The most vulnerable identities make easier prey for the calculations of those promoting Clinton. The same CBC types who endorse Clinton also supported a Loretta Lynch appointment, while reminding Obama that "African-Americans across the country understand the significance of the Supreme Court." Her appointment "could have an impact on turnout in the election," advised another CBC member, since "African American women have played a major role in our electoral process. They vote at a high rate." For example, in the 2016 Ohio primary black women were 13% of the Democratic primary electorate compared to 8% for black men. While white men and women broke 3-2 respectively for Sanders and Clinton, black women voted more than 2-1 for Clinton.
This sage election advice from CBC elders would be more useful for Sanders than for Obama. Obama is finished with elections now so he was able to give the Republicans a white male plutocrat stripped of any significant identity politics much different from the rest of the white male majority would be sitting Judge Garland on the Supreme Court. But African American women defeated Sanders in South Carolina. He did not learn from that experience so they did the same in elections that followed throughout the South right down to the final southern primary in North Carolina where Clinton won 81% of black women voters, who were in turn 19% of the primary electorate. As a result Sanders is losing what he should be winning in delegate strength.
Sanders' advice to Obama should therefore echo the CBC leaders who supported Lynch, a lesson which Sanders has hopefully now learned the hard way. Sanders needed to be seen informing Obama that he should select a qualified African American woman nominee, but one who is not "marinated" in plutocracy such as CBC's PAC funders would support. This good advice would reach an important part of the primary electorate who still do not feel they know Sanders as well as they think they know Clinton.
Going to bat for a progressive nominee to the Supreme Court who happens to also be a qualified African American woman could change that sense of unfamiliarity. Sanders needs to do something to give black women a good reason to vote for him rather than for a Jim Crow candidate who helped foster the current civil rights crisis by advocating tough policing and welfare cuts in the 1990's. There is no reason to discredit the views of veteran CBC members on this subject.
Obama's Kabuki performance of appearing to conquer Republicans by pummeling them with the name of a white male plutocratic nominee could exacerbate the split now being acted out in the primaries between Sanders' newly revived anti-plutocratic progressive wing and the old Clinton/Obama plutocratic wing of the Democratic Party, which some identify as the Party . Clinton has predictably praised Obama's Court choice, with the added flourish of claiming that "millions of people's lives [are] in the balance," if the Republicans stand pat on their constitutional prerogative to deny consent. It seems likely that what is a combination of perhaps the most important and most timely Supreme Court appointment in US history will not be overlooked by voters as many other appointments to the Court have been. But so far Sanders has avoided making the Court an issue in the campaign.
At the same time that Sanders seems to be ignoring the importance to his agenda of appointing a progressive to this swing seat, he has encountered difficulty demonstrating to black voters what West instructs in his article titled "Why Brother Bernie Is Better for Black People Than Sister Hillary": that Sanders is "more progressive than not just Clinton but also Obama--and that means better for black America." Intellectual leaders like West, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Michelle Alexander have not only criticized the failure of the Clintons' deeds to match their words on issues important to black voters, not to mention to Haitians and Africans. They have also exposed the Clintons' active disservice to blacks and their Jim Crow views.
West points to contrasting evidence of authenticity. In the 1960's, when Clinton was a Goldwater youth who attended the Republican Convention, " at this same moment in history, Sanders was getting arrested for protesting segregation in Chicago and marching in Washington with none other than King."
Cornel West was not alone in taking this powerful message to South Carolina and to Michigan. He pronounced: "This election is not a mere campaign; it is a crusade to resurrect democracy.... Sanders is the one leading that crusade." West is walking his talk in the crusade, with firm knowledge of who are the first victims of a democracy in decline. This is the year to separate Identity Plutocrats and their gravy trains from black progressives like West who know they are fighting a crusade to rescue democracy itself for those structurally oppressed groups who most depend on equal democratic rights to protect themselves from politically manufactured hate.
But Sanders has yet to find an effective means for communicating this message to black voters.
Reaching Out
The time has arrived for Sanders to take a firm step that recognizes the centrality to his campaign of the same identities that Obama was advised to exploit for the benefit of plutocracy. Nomination of a Loretta Lynch, or any other qualified African American woman, would invoke what have been the two most important insurgent groups for democracy ever since the early 19th century. Instead of playing politics with these identities for the benefit of plutocracy, Sanders can explore the same talent pool for democratic authenticity to rescue progressive politics from Obama and Clinton Identity Plutocracy.
Sanders needed to act quickly to make it clear in advance that he would withhold his "consent" from any Obama nominee of any identity who will not pass the litmus test of opposition to the Supreme Court's "money is speech" alchemy of Buckley v Valeo. He did not, but there is still time for him to make his views known after McConnell again directly advised Garland himself that the Senate would not consent to any Obama nominee.
Josh Earnest claimed that there had been a concerted effort to "reach out beyond the White House to consult with interested parties" on this decision about filling the essential swing seat on the Supreme Court. All citizens are presumably "interested parties" in their government. This is strange phrasing from Obama's mouthpiece, given how the plutocratic Court has for most of two generations now served mainly a narrow set of special interests, instead of the interests of all Americans. The highest Court is an essential, and currently reigning part of government in this era of extreme judicial supremacy, which is the cause of the current political polarization over replacing Scalia. This revealing slip by Earnest may refer to Obama's "reaching out" to professional activist allies to assist him in diverting attention to the Kabuki theatrics of partisan nomination politics and away from the plutocratic politics of his nominee. But the "consult with" part of the statement suggested Obama's intentions to nominate someone who will reliably continue the Court's service to plutocratic special interests. Obama referred to his consultation with representatives of "an array of interests" before deciding upon his "consensus" candidate, the mild-mannered Mr. Garland.
One of the most legitimate of "interested parties" for such consultation should be Senator Sanders. As Senator, Sanders has a constitutional role in providing "advice" to the president. By winning or virtually tying blue and most purple state primaries from Maine to Minnesota and Michigan to Colorado, Sanders has become the most prominent Senator on the Democratic side of the aisle. With his chances of reaching the White House significantly improved since his historic Michigan primary upset, notwithstanding his lackluster results in the Ides of March contests, this swing appointment could very well be his to make.
Notwithstanding these significant legitimate interests, Sanders' current advice, or future preference, for the swing seat on the Court remains unknown. Obama has not asked for his advice. Clinton, when asked about the appointment to the Court in the March 9 debate, rightly replied that "I think this is one of the most important issues facing our country right now." But then the "the living avatar of pay to play politics" deftly sidestepped the Roberts' Five money-in-politics cases. She instead mentioned Bush v Gore (2000) as emblematic of the Court's overreaching 5-4 decisions.
Clinton went on to recite Obama's diversionary Kabuki talking point du jour: "I fully support President Obama's intention under the constitution to nominate a successor."
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