Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

If anyone needs an object lesson in why the Democratic Party -- handed a series of scandals and embarrassing revelations by the Republicans -- is still perfectly capable of losing election after election, or barring that, becoming low-cal Republicans, I give you Vernon Robinson. Robinson is a Black Republican standing for so-called "liberal-Democrat" Brad Miller's North Carolina 13th District Congressional seat.

Here is a taste of strategic theory culled from military science: If you stay on the defensive long enough, you will be pinned down and placed under siege. Then you have a choice: break out or capitulate. Following up, here is an excerpt of the first two of Vernon Robinson's stands on "the issues":

Securing Our Borders

Our current immigration policy is a treasonable threat to both public health and national security. We do not need a wall to secure our borders. Five thousand Marines and 100 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) can do the job tomorrow. We must also make English the official language of the United States. Any local government or college that interferes with immigration enforcement should lose its federal aid. Finally, automatic citizenship for those born here must be replaced with the baby adopting the citizenship of the mother. These steps must precede any guest worker program.

Anyone wishing to work here must return home to apply, agree to be deported for any violation of law, carry a biometric ID card at all times, and have their employer sponsor bear the cost of any public services used (courts and health care). Massive criminal and civic penalties for hiring illegals must be put in place. As your Congressman, I will work to ensure your children don't have to learn a second language to get a job and that you won't have to press 1 for English any longer.

Defending Marriage and Traditional Values

I will always fight for what's right and you will always know where I stand. We cannot redefine marriage as any grouping of adults and children. I will vigorously oppose homosexual marriages, marriage-lite proposals and adoptions, as well as "gay" Scoutmasters. While my opponent believes that those in a drag queen parade and Rosa Parks are both civil rights leaders, I will join the dozens of Congressmen who sponsored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that provides that "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."

Make fun of Uncle Tom all you like. Tom knows how to get paid. And make fun of Republican operatives all you like. They know how to use Democratic hypocrisy and opportunism to build a wedge.

As the joke goes -- Republicans run on what they believe, and win. Democrats run on what they believe will win elections, and lose. The Republican Party is based fundamentally on three core values. (1) White supremacy. (2) (Clerical) Patriarchy. (3) Imperialism. The Democratic Party is based fundamentally on three core values. (1) Color-blind equality. (2) Gender-blind equality. (3) Imperialism. Since color-blindness is a kind of narrative-mythology to ignore the real existence of white supremacy as a structural reality in American society, it leaves the structural subjugation of African America, Hispano-Latina America, Native America, et alia, intact. Since gender-blindness is a kind of narrative-mythology to ignore the existence of patriarchy as a structural reality in American society, it leaves the structural subjugation of women (and consequently non-heterosexuals) intact.

It is considered lumpy to bring this up in what seems a perennial election year, when so many have again pinned their hopes on an electoral miracle to halt the decline of the American Empire and all its illusions both moral and material, but the struggle between Republicans and Democrats is no more oppositional than any other sibling rivalry. Ask yourself why both parties consistently throw their weight behind so-called "free trade" agreements, that are little more than a recipe for loan sharking and extortion on an international scale. Ask yourself why both parties fight to see who can give the most support to Zionist expansionism and international outlaws. Ask yourself why they fight over Roe vs. Wade, which guarantees only an abstract "right" to seek an abortion, when the Democrats could have fought for Harris vs. McRae, which would have guaranteed funds to any woman seeking an abortion -- making the promise of equal access a material, and not an abstract, reality. Ask yourself why Democrats have put more people of color in prison than Republicans, when incarceration combined with felony disfranchisement and Republican local-district gerrymandering have re-constructed Jim Crow on a new foundation.

Gay marriage and immigration are brilliant strategies for Republicans, because they know Democrats will mount a feeble, half-assed response to their assaults in an attempt to compete for a sliver of the homophobic and xenophobic base that's out there... and the Republicans also know how these two issues cut across racial-national lines. There is no shortage of gender-backward Black patriarchal preachers fag-baiting from the pulpit, who have leadership within the only social institutions over which Black folks have any real control. And the Republicans have sniffed out growing white and growing Black anti-Hispano-Latina xenophobia (based on competition for shitty jobs) as surely as a shark smells blood-chum.

The Republicans in North Carolina's 13th District don't have to win the Black vote. They know that African Americans rightly fear Republicans. That's the only reason they stay with Democrats after a series of betrayals no less stunning that the treaties signed with our First Nations. It's defensive. It's the wrong end of siege warfare. No one has figured out how to break out, so the Democrats engage in recurrent capitulation. That's how they signed onto this disastrous and immoral war in Iraq, and why they refuse to stop it. The Republicans in North Carolina's 13th District only have to get enough of the Black vote to shave Brad Miller's majority. Because neither Brad Miller nor any of the leadership of the Democratic Party -- as evidenced in their shameful silence on the racist affront to Cynthia McKinney -- is going to act like leaders and tell hard truths to the masses of people. They can't. They are part of the same class as the Republicans. They still get invited to the same fetes, no matter how much we or anyone else suffers with the results of this sibling rivalry.

Haitians set up burning tire roadblocks. Bolivians shut down capital cities by blocking the roads. Immigrants engage in boycotts and work stoppages. We take our Prozac, and we vote, wringing our hands a bit as we go home about those big, mean Republican bullies. And Vernon Robinson gets paid.