Prometheus 6

I agree with the main thrust of the commentator's argument but the historical analogies he uses, in my opinion, are mistaken. It is true that white voters in California, for example, told pollsters that they were voting for Tom Bradley at least during his first run for the governor's seat. Bradley's campaign, however, did relatively little to innoculate itself against the prospect that these voters were either lying or feeling quite ambivalent about his candidacy.

The Bradley campaign did not run a voter registration and GOTV campaign in, for example, Alameda and Los Angeles counties where there are large numbers of African America residents. I have seen some reports indicating that as many as 350,000 blacks who were eligible to vote did not vote in that election. If Tom Bradley had gotten only one quarter of these voters to cast their ballots for him, he would have won the election easily.