The Republican National Convention has never been an event that's heavily attended by African Americans, but this year there will be even fewer black delegates there than usual. There are only 36 black delegates in St. Paul right now, and that's just 2 percent of the entire election pool. Back in 2004, black delegates made up 6.7 percent of the delegates at the convention. In contrast, nearly 25 percent of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention last week were black.

So why the worse-than-usual showing? The obvious reason is that McCain is up against Barack Obama here, so he's fighting even more of an uphill battle than Republicans are usually fighting. And he's not really putting in that much effort in this particular fight, to be honest. There's also that icky association with George W. Bush. As a result, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies says that McCain will end up with a "historically low" percentage of the black vote. In a nutshell, blacks like John McCain less than they did George W. Bush. Ouch. [USAT]