my people out there.”

Lo and behold, not too much longer after this conversation, after summitting Mt. Whitney with a good friend and Pops, we were on the descent towards Whitney Portal when we passed a group of people heading up, one of whom was a black male in his 20s.

Oh boy, we thought. Can’t wait to get back to Jimmy and inform him of this “sighting”. The following Monday at work, we rolled up on Jimmy and told him what we had observed the previous week.

Jimmy looked at us sideways and said: “Dude may have been black but he ain’t no brother”