Black Agenda Report, by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The nation’s First Black President has made it abundantly clear that he wants New York’s First Black Governor to forgo election next year. In choreographed leaks to the press, the White House threw its weight to David Paterson’s most prominent Democratic challenger, state attorney general Andrew Cuomo, who maintains close ties to the Administration and has raised twice as much campaign money as the incumbent. (Then Lt. Gov. Paterson assumed the top spot when Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a sex scandal in 2008.)
BAR has no favorite in this dispute, since Paterson and Obama are ideologically indistinguishable. Rather, the president’s unprecedented bullying of Paterson should represent a challenge to those African Americans that supported Obama because, in the words of crusading New York City councilman Charles Barron, “I just want to give a brother a shot.” Now, the only “shot” that “brother” Paterson will get at election in his own right is the coup de grace to his temple administered by President Obama.
When the white people have left the room, most African Americans on the Left, Right and in-between will confess that their support for Obama is rooted in race – a default position that has become dysfunctional with the advent of Obama and a whole crop of corporate-friendly Black politicos.In the past, race-based electoral loyalty served Black people rather well – when it was reciprocal. But Barack Obama harbors no such loyalties; Paterson was deemed a weak candidate, so he had to go. see
