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CounterPunch
February
28, 2003
Rev. Al Sharpton and the Democrats
White
Liberals Don't Understand How Angry Black Voters are at the Democratic
Party Establishment
by THE BLACK COMMENTATOR
Forget about the smoke and fog spewed by corporate
media and chattering consultants of all colors. Let us begin
with a stark forecast: The Democratic Party primaries must result
in a national ticket that is fit for Black participation. If
the party cannot loosen the fatal grip of the Democratic Leadership
Council (DLC)--the Republican wing of the party--it will die.
Black voters and their allies will either purge the DLC from
national influence this primary season, or leave the Democrats
to spiral into deserved oblivion.
That is what the polling data actually
foretell--not an incipient Black conservatism, but levels of
frustration with the national Democratic Party so high among
Blacks that one more betrayal will likely spark a massive exit,
even if the destination is... nowhere, the negative alternative
that has already been chosen by a huge chuck of younger African
Americans.
First and foremost, Black participation
hinges on denying the presidential nomination to the dreadful,
racist Senator Joseph Lieberman (CT), the DLC's champion. He
will soon be recognized as wholly unacceptable to Black voters,
who are the progressive mass base of the party, and to anti-war
voters, a majority sentiment within the ranks at this time, nationwide.
Lieberman and the DLC spell electoral
non-participation by Blacks. Therefore, he and his ilk are the
enemies of all those who seek the broadest, most intense political
involvement of African Americans in national life. There can
be no compromise with people who poison the political well. Cohabitation
with Rightists and racists means death to the Party.
Ninety percent of Black voters participate
in national elections as Democrats. Therefore, the Democratic
Party and its primaries are the field of national electoral expression
for Black people as a whole. It is where the bulk of the people
are--for now. In a fundamental sense, African Americans work
out their political yearnings and programs through the mechanisms
of the Democratic Party. If the political house is unwholesome,
polluted with the unmistakable odors of white supremacy and Black
sycophancy, African Americans recoil as one body.
To believe otherwise is to misread history--which
is the norm in a society that prefers to operate on a succession
of lies. No group turned more quickly and dramatically to the
promise of Democratic liberalism than Black Americans. It is
on the residual strength of the promise of inclusive, progressive
Democratic politics that Blacks have remained solidly Democratic
since completing the transition en masse and in the political
blink of an eye four decades ago.
Black loyalty to Democratic Party structures
has been misinterpreted as inertia--a racist conclusion that
implies laziness of thought and action. This false reading of
African American motives and intelligence has led whites in the
Party--and some Black operatives--to miscalculate the cumulative
effects of the savage compromises that have been foisted on Black
Democrats since Jimmy Carter's "New South" term in
the White House. Assuming that Blacks will "stay" simply
because they have nowhere else to "go," national Democrats
refuse to understand that Rev. Al Sharpton's support derives
from deep anger and heartfelt disappointment, not with Trent
Lott and the White Man's Party, but with them. Sharpton is dismissed
as a mere showman, in effect relegating Black voters to the status
of an Apollo Theater crowd on amateur night. The expectation
appears to be that Sharpton and his supporters will make a lot
of noise, attain emotional release, and return meekly to the
fold.
The Democratic Party and its consultants
grossly underestimate Black capacity for decisive action, ignoring
the sea changes that have swept over the Black body politic in
the past. More specifically, they underestimate Rev. Sharpton,
who has no personal stake in the Democratic Party's institutionalized
structures of Black mollification and is the sworn foe of the
Democratic Leadership Council.
When Sharpton tells Village Voice writer
Thulani Davis, "Many people who are running, in my judgment,
are to the right of Republicans," he is speaking most directly
about Sen. Joseph Lieberman and the DLC. When Sharpton declares
that he is in a battle for "the soul of the Democratic Party"
he means he is running against the existing structures that have
brought the Party "to the right, not the center." And
when polls show that Sharpton will capture Black majorities in
the primaries, that means masses of African Americans agree with
his assessment of the Party and are as anxious as he is to disassemble
its racist components. Huge numbers will follow Sharpton despite
his perm, because they know that he "speaks truth to power,"
an esteemed quality among African Americans, the most sophisticated
electorate in America.
Al Sharpton will not tolerate the influence,
much less nomination, of Lieberman, the standard bearer for all
that is wrong with the Democratic Party. Sharpton will treat
Lieberman as the Republican that he is, methodically "outing"
the devious crypto-racist in terms that no amount of corporate
media ridicule and distortion can obscure. It is at that point,
in the heat of foreign conflict and domestic anxiety, that the
Black public will approach a sea change in their perception of
the Democratic Party.
The future of the Party will then be
in the hands, not of Rev. Al Sharpton who does not seek to destroy
it, but of the men and women who have disrespected Black voters
for the better part of a lifetime. They can have a Party crippled
by Lieberman's DLC, or they can retain a Sharptonized Black electorate.
But they can't have both.
The
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can be reached at: publisher@blackcommentator.com
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