Cobb

This is the season of a kind of wacky pluralism that fits well in a television season crammed with 'reality TV'. Here in Cali, there are at least two and probably three maybe four black candidates for Governor. The LATimes put together a very nice interactive website that showed their pictures and quotes. For most of them you could also listen to their voice. Ignoring Gary Coleman, I found the black candidates quite un-loony, and one black woman who I actually would vote for. But as I've said before, voting is the lowest common denominator of politics, I think I do a lot better writing and thinking about policy and politics which is why I put Vision Circle together. But inside that LCD and mass appeal, are inevtibably going to be votes that people will count and analyze. This will be one of the last major elections when 'the' black vote can be taken for granted.

That said, my biggest hope is that Sharpton and Mosley-Braun net about 30% of the black vote. I hope that most of the black vote goes to Wesley Clark because I am becoming convinced that he is the man to beat, and I sympathize most with blackfolks who are in the services because they've dealt up close and personal with the geopolitical turds that the GWBush White House has squirted into the world. I think it would be poetic justice for the armed services to vote Bush out, and vote Clark in. But I think the white vote should go to Clark as well.

As for Sharpton and Mosley-Braun, I still believe it is important for that segment of the black left to make its mark on the Democratic party in such a way that their policy considerations will be taken seriously. But it's very hard to tell whether either of the two will gather enough electoral college votes for it to make a difference at the Democratic Convention in Boston. So who can deliver that? For my money it would be Mosley-Braun, who is a veteran of getting votes. Sharpton, on the other hand is a strange creature of New York politics and stupid media who would rather pretend that no other black politicians, save Jesse Jackson, exist. Sharpton knows this, which is why he should start dating Ariana Huffington as soon as her marriage crumbles. On the other hand, why wait?

It's rather sad that of all the people we focus on in these days of economic crisis, the black politician I'd deem most capable of dealing with such matters is resigning under a cloud at the NYSE. Carl McCall is on the fast-track to has-been land. And yet there is no question that a man with his connections could do a world of good for some Democratic hopeful. Alas, when America talks about black politics (as if America understood), they generally mean the populist politics of the proles. We in the Old School resent that, of course, being as we prefer jazz to pop, we understand that everything that's of quality is not necessarily prepared or consumed in mass quantities. Of course, once you are satisfied with Ornette Coleman, it doesn't make much sense to compare Jay-Z to Mary J. Blige. More power to those who do, however.

Speaking from this chip off the monolith, I understand the value of having Schwartzenegger win rather than Tom McClintock in California. So I would cast my vote for AS even though I consider him inferior to.. well too many people to mention. I would advise blackfolks to do the same because I'm convinced that Bustamante cannot win. Even if he did win, it only gives McClintock and the right wing of the Republicans more hope than they deserve. And in case you haven't figured it out already, it's more important to me that black voters swing Republicans to the center by bombing the right wing, than it does that black voters swing the Democrats into Sharptonville.

So the question of primary importance is how to declaw the right wing, not how to empower the Left. This is America, the Left is dead and it is incapable of playing hardball with the big boys. There is no magic Negro Lever that is going to do in 2004 what King did in Memphis in 1968, which is to scare the bejeezus out of the everybody.

Donna Brazile must already be working with Clark. There's the correct path. Get black about that.