What if the Democrats regain Congress on November 7th?
We know what will happen on November 8th.
There will be a big hue and cry in the mainstream media (MSM) for the Democrats to "move to the center" and seek a "bipartisan consensus." If any unapologetic antiwar candidates successfully unseat any prowar incumbents, those people will be ignored. Instead, as surre as I am writing this post, the MSM will be hyping the "moderates" and urging Democrats to be "responsible" by signing onto some "bipartisan" cover-your-ass strategy for Bush.
If it is the duty of my progressive antiwar brothers and sisters in "Red" states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee to hold their noses and vote for some weird conservative Democrats, then it is my duty in "Blue" California to support candidates like Byron DeLear to "send a message" we ain't playing with Bush and his gang.
Already, the MSM is hyping "moderate" Democrats likely to turn up in the freshman class.
The New York Times ran a front page article crowing how
In Key House Races, Democrats Run to the Right(registration required):
In their push to win back control of the House, Democrats have turned to conservative and moderate candidates who fit the profiles of their districts more closely than the profile of the national party.
One such candidate, Heath Shuler, was courted by Republicans to run for office in 2001. Mr. Shuler, 34, is a retired National Football League quarterback who is running in the 11th Congressional District in North Carolina. He is an evangelical Christian and holds fast to many conservative social views, like opposition to abortion rights.
The New Yorker published a story about James Webb and George Allen in The Weirdest Senate Race and half the article was devoted to describing the passion and fury of Democrat James Webb's hatred of "Sixties" liberalism:
The unifying theme of Webb's fiction, his popular history of the Scots-Irish, and, especially, his opinion journalism has been that of put-upon people (the military, Southerners, white men) suffering the smug disregard of a hostile elite. In the Webb reckoning, much blame resides in nineteen-sixties-era liberalism, which has influenced the Democratic Party for a generation. That he now finds himself a Democratic candidate in a pivotal U.S. Senate race is a development that proceeds, by its own stubborn logic, from this insistent theme. Webb's candidacy is partly a quest to reclaim the Democratic Party for what he sees as a natural constituency.
Then, there is the strange journey of Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee. The son of the legendary liberal African-American Congressman Harold Ford, Sr., one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, Ford, Jr. is running essentially on the theme: "I am not my father's son."
It is a measure of the hunger of the liberal intelligentsia to elect any Democrat that no less a progressive voice than The Nation published a "puff piece" by Bob Moser about Ford titled The New Model Ford:
The most audacious campaign ad of this topsy-turvy political year is set in the sanctuary of the Mt. Moriah East Baptist Church in Memphis. With a praise song swelling in the background, the camera pans down from sunlit stained-glass windows to a dapper young man striding thoughtfully up the aisle and flashing a Hollywood smile as he says, "I started church the old-fashioned way--I was forced to. And I'm better for it.... Here, I learned the difference between right and wrong." But now, he says solemnly, his opponent is "doing wrong," "telling untruths about...me." He sits in a pew and leans forward prayerfully. With a huge red tapestry with a white cross perfectly positioned over his right shoulder, he dead-eyes the camera and corrects the record. "I voted for the Patriot Act, five trillion in defense, and against amnesty for illegals. I approved this message because I won't let them make me somebody I'm not. And I'll always fight for you."
Where I'm Coming From
It is good to know that Ford will be a fightin' Democrat, though there is nothing in there to indicate he'll be fighting for me.
I was born and raised in "conservative" Hampton, Virginia where my family has lived since the Civil War. I was educated in the public schools; went to a historically black university; went to graduate school at Sen. George Allen's beloved University of Virginia; and worked in Virginia as a professional computer programmer until I was thirty. And even though it should not make a damned bit of difference, I guess I need to add that I am a black man, a descendant of Black African slaves in Old Virginny.
I lived through the civil rights revolution in the South in the era of "Sixties" liberalism. I remember when black boys and white boys were being drafted and sent to fight and die together in Vietnam by the same Southern segregationist racist "conservative" politicians that moved heaven and earth to keep them from studying together and being friends in a classroom.
