Black powerbrokers vie for New York City

A small coterie of aging Harlem powerbrokers gathered in a secret hideaway this week and cut a deal that will send reverberations throughout New York City.

According to sources, Sen. Charles Schumer has agreed to vacate his office prior to the next election to run for governor in 2006.

Though Schumer has consistently denied having any gubernatorial ambitions, the source says he is stepping down because "he is miserable being senator and hates playing second fiddle to Hillary Clinton."

Schumer has agreed to pick former State Comptroller Carl McCall to fill his vacancy. McCall was defeated by Gov. Pataki in the 2002 gubernatorial race and has recently been on the hot seat for approving a $190 million payout to Dick Grasso while serving as the Compensation Committee chairperson for the New York Stock Exchange. McCall subsequently resigned his position. In return for picking McCall, the Harlem powerbrokers will drum up black support for Schumer's gubernatorial bid.

If the deal goes through, McCall would be the only black American in the Senate. That prospect has the Democratic Party and the Harlem Cosa Nostra (most notably Charlie Rangel and Percy Sutton) salivating. The Harlem gang figures that if they can push McCall onto the national stage, they can position themselves at the center of the black political landscape. It's a position they haven't been in since the Jesse Jackson scandal fractured their leadership, opening the door for Rev. Al Sharpton to ascend as the most prominent black voice in the country.

Tellingly, they did not include Sharpton in their deal. The two camps have long waged a behind-the-scenes turf battle. That battle intensified when Sharpton encouraged Adam Clayton Powell IV to run against Rangel this fall.

When the New York Times recently proclaimed that Sharpton had failed to unify black voters behind his presidential bid, the old guard saw an opportunity to pounce. Now Rangel is smiling wide (incisors fully revealed) at the prospect of empowering McCall and usurping Sharpton in his own back yard. But there is a scent of desperation wafting about them. Charlie Rangel is no longer a lock for re-election. Changing racial demographics in his district have eroded his traditional power base. If they fail here, the old guard may fall by the wayside. If they win, the Harlem gang will be right back at the apex of black power in New York. That means that Hillary will have to go through them - not Sharpton - when she runs for president in 2008.

Or as financier Harold Doley put it, "The political pimps want Sharpton out of the way and are trying to make a power play."

For his part, Sharpton scoffs at the plan: "I would have preferred seeing someone younger (than McCall) that can build seniority in the Senate. It makes more sense for the state and for our community if you're going to put someone in the Senate for a six-year term, he should be someone that can easily do two or three terms. McCall is 70 years old and the idea of him doing two or three terms is ludicrous."

This is a reserved response from a man who is about to slug it out with Rangel and his gang for the title of black powerbroker par excellence.

We must not forget
that Charlie Rangel
is the clintons' "boy."
This power play
for the exploitive control
of the black underclass
reduces ultimately
to the clintons vs. Sharpton.
(The clintons'
Moseley-Braun maneuver
to marginalize Sharpton
didn't work.)

The Curious Candidacy of Carol Moseley Braun:
an Extension of clinton drag and drop and legacy of lynching: by Mia T, 2.20.03

If a white person was walking down the sidewalk, a black person had to get off the sidewalk so the white person could walk by. There were laws which prohibited Blacks to look at white people in the eye, and a black person could be sent to jail for "assault (reckless eyeballing)."

... Blacks who dared to challenge the rules were lynched by the thousands. Men and women were lynched. Lynchings were public events and white men, women and children went to watch Blacks being tortured and burned or hanged... Whites literally got away with murder for killing "uppity" Blacks.

Historical Backdrop to FREEDOM SONG

"When 'Queen Hillary' walks down the hall, you're not supposed to look at her. You're actually supposed to go into an office if there is one nearby. She doesn't want staff 'seeing' her. And I know she sure as hell doesn't want to meet you or any other staffer!" "You have to be kidding me!" John replied. "No, we got the word at a staff meeting. It's true. Look around. Do you see anyone else in the hall?" John looked around and sure enough people were starting to emerge, like prarie dogs peeking out of their burrows after a hawk had flown past.

Gary Aldrich, "Unlimited Access"

"I'm doing my chores for Hillary Clinton."

