ebogjonson.com

« can the IRS investigate this guy already? | Main | rips ed »

November 8, 2006

black republican and talking android massacre!

From the often wrong-about-race New Republic:

All three black Republicans vying for major statewide offices appear to have lost. J. Kenneth Blackwell conceded his race for governor of Ohio early in the evening, and Lynn Swann, running for the top seat in Pennsylvania, fell short by a double-digit margin. Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele appears to have lost in his quest for the Senate, and all of the black Republican House candidates have gone down in flames. And, while boatloads of exit polls and turnout reports will come out over the next few days, enough data is available to know that these candidates did not get substantially more black support, or create more excitement about the party nationally, than white Republicans normally do. (Steele did better than average, but his campaign consistently dissociated itself from the party, and materials distributed on election day claimed, falsely, that he was a Democrat and had support from key black Democratic leaders.) [full link]

Steve Gilliard agrees with TNR for likely the first time ever:

Dear Losers,

Did you think it would end any other way? Did you think it would end with the white folks hosting you on their shoulders and smiling at you? Did you think you were the special negro who would prove you weren't like us?

Ken Blackwell lost in a landslide, as did Lynn Swann. Steele lied and played on his skin color to make it far closer than his record had any right to make it.

You shame our forefathers, those who died in the Crater, on San Juan Hill, in the Argonne, in the Battle of the Bulge, in the streets of Alabama. They did not make their sacrifices so you could sell out your people for personal gain. They didn't survive bullets, poison gas and the deadliest winter in a century so you could preen and strut about for the people who have dedicated their lives to making our lives harder.

People did not flee from dogs so you could append your lips to the asses of your white patrons. [full ass-whipping]

It's worth pointing out that talking androids from both parties lost elections last night. Sure, there was Steele, Swann, and crazy Kenny Blackwell, but Democratic talking android Harold Ford went down to defeat, while crook talking android William Jefferson is heading to runoff in LA that he is likely to lose.

Corrupt talking android Albert Wynn held his seat, but given his heavily Democratic district, the main chance for unseating him was during the Dem primary, which, BTW, Wynn bragged of stealing from opponent Donna Edwards.

I have to confess to having developed mixed feeling about poor, little Harold Ford in defeat. While Blue Dog Democrat Ford is exactly the kind of talking android, Dem up-and-comer that rubs me the wrong way (think a Southern Cory Booker), and while his votes on war authorization, gay marriage, partial birth abortion, bankruptcy, faith-based initiatives, and flag burning suggest a mercenary eager to play to conservatives, it's always sad to see a proverbial brother run into the proverbial glass ceiling. If you took Harold Ford and, everything else remaining equal, made him white, he would have beaten the largely unknown Corker, especially on a night like last night. Instead Ford lost, largely because gents like this one turned out not to be able to see past his color:

COALMONT, Tenn. -- John Layne is a 57-year-old white Republican with a long gray beard, no job and advancing emphysema. He arrived an hour early to hear Harold Ford Jr. speak in this struggling mountain town.

"Oh, sure, there's some prejudice," Layne said as he contemplated casting a ballot for a black man. "I wouldn't want my daughter marrying one." But he's more concerned about rising medical costs: When it comes to voting, "you gotta look at the person, not the color." [full story][forwarded by the illhindu; thanks!]

Yeah, right. The idea that any amount of tacking right was going to sway racists like John Layne turned out to be a pipe-dream, and it's difficult for me to decide whether that dream was cynical or simply naive. For the moment, though, my feelings about Ford largely echo those of his (white) ex-girlfriend:

Just to clarify, I dated Harold more than three years ago, back when I was young and more than a little clueless slightly retarded. I certainly have impressions of him, but they have more to do with his lack of skiing ability than anything else. As I said in a previous interview, he's a politician. After living in DC for almost five years, I would contend that they're all douchebags, every one of them - Harold's no more douchebaggy or less douchebaggy than any of the others. I make an exception for Barack Obama, whom I worship slightly (how original, I know). [full confession]

No more douchebaggy or less douchebaggy, indeed!