Today, I live in West Los Angeles, California, in a predominately African-American middle-class neighborhood across the street from the City of Inglewood. So, what is supposed to be my political contribution to bringing an end to this war? If it the duty of my two brothers, Walter and Jonathan Walker, back home in Virginia, to hold their noses and vote for this weird James Webb, preaching nonsense about how poor, little, gun-loving, woman-hating, Southern, segregationist racist "conservatives" are the victims of "elitists" forcing civil rights, women's rights, and gun-control down their throats, then what is my duty here in California?
LOS ANGELES AREA CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS
It needs to be said. These are gerrymandered districts. The boundaries of all these districts have all been set up with computerized precision to ensure just the right mix of social classes, ethnic groups, and races to ensure the reelection of Democratic and Republican incumbents in California.
I live in California's 33rd Congressional District, Culver City and a portion of Los Angeles. "Minorities" like me are almost 80% of the population. Two years ago, my Congresswoman, the Honorable Diane Watson, was reelected with 88.58% of the vote. This year Ms. Watson will do even better - her name is the only one on the ballot.
The adjacent 35th Congressional District includes Inglewood and Hawthorne as well as south-central Los Angeles. In the 35th C.D. the Honorable Maxine Waters had a tougher reelection fight. In 2004 Ms. Waters "only" garnered 80.53% of the vote.
Based on this standard, California's 28th Congressional District was a hotbed of democracy. In 2004 the Honorable Howard L. Berman was reelected with 70.95% of the vote.
An excellent analysis by Rachel Morris was published in The Washington Monthly under the title The Race to Gerrymander:
In California, the arrangement went something like this: State Democrats solidified their grasp on Sacramento and strengthened the existing seats of congressional members, without increasing their number. Republicans, who agreed not to challenge the map in court or introduce a redistricting-reform ballot initiative, were prepared to take state-level losses in return for making their 20 congressional seats safer-with the overriding goal of maintaining the GOP's House majority. This incumbency-protection racket produced some truly bizarre cartography. One slender district, known as the "ribbon of shame," snakes down the Pacific coast, 500 miles long and in some places only 500 yards wide. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the delegation's point man for redistricting, now represents a district shaped like a set of headphones, drawn by his brother, which maneuvered around a pocket of Latino voters so Berman wouldn't face a strong Latino primary opponent. The map may have pleased California Democrats and national Republicans, but the real losers were the state's voters: in 2004 not a single congressional or legislative seat changed hands.
As a direct result California Republican Congressmen, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Dana Rohrabacher, and the latest designated crook-of-the-month from "conservative" San Diego are sitting pretty as some of the worst reactionary members of the U.S House of Representatives.
They will be reelected from their safe, one-party districts just like Watson, Waters, and Berman, smugly sitting up in his funny-looking 28th District.
California is a big "blue" state. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry all carried the state by a landslide in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. Democrats control both houses of the California state legislature. It is a measure of just how politically inept these guys are that, as I write, this, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (boo! hiss!) is expected to be easily reelected.
We are all friends here, so let me be frank. Getting up early on the morning of November 7th to run out and vote for my Rep. Diane Watson will be as every bit as meaningless as getting up in the morning to cast a voter for the Communist Party candidate in Beijing.
Mark my words, if Harold Ford is elected the first black Southern senator since reconstruction, the MSM will forget Barack Obama, the brilliant mainstream liberal, and crown Ford, the gun-loving, woman-hating, immigrant-bashing, Bible-thumper as the "Good Black" for America.
I have therefore concluded that it is not only my choice, but my duty to "send a message" to Democrats like Berman, who have not only been enabling President Bush, by supporting Mr. Bush's war, but no less importantly, has been enabling the whole game of cynical politics that is wrecking America.
A 20% Green vote for DeLear would be the best thing an antiwar voter in Los Angeles can do to "send a message" we ain't playing.