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April
8, 2002 8:30 a.m. By Edward Blum |
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l
Sharpton has never looked better — physically and politically — than he
does today.
The
Brooklyn-based preacher and presidential aspirant has done everything right
to position himself for the Democrat primary in 2004. So far, he has shed
over 100 pounds and all of his "gangsta" gold jewelry, and is
the only candidate to have a credible exploratory committee up and running.
The other Al running for the presidency — Al Gore — has yet to put himself
on a diet and can't seem to get anyone in the party to take him seriously.
However, for now, no one really takes Sharpton seriously either, least of
all, the old-line Democrat establishment.
Yet ignoring Al Sharpton could be a very costly mistake for the Democrat party. Just ask Democrat Mark Green — who did — and went on to lose the New York City mayoralty.
Sharpton pretty much sat out the showdown between the liberal Republican nominee Michael Bloomberg and the liberal Democrat nominee Mark Green last November after the Democrat primary runoff turned nasty. As reported by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker on February 25th, Sharpton threw his support to Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, a Latino who openly embraced Sharpton to the chagrin of the city's Jewish leaders. Somehow a cartoon of Ferrer kissing the oversized backside of Sharpton amid "clouds of what can only be assumed to be flatulence" was circulated in a Green campaign leaflet. Sharpton went ballistic, after which Green's campaign became radioactive in the black community and was doomed.
Speaking to his supporters in Harlem a few days after the general election, Sharpton blustered, "We may have a bad date with Michael Bloomberg, but I'm not going to be the battered wife for the Democratic party. That's what battering husbands do: beat their wives, talk about 'Nobody wants you but me,' slap them around, say 'Who else is going to buy you a dress?' Well, I'd rather walk around naked than wear your wretched dress."
This is quintessential Sharpton and is not the first time he has flexed his political muscles. In 1994 he launched a primary challenge against incumbent Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Although the popular Moynihan easily won, Sharpton garnered eighty percent of the black vote, resulting in 25 percent of all votes cast. This overwhelming black cohesiveness aligned against an icon of the Democratic-left must have stunned every political consultant in the state.
And it must be giving the consultants working to get Andrew Cuomo elected the next governor of New York nightmares as well. Cuomo, the son of former governor Mario Cuomo, will face state comptroller Carl McCall in the Democrat primary this September. McCall, who is black, is backed by the state's black political glitterati, including Sharpton. Cuomo now knows he must win the nomination without any significant black support — a huge challenge in a state in which 25-30 percent of Democrat primary voters are black.
There are two unique features that characterize black voters in America and Al Sharpton will use of both them to his advantage: First, in national elections blacks are a near-monolithic vote. Second, using census data, blacks voters can be identified household-by-household and targeted on the precinct level. If Sharpton bled 80 percent of the black vote away from Moynihan, he could do the same against Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry or any of the Democrat leading lights. Throw in a handful of Hispanic and white voters and Sharpton could win or be runner-up in most of the critical primary states. Since the Democrats are likely to frontload their primary-election schedule this cycle, it is not inconceivable for Sharpton to actually win New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. If he doesn't outright win these states, the racial arithmetic earns him a close second.
This is not theoretical political physics either. Some well-regarded political analysts believe that in many states black voters could constitute between 30-40 percent of Democrat primary voters in 2004 because black-voter participation at the polls has never been higher. And therein lies the problem for the other Democrat presidential hopefuls: how do they distinguish themselves among primary voters if they probably won't be successful attracting any black voters? Do they out-Sharpton Sharpton by defending racial preferences? Should they follow his lead and endorse reparations for slavery? Or do they remind voters of Sharpton's none-too-subtle anti-Semitism and the Tawana Brawley fiasco? Can they criticize — personally and politically — the candidate of choice of most black primary voters and expect the same voters to return in sufficient numbers in November to vote for them and against George W. Bush?
Probably not. And Al Sharpton knows this and will play his hand accordingly. That is why his critics on the left and on the right have underestimated him. Sharpton knows he can't win the nomination, but that isn't the point of his candidacy. Unlike Jesse Jackson who didn't mind being the battered wife of the Democrat party — as long as it got him the exposure he craves — Sharpton is prepared to play spoiler unless he gets what he wants, which, among other things, was depicted in the Mark Green campaign brochure.
The reason none of the Democrat contenders will likely stand up to Sharpton is illustrated by Joe Lieberman's experience in 2000. Once nominated to be Gore's VP, Lieberman, a thoughtful objector to race-based policies and preferences, was immediately wood-shedded by Congresswoman Maxine Waters at the Democratic convention and made to renounce his former views. A few months later, hoping to show his true change of heart, Lieberman topped himself by saying in a radio interview that he was willing to meet with Louis Farrakhan, America's leading anti-Semite. All of this from the most "principled" Democrat in the U.S. Senate.
In any event, all of this may be good news for the Republican party, but bad news for race relations overall. The Bush reelection team will probably stand back and watch the Democrats out-pander one another with the hope of keeping Al Sharpton on the plantation during the 2004 campaign. And Sharpton won't fade away during the campaign either — bought off like Jesse Jackson in 1988 after Michael Dukakis got him his own campaign jet — making it certain that slavery reparations, black "victimology," and the promotion of affirmative action remain a recurring campaign theme for the Democrats.
The Republicans have their own racial-image problems to shoulder as well. In an attempt to attract Hispanic voters to the party, GOP candidates have gone out of their way to avoid any criticism of racial or ethnic preferences, so fearful are they of alienating this growing segment of the electorate. This concern resulted in George W. Bush's meltdown during one debate with Al Gore when asked about affirmative action. In the 2004 general election, if Sharpton gets to play the role for which he auditioned during the primary, President Bush won't be able to dodge reparations or preferences. Yet instead of simply telling voters that he opposes quotas and his administration, like Bill Clinton's, "looks like America," Bush could attack the Democrats — and Sharpton specifically — over these issues. Pinning Al Sharpton to the lapel of the Democratic nominee may emerge as an effective political wedge between Hispanics and whites on the one hand, and blacks on the other.
It is conceivable however, that there could emerge a Democratic candidate that will put racial identity politics where it belongs — in the trash heap of failed ideas. Such a candidate would reject racial preferences, call for the government to get out of the racial classification business, and argue for "affirmative action" programs based on economic disadvantage, rather than skin color. Furthermore, this candidate would not salivate every time Al Sharpton rang a bell.
By staking out this ground, the Democrats could lose some of their traditional black support at the polls, but they could make inroads with white voters, a segment of the voting public they have been losing steadily since the 1960s. But the most important benefit for everyone, regardless of political advantage, would be the improvement in racial discourse, something long overdue in national political campaigns.
In the end however, Al Sharpton, trimmed down and sharp as a tack, won't let that happen. His power over the Democrats depends on his ability to keep blacks in political lockstep and his power over blacks depends on his ability to keep them agitated over issues of racial injustice. No justice, no peace. Get it?
Expect no peace from Al Sharpton in 2004. No justice, either.
— Edward Blum is an adjunct scholar at the Center for Equal Opportunity
in Sterling Virginia.
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