And there it is. Yet again. Endlessly again.
Here is the leader of House Democrats, a former Speaker of the House, addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors about the latest Trump immigration plan. Said Leader Pelosi:
“Let me just say what I said last night: that plan is a campaign to make America white again.”
In making such a baldly racist pitch Pelosi illustrates vividly not only her party’s horrifically racist past but indicates that for Democrats and progressives, in true Shakespearean style, the past is prologue. The saying, of course, originates from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It is also carved on the National Archives Building down the Hill from the U.S. Capitol building. Not accidentally the entrance to the Archives Exhibit Hall, where one will see displayed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights — is on the Washington boulevard named for the nation’s governing document — Constitution Avenue.
Recall the Constitution? That would be the document into which a notable predecessor in Pelosi’s party — a Democrat named Roger Taney — tried to make slavery a constitutional right. In his capacity as a Democrat-appointee as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Like Pelosi, Taney applied exactly the same test to deciding the case ofDred Scott v. Sandford as Pelosi is applying to illegal immigration — skin color. Neither Taney nor Pelosi saw or see human beings as human beings, unique individuals every one of whom bleeds the same color red blood and whose brains are gray. What both Taney and Pelosi judged — and judged is the word — is skin color. In fact, as the political careers of both make plain, skin-color judging played and still plays a central component in the Democratic Party of their respective eras.
Leader Pelosi makes her statement that the Trump immigration plan is “a campaign to make America white again” — without the slightest hint that all she has to do is arrange for herself and deputy Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to step aside and — presto — the third ranking Democrat in the House — South Carolina’s James Clyburn — would be in line to be the first black House Democratic Leader. And, if Democrats did capture the House in November, Clyburn would be the first black Speaker of the House.
But curiously and alas, the white Leader Pelosi is not about to yield her post to the black Mr. Clyburn. Imagine that.
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