Temporarily demoted to probationary black man status.
Congressman Artur Davis’ vote against healthcare reform has had some folks questioning whether he’d rather mortgage his political future these days than represent the people who put him in a position to entertain a run for Governor, prompted his mustachioed Democratic rival to suddenly be as in favor of a public health plan as any latte-sipping, cock-sucking, weed-smoking San Francisco, California, liberal, and, most recently and importantly, led to important and critical questions about his blackitude by the Rev. Jesse Jackson:
We even have blacks voting against the health care bill. You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man.
And by “blacks” Jackson means, well, Artur Davis who was the only Black Congressional Caucus member to vote against the bill in the House and thus, in Jackson’s parlance, earn Multiple Black-Man Status (MBMS).
In response, Davis attempted to repel and celebrate Jackson’s comments at the same time and restated that he supports healthcare reform, just not the particular politically realistic and most likely as good as we’re going to get with the current population of dumb politicians and sheeple being considered on Capitol Hill. Political experts even say that his split with Jackson, along with his vote against a reform that is unpopular in Alabama because we like fucking ourselves to death with that rusty metal pole and we’ll lick our lips for you because you like it when we do it like that don’t you big daddy?, is likely to strengthen his chances of being elected Governor next year.
All that being said, I’ve been consistently underwhelmed by the Davis campaign — and not for those “Oh it’s because he’s a Democrat and I’m a nacho-eating neocon” or the “Oh and he’s black and I’m one of those Huntsville/Mountain Brook racists who talks around hating black people as if it’s some sort of medical or social condition like AIDS and crime and boy how I hate AIDS and crime” kind of reasoning you might find elsewhere in the Alabama Weblogosphere.
My concern has been that the Davis’ alleged campaign staff have not shown any signs of being particularly capable or fully cognizant of the raining racial hellfire they will have to cope with if he wins the Democratic nomination next year.
There’s running post-racial, then there’s running in a happy-happy la-la version of Alabama that doesn’t exist where it’s a matter of fact we either can ignore or that we don’t have to get to yet so we can make stupid moves like letting the Internet determine our campaign platform.
Given my background, I tend to see these things in terms of emotionless political calculus, and I imagine Davis does to some extent as well. My read is that Davis probably supports healthcare reform — maybe even in its most liberal yet logical form — but trusts his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate to at least be able to do some approximation of getting the job done without him so can cover himself to perhaps – switching back from the political to the ideal – do greater good in Alabama from 2011 onward.
Unfortunately, reading things in political terms tends to desensitize you to what’s right an awful lot. If there’s a general election and a broad portion of the voting population die-hardedly believes that skullfucking homeless people to death is the only way to instill values and rejuvenate economic development — and please, Alabama Republicans, don’t take this as a commentary on your party’s platform right now — and you needed at least a good chunk of those people to form a winning coalition, a hardened political “expert” like myself would recommend you give at least a little qualified support to doing some awful things to homeless people for the good of our economy and to preserve morality for our children’s future.
That’s because while most human beings know socially and morally what’s the right thing to do, most of the time they are too politically and personally stupid and immature to do it. It’s how jackasses who have no fucking idea what the hell they’re doing (not to mention candidates who actually believe government can be run as a for-profit business as if they are the same fucking thing) get elected all the time. It’s why President Liberal-Black-Man-Raised-In-A-Poor-Interracial-Household-And-Worked-As-A-Community-Organizer has to play to the bigots feelings about The Gays (TM) instead of letting them experience the empty, sexless joy of marriage or openly die in our latest pointless military quagmires.
People, especially voters, are petty little children who refuse to drink their milk even if they know it’s the only thing keeping all their teeth from falling out. And Alabamians are among the biggest, toothless babies of them all.
So yes, Artur is taking the right stance to appeal to the stupid, immature, anti-progressive majority of Alabama voters — you know, the same people who are still totally too stupid, immature, and anti-progressive right now to vote for him because he has a skin tone a shade darker than mother of pearl.
Oh and by the way, Artur, your home base, poor black people such as those in your poor black congressional district, who I will remind you are — at least according to stereotype — seen as only slightly more electorally reliable than “politically-motivated” college-aged liberal youth, might remember how you voted pretty blatantly against their interests and could decide not to show up records numbers that Black Belt counties will obfuscate through voter fraud on Election Day 2010. That too.
(Again, I don’t think they’re even the slightest bit prepared for that whole racial hellfire thing.)
So let’s break it down.
Is Davis the most palatable gubernatorial candidate there is right now? Considering that the other candidates are an irrelevant, unprepared mustache man who has suddenly had a Saul-to-Paul moment on healthcare reform, a quietly unaccomplished allegedly accomplished non-threatening White Republican who has the physical appeal of a gray-at-the-temples middle-aged man that horny White Republican women would love to see in one of those bathtubs in the Cialis ads, a fool who fucked-up managing your kids’ college money and has limply attempted to absolve herself by blaming the money, an empty-headed Jesus freak retread, a bored, unappealing Tuscaloosa dermatologist, Tim James, and an anonymous far-right dumbfuck whose entire last-place campaign has morphed into a giant fuck you to the sitting lame-duck governor for forcing him out of a job most Alabamians don’t care about or understand, I’d say so.
Does he have to work harder and be more perfect than any of us can imagine — even if he’s amply more qualified and trustworthy than the rest of these jackasses — because he’s a black man running for a statewide elected office in Alabama? Hell yes. A hundred times more than any of the fine young Democrats working on his campaign realize — even he knows it in no uncertain terms.
Is it fair? Fuck no.
Is it reality? Until further notice, unfortunately so.
Did he just sell out the people he represented and thus cast doubt as to whether he’s the grown-up Alabama needs to make it a better place?
Yeah. He did.
And he should have known better than that.
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A handful of reasons why Artur Davis actually lost, in no particular order:
