The Pink Herring in Obamaland
By William Pleasant
© 2009 Thunder Publications, Inc.

5/29/2009

So Barack Obama nominated the first Latino to the U.S. Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor is no Hispanic version of Thoroughgood Marshall. She is no civil rights crusader, just a by-product of the New York City Democratic Party clubhouse and, particularly, a protégé’ of New York’s hack U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Sotomayor is brown, but she is safe as any other pick Obama could have made from the current stable of white Democratic Party-hatched U.S. Appeal Court Judges. Despite her “minority” credentials, Sotomayor’s entire legal career has been spent fleeing controversy and, by extension, sidestepping the concrete demands that poor and working people–especially New York City Puerto Ricans–have made upon the very racist state and federal court systems.

The Republicans, eager to shoot down Obama’s nominee or at least leave the half-Black (or half-white) president bloodied, have already begun to sharpen their knives for the coming senatorial confirmation hearings. In the meantime, they made what amounted to diversionary attack moments after Sotomayor was named. Trotting out their crown clowns, Rush Limbaugh and the unemployed ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich as spokesmen, the Republicans charged that Sotomayor was a racist last week. Why? Because of a 2002 statement where she asserted that she would better address civil rights issues than a white judge because of her social experience as an oppressed Latina. The Obamacons went for this bait, stumbling over themselves to apologize for Sotomayor’s “poor choice of words,” regardless of the historical FACT that white judges have been–to a MAN– the authors of ALL atrociously discriminatory rulings (state and federal) in this country for the past 233 years. In other words, Sotomayor was correct! But right means fight in the Obama universe, where Clinton-era retreads call the shots in the name of the Obama Movement but in the interest of the long discredited Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) faction of the party.The DLC strategy of appeasing the Right Wing, rather than confronting it, is in full effect today. And that is why Sotomayor’s nomination, as limp noodle as it is, may probably go down in flames before September. The racism charge against her was just a feignting gesture. The Republican Party’s real weapon of mass destruction against the Sotomayor nomination and all Democrats in the coming mid-term elections is none other than the PINK HERRING. The DLC lacks the will or the wit to fight it.

The pink herring is, of course, the issue of same-sex marriage. The Republicans actually have no other issue at their disposal. Abortion is finished, except for the gunplay. The Iraq/Afghan military fiasco is a political albatross. Issues of torture and preventive detention are already winding their ways through the court system. Affirmative Action is the de facto law of the land, although it’s called something else these days. And embracing big business, as the socio-economic saviors of the realm, sells– in the midst a 1930’s category depression–like a punctured condom. The old Republican rant is just a whimper these days.

But the precedent has already been set. In the 2004 federal elections, the Republicans stampeded their base to the polls for George Bush by raising various constitutional amendments on the state level banning same-sex marriages or “defining” marrige as an exclusively heterosexual affair. Hundreds of state-level Republican candidates benefited from this ploy. And of course, George Bush was granted an undeserved lease renewal on the White House. In 2010, the Republicans will wave the pink herring again, but this time with an eye on just holding on to what they’ve got. Provincial dimbulbs, outright homophobes and assorted religious cranks will come a’runnin’ and a’slobberin’ to the polls to kick some queer ass. That is the strategy.

The opening shots will come in the Sotomayor confirmation when the Republicans put the question of same-sex marriage to the nominee. Does she support it? Yes? No? The Obamacons will then strain themselves to explain why “no” is a poor choice of words or “yes” is a poor choice words. But the real poor choice is Obama’s determination to refuse to take a stand on behalf of the political base that put him in office, and who overwhelmingly support the right of consenting adults to make whatever non-criminal contract they deem fit, including the sexual contract called marriage.

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