"He
came out talking about how good of a race Barack Obama was running, and how
proud he was of Barack," Mr. Ballentine said. "You know he went
back home and said, ‘I can't believe I spoke in front of all those Negroes
today!' "
"He was pandering to the crowd, talking about how he felt when Martin
Luther King Jr. died," Mr. Ballentine went on. "However, he didn't
vote for the holiday of Martin Luther King Jr."
Rush Limbaugh, meet your black liberal counterprogramming. Mr. Ballentine
is one of the many African-American radio hosts and commentators who are aggressively
advocating for Mr. Obama's election on black-oriented radio stations daily.
Since Mr. Limbaugh first flexed his tonsils two decades ago, Democrats have publicly worried about their lack of an answer to him and his imitators, who have proven so adept at motivating conservative Republicans to go to the polls, especially for President Bush.
Now it is Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who has a harmonious chorus of broadcast supporters addressing a vital part of his coalition, feeding and reflecting the excitement blacks have for his candidacy in general. Mr. Obama is getting support from white liberal talk radio hosts as well, but the backing he is getting from black radio hosts could be especially helpful to his campaign's efforts to increase black turnout and raise historically low voter registration enough to change the math of presidential elections in battlegrounds and traditionally Republican states like this one.
"Urban stations can be in '08 what Rush Limbaugh delivered for conservatives a generation ago," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has a two-year-old radio program that is now syndicated on stations throughout the country, including in states like Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina. "If you look at the political map of where our shows are, it matches the gap of unregistered voters."
Mr. Limbaugh and other conservative hosts generally support
Mr. McCain, though perhaps with less enthusiasm than they displayed for the
man he hopes to replace.
When it comes to criticism from black radio hosts like Mr. Ballentine, Tucker
Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said, "John McCain believes
every person is entitled to their opinion, no matter how outrageous."
"But John McCain is an inclusive candidate," Mr. Bounds added, "and he will be the president of all Americans." (Mr. Ballentine was correct that Mr. McCain voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, in 1983 - but Mr. McCain later expressed regret and supported the holiday in his home state.)