BROOKLYN, New York – Thursday night Democratic candidates for 2016, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, “got it on,” as they say, under all the hot lights and scrutiny of the day before a capacity crowd in Brooklyn, NY. USA. And to say that it was a heated debate between the two larger-than-life Democratic candidates would be an understatement.
It was doggy dog all night with both candidates experiencing scrutiny from the audience in attendance (in the make-shift style debate hall in a semi-abandoned warehouse in the New York City borough) to the journalists/hosts that moderate the debate for CNN & New York 1 to the candidates themselves as they traded barbs and jabs back and forth throughout the night.
And while some say that their was no clear winner or looser to emerge in Thursday night’s debate, the fallout from the debate or the narrative out of the ‘city so nice that they named it twice’ was that “Bernie Sanders denigrated the South and Hillary Clinton’s wins there in primaries and caucuses and when he was asked a specific question about the primary process and how it was really going in his opinion, he dodged the question”.
Lets be clear here for a minute: There is no question but that Hillary Clinton has done well in the South, all throughout this Democratic primary process for 2016 in fact, BUT lets look to the context and perhaps the method used for all those so-called “Solid South,” wins for Mrs. Clinton.
These states (highlighted in deep red on the map just above) are the States in the Union that make up the Southern most part of the Continental United States of America [excluding Alaska and Hawaii – highlighted on the map by squares on the bottom left hand side just above].
These are the Southern states, since the 1800’s and on here in America, that experienced and lived through, albeit survived, the Civil War’s Reconstruction period having undergone a political period known as the “Southern strategy” or the political as well as emotional appeal to Southern White Democrats to vote for Republicans in primaries, caucuses and general national election cycles (visa versa).
Disaffected and disgruntled whites after the Civil War felt that they had no place to turn, no opportunities would ever be presented to them, no chance for advancement or a better life.
In view of the Civil War these Americans had betrayed their country, went against the Union of the United States of America, when they went to war against their fellow (Northern) Americans. And even though the South, as we know it today, lost that war they were still thrown a bone, politically, by the “Party of [Abraham] Lincoln”.
Republicans strategized with Democrats in the Congress ‘that we’ll give you the South, politically, if you leave us alone in the North, Midwest and Western United States’.
Southern Democrats, in amazement, believed that they had been given a great gift. As a national as well as a Southern States and local political party got together and devised ways to punish not only the black man, but the poor white man as well, through poll taxes, Jim Crow Laws and literacy tests when it came to the people’s expressed desires to vote, hold and own land, etc…
“From 1890 to 1908, the white Democratic legislatures in every Southern state enacted new constitutions or amendments with provisions to disenfranchise most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites. Provisions required payment of poll taxes, and complicated residency,literacy tests, and other requirements, which were subjectively applied against blacks. As blacks lost their vote, the Republican Party lost its ability to effectively compete in the South. There was a dramatic drop in voter turnout as these measures took effect, a decline in African-American participation that was enforced for decades in all southern states….[All over the North]Editorial cartoons [such as this one featured above] from the January 18, 1879, issue of Harper’s Weekly [were seen] criticizing the use of literacy tests. It shows “Mr. Solid South” writing on the wall, “Eddikashun qualifukashun. The Blak man orter be eddikated afore he kin vote with us Wites.” – Taken from the Southern strategy Wikipedia page
In an unwritten deal in 1877 Republicans removed all federal troops from the South in exchange for the White House in the form of Rutherford B. Hayes v. Samuel J. Tilden. As a result Southern Democrats had a political stranglehold on the South until the Civil rights era of 1954 to 1968. And they expected to maintain power for a long time, that was until men like Vernon Johns and Martin Luther King, Jr. came along and forever changed the dynamics of protests for civil and human rights.
The undertakings of Johns and King (countless others) lead to the dismantling of decades of authoritarian rule, politically, through the subjugation of poor whites and blacks throughout the South. “Finally!” Many decried. “Someone that we can rely on to see us through to full freedom, justice and equality…[Voices for the voiceless.]”
Wrong!
Fast-forward to today, and some would argue that the Southern strategy is in full effect as many believe that this is what Hillary Clinton used to propel herself to a “comfortable lead” against her opponent Bernie Sanders via the African-American vote in the South.
