Gush and Gore
2000 brought us Bush and Gore, or as some called it, Gush and Bore. The most memorable thing about their three Presidential debates and their campaigns in general was how similar they were on the issues, how little Democrat Gore tried to draw out major areas of disagreement with Republican Bush. "The greatest tragedy of the 2000 presidential race, from the vantage point of the African-American electorate, was that the black vote would have been substantially larger if the criminal-justice policies put in place by the Clinton-Gore administration had been different. . . more than 4.2 million Americans were prohibited from voting in the 2000 presidential election because they were in prison or had in the past been convicted of a felony. . . In effect, it was the repressive policies of the Clinton-Gore administration that helped to give the White House to the Republicans." (Marable, pps. 88-89)
Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court had much to do with the Bush victory, building upon the deliberate removal from the voter roles of literally tens of thousands of eligible black voters by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris in Florida. And, over three years later, the Democratic Party has done virtually nothing to challenge that disenfranchisement or even to make it an issue during this 2004 election year.
"Neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party, as a political organization, is interested in transforming the public discourse on race, though for different reasons. The Republicans deliberately use racial fears and white opposition to civil rights-related issues like affirmative action to mobilize their conservative base. The national Democratic Party mobilizes its black voter base, in order to win elections, but in a way that limits the emergence of progressive and Left leadership and independent actions by grassroots constituencies. . .
"What we need is to revive the vision of what the Rainbow Coalition campaigns of 1984 and 1988 could have become. A multiracial, multiclass political movement with strong participation and leadership from racial minorities, labor, women's organization and other left-of-center groups could effectively articulate important interests and concerns of the most marginalized and oppressed sectors of society. It would certainly push the boundaries of political discourse to the left. . ." (Marable, pps. 89-91)
2004 Racism Watch is being established for the explicit purpose of helping broad sectors of the progressive movement get organized and prepared to speak up and take action in opposition to the use of racism during the Presidential and other electoral campaigns this year, and to make issues of racial justice a part of this year's political debate. We hope that 2004 can be the year that we make visible an explicitly multi-cultural network of activists who understand the obligation to confront racism whenever and wherever we find it. We can put those who use racism for divisive and destructive ends on the defensive and help to get better candidates elected, while building for the future.
