Jim Crow Caucus
New Jim Crow, same as the old Jim Crow.
Photo from theroot.com
I don’t think it should go unspoken that a Black, mixed race Woman is the vice president elect of the United States and one unhappy circumstance from being placed in the position of acting as the president of the United States.
Those of us “libral” voters might tend to overlook, or downplay, this historical event but I guaran-damn-tee you the Insufferable Boor, his insipid Congressional supporters and his tried and true believers are very much aware that America stands on the precipice of not only having a woman in control of the nuclear codes, but having an ‘Other’ in the White House as Commander-in-Chief.
Just to remind you, America has never once in more than 240 years had a woman elected to one of the two highest offices in the land.
Kamala Harris is remarkable on her own. But she is also remarkable because her being on the winning presidential ‘ticket’ with Joe Biden is unprecedented during the age of unprecedented behavior.
I never thought I would see a Black man elected as president and then I heard Barack Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention about there not being ‘red states or blue states’ and I began imagining the impossible might happen. We expected great things from a man who echoed Dr. King’s rhetoric and spoke with just as much certainty and gravitas, but the country was a wreck in the year he took office. Just as it always is after wolves are allowed access to the henhouse for unverifiable amounts of time.
I used to joke that not long after Barack Obama was sworn in he was whisked away to an underground bunker and told in no uncertain terms what he could and couldn’t do. What he could and couldn’t lobby for. What he could and couldn’t say. Besides the economic crisis, he was hemmed in from the beginning by an unseen force.
The Tea Party formed not long after he took office and the conservatives took an ugly turn further right. As far as conservatives are concerned it couldn’t be a coincidence that community activist and communist both begin with the same seven letters. As a former community activist, Obama clearly was a communist.
Obama’s election was so unlikely - he was Black.
He was a community activist with ties to more radical community activists.
His middle name was Hussein. We had just spent the nation’s treasury destroying a nation in order to kill another Hussein.
He was the offspring of a man from Kenya.
He was Black. Had I mentioned that? His wife was Black. His kids were Black.
But he was also an image-breaker. An iconoclast. And, as we learned later, some of the Insufferable Boor’s voters voted for Obama. They had to. There was no way he could have won otherwise. They wanted change. They hoped for change.
But the change many people wanted did not come.
Those of us who are not hardcore conservatives did not do the work during the Obama years. We let the opportunity to create change slip away. We probably thought someone like Obama with his meteoric rise and golden tongue could do it without our help. He’d charm Congress into seeing things our way.
We also believed America had turned a corner on race. I doubt very many Black people believed this, but we who live in a lily-white universe allowed ourselves to be lulled into complacence. “We elected the first Black man for president - which none of us saw coming in our lifetimes - we can rest on our laurels!”
During our laurel-resting conservatives ‘stole a march.’
The Tea Party was to the conservatives what The Resistance has been to the liberals. They were politically active up and down the ballot and they were a major thorn in the side to politicians who did not see things their way. The Birtherism conspiracy theory regarding Barack Hussein Obama’s birthplace emerged during this period and there is no way not to connect this with every other effort to make Black people in America second class citizens.
Just as there is no way to not see what some members of Congress are doing right now as just another voting rights and civil rights skirmish. About a dozen conservative senators and around a hundred conservative representatives form what many of us are calling the “Jim Crow Caucus” want to nullify vote counts in districts in swing states where minorities are the predominant voters. They will be objecting during the Electoral College count tomorrow.
Their plan is to gum up the works, but my understanding is that the worst that could happen is that they wind up appointing Nancy Pelosi as the place-keeper president from now until January 21st when Joe Biden would take the mantle of our 46th President of the United States. At that very moment, the Insufferable Boor will become the nation’s 46th worst president and - hopefully, eventually - become America’s first president-inmate or president-fugitive.
Some of the members of the Jim Crow Caucus - like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley - are jockeying for position with the conservative base - that cannot come to grips with diversity, multiculturalism and the future - for presidential runs in 2024.
Some of them are knee-jerk reacting by doing something that is in their political DNA - displaying their racist bonafides and playing to the crowd.
All of them prefer authoritarianism over democracy, and none of them can imagine a smart, engaging multiracial woman like Kamala Harris as president.
There is little in the wind about it right now, but it’s in the back of their minds.
And that, in my opinion, is why they are pulling out the stops.
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This is making the rounds on social media. Edward Norton (yes, “The Fight Club” Edward Norton) posted this keen observation on the 20th of November.
I’m no political pundit but I grew up w a dad who was a federal prosecutor & he taught me a lot & I’ve also sat a fair amount of poker w serious players & l’ll say this: I do not think Trump is trying to ‘make his base happy’ or ‘laying the groundwork for his own network’...
...or that ‘chaos is what he loves’. The core of it is that he knows he’s in deep, multi-dimensional legal jeopardy & this defines his every action. We’re seeing 1) a tactical delay of the transition to buy time for coverup & evidence suppression 2) above all, a desperate endgame.
His ‘turn card’ bluff will be an escalation & his ‘River card’ bluff could be really ugly. But they have to be called. We cannot let this mobster bully the USA into a deal to save his ass by threatening our democracy. THAT is his play. But he’s got junk in his hand.
So call him.
I will allow that he’s also a whiny, sulky, petulant, Grinchy, vindictive little 10-ply-super-soft bitch who no doubt is just throwing a wicked pout fest & trying to give a tiny-hand middle finger to the whole country for pure spite, without a single thought for the dead & dying.
But his contemptible, treasonous, seditious assault on the stability of our political compact isn’t about 2024, personal enrichment or anything else other than trying to use chaos & threat to the foundation of the system as leverage to trade for a safe exit.
Call. His. Bluff.
Faith in the strength of our sacred institutions & founding principles is severely stretched...but they will hold. They will. He’s leaving, gracelessly & in infamy. But if we trade for it, give him some brokered settlement, we’ll be vulnerable to his return. We can’t flinch.
Also, this can’t be good. Support Truthout.org while you’re there. William Rivers Pitt has been doing a bang-up job since the days of Air America.
One in Three US Rivers Changed Colors Between 1984 and 2018
