Condoleeza Rice in 2008!
<p>So Condi Rice is going to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State.<br />
I have to think this means she&#8217;s being groomed for the Republican ticket<br />
in 2008.</p>
<p>Well, I hope so anyway.  I know very little about her, but I&#8217;ve discovered<br />
that I <em>really</em> want to have a ringside seat on the farcical hijinks<br />
that will certainly ensue if the Republicans run a black woman for President,<br />
or even Veep.</p>
<p>Just so my position is clear, it is quite unlikely I&#8217;d vote for<br />
her.  As in, not unless the Libertarian candidate is a werewolf or<br />
something.  It&#8217;s just that the thought of Democratic strategists<br />
having shit fits over the hemhorraging black vote greatly amuses me.<br />
The panic and confusion that would reign on the New York Times<br />
editorial page as their political-correctness bias <em>clashes</em><br />
(for once) with their anti-Republican bias would be good for many<br />
guffaws.  I might actually listen to NPR just to hear them choking.<br />
In general, just watching the machinery of smug left-wing duckspeak<br />
seize up and damage itself on Condi&#8217;s blackness would be<br />
delicious.</p>
<p>Watching Republican racist/nativist types hold their gorges down<br />
for the sake of party unity would be entertaining too, but probably<br />
much less so as that type seems rather rare these days.  In lieu of<br />
that, I&#8217;d just have to content myself with the screams of insenate<br />
rage that would issue from the neo-Nazis at <a href='http://www.stormfront.org/'>Stormfront</a>.  Why, they might be<br />
almost as angry as the &#8220;Bush=Hitler&#8221; crew over at Democratic<br />
Underground.  With any luck we might actually get to watch a few of<br />
the vicious morons on both sites die of thundering apoplexy.</p>
<p>Truly, what&#8217;s not to like?</p>
<p>There are, of course, excellent reasons for the Republicans to try<br />
this maneuver.  Mainstream blacks are far more socially conservative<br />
than most of the other interest groups in the Democratic coalition.  I<br />
personally do not consider this is a good thing, but there is no<br />
denying that it makes them pretty ripe to be the next demographic that<br />
gets chiseled out of the party (following southerners, rust-belt<br />
blue-collar whites, and most recently Catholics).</p>
<p>But having a corner on the black vote is important to the Democrats<br />
for more than just raw poll numbers.  On it, now that the whites at<br />
the bottom of the socio-economic scale have gone majority-Republican,<br />
rests their last tenable claim to be the Party of the Oppressed.  This<br />
claim has become so important to their image and internal mythology that,<br />
without it, the Democrats might very well collapse.</p>
<p>Who&#8217;s going to be their next favorite victim group to hang this<br />
myth from?  Homosexuals won&#8217;t do; there are too few of them at 4%.<br />
The Jews wouldn&#8217;t do either, at 2%, even if the Dems hadn&#8217;t gotten<br />
badly tainted by the creeping anti-Semitism of their own left<br />
wing. Hispanics used to look promising, but they&#8217;re in a late stage of<br />
assimilation and obviously headed the way of the Italians or Irish &#8212;<br />
they won&#8217;t remain an ethnic voting bloc for even another decade.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s hard to peddle your outfit as tribunes of the disadvantaged<br />
when your main powerbases are the public-employee unions, Hollywood,<br />
and the Upper East Side.  The Republicans have gotten pretty good at<br />
nailing the Democratic leadership as the spoiled children of wealth<br />
and privilege even <em>with</em> the blacks in the Democratic column;<br />
without them, it&#8217;s just going to get uglier.  And Condi Rice would be<br />
the perfect wedge candidate.</p>
<p>Your average Democrat&#8217;s reflex seems to be to blame the sinister<br />
machinations of Karl Rove for this state of affairs.  The trouble with<br />
this theory is that Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice do<br />
actually <em>exist</em>.  They&#8217;re not just fantasies, and they<br />
represent a degree of access and power black people never had under<br />
any Democratic administration.</p>
<p>Cynical tactical positioning?  Maybe.  Who cares?  No matter what<br />
the Republicans mean by it, the cause of equality gains and the<br />
hate-spewing race-baiters on the left and right lose.  Condi in<br />
2008!</p>
