The sole primary next Tuesday will be in West Virginia. Due to the Appalachia effect, the state can be expected to tilt heavily towards Hillary Clinton. Because she cannot become the Democratic Party nominee, her victory in West Virginia will serve only to harm the party, to needlessly prolong a decided contest.
There is one man in West Virginia who might somewhat shift the results: Senator Robert Byrd. Like many superdelegate officeholders, Byrd has remained neutral, on the theory that his vote should follow that of the people of his state. Sometimes that is a valid position. Not this time.
Senator Byrd needs to lead. He is the last surviving relic of that shameful period in the history of the Democratic Party when it obtained and retained political power by explicitly appealing to white racist voters. He has since changed. As many of the people of his state have changed. But not enough. Senator Byrd can discharge a debt he owes to his country, to his party, to black Americans, and to himself, by bridging history. By becoming, when it matters, a one-time virulent segregationalist, who endorses for the presidency of the United States the first black man to serve in that office.
At some point this summer or fall, Senator Clinton, if she expects to have a future in our party, will need to eloquently and explicitly address those voters that her campaign, as it has grown increasingly desperate, has intentionally courted: whites who are hostile to, leery of, or uncomfortable with, the idea of a black man serving as president. It will be her job, because through her and her campaign's unpalatable words and deeds she has made it her job, to secure the votes of these people for Barack Obama, the 2008 Democratic Party nominee for president.
Senator Byrd's debt is much older. Byrd, now 90, and the longest serving member in the history of the United States Senate, was elected in 1942, at the age of 24, Exalted Cyclops, or leader, of the Matoaka, West Virginia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd himself, in his autobiography, frankly pronounces this the beginning of his political career.
Byrd climbed the Klan ladder while working as a shipyard welder during WWII. Damning proposals to integrate the US armed services, he wrote to the notorious racist Senator Theodore Biblo of Mississippi:
"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."
There have been several signal figures in the history of our party who were once associated with the Klan. One is Associate Justice to the United States Supreme Court Hugo Black, who served in the Robert E. Lee chapter of the Klan in Birmingham, Alabama during the mid-1920s.
It is an ugly fact that in Alabama in the 1920s, as in West Virginia in the 1940s, membership in the Klan was useful for young men ambitious for a future in Democratic politics.
Black, however, was later presented with an opportunity to change, and he seized it. Black is today generally acknowledged as the most fierce and stubborn proponent of the series of landmark decisions of the Warren Court that judicially struck down institutionalized racism in this country.
Byrd, when presented with his opportunity to change, did not change. When Lyndon Johnson strove to follow the lead of the United States Supreme Court, shifting the direction of both this country, and our party, Byrd, elected to the US Senate in 1958, opposed him. Byrd fought against, filibustered against, all the civil-rights legislation pushed through Congress under the Johnson administration. He refused to vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall, a black man, to the US Supreme Court.
When racist Democratic officeholders began leaving for the Republican Party, following the racist voters who were effecting a similar shift, Byrd remained in the Democratic Party. And he was rewarded. Despite the fact that he had virulently opposed that seismic shift in our party that made it what it is today, Byrd has been allowed to serve as Senate Minority Leader, Senate Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader. Today he is President Pro Tem of the Senate, and third in line to the presidency.
Byrd has long since apologized for his long-ago membership in the Klan, for his disgraceful letters to Bilbo, for his opposition to civil-rights legislation, for his refusal to confirm Thurgood Marshall. In 2004 he received a 100% rating from the NAACP for his votes on legislation of importance to that organization. Byrd has meanwhile so succeeded in channelling federal funds to the people of his state that he is sometimes dubbed "the King of Pork." He was an early, and eloquent, foe of the occupation of Iraq, about which he proved something of a prophet:
"If the United States leads the charge to war in the Persian Gulf, we may get lucky and achieve a rapid victory. But then we will face a second war: a war to win the peace in Iraq. This war will last many years and will surely cost hundreds of billions of dollars. In light of this enormous task, it would be a great mistake to expect that this will be a replay of the 1991 war. The stakes are much higher in this conflict."
His blistering reaction to George II's disgraceful Mission Accomplished roadshow:
"I do question the motives of a deskbound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech."
In 2006, when Byrd sought a ninth Senate term, Senator Barack Obama endorsed him, and, working with MoveOn, dispatched a fundraising appeal that netted Byrd close to a million dollars in less than 48 hours. Byrd, in return, said of Obama:
"He said some nice things about me. Anywhere he comes in West Virginia we will give the man a great reception. He's a wonderful man."
The people of West Virginia first sent Robert Byrd to Congress as a segregationist, and they returned him to office four times as a segregationist. As Byrd has modified his views, so too have the voters who have continued to send him back to Congress. However, as DHinMI starkly outlined here, too many of the Democratic voters in that geographical area known as Appalachia--and West Virginia is all Appalachia--do not yet appear as ready as much of the rest of the nation to accept the notion that a black man should be allowed to serve as President of the United States.
Markos is right, that senatorial endorsements are generally of no moment. But this, I think, is a special case. Robert Byrd not only can, but needs, to speak to these Appalachian voters. He can, and needs, to speak to them as someone who has made the long journey from a leader of an organization dedicated to intimidating, terrorizing, and killing black men, to a co-equal colleague of a black man, a black man who helped save his career in the Senate, a black man whom he, Robert Byrd, believes is most qualified to serve as this country's next president.
Hillary Clinton, politically speaking, is a dead woman walking. Every day that she remains in this race does harm to this party . . . the party that Robert Byrd himself once bucked, in bucking Lyndon Johnson and his embrace of civil rights, the party that nonetheless then rewarded Byrd with its highest Senate leadership positions, its loftiest committee assignments--as well as the keys to the federal treasury.
Robert Byrd owes both his party, and the black people of this country, to do what he can to put a stop to this doomed, harmful, ludicrous March Of The Deadenders of a Clinton campaign. She has no chance: the only chance she has is to damage the 2008 Democratic Party nominee for president. As pollster John Anzalone put it in the Washington Post: "She is the Japanese soldier in the Pacific island that hasn't been told the war is over. Occasionally she picks off a few islanders and considers it a victory."
A Clinton victory in West Virginia, particularly a sizable one, will not be a victory for anyone. It will not be a victory for Senator Clinton, who will be denied the nomination anyway. It will not be a victory for Barack Obama, who will need to exasperatedly, though gracefully, soldier on, towards what is already his. It will not be a victory for the Democratic Party, which will again need to put on hold the training of its guns on John McCain. It will not be a victory for the country, because it will do nothing to increase the likelihood that McCain will in November be defeated. And it will not be a victory for Robert Byrd, who, once again, will pass up a chance to be on the right side of history, when that history concerns black people.
Mostly, Robert Byrd owes it to himself, to endorse Barack Obama. Throughout his 90 years, Robert Byrd, in the area of civil rights, has always been, at best, a step behind. He is today ceaselessly mocked by the likes of the execrable Sean Hannity--himself an out racist--as "Robert 'KKK' Byrd." There, Byrd--rightly or wrongly--is looking at a large part of his legacy.
But Byrd today has the chance to efface that legacy. To, this time, be a step ahead. He can endorse, now, when it matters, the black man who will be the 2008 Democratic Party nominee for president. And he can speak to the people of his state, and urge them, likewise, to, this time, boldly step ahead, and do the right thing.
(Senator Byrd may be contacted here.)
(Several fine diaries from the Kossack Carnacki that concern Robert Byrd can be found here.)