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Friday, August 18, 2006
Black middle class forges its own identity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s not a promise, but if all goes well it’ll not be necessary to mention a tired, old subject — Cynthia McKinney — again. Well, until she speaks, as she did Tuesday in Augusta, insisting on an end to crossover voting and runoffs, which she considers a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
“How is it that I could win election and get kicked out, win election and get kicked out because Republicans can cross over and vote in the Democratic primary?’ she was quoted by Kate Brumback of the Associated Press as saying at an Augusta event sponsored by the Rev. Al Sharpton. “If Republicans work that hard to get rid of me, I got to be doing something good for you.”
Runoffs absolutely should be kept. They violate nothing. And it is self-delusional to believe that Republicans were anything more than spectators in what remains the most significant Georgia political story since the Democratic Party’s swift implosion, following the surprising win by Gov. Sonny Perdue four years ago. The story of a seminal event, not fully detected in advance by anybody, is of the political transformation of the black middle class.
If one election could be said to be the dividing line between the era of “civil rights leaders” and the world to come, in which situational leaders emerge and fade as issues dictate, it was this one in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District.
The Latino community may develop, and probably will, with individuals, or a tiny few, designated by the media as spokesmen in the same way the media once decided that certain individuals — a Jesse Jackson, an Al Sharpton or Cynthia McKinney — were to be spokesmen or women for a people who lacked the voice or forum to speak for themselves.
We see it happening already. Latinos in leadership positions, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, are expected to think alike on issues such as illegal immigration or education or government programs.
With that election, the high-profile “truth to power” celebrities, such as McKinney, Jackson, Sharpton and others of the old order, just became yesterday’s news. They have lived long enough to see the cutting edge of the new day dawning.
Like former Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy in his waning years, they still have the potential to cause trouble or to focus attention, but the end is nigh.
It was the runoff that hastened the process. Otherwise this incumbent, any incumbent, has a material advantage against any challenger.
The incumbent generally has the largest bloc of voters, the best organization and the most money. In a crowded field, the incumbent wins. So while the majority may prefer somebody else, without the runoff an incumbent with a diehard band of followers is always advantaged.
Runoffs allow the majority to speak. Mc-Kinney led 47.1 percent to 44.4 percent in round one. She lost in the runoff, 58.8 percent to 41.2 percent. Almost 60 percent preferred somebody else. And yet, had the race been over after the first round, the majority would have been denied .
Incumbents, even the Republicans under the Gold Dome who are no fonder of opposition than are the Democrats they replaced, may very well consider eliminating the runoff. Voters should resist. It serves a purpose. It assures the election, or the nomination, of a candidate the majority supports.
Yes, it’s an additional expense. But it’s an expense easily affordable.
In her Augusta remarks, McKinney blamed her defeat as well on electronic voting. She sees in them the same evil lurking as she sees in, well, lots of stuff. Irony of ironies, it was her fellow Democrats who rushed to spend $54 million to buy the machines just before the 2002 election because their voters were having trouble following instructions on paper ballots.
And, as they saw it, they were leaving votes on the table at a time victory margins were narrowing. Sure it would have been more prudent financially to wait until machines could produce the paper trail she and I want. But this was about political advantage.
“It’s critical that you know that you have no way of being sure that your vote was counted,” she told the 200 or fewer people who attended Sharpton’s National Dialogue and Revival for Social Justice in the Black Church.
The black middle class that spoke Aug. 8 is not one that can be pigeonholed or stereotyped. It’s complex, nuanced, sophisticated with a hundred voices and altogether unlikely to see politicians as their conduit to wealth or security.
McKinney sees the world in conspiracies. They don’t. In a day and time past, her worldview and her spin might have been theirs. In a day at time past.
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