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