It seems incredible that with one of the most unpopular presidents in history, an unending and unwinnable war, and an economy where all news is bad news, that the party in power would not only retain the White House, but do so with panache. But that seems to me precisely what is going to happen this year.
There are good reasons for favoring Clinton over Obama for the Democratic nomination. There is the argument that the country is in such awful shape that it is imperative that we elect someone ready to take charge from the first day. The Clinton team has been there, they know the ropes, they can handle it. There is the argument of Clinton’s intelligence, her incisiveness, her grasp of the issues. There is even the argument that with Clinton, “it’s personal,” that decades of attacks from the right have hardened her and given her the fire in her belly to get payback. But ever since the Team Clinton’s panic after Iowa, all those reasons have been swept aside, and been replaced with a reason that is poison for her candidacy. That is the argument that Clinton should be nominated because a black candidate cannot be elected.
If Clinton ultimately wins the nomination (and I think she will), this will be argument that will stick in the minds of many millions of black voters. They will believe that at the highest levels of power in the Democratic party, blacks are simply not welcome. And they will stay home on election day, or worse, vote Republican.
This November, of the 33 or 34 Senate candidates the Democrats will be running, how many are African-Americans? There may be somebody I’ve missed, but as far as I have heard, there is Vivian Figures in Alabama, an attractive, progressive legislator who will, I am confident, be abandoned by the national party as they focus on supposedly more winnable races.
The Democrats can’t win elections anywhere if they lose their largest constituency. The blue state/red state divide will be breached, and a dozen or so blue states will fall. The Democrats will see the Senate slip from their hands, as seats in Louisiana, Arkansas, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois are put in jeopardy.
Maybe it doesn’t make a difference anymore. Maybe the do-nothing Congress that we elected in 2006 is all that we could expect from a party when all progressive instincts collide with the necessity of corporate backing to produce paralysis. But, somehow, it seems to me that even a pessimist had a right to expect something better from November.