Vision Circle

Broken Clocks

A recent piece about Al Sharpton drives home what is bankrupt about American politics in general. We've become so focused on individual personalities and political parties that we've lost the big picture--people are elected to serve in order to get certain policies enacted. As much as Al Sharpton's critique of the Democratic Party is on point, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Take a look at Sharpton's web page.

Do you see a HINT of a policy program?

Now take a look at Howard Dean's page. I don't care about the extra stuff...we can expect that Dean has more resources to provide bells and whistles than Sharpton does. I'm talking specifically about policy platforms. From what I can tell, Sharpton DOES NOT HAVE ONE. So why in the hell should we vote for him? Coates seems to argue that somehow Sharpton's campaign is going to move the Democratic Party to the left, increase black political activism, and bring the disaffected back to the party. How this is going to happen without public policy is beyond me.

Now at some point I expect that Sharpton is going to develop a policy program. But by making the policy program a secondary aspect of his campaign, Sharpton is making the campaign about one thing...his personality. And if black people need to get away from anything...it's the politics of personality. We don't need individuals...we need policy programs.

The Democratic Party HAS lost its way. Given that the Republican Party began as an attempt to envelop enslaved Africans within the American polity, we can say it has lost its way as well. But I'll be damned if we solve the problem by permed out reverends talking about identity rather than policy. Though I don't really expect more from Sharpton, we should all expect more from Coates and other analysts covering his campaign.