I got the following email today from Jordan Gehrke, Campaign Director, AmericansforHermanCain.com

Patriot—
They’re at it again.

Herman Cain is winning the Republican race for President. So the left-wing media has swung into action.

Clarence Thomas called it a “high tech lynching” 20 years ago. That’s exactly what they’re doing to Herman Cain today. This is nothing but an attempt to smear Cain’s reputation and character. . . .

The Left spews such hatred at black conservatives because they know that if the GOP ever breaks the Democrat stranglehold on the black vote, they are DONE as a party. . . .

I’ll leave it to political scientists such as Tim Groseclose to judge whether the left-wing media has swung into action, but I will say that I think Jordan Gehrke is way wrong when he writes that the Democrats are goners if the GOP breaks their stranglehold on the black vote. On the contrary, I’m guessing that if the Republicans start getting a big chunk of black votes, a bunch of whites will move over to the Democrats.

Andrew Gelman is a professor of statistics and political science and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. He has received the Outstanding Statistical Application award from the American Statistical Association, the award for best article published in the American Political Science Review, and the Council of Presidents of Statistical Societies award for outstanding contributions by a person under the age of 40.