New Day or New Jack City?

The reports are coming in from Saturday's Shelby County Democratic Party convention and the news is mixed. Bad for Harold Ford, maybe bad for the Democrats in the longer term, good for Memphis Mayor Herenton, and possibly good for the Democrats down the road.

The best coverage comes from Jackson Baker in the Memphis Flyer. He certainly gives us the most detail. Democratic activist and Convention Coalition member LeftWing Cracker offers quite a bit more. Thaddeus Matthews chimes in too. The Commercial Appeal has a perfunctory summation that focuses more on the past than on the convention.

What was missing, and I would like to have read, is new Chairman Matt Kuhn's background, relationships and alliances. He wasn't the candidate of the Convention Coalition, but of the Herenton crowd. He's been around. Who are his former allies, his former candidates and his recent friends? What does he really bring with him? Will he act as the agent of change the CC wants, or to smother their efforts to serve the Herenton/Chism/Carson bloc?

My take as an outsider is that Mayor Herenton is solidifying his hold on the party. The Convention Coalition folks got their success only because Sidney Chism, Herenton's man, helped them. Do not doubt who will find himself in the driver's seat when the dust settles and things get back to business. While Baker reports the general unhappiness of the Ford faction, there seems to be no unhappiness with the Herenton people mentioned. That says something.

Baker notes, and so do commenters at LeftWing Cracker's blog, that the new Executive Committee of the SCDP is majority white ("...for the first time in decades," is Baker's formulation) as is the party Chair. This change will not be lost on black Memphis and will become a source of resentment and conspiracy. Listen to WDIA next week and see if the theme doesn't emerge that "white folks had to rescue the party from the corrupt black folks." Whatever the Convention Coalition's intention, that's the perception that will come about. I suspect, over time, the silent network of black racism will go to work and the CC folks will one day discover that they are no longer part of the decision-making process.

Harold Ford has just watched his race for the Senate get harder still. Even with the hardball (or dirty, depending on your affiliation) tactics of Upton and the Ford crowd, he lost pretty resoundingly. Heck, he couldn't even be bothered to attend the convention, which any politics watcher would say was a must-attend photo op and alliance building event. Rosalind Kurita, Ford's primary opponent, managed to be there, and she has no irons in this fire! Bad choice on Ford's part and this will certainly be used against him as the primary season rolls along. "If his home base won't support him, why should we?"

The whole Ford machine seems to be truly crumbling. The Commercial Appeal, in a separate article, even feels the need to point it out, though it can be fairly argued that their support for Herenton clouds their view. But when the family pins hopes on also-rans like Ophelia, trouble has come to River City.

On the gripping hand (ie. the third hand; it's a Larry Niven joke), the infusion of vitalising energy will help the party rebuild, provided that the CC doesn't find itself co-opted or racial animosity opens new rifts. For the Democrats that's a good thing. But, again, there's a lot of money (above and below the table) at stake here, a lot of players with their hands in the pot or trying to snatch their share, and some very profitable relationships being threatened. Never underestimate the willingness of the greedy to do what must be done to protect their money. Numbers don't always overwhelm corrupt leadership, especially when some of your allies are part of the corruption.

It depends on what happens with the ongoing Tennessee Waltz, the shadow that only lengthens and never retreats. If the indictees find themselves in court next year near election time, it will hurt the Democrats. If more indictments come down, and it hits Memphis & Shelby County as expected, it may cripple the Democrats. Notice some of the names not mentioned in any reports and their implication in future possible indictments.

Certainly the Republicans are behaving as though it will be a new season. They've latched onto the State Senate District 29 race like they think they can win that longshot.

Interesting days continue.

[Media criticism digression] I was amused to read the following in Jackson Baker's report:

Here are a few of the factors that, by the testimony of some of those voting for Kuhn on Saturday, led to defeat for Rep. Ford’s chairmanship candidate, the mild-mannered and generally well-liked Cocke, and, indirectly, for the congressman himself:

*Dissatisfaction with Ford’s increasingly conservative voting record and rightward-tilting campaign strategy. The two groups making up the Coalition are, in the long-accepted vernacular, “yellow-dog” Democrats, convinced that the chief cause of the party’s electoral reverses in recent years has been the accommodationist politics of over-cautious Democrats.

Notice there are no "that they say" or "referred to by opponents" or "some of those present" phrases here. Reporters and columnists (most definitely including Baker) use those kinds of distancing phrases to take the sting out of someone's positions or statements; it's a defanging technique. No "defanging" of criticism against Ford here; no sir. It's a reasonable assumption that Baker agrees with them.[End digression]

UPDATE MONDAY MORNING Blogger Memphis Blue comes out of hiatus to rail passionately about some of the points made above. I still think that for all the revitalising energy there is a new tension added to the local party's top layer that's going to have bad side effects.