Dana Blankenhorn

Jim Crow America and the Second Battle of Atlanta

A lot of ink is being spilled asking what’s the key state in the 2020 election.

Is it Florida? Ohio? Maybe Wisconsin?

No. It’s Georgia.

I wrote almost three years ago how Republicans are taking the Jim Crow approach to power.

Before Jim Crow, most southerners were black. They held power during Reconstruction and should have held power after it. Instead, Southern whites destroyed their franchise and murdered blacks with impunity. This injustice system existed for almost 90 years, giving southern whites the same level of federal power, as their fathers and grandfathers held under slavery, when black people were counted as 3/5ths of a white person. Under Jim Crow, black people were still counted, but they didn’t count.

The Trump strategy is Jim Crow writ large.

The late George Carlin might say we’re all Trump’s niggers now.

Eyes Wide Open

When idealists and pragmatists are scared, they react differently.

Idealists want what’s best for everyone. When attacked, we ask why and seek compromise. When the attacker rejects compromise, we panic.

Pragmatists will look to protect themselves. They’ll look for the enemy’s weakness and seek to take them down.

The difference between white and black Democrats is just that. White Democrats are idealists. We can afford to be. Black Democrats are pragmatists. They won’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Or even the barely OK. 

My black neighbors never loved Joe Biden. They supported him for practical reasons. He was Barack Obama’s “Uncle Joe.” Polls said he could win. But they also knew that Biden is a white liberal, always ready to compromise, to say “yeah, but,” to seek the good in everyone. Even a snake like Trump.

The failure of other white liberals to back Biden shook these voters hard. They were left adrift. They have one great desire, which is to win, to get rid of Trump. They’re also much more realistic than we white liberals about what might follow a Trump victory.

It’s not that Trump is a Nazi. It’s not that he’s a Confederate. These are the clothes liberals like to put on Trump supporters. That’s not what Trumpublicanism is about.

It's Jim Crow.

The Avalanche

Between the Iowa caucus debacle and the rocketing stock market, a lot of Democrats spent the first week of February in a very depressed mood.

Rising stock prices, and low unemployment, have the Trump approval rating as close to 50 as it can get. He is certain to be even more unhinged, and unbound, by the Republican Senate’s refusal to even censure him for his theft so far.

Lincoln said it best. “The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid.” 

The tide is still running out on Trumpism. Demographically, it stands no chance. In terms of issues, the same. It’s only the market that’s with him. That, too, may be about to change.

That’s because the stock market, like the housing market, is made up of assets.

Generation Gap

I’m writing this before any caucuses, before any primaries.

But it’s clear to me what the story of the Democratic Primary is going to be.

The Generation Gap.

It’s back, baby.

The mystery of Bernie Sanders’ rising in January’s polls, to the top of the Democratic stack, is all about the Generation Gap. It’s now wider than it’s been at any time since Bernie here was on the other side of it, in the 1960s.

Iowa voters are well aware of how they're talking past one another. While Bernie was beloved of the young folks on Tuesday, Pete Buttigieg, the youngest candidate in the field, was favored by the olds.