In Florida particularly, but also in other key states, black voters turned out in force, and 80 percent or more voted Democratic, despite the fact that vice president Gore generally stayed away from black communities. This voting pattern goes back at least 35 years, and it's time for the party to show it deserves such loyalty. PNS commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the president of the National Alliance for Positive Action. e-mail: ehutchinson@natalliance.org. Website: www.natalliance.org

Al Gore should fall on his knees and give thanks for two great political blessings.

The first was George W. Bush's little brother, Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush. His rash act -- signing an executive order in March banning affirmative action in state contracting programs and university admissions -- guaranteed blacks would wage a virtual holy war against the Republicans.

They turned out in huge numbers to vote against his brother. But even without the Jeb-induced furor, blacks would still have voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats. They are the most loyal of party followers -- in every election stretching back to LBJ in 1964, more than 80 percent have given Democrats their vote.

Even as many Latino and Asian voters and trade unionists defected to the Republicans, blacks have stood firm.

Yet Gore spent most of his campaign avoiding appearances in black communities. Worse, he was stone silent on issues such as urban investment, health care for the uninsured, fixing lousy inner-city schools, racial profiling, affirmative action, the obscene disparities in the criminal justice system, and the Clinton administration's racially-marred drug policy -- a policy that has more than a million black men and women warehoused in America's prisons for mostly non-violent, usually petty, drug-related crimes.

But in the final few days of the campaign, with the election on the line, Gore did the predictable. He made like Clinton and turned up at black churches, preaching, praying, belting out "We Shall Overcome," and dancing with his wife, Tipper to a gospel choir bellowing, "Oh happy day."

He got Martin Luther King III and Jesse Jackson to plead with blacks to vote for him. He even got his mother sitting at home on her farm in Tennessee to call every minister she could and implore them to vote for Al.

Gore and his mom weren't alone. An endless legion of black Democrats, athletes, entertainers, and trade unionists beseeched black voters to make a life or death stampede to the polls to vote for the party.

Gore even turned to Clinton for help. Clinton -- many blacks still see him as the closest thing to a Messiah since Martin Luther King, Jr. -- hustled off to black neighborhoods to fire up the faithful. He led spirited chants and cheers for Gore at black churches, in parking lots of predominantly black shopping centers, on street corners in Harlem, Oakland and South-Central Los Angeles the weekend before the vote.

The Democratic National Committee, going toe-to-toe with the Republican National Committee, dumped a few million dollars into ads in black newspapers and radio stations.

It worked. In the must-win toss up states of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, blacks came through in big enough numbers to trump the 10 to 15 percent edge that Bush had over Gore among white male voters.

Gore and company got away with blatant racial patronizing by playing hard on the terror and panic that prospects of a Bush win stirred in many blacks. They dangled the nightmarish vision of a Supreme Court packed with such avowed enemies of civil liberties as Supreme Court justices Anton Scalia, William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas.

Blacks voted for Gore out of fear of a Bush win -- giving the Democrats another free ride. Gore didn't need to tell them what he would do about lack of abortion funding for the poor, criminal justice -- including prison reform, grotesque disparities in administration of the death penalty, racist drug policy, health care for the poor, increased spending for housing, business development and inner city schools.

He also did not have to tell blacks why he voted to confirm Scalia and Thomas, and why a Democratic controlled Senate voted to confirm Rehnquist.

Democrats conjured up horrific visions of the Reagan years saying Bush would, like Reagan, unleash an all-out blitz on civil rights, social and education programs.

They're probably right. As president, Bush would almost certainly try to hammer the final nail into the coffin of affirmative action, pump school vouchers, and torpedo the Justice Department's few efforts to force some big city police departments to clean up their brutal acts.

Despite Gore's scattered promises to mostly black audiences at the tail end of his campaign and the black Democrats' scare tactics, he probably won't do much better on any of these things than Bush.