There’s a particularly obnoxious diary on the rec list right now by Brooklynbadboy that is probably the most aggressive of the recent trend of racial minority diarists and the occasional front pager crowing about the shifting demographics of the American left and how this makes some subgroup or other — but mostly Latinos and African Americans — kingmakers in the Democratic Party. Some authors, like the absentee landlord of the site, manage to do this with a reasonable amount of decorum. Others, like BBB, dress it up with a stunning amount of condescension and outright racial venom that might be appropriate if he was addressing Georgia Republicans, but which is at the very least ill-advised if one is addressing fellow party members one would like to remain fellow party members.
It also doesn’t work that way.
Look, what the ongoing demographic shifts mean isn’t that anyone gets to call the shots on the left, it just means that the day when white guys like me could call the shots is over. The left — and many decades from now, the whole country — has simply become a coalition of minorities where no one is in charge, but we all have veto power.
No one gets the Democratic nomination without the support of African American Democrats. No one gets the Democratic nomination without the support of Latino Democrats. No one gets the Democratic nomination without the support of white Democrats. That’s the reality
It’s mathematically possible that any two could turn on the remaining one and force a candidate through. The chances of that actually happening approach zero, but even if it did happen, it would only alienate the voters that candidate would need to win in the general. It’s possible that a Democratic candidate without broad internal support could take the White House, but only if a substantial number of Republican voters crossed the aisle. (Some Sanders supporters believe this could happen for a Sanders candidacy, but despite my personal enthusiasm for Bernie, I’m just not seeing many hard-right mouth-breathing rednecks feeling the Bern from my perch in rural Tennessee.)
BBB and his fellow shit-stirrers are quite right: there is no road to a Democratic presidency that does not lead through African American voters. What he fails to appreciate is the corollary: there is no road to a Democratic presidency that does not lead through the white progressives he holds in such contempt.
Now, please do not think that I mean to tar black Democrats with the broad brush of a bigoted bully like BBB. He’s just doing what bullies do and sucker punching people who mistook him for a friend instead of taking the fight to real — and real dangerous — enemies. And please don’t think that I’m siding with the other handful of entitled white dickheads who are demanding that black Democrats justify their choice of candidates. I find their arrogance sickening. (Respectfully asking is fair, and probably something we should be doing routinely to better understand each other.)
What I am saying is that we have arrived at a place where none of us can take any of us for granted. It does not mean that anyone gets to dictate terms. We have seen plainly in the last several elections that all of the major Dem factions are quite capable of making good on their threats to stay home on election day in numbers large enough to make the Republicans happy. What it means is that we — and our candidates — have to start hashing out coalition deals well in advance. No one will get everything they want, but dig this: if everyone doesn’t feel they’re getting their fair share, none of us are getting anything but a Republican jackboot on our necks.
White progressives are not getting anything without black and Latino Dems, and vice versa. Hillary supporters are not getting a Democratic president without Bernie supporters, and vice versa. And I hate to say it, but none of our varied factions have enough equanimity that they will not respond to feeling shit upon by staying home and forcing all of us to deal with the supposedly unthinkable horror of President Trump. I’m not even sure any of us should: a totally reliable voter is an ignorable voter.
So somewhere between here and the conclusion of the primaries, we are going to have to rebuild every last burned bridge on the left. I don’t like the prospect of making nice with you assholes any more than you like the prospect of making nice with us assholes, but we are going to be one big, grudgingly cooperative family of assholes or else the other side is going to thoroughly remind us what real assholes are like.
And that’s not going to change for three or four generations.
If it’s any consolation, I don’t like it any better than you do. But it is what it is.