THE POLITICS OF BETRAYAL FAILED
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 11/10/02]
Democrats, stunned by recent electoral results, are walking around dazed, heads hanging, hearts heavy....
There should be little surprise at the results, for they follow, as night follows the day, from the party’s recent strategies to become a kind of 'republican-lite' party.
They’ve become so similar that millions must've wondered, why vote for ‘em? What’s the dif?
Given its corporate-heavy funding, and its deep core of betrayal of various constituencies, every policy adopted by the Democrats has been designed to show how much they are like the other guys.
They are (just barely) the loyal opposition, but they aren’t loyal to those who most consistently vote for them, but they are loyal to the corporations -- that’s where the money comes from, and that’s where their loyalty goes.
The Clinton strategy, of 'Black faces in high places,' leaves the poor and working class out-of-the-loop, and still like aliens in the land of their birth. In the waning days of the campaign, some prominent Democrats found their way to Carl McCall’s gubernatorial campaign headquarters, after assiduously ignoring him for months. The same old tired program, of kissing Black babies, while jailing juveniles; of singing in Black churches, while sending congregations to the hell of prisons (or the equally bitter hell of poverty), ain’t gonna cut it.
The brave, outspoken Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) was sold out by the big-wigs of the Democratic Party. A strong, Black, opinionated woman was apparently too much for them to support.
These bigwig, wealthy, rightward-leaning, corporate Democrats, have tried to out-republican the Republicans, and in the process, they have consistently abandoned their core constituencies. As a logical response, their core constituencies are abandoning them. They feel, perhaps rightly, that they gain nothing by voting for those who don’t share their interests.
In short, why vote for someone who doesn’t vote for you?
In Florida alone, some 20% fewer Black voters went out to vote in recent mid-term congressional elections. As it stands, just over one-third of the eligible voters actually voted, so the "majority" received perhaps 15-to-20% of the votes of the electorate -- some majority.
As for Blacks and their vaunted loyalty to the Democrats, recent studies done by the Joint Center for Political Studies show a markedly downward trend in support for the Democratic Party among young Blacks in their 20s and 30s. Increasingly, they are turning Independent. For them, chicken dinners, and church visits are not enough. Public Service Announcements on hip-hop radio is not enough. They must give them a reason to vote, or they will go the way of the Whig party -- into oblivion.
The politics of betrayal don’t seem to be working anymore.
© copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
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