----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Consequently, since the 1980s, black politics has been faced with a
>conundrum: it has a leadership class that has institutional means
>but is unwilling to risk to them in order to mobilize its
>constituents. Freelance racial spokespersons have sensed this
>political timidity, but have basically used symbolic mobilization to
>mask a personalized racial brokerage that has no interest in
>effective, programmatic politics. Instead, practitioners are merely
>provided with "a seat at the table." In other words, unaccountable
>power.
-The point isn't just to accumulate votes, is it?
Well, actually, the goal is to mobilize black voters to turn out, to increase their power in a range of ways. The point is that incumbent majority-district based black leaders don't necessarily have an incentive to maximize turnout, if they are in safe districts, but folks like Jackson and Sharpton do have that incentive, to mobilize constituents, since their status is based on maximizing their vote based on black numbers. They come as close to the status of small parties in Europe, where they register their power by their vote totals each election.
It works poorly for third parties in the US, given the spoiler problem, but works well in primary races.
-- Nathan Newman