Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: From: c b Date: August 7, 2013 at 10:22:42 AM EDT To: charles brown Subject: CB commentary on election Most people do not want to spend a lot of time parsing the complexities of a budget deficit, billions of dollars in city spending, pensions, municipal bonds, emergency management and bankruptcy; as debated by 12 mayoral candidates. They'll just wait for a simpler choice in November. One of the biggest complaints about city council is "they sit up there and argue too much". People don't want to do heavy thought work on city government; heavy thought can't be done without a lot of arguing. Anyway, for most white's in Detroit the vote was simplified based on color: one legitimate white candidate. " Why does race matter ? Just vote for the best candidate", they say in their best Reaganite "colorblind" thinking. Simplified and simplified for whties; too , complicated for Blacks. Charles Brown I am disgusted by this turnout. With so much at stake, it does not make sense. What do you think is going on? Was this some kind of "passive aggressive" protest?///// This is a normal level of turnout for a primary. Most people are not into city politics or politics in general as much as those of us who write on these social networks. And city business is by-and-large very boring. Garbage pickup, public lighting and water and sewerage are deadly dull topics. Daily life struggles and escaping from them into television dream worlds predominate in people's attention, not the Coleman A. Young building. With a 17% turnout, 50% or more of the vote could be white people, because even though Black people are say 80% of the population, Whites register to vote at a higher percentage and turnout at a higher percentage. If these transformations of the basic population proportions into different proportions of the voting population are large enough, whites can easily be 40 to 50% of the total vote. White people might vote 80% -90% for Duggan. Add in enough Black people voting for Duggan, and this result is feasible. Black voters may have been lazy relative to white voters, as Orr said (giggles)( 17% was the figure given for the turnout last night. I assume that hasn't changed.) This is the first time there has been a White candidate who was a legitimate contender since 1973. By the way, If we're so dumb, how come we're so rich ? Since we're really not rich, we must be smart (smiles) Most of the rich _are_ lazy.