The Gantt Report - Some of my best friends are “Democrats” so I don’t want to hurt any feelings with this column but the truth must be told.

The best candidate for United States President currently running in the 2008 primary elections is Illinois Senator Barack Obama. He has taken a lead in the delegate count over rival Hillary Clinton after sweeping elections and caucuses during the Valentines weekend.

Don’t stop going to the polls. It is not over. Politicians and political parties are tricky, to say the least.

What I’m writing about today is what I’ve written about many times in the past but now the issue is as clear as day!

Barack Obama has exposed the Democratic Party!

For years, Democrats and Republicans have taken a “any Negro will do” attitude when seeking help in influencing Black voters. Registered, voting African-Americans have been taken advantage of by all politicians. The Black vote has been forever taken for granted in national, state and local election contests!

Obama has pulled the sheets off of political pretenders that pretend to have the issues, concerns and desires of Black and poor people at heart.

The Clinton family, the Kennedy family and other families have a long and distinguished history of garnering Black votes.

But so far in 2008, Hilary Clinton has gotten on average in the primary contests about the same percentage of votes that George Bush got from Black voters, around ten or fifteen percent.

What this shows to a professional like me is that if white Democrats, no matter who they are and what family they come from, don’t generate votes from Black voters, they are dead in the water!

The hippie-type, so-called liberal white candidates don’t get it. They still want to generate Black votes with a bucket of chicken, two little fish and a keg of beer. But the older, wiser Democratic statesmen prefer to work on elections with proven professionals with histories of election success, related educational experience, access to desired African-American communities, churches and leaders and Black political professionals that don’t get campaign work by hating on and lying on every other Black person that seeks to do political business.

Regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination for President, don’t risk your elections to wannabees and political neophytes. Seek to hire true Black political professionals that can do media, graphics, targeting, polling, printing, phone calling, direct mailing and all of the other political services that you need.

The new Democrats and true Democrats look and think, to some extent, like Barack Obama. Those George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Richard Russell and Dempsey Barron Democratic political days are over. (Gantt's new book "Beast Too: Dead Man Writing" is coming soon. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net)