RON BROWN (ON HIS COMMERCE-DEPT CRIMES) TO NOLANDA HILL

"I will not go down alone."

RON BROWN (DAYS BEFORE HIS DEATH, ON HIS PLEA AGREEMENT WITH THE DOJ) TO BILL CLINTON

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."

Ironically, the logic of this pronouncement by Martin Luther King would, in short order, be refuted by the fact of his own lynching. King's hope was misplaced and his reasoning was circular. The resultant rule of law relied on by King presumed an adherence to the rule of law in the first instance.

Adherence to the rule of law is not something normally associated with the clintons. Moreover, racial and ethnic disrespect, intimidation, exploitation and hate have always been a fundamental clinton tactic and the reflexive use the "N"-word and other racial and ethnic slurs, an essential element in the clinton lexicon. When the "first black president" and his wife ran Arkansas, the NAACP sued them for intimidating black voters at the polls.

But it is the clintons' refinement of the DNC drag and drop that is, arguably, the most insidious and repugnant application of their special brand of race-hate politics.

Drag and drop is a vote fraud technique by which unwitting, unwilling and/or illegal voters -- typically inner-city blacks and other minorities -- are literally dragged into the voting booth and told where to mark the "x" -- often multiple times per election. Drag and drop does not merely undermine and corrupt our system of government. Drag and drop is not merely illegal and exploitive.

Drag and drop is racist and dehumanizing.

Calculating a black man's worth to be 5/3 of a vote is no less racist, and arguably more so, than calculating his worth to be 3/5 of a white man; the latter is demeaning, but the former is dehumanizing.

In the senate race against Rick Lazio, it is widely understood that the drag and drop, (followed by the OLD ANGLE / NEW SQUARE / OVAL OFFICE SCHEME ) was clinton's vote fraud technique of choice used to overcome her low poll numbers, high personal negatives and consistent public failures.

"UPPITY" BLACKS AND THE CLINTONS

The Ron Brown death and the clinton legacy of lynching represent the pernicious endpoint, but the history of clinton race-hate politics is replete with a reflexive 'disposal' of 'uppity' blacks from to Marian Wright Edelman to Lani Guanier to Jocelyn Elders to Carl McCall...

To former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson. The clintons' anointment of their man, Terry McAuliffe, to the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee didn't merely force Maynard Jackson to the back of the bus. It pushed him off.

Two Degrees of Segregation: Al Sharpton, Donna Brazile, Carol Moseley Braun and the clintons

The announcement that intellectual and ethical lightweight, Carol Moseley Braun intends to run for president raises the same fundamental question that hillary clinton's looming presence does: "What the hell is this moribund loser doing in the political arena, anyway?"

In order to better understand the easy entry of Moseley Braun into democrat field, clinton-clinton precedent (president!) and the field's increasingly circus-like quality notwithstanding, one must consider the precipitating acts of Al Sharpton and Donna Brazile.

The Al Sharpton candidacy, by definition, disturbed both the clinton calculus and literati sensibilities, inspiring an immediate if ineffectual Tawana-Brawley deathblow attempt by leftist media. Sharpton's response was swift and sure. He warned that the next time the media asked him about Tawana Brawley, he would invoke the clinton scandals and the media's apparent lack of interest in same when questioning hillary clinton. (Surely the clintons' rapes and other predations would trump this quaint little hoax...)

Sharpton's Harlem office effectively burned to the ground the next day--an accident they say--but he was not deterred. The media, however, apparently were; they quickly buried Tawana Brawley beside Juanita Broaddrick, somewhere in that dark recess of expediency called access journalism.

If the clintons wanted Sharpton out because of the sheer embarrassment of him before his salvo, they now would be satisfied with no less than Sharpton's head. Donna Brazile was to neutralize (decolorize?) Sharpton by creating black favorite son candidates in every state of the union. It seems that Brazile ultimately thought the better of it, warning that dem dissing was demonstrably dumb, that Sharpton could, a la Jesse Jackson, lure crucial black voters back into the democrat fold.

So how then to siphon off the black votes that will go to Sharpton? Enter clinton lackey, Carol Moseley Braun, nothing more than a cynical extension of clinton drag and drop and legacy of lynching.

details: clintonism and the theology of contempt

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.