Today may prove to be one of the most significant days in the 2004 primary season, but didn't get any notice at all, even on CNN's Inside Politics, which focused on the Iowa horserace, Lieberman's presence in New Hampshire, and a rather devastating clip of Wes Clark (furnished by an undisclosed rival campaign) talking about the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda a year ago.
Today is the Washington, DC presidential primary, a contest in which there are only four candidates: Dean, Kucinich, Moseley Braun and Sharpton. Frankly, I don't know enough about the dynamics on the ground to participate in the Kos lottery, although a 10% turnout would naturally benefit the most organized candidate, and I imagine that accounts for the Dean forces' confidence.
Here's what I do think. Tomorrow is the first and only early test of candidate strength among African-Americans. Among the white candidates, only Dean and Kucinich chose to contest; I am guessing the others didn't less out of respect for Iowa and New Hampshire than out of fear that Dean's organization would best them in a race that would have enormous implications for electability in the South.
I suspect that Al Sharpton's intervention in yesterday's debate had less to do with Iowa or New Hampshire or even organizing in next month's South Carolina primary than with what must be a horrifying fear that Howard Dean could walk away with a plurality or even a majority of the vote in a city (though not electorate) that is 60% African American.
Sharpton has shown a greater propensity for electing Republicans than Democrats in his home state. Indeed, the typically smarmy Republican racists behind sites like these surely know little about how much Sharpton has done for their interests in the past.
Donna Brazile must be in heaven right now; tonight's results may be beyond even the wildest imagined success of her "favorite sons" strategy. For indeed, if Al Sharpton places behind both Carole Moseley Braun and Howard Dean in the Washington, DC primary, he may well be finished as a national political force. If he remains in the race till the end and contests New York (with a local African-American political establishment endorsing other candidates) and then loses where it matters, it may be the end of him as a local political force as well.
The thought must keep him awake at night.
Finally, it's worth considering that these results should also be a (likely unheeded) wakeup call to a media establishment that tends to assume that African-Americans vote en masse for anyone just because they are black. They are a slap in the face to those who continually denigrate Jesse Jackson's extraordinary performance in the 1988 primary, in which he received 92% of the African American vote, by saying that his vote was foregone conclusion (it wasn't in 1984, when he received a far lesser proportion (77%) against Walter Mondale). Jackson's remarkable 1988 performance, indeed, may never be repeated in Democratic primary politics.
I will leave another interesting conclusion, that this primary season may ultimately mark a shift in power from New York to Chicago in African-American Democratic politics, to Peter, who suggested it to me last night.
(From JUSIPER)