{"id":167,"date":"2004-11-16T14:15:04","date_gmt":"2004-11-16T19:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=167"},"modified":"2004-11-16T14:15:04","modified_gmt":"2004-11-16T19:15:04","slug":"condoleeza-rice-in-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Condoleeza Rice in 2008!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So Condi Rice is going to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State.<br \/>\nI have to think this means she&#8217;s being groomed for the Republican ticket<br \/>\nin 2008.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I hope so anyway.  I know very little about her, but I&#8217;ve discovered<br \/>\nthat I <em>really<\/em> want to have a ringside seat on the farcical hijinks<br \/>\nthat will certainly ensue if the Republicans run a black woman for President,<br \/>\nor even Veep.<\/p>\n<p>Just so my position is clear, it is quite unlikely I&#8217;d vote for<br \/>\nher.  As in, not unless the Libertarian candidate is a werewolf or<br \/>\nsomething.  It&#8217;s just that the thought of Democratic strategists<br \/>\nhaving shit fits over the hemhorraging black vote greatly amuses me.<br \/>\nThe panic and confusion that would reign on the New York Times<br \/>\neditorial page as their political-correctness bias <em>clashes<\/em><br \/>\n(for once) with their anti-Republican bias would be good for many<br \/>\nguffaws.  I might actually listen to NPR just to hear them choking.<br \/>\nIn general, just watching the machinery of smug left-wing duckspeak<br \/>\nseize up and damage itself on Condi&#8217;s blackness would be<br \/>\ndelicious.<\/p>\n<p>Watching Republican racist\/nativist types hold their gorges down<br \/>\nfor the sake of party unity would be entertaining too, but probably<br \/>\nmuch less so as that type seems rather rare these days.  In lieu of<br \/>\nthat, I&#8217;d just have to content myself with the screams of insenate<br \/>\nrage that would issue from the neo-Nazis at <a href='http:\/\/www.stormfront.org\/'>Stormfront<\/a>.  Why, they might be<br \/>\nalmost as angry as the &#8220;Bush=Hitler&#8221; crew over at Democratic<br \/>\nUnderground.  With any luck we might actually get to watch a few of<br \/>\nthe vicious morons on both sites die of thundering apoplexy.<\/p>\n<p>Truly, what&#8217;s not to like?<\/p>\n<p>There are, of course, excellent reasons for the Republicans to try<br \/>\nthis maneuver.  Mainstream blacks are far more socially conservative<br \/>\nthan most of the other interest groups in the Democratic coalition.  I<br \/>\npersonally do not consider this is a good thing, but there is no<br \/>\ndenying that it makes them pretty ripe to be the next demographic that<br \/>\ngets chiseled out of the party (following southerners, rust-belt<br \/>\nblue-collar whites, and most recently Catholics).<\/p>\n<p>But having a corner on the black vote is important to the Democrats<br \/>\nfor more than just raw poll numbers.  On it, now that the whites at<br \/>\nthe bottom of the socio-economic scale have gone majority-Republican,<br \/>\nrests their last tenable claim to be the Party of the Oppressed.  This<br \/>\nclaim has become so important to their image and internal mythology that,<br \/>\nwithout it, the Democrats might very well collapse.<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;s going to be their next favorite victim group to hang this<br \/>\nmyth from?  Homosexuals won&#8217;t do; there are too few of them at 4%.<br \/>\nThe Jews wouldn&#8217;t do either, at 2%, even if the Dems hadn&#8217;t gotten<br \/>\nbadly tainted by the creeping anti-Semitism of their own left<br \/>\nwing. Hispanics used to look promising, but they&#8217;re in a late stage of<br \/>\nassimilation and obviously headed the way of the Italians or Irish &#8212;<br \/>\nthey won&#8217;t remain an ethnic voting bloc for even another decade.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to peddle your outfit as tribunes of the disadvantaged<br \/>\nwhen your main powerbases are the public-employee unions, Hollywood,<br \/>\nand the Upper East Side.  The Republicans have gotten pretty good at<br \/>\nnailing the Democratic leadership as the spoiled children of wealth<br \/>\nand privilege even <em>with<\/em> the blacks in the Democratic column;<br \/>\nwithout them, it&#8217;s just going to get uglier.  And Condi Rice would be<br \/>\nthe perfect wedge candidate.<\/p>\n<p>Your average Democrat&#8217;s reflex seems to be to blame the sinister<br \/>\nmachinations of Karl Rove for this state of affairs.  The trouble with<br \/>\nthis theory is that Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice do<br \/>\nactually <em>exist<\/em>.  They&#8217;re not just fantasies, and they<br \/>\nrepresent a degree of access and power black people never had under<br \/>\nany Democratic administration.<\/p>\n<p>Cynical tactical positioning?  Maybe.  Who cares?  No matter what<br \/>\nthe Republicans mean by it, the cause of equality gains and the<br \/>\nhate-spewing race-baiters on the left and right lose.  Condi in<br \/>\n2008!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So Condi Rice is going to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State. I have to think this means she&#8217;s being groomed for the Republican ticket in 2008. Well, I hope so anyway. I know very little about her, but I&#8217;ve discovered that I really want to have a ringside seat on the farcical hijinks&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=167\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Condoleeza Rice in 2008!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}