This year was billed as the year of the black neo-douchebag, high-profile black GOP candidates and endorsements by the likes of Russell Simmons (or Mike Tyson) suggesting that an era of increased canoodling between black voters and Republicans was somehow underway. It turns out, however, that reports of black Republican rebirth were premature. Instead of rebirth, we get electoral reconfirmation that there is no national black conservative agenda, no constituency for black Republican candidates outside a handful of white folks.

The tired signature issue of most black neo-cons - echoing yap about "values" - turns not to play as well with black voters as the Republicans expected it to. While black Americans do poll as socially conservative on some issues, we also don't show much enthusiasm for using the electoral process to mind other peoples' business the way, say, white fundies do:

In an AP-AOL poll from late October, black voters thought that the most urgent problem facing their community was the economy, and more black voters ranked health care and Social Security as "extremely important" issues than they did anything else--including terrorism and the war in Iraq. (The general public, according to a Washington Post poll from last week, ranks Iraq a full ten points ahead of the economy.) And gay marriage barely mattered: Even though two-thirds of blacks oppose same-sex unions, well over half trust the Democrats more than the Republicans to "do a better job of handling" the issue. "On Election Day, African Americans tend to put their economic and social situation in perspective," says Donna Brazile, the Democratic consultant who ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. "Personal opposition to wedge issues like abortion and gay rights is not going to make anybody write home and say 'Wow, we need to vote Republican.'" [full, surprisingly astute TNR story]

The problem for black conservatives is that, while black Democratic politics still offer a distinct vision of the Democratic party and it's role in the nation's affairs (contrast the focus on race, income inequality, cities and multilateral foreign policy to the post identity netroots aesthetic or to DLC triangulation), there is no discernable black way of being a Republican. That's why black Republicans are so often accused of careerism, as, whether running from the GOP (as Steele did this year) or enthusiastically doing its dirty work (as Blackwell did in 2004), their politics regularly reduce to a mix of regurgitation, radical individualism and chiaroscuro, the optics of being black+Republican are 95% the already-limited game.

That lack of a distinct politic is also why yesterday's only legit black conservative victory was the one brought to you by a black man willing to get in bed with the most virulent white racism imaginable. Michigan's anti-affirmative action Civil Rights Initiative passed yesterday (this even as South Dakota's draconian anti-abortion law was deep-sixed) and the campaign's signature moment was the assertion by talking android Ward Connerly that he was willing to accept support for his cause from the Ku Klux Klan:

The man leading the effort to ban affirmative action in Michigan, Ward Connerly, welcomes the support of the Ku Klux Klan. Connerly said, "If the Ku Klux Klan thinks that equality is right, God bless them. Thank them for finally reaching the point where logic and reason are being applied, instead of hate."

Connerly, "defended his remark in a statement, saying he accepts support for banning affirmative action wherever he finds it." According to Mark Bernstein of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, the Ku Klux Klan is the "only large organization" to endorse Connerly's ballot measure.

Last month, Connerly was photographed shaking hands with John Raterink, chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white separatist organization. The CCC "opposes most immigration and 'all efforts to mix the races of mankind.'"[full item]

The video in question can be viewed below.

Connerly's statement is a neat encapsulation of the only truly (and terrifyingly) unique thing black conservatives add to the national political landscape, i.e., their willingness to work with the most disgusting racists in politics. Like an American Jew opining that he or she is glad that the American Nazi Party has finally "moved beyond its ugly history" by supporting some or another ballot initiative, Connerly's comment is a form of derangement that seems somewhat common among minority Republicans. (Think of all the gay Republican staffers who came to light during the Foley scandal, men and women eagerly working for a Republican party whose number #2 go-to-gambit after terrorism is painting homosexuals as sub-humans.)

But all that is, today, just a lot of theorizing, and much of it has been rendered just a touch neither here nor there by the cumulative scale of yesterday's victories. Yes: the Michigan Initiative passed, and yes: it will be tied up in knots in the courts for years. With a Democratic-held Senate and House, our ability to fend off such attacks has been strengthened. The world turns out to be much smarter and more concise than I am: Out of office, fuckers, we've completely had enough. You lose.

Posted by ebogjonson in talking androids, on November 8, 2006 3:36 PM

Comments

Posted by: belledame222 at November 14, 2006 7:22 PM

Posted by: belledame222 at November 14, 2006 7:26 PM

Posted by: belledame222 at November 14, 2006 7:28 PM