Freedom Line Blog

Ashton correctly notes below that the Democratic Party is incapable of discovering “diversity” anywhere other than in the melanin count or chromosomal pairings of its members, beyond which measures the party is remarkably homogeneous. I want to add one note to that, which plays into my longstanding irritation with the raw deal that African-Americans get from the Democratic Party.

While Debbie Wasserman-Schultz crows about the greater diversity in Democratic ranks, what goes unspoken is that the process by which minorities get elected to the House of Representatives actually thwarts their ability to move into higher office. Consider: in the outgoing Congress (the 112th), there are 44 black members, or just over 10 percent of the body. Blacks are 12.6 percent of the nation’s population, but there’s no iron-clad law by which we should expect them to achieve elected office in perfect proportion to their share of the population. Still, this is pretty close.

Now, how many black senators are there? 0

How many black governors? 1, Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick

When you consider that the House often acts as a feeder to both of these higher offices, the discontinuity only gets stranger. So what’s the cause?

Of the 44 black House members, 26 (59 percent) come from congressional districts where the majority of the population is black (as a bit of a trivia on the side, it’s worth noting that there’s one district — the Tennessee 9th, located in Memphis — where a majority black population is represented by a white member, liberal Steve Cohen). An additional four come from districts where the black population is over 40 percent. And the representatives who come from districts with smaller black populations include some of the most left-wing members of the House, including Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Keith Ellison.

The problem is that Democrats have long agitated for lawmakers to gerrymander these minority-majority districts as a means to ensuring electoral success for black candidates. That’s worked so far as it goes, but it’s also generated a generation of black politicians who have no experience appealing to anyone other than their fellow urban blacks. Since that group represents a small population in statewide races (even in Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of African-American residents, blacks make up only a little over 1/3 of residents), these House members end up being precisely the wrong kind of figures to obtain higher office. Indeed, it’s notable that Governor Patrick and President Obama, the two most prominent black public-sector executives in the nation, never served in the House (Obama lost a bid for the Democratic nomination in the First District of Illinois in 2000).

The vast majority of Americans agree that we should be striving for a color-blind nation. We’ve made remarkably brisk progress towards that goal in civil society for the past several decades. But, if anything, we’re lagging behind on the political front. Segregating black politicians from non-black voters is not the solution.

In a recent Freedom Minute video, we chronicled the decline in basic standards of decency and civility amongst America’s political class. And one of the examples we cited was Florida Congresswoman (and newly-installed DNC Chairwoman) Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Here’s one of Wasserman Schultz’s greatest hits, prompted when a television interviewer recently asked her about the Republican push to require photo identification at the polls in order to combat voter fraud:

[I]f you go back to the year 2000, when we had an obvious disaster and – and saw that our voting process needed refinement, and we did that in the America Votes Act and made sure that we could iron out those kinks, now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally – and very transparently – block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it’s nothing short of that blatant.

Even the verbally incontinent chairwoman had to walk this one back, later explaining that “Jim Crow was the wrong analogy to use.” But while such thoughtless mistakes can be expected from the congenitally inept Wasserman Schultz, former President Bill Clinton doesn’t have that excuse. Here’s what Clinton told a group of young liberal activists gathered in the nation’s capital today, according to Politico:

“I can’t help thinking since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we’re supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Clinton said at Campus Progress’s annual conference in Washington.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton added.

If Clinton wants to bask in the adulation of being an elder statesman, he ought to begin acting like one. He knows that saying Republicans across the nation want to suppress the vote is a baseless attack on the character of decent men and women. Republicans want to suppress voter fraud, a goal that Democrats profess to share (in practice, however, they’ve done little to effectuate it).

Debating the means by which we attain that end is an utterly justifiable pursuit. But tarring the opposition to score cheap applause from the Daily Kos’s farm team? That’s just not presidential. Of course, why start now?

Monday’s news cycle has been very good to two men who don’t receive a lot of sunshine in their lives these days.

The first is former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was in a New York City courtroom this morning to plead not guilty to the charge that he sexually assaulted a Big Apple hotel maid. While his circumstances are still unenviable, the media spotlight abandoned the French financier in favor of the equally prurient Anthony Weiner, the Democratic New York congressman who admitted at a press conference earlier today to committing every gross act you already suspected he committed. The irony must be galling to Weiner, who, had he followed Strauss-Kahn’s lead and pursued a career in French politics, would doubtless be up for a cabinet position after his recent revelations.

The second is Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman whose two-year tenure was marked by a parade of rhetorical gaffes and accusations of gross mismanagement. Steele, however, looks like a man with the message discipline of a Soviet apparatchik in comparison to the new DNC chairwoman, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

As our own Quin Hillyer has repeatedly (and persuasively) argued, Wasserman Schultz is a public official who elevates inanity to an art form. Prior to today, her most egregious exercise in vapidity had been her characterization of Paul Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare:

[Republicans] would take the people who are younger than 55 years old today and tell them, ‘You know what? You’re on your own. Go and find private health insurance in the health care insurance market. We’re going to throw you to the wolves, and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions.  ‘We’re going to give you X amount of dollars and you figure it out.’

Asinine and, as is now well-documented, totally wrong. But if Wasserman Schultz seemed to have found a floor for exhibitionist stupidity with that remark, she has now gone subterranean. Asked this weekend about the possibility of stricter state voting laws, this was the controlled implosion that ensued:

“Now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally — and very transparently — block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates,” she told host Roland Martin on “Washington Watch” this weekend [emphasis hers]. “And it’s nothing short of that blatant.”

Some remarks speak for themselves. But just a few notes for the gentlewoman (I suppose) from Florida:

1. The word “literally” only has one meaning. This isn’t it. No matter what Joe Biden has told you.
2. If Republicans actually were enthusiastic about Jim Crow laws, they’d have to take tutorial sessions from Democrats — who actually authored them.
3. On behalf of all conservatives everywhere … please do more media availability.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Hillyer:  To Run DNC, Wasserman Schultz Be Illin’
Ellis:  Gunrunner Scandal Beating a Path to AG Holder’s Door
Lee:  U.S. Tipping Point: 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes
Senik:  Bin Laden and “The End of the Beginning”

Freedom Minute Video:  Justice, At Last
Podcast:  Early Predictions on the 2012 Presidential Field
Jester’s Courtroom:  Momentary Baby Switch Not Grounds for Lawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

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