Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich decided to interrupt the usually news-free interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s. Despite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s declaration that he would not seat any Senator appointed by the disgraced governor, Blajogevich went ahead and made his pick for the Senate: former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris.
Blagojevich, during the press conference announcing the pick, would enunciate each sentence with a smirk, while Burris looked almost confused at why the press crops would be so hostile towards an Illinois elder statesmen being appointed to a vacant Senate seat. Burris had the slightly detached, weary manner of so many old black men in movies. Those men whose only purpose is to allow a sinful white man to find and redeem himself (think Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption or the kindly black bartender who wins over Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl).
At this point, an observer wouldn’t be blamed for thinking things couldn’t get much stranger than a universally reviled and disgraced governor appointing someone to a Senate seat that he allegedly tried to sell off, Congressman Bobby Rush emerged from the press galley. Everyone was confused as the former 1960s radical and Black Panther congressman from South Chicago (Obama’s district, in fact) stood behind the podium and began to speak. Rush gravely intoned that Burris would be the only African-American in the Senate and directed to the press: “I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer.”
We tend to expect shamelessness from politicians, but Rush’s race-baiting was exceptional. It’s also, hopefully, the last, dying breaths of an entire school of politics that may be soon irrelevant.
Rush’s strategy was obvious: turn the black community against Senator Harry Reid (who has publicly declared that the Senate won’t seat Burris) and force through Burris’ appointment, thus placing Burris in his debt. Continuing, if that included some trivializing of America’s shameful history of racial violence, then so be it.
Racial appeals, both explicit and coded, are as old as politics itself. When deployed positively, they are totally legitimate. For African-American politicians especially, it makes sense to appeal to a sense of racial solidarity because white voters are less likely to vote for a black candidate. And since black politicians are basically limited (at the national level) to special majority-minority districts (districts where the majority of the population is associated with an ethnic minority) specially carved out to ensure a baseline level of black representation in the House, it’s only logical that the candidates would recognize their special appeal to African Americans. But this entire mode of politics is incredibly dangerous and can quickly get out of hand.
Steve Cohen is the Congressman from Tennessee’s Ninth district and is one of two white representatives from majority-minority districts. In the 2008 Democratic primary, he faced Nikki Tinker, a well connected black lawyer and member of the Ford family political machine, in the Democratic primary. Tinker and her supporters faced an uphill battle to unseat the popular incumbent, so they turned to Jew-baiting.
Tinker’s campaign made two television ads: One accused Cohen of visiting “our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet … he’s the only senator who thought our kids shouldn’t be allowed to pray in school,” and another put Cohen’s picture next to that of a hooded Ku Klux Klan member. Since they had no substantive argument against Cohen, the Tinker campaign and its supporters doubled down on the worst type of atavistic identity politics. Flyers were distributed in churches saying that “Steve Cohen and the Jews Hate Jesus” and one minister who supported Tinker flatly declared that “He’s [Cohen] not black and he can’t represent me, that’s just the bottom line.” On Election Day, Obama condemned the attacks and Cohen went on to win the vote by an embarrassing 79-19 margin.
The ridiculous floundering of Bobby Rush and the desperate anti-Semitism of Tinker is indicative of a larger trend of the old black political leadership fading away into irrelevance and parody. Since black congressional representatives are essentially congressmen for life, they are rarely held accountable by the voters and do not have to build up a record of policy accomplishment to get re-elected. This disconnect from their constituencies was evidenced in the 2008 Democratic primary when many prominent Black congressmen – Charlie Rangel, John Lewis, Stephanie Tubbs Jones – endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton, despite Senator Obama having won the vote in their districts by massive margins (Lewis would eventually endorse Obama). Bobby Rush, who defeated Obama in a 2000 Democratic primary, even endorsed Obama’s opponent in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, Blair Hull. I guess Rush didn’t find African-American representation in the Senate as particularly important a mere four years ago.
The argument for having a system that ensures a minimum number of black Congressional representatives was that it was essentially impossible for African-Americans to win anything more than a majority-minority house seat. Until non-black America showed that it could support black politicians, politicians would have to tinker with the system to ensure some basic level of black representation. After all, there have only been three black senators since the Reconstruction, and before Hurricane Obama hit our shores, a black president was something you saw on 24, not a prospect anyone seriously considered.
With Obama in the White House, however, the tried and true strategy of crude appeals to racial solidarity will become less and less effective and a new black leadership will have to win elections based on their ability to govern. We are already seeing a new crop of black elected officials – Cory Booker in Newark, Adrian Fenty in Washington, D.C., Artur Davis in Alabama – who are disconnected from older black power structures and are instead are making a name for themselves as independent, competent policy wonks.
Although Rush’s defense of Burris and his subsequent theatrics were to be expected, the fact that his campaign to defend Governor Blajogevich by dredging up the darkest chapters in American history has fallen flat shows that even those who Rush claims to represent are tiring of his brand of politics. Let’s hope they aren’t the only ones.