Okay I will be the first to admit that among a vast majority of African Americans proclaiming oneself a Republican would be the 11th deadly sin. However, I think that this election cycle has created a unique set of circumstances which could prove to be fertile ground to nurture and give birth to the Black Republican. Now two things would have to happen for this to occur: first the Democratic Party would have to remain on the self destructive and divisive path that the campaign has taken in recent weeks and second, and much more difficult, the Republican Party would have actually have to take steps to encourage African Americans to join and convince African Americans that the Republican Party has found the desire to be a party of inclusion, while this may be difficult it is not impossible. They could start by actually have something other than old guys standing behind their canidate at press conferences. If an African American is too big of a leap, we could start with a few women, maybe even a few Hispanic men.
You might ask what the Republican Party and black people have in common. Well, African Americans are by nature conservative on most issues except social ones, this puts black voters on very common ground with moderate and liberal Republicans. I have quite of number of friends who I tease as being undercover Republicans. I will not mention there names here to in the interest of protecting the guilty. These are black people who will vote for a moderate Republican in a local or even statewide election but would never admit that to a pollster. I was even more surprised though to find that some of them were actually undercover Regan Democrats!!! I actually think that it would be a good thing for our country for both parties to become more diverse not only ethnically but ideologically. Who would have thought that you would see a day when the most heated competition was for the white male vote and we all understand that competiton for your vote means at least lipservice to your concerns. Many African Americans had already begun to feel that the Democratic Party took our vote for granted and that has been ramped up during the course of this election. Conversely, I believe that if the Democratic Party could find a way to really pay attention to the concerns of Latino voters and make real strides to addressing those concerns that we would see more Latino Democrats. If anything this race has shown us that you cannot paint any group of people with one paint brush. Latino's may not have had their agenda pushed forward as much as they would have liked by the attention that the primaries in California and Texas garnered. The one thing that country now knows is that the concerns of Latino's in Miami and Texas and California are not the same, moreover the young generation of Latino voters think differently than their parents. The same is true of African Americans, we may share a common ancestry but we have divergent concerns and issues. I would love for our vote to not be taken for granted and actually have issues that concerns us directly listened too. Maybe if a few more of those undercover Black Republicans came out of the closet, the DNC would do more to heal this race/gender divide that is opening up. I know that if I was a Democratic Party leader the fear of a mass migration of either women or African Americans to another party would keep me up at night. Lately, I have heard Libertarians making pitches which could definitely appeal to some of the people who may feel wounded after the DNC convention. Their first challenge is having someone other than Ralph Nader represent them. This is were I take a stroll down memory lane, in a movie this would be the memory flashback. Ralph spoke at my law school graduation from Tulane University. This is only memorable because he railed on for almost two hours about the over concentration of lawyers in the world and the evils of the legal system. There may in fact have been some good points in the midst of that mess of a speech but quite frankly on the biggest day of your life you don't want to hear that stuff (read****). So due to my personal post traumatic stress syndrome that I associate with Ralph I may not have the ability to be impartial.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Birth of the Black Republican
My Take on DiMaio v. the Florida Democratic Pary and the DNC
I know that it won't make the traditional list of things to do in Atlanta, but if you are in Atlanta you should definitely make time to stroll through the halls of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals located at 56 Forsyth Street. The grandeur of the courtroom with it's moldings, massive windows, and carved ceilings is truly an impressive sight. Unfortunately, they do not allow cameras in the courtroom and I am too lazy to go browsing the Internet for photos. I was in the 11th Circuit to hear the oral arguments in the case of Victor DiMaio v. the Democratic National Committee and Florida Democratic Party. The guy (Appellant) who brought the appeal is an active democrat from Tampa, Florida, Hillsborough County, who filed his suit prior to the January 29, 2007 primary. I had the opportunity to speak to him and he was a nice guy who seemed to have sincere intentions. The District Court in Florida dismissed Mr. DiMaio's case with prejudice for lack of standing (basically he was the wrong person at the wrong time) which prevented him from refiling his case. To over simplify the issue: at the time that Mr. DiMaio's filed the case he had not suffered any harm or damage because the primary had not occurred yet and he had not voted. In my opinion the District Court should not have dismissed this case with prejudice because once the election had occured and the Appellant had actually voted then he would have had a better case evidencing damage and consequently standing. I believe that this techinical problem with the case is actually the most important issue, however, it is the underlying facts surrounding the possibility of the Florida delegates not being seated that has drawn the national spotlight. The Court comprised of Justice Tjoflat, Justice Marcus and Justice Vinson heard the case and Counsel's arguments on standing which were brief and quite frankly uncompelling. There was a rush to get to the sexy stuff, an Equal Protection Argument. The oversimplification of this argument is that the National Democratic Party treated the democratic voters of Florida differently than democratic voters in other states, but then came the first body blow. The Appellant had to admit that the Florida Democratic Party never went to the National Democratic Party and asked for permission to hold it's primary on January 29, 2007. Then there was the admission that at some point in 2007 the National DNC made an offer to the Florida party to run a caucus primary which the DNC would pay for, moreover this offer was not made to any other state, notably Michigan. Kinda makes the Equal Protection Argument fall a little flat. Oh and by the way the State of Florida was not a party to this suit, which left me feeling as if all the talk about the Republican lead Florida legislature creating the problem was mostly rhetoric to explain having started a small campfire and found yourself in the middle of a forest fire you can't control and now you need someone to blame because you can't go back to your friends and tell them you burned down their tents.
The Florida Democratic Party did not escape completely unscathed but the court noted about ten minutes into their argument that they had made their case. This left about 10 minutes on the clock which went unused, in the world of appellate argument, that is like calling the football game at half-time.
You would have to have a crystal ball to guess how the court will rule, but given that it will likely be 4 -5 weeks before the court makes a ruling, I don't know if it will even matter in time for this election. I would put my money on the 11th Circuit finding that the Appellant did not have standing but that the case should not have been dismissed with prejudice, but rather that the case should have been dismissed without prejudice. This would allow the Appellant to re-file his complaint. I also predict that the court will not rule on the merits of the case, but the political pundits have mostly been wrong all year so I will be in good company if I am to.
