According to a black man I saw on the bus today, the next President of the United States has currently not been identified.  He is, in other words, or she is, in other words, not known to us. The brother, who smelled like a whiskey distillery, advised me of this when I was reading the New York Times (Where was the Detroit Free Press, he also asked, we are in East Lansing, Michigan?) that a fringe candidate would emerge and motivate the masses to a grassroots victory over the two dominant political parties - Democrat and Republican. He was, to say the least, quite serious.

I am, like most, awaiting the outcome of the next election. Times are stupid. Times are tough for many. Things have never been as absurd as they are now or quite as weird. I have no idea how this is going to do or if it means anything at all but what it has always meant.

Working class whites, it has been said in polls, are flocking to the Republican Party.  Blacks, of all persuasion, are angry as hell, and not flocking anywhere because they figure the black man, in the White House, would try to address the 16 percent unemployment rate in Black America. Both of these traditional, vibrant voting blocks, should really think about the election and what to do, who to vote for, etc. They have a role to play; don't be foolish and not vote and don't vote for morality or religion or race; vote smart. But most of all, the election is not the key to your future; there is much more you can than just vote.

Let me address that latter part of this first.  Black people, Mr. Obama cannot deliver you anything these days.  He is in a pinch of his own making and that made and the making of the Republican Party who want to win so bad they would rob gas stations if they knew it would guarantee their ascent into the White House. I find them to be ruthless and immoral but politics in America is ruthless and immoral and this explains why they do well most of the time.  Mr. Obama spent too much time trying to talk to them and now he finds himself lost in the political wilderness giving powerful speeches but with no means to pass anything.

With that said, has Mr. Obama done good things in office? Sure. Many. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. He and his party had a chance to go for a big, giant stimulus package back in 2009, but his own party held up progress, and Mr. Obama stands to be voted out because of their lack of courage or fortitude.

The economy will not get much better probably until he is voted out of office; that is, as Bruce Hornsby might say, the way it is.  A black man becomes President and he is handed the worse mess of all. He tried and for the most part, he didn’t accomplish his goals.  It will be, according to my friend on the bus today, like he never was President really; they will repeal all he has passed, and try to make him look stupid, and by default make all black people look stupid. This is, my drunken friend said, the plan.

I would laugh at this months ago; today, I read the Times, tune him out, see how many hits the Tigers got yesterday in beating the Yankees.

As for working class whites flocking to the Republican Party, this should be the subject of some scientific study at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.  The working class folks I see each day in the Midwest were once part of America’s industrial core; they had jobs, and pensions, and nice homes; now they bring cans to the supermarkets each day to get money for recycling them. They make sandwiches. Their kids don't go to college; they can't.  Most of them will not get a good job in a factory; their Republican friends sent their jobs abroad going back to the days of Ronald Reagan.  Yet, this is the party they will stand with for reasons which defy logic.

I got off the bus today. I barely remember what the black man looked like. I am near a supermarket. White men carry cans into the grocery store to cash them in for money. Black men are on some bench looking half drunk. People are going about this business. Where is this guy my whiskey soaked friend says will emerge to fix all of this? 

This is America today, in Black and White.  October 3, 2011.