We may not make the ‘Negro’ of today ‘stand on one foot and count to 100 backward’ or ‘spell soap backward’ or ‘read the star-spangled banner on a piece of paper upside down’, BUT that through things like “voter id laws,” “real id laws,” (Willie Horton political campaign ads) etc. (An as yet alleged kinder and gentler tone and tenor has emerged to the once usual hue and cry of old, “Nigger, nigger, nigger [the Klan is getting bigger]!” – Lee Atwater)
That the past is just prolonged that it is a matter now of semantics, of political correctness and so-called “political establishment” that rules are days now. And we should just excuse this dementedly sad history all away now because a black man has been elected president in this country.
And soon enough a woman will get the honor and privilege to be called the same, right? So. Case. Closed. Right?
Wrong!
Meet the unholy of political holiest that we have to thank for the Southern political strategy here in the United States of America. These are the ones that we have to thank for things like Jim Crow laws, [racial] Segregation, poll taxes and Literacy in the form of voter id laws that does noting but test the will and resolve of blacks and poor Peoples throughout the South for centuries in terms of the vote.
Through legislation and taxation and with the help of organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC this faux fo pas trinity, since Reconstruction on, has managed to corner the market and pigeonhole the American democratic process in both the South and the whole of America.
Republicans and Democrats from 1920 on have bought, sold and traded the American people, the American voter, for both political gain and power, but also for wealth and interests through the Southern strategy. Deploying and developing means, method, motive and opportunity to keep the American people under a type of authoritarian rule. In a kind of modern-day poll taxing-jellybean counting-read the U.S. Constitution backwards style body politic.
Confusing and putting the American people, the American voter, in a state of panic and disarray. And no two were better at deploying the Southern strategy (deploying chaos and disarray) than Richard Milhouse Nixon and George Cornelius Wallace, Jr..
Like the Ancient Mongolians (Chinese) teaching the Ancient Romans how to Crucify, Wallace and Nixon perfected the crucifixion of the American people via the Southern strategy. Preying on the fears of the common white man towards the common black man. And in their wake of evil we are hung on the cross daily by things like mass incarceration, youth unemployment, police brutality, human and civil rights violations, deportation, debtors prisons, prolonged and enhanced interrogation techniques, spying, lying, drone warfare and perpetual or endless wars (by proxy) in far away places that we don’t even know nor have we ever heard of.
For what? Money. Power. Greed. The fevered dreams of an elite and ruling class of people fulfilled.
The other night Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton met in Brooklyn for a twelfth time out of fourteen, reportedly, scheduled debates between the two Democratic candidates that are left.
Argument has been made, since, that Bernie Sanders is somehow excusing away the fact that Hillary Clinton won the Southern United States or the Deep South by an “overwhelming majority of the black American voter (something that Bernie Sanders himself would never ever be able to do because Bernie Sanders doesn’t know how to connect “properly” with black people and Hillary Clinton does, BECAUSE she is married to the “first black president this country has ever had” – and so it goes in implication),” and that IF she gets the nomination of her political party she will win the South by an “overwhelming majority” in a general election.
Depicting, somehow, a repeat performance of her husband, Bill Clinton’s, 1992 presidential campaign and his own Southern strategy in the form of the “Man from Hope [Arkansas]” and “I still believe in a place called Hope” Campaign theme(s) coming out of the 1992 Democratic National Convention.
And so therefore Bernie Sanders shouldn’t somehow ‘excuse away the once Solid South‘ for Democrats. Its happened before, and it can happen again. In this kind of R. Lee Ermey “Mississippi Burning,” Mayor remarks “our nigra were happy until you FBI men came down here” tail that wags the dog we gonna whip y’all in ta shape come hell or high water moment. ‘The South will rise again!’ And so it goes…
And Mrs. Clinton may well ‘Get Lucky in Kentucky’ and win the whole damn thing via the South, more power to her! But you must never ever forget that a Democrat running for the highest and best office in the land has not won in the Southern most United States of America since Bill Clinton, and that was without an overwhelming majority of the voting population there in a general election. – Not even the so-called ‘twice elected black man’ that’s in the White House now won the South with an overwhelming majority of the vote down there.
“Southern Strategy” Much?
–Rhett.
Say What News?! 