LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of our favourite, and most honest, critiques of contemporary electoral politics for the last few presidential election cycles has been provided by Lumpenproletariat acquaintance Bruce Dixon and his colleague Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report.  In this recent article, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor, Glen Ford disabuses us of false illusions associated with voting Democrat, in an article relevant to not only the black electorate, but to all electorates trying to make ends meet in the USA.

“So, let us not talk falsely now/The hour’s getting late…” —Jimi Hendrix vis-à-vis Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower“

“All Along the Watchtower” interpreted by Jimi Hendrix

Messina

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BLACK AGENDA REPORT—[24 FEB 2016]  “Black Power” has been turned on its head on the electoral front, put at the service of corporatists like Hillary Clinton. “Paralyzed by fear of the White Man’s Party, Black voters find a false sense of power in clustering around the perceived ‘winners'” on the Democratic Party menu. “The mantra is, effectively, ‘All Power to the Democratic Party!'” – brokered, of course, by the Black Misleadership Class.

The Bogus Power of the Black Vote Within the Confines of the Democratic Party

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“The March 1 contests in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee will seal the deal, allowing warped practitioners of Black electoral power politics to claim Hillary owes her nomination to African Americans.”

I can hear it now: “For the third time in this century, Black voters (‘the hands that picked cotton’) are picking a president of the United States.” Such inanities will ring out from every bastion of Democratic Party hegemony in Black America in celebration of Hillary Clinton’s sprint towards coronation as the Third Black President (her husband having purportedly been the first).

Although the young, white Sandernistas may not grasp it yet, their doomed quest to transform the Democratic Party “from below” has failed to move the voting bloc that makes up the actual “bottom” of the party: the bedrock 25 percent that is Black. In South Carolina, Blacks will be a majority of Democratic primary voters on Saturday – a “demographic buzz saw,” as a Washington Post headline put it, with Clinton sweeping all the African American age cohorts.

Although Bernie Sanders garnered 84 percent of Democrats aged 29 and younger in overwhelmingly white New Hampshire, and beat Clinton by 21 percentage points among voters age 30 to 45, he is polling at only 35 percent among Blacks age 45 and under in South Carolina, and losing to Clinton 78 to 12 percent among Blacks over age 45, according to NBC’s numbers.

Entrance-exit polls show Clinton won 76 percent of the Black vote in Nevada. The March 1 contests in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee will seal the deal, allowing warped practitioners of Black electoral power politics to claim Hillary owes her nomination to African Americans.

“They tune Sanders out, because their main purpose for voting in national elections is to keep the White Man’s Party, the Republicans, out of the White House.”

Statistically, they will be correct. But Bernie Sanders, whose domestic politics is a much closer fit with the historical and current Black world view, is not losing to Hillary because of his positions on the issues, or because Blacks trust in Clinton’s honesty and integrity (huge numbers don’t, in every demographic). It is also no longer the case that most Blacks are unfamiliar with Sanders’ platform. African Americans are, by some measures, more tuned in to the “news” than whites (although Blacks trust the media less). But they tune Sanders out, because their main purpose for voting in national elections is to keep the White Man’s Party, the Republicans, out of the White House, and believe Clinton has a better shot. Almost everything else is bullshit.

There is a direct and dialectical relationship between this historical Politics of Fear, as we have described it in these pages, and the hegemonic domination of a calcified and infinitely corrupt Black Misleadership Class whose primary loyalty is to the Democratic Party, which for two generations has been their route into the corridors of money and power. They “deliver” that vote to the highest bidders in a party structure that is under the commanding influence of finance capital and its representatives (currently, the many-times-over-bought-and-paid-for Clintons). The mantra is, effectively, “All Power to the Democratic Party!” – brokered, of course, by the Black political class. Paralyzed by fear of the White Man’s Party, Black voters find a false sense of power in clustering around the perceived “winners” on the Democratic Party menu.

Learn more at BLACK AGENDA REPORT.

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“All Along the Watchtower” composed and performed by Bob Dylan

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[Last modified 22:54 PDT  1 MAR 2016]