Dem Divide: It Really Isn't Funny

It’s easy for Republicans to snigger at the problems the Democrats are having in nominating a candidate for president.

After all, they deserve it. For forty years since the civil rights era they have sat at the political table and played race card after race card.

Har, har, they would say to the white-faced players at the table as they cleaned up, and not just money, but power and the love of beautiful women.

But now it is looking as if their race politics is forcing the Democrats to nominate a very not-ready-for-prime-time candidate for president.

And there’s nothing the Democrats can do about it. That’s because their candidate is black. If the Democratic superdelegates ditch Obama—for another flawed candidate—then they are risking the fundamental base of their party support, the almost unanimous support of the black electorate. James Edmund Pennington calls it the Democrats’ devil’s bargain,

[the] devil’s bargain with American blacks, a bargain that promises, in exchange for nearly all black votes all the time, fealty to certain imperatives, be it a continuation of social policies that are poisonous to blacks and the nation, silence and denial in the face of widespread destructive behavior patterns at the root of much of the black American dilemma, obsequious veneration of hate mongering, racial arsonist black "leaders", or, as in the case of Obama, the nomination of dangerously untested, thinly-resumed candidates who may be deeply flawed and unelectable. For forty years this has been the bargain and it must hold now.

Devil’s bargains end in an almighty smash-up. When it comes, it’s not going to be at all funny.

But let’s face it, American blacks were going to have to come face to face with reality, the reality that life is not just race and slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination.

Why not this year?