NYT's Blow: Republicans Better Informed Than Blacks and Hispanics

October 2nd, 2010 1:23 PM

Here's something you wouldn't expect to read in the New York Times: Republicans are better informed about political issues than blacks, Hispanics, and young people.

"Big-city liberals and their blogging buddies love to paint Tea Partiers as yokels with incoherent candidates and language-mauling signs," began Charles Blow's column Saturday.

"The unpleasant fact that these liberals rarely mention, and may not know, is that large swaths of the Democratic base, groups they need to vote in droves next month - blacks, Hispanics and young people - are far less civically literate than their conservative counterparts."

That was just the beginning of the surprises in Blow's "What's Dumb, Really?":

How can they motivate these voters to help Democrats maintain their Congressional majorities when, according to a poll released this week by the Pew Research Center, 42 percent of blacks, 42 percent of Hispanics and 35 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 years old don't even know that Democrats have a majority in the House? It's sad. Pathetic, really. But it's a political reality. (Only 71 percent of Democrats overall knew that Democrats had a majority in the House. By comparison, 82 percent of Republicans knew it.) [...]

In the Pew poll, 64 percent of Hispanics, 51 percent of young adults and 45 percent of blacks could not name Biden as the vice president. (Only 35 percent of Republicans got it wrong.)

Just remember that the next time some so-called journalist calls Tea Party members uneducated fools.

As for Blow, this isn't the first time he's imparted some sanity on the pages of the Gray Lady. In fact, he's penned a number of surprises recently:

K

eep it up, Charles.