I’ll be quite interested to see how New York Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs ends up after commenting on why he’s not endorsed the winner of the Democratic primary for nomination for the mayor of Buffalo, India Walton:
“Let’s take a scenario, very different, where David Duke, you remember him? The grand wizard of the KKK? He moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat, and he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which has a low primary turnout, and he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I don’t think so,” Jacobs said.
He continued, “Now, of course, India Walton isn’t in the same category, but it just leads you to that question, ‘Is it a must?’ It’s not a must. It’s something you choose to do. That’s why it’s an endorsement. Otherwise they call it something else, like a requirement.” [New York Intelligencer]
He has since suggested that the analogy, as caveated as it was, was offensive. The question, though, is why?
He explicitly excluded Walton from the entire category of whatever David Duke, an otherwise fairly pathetic KKK creature, may be representative; the entire point was to suggest that finding a candidate to be ideologically repulsive means a party chairman is not obliged to endorse the candidate.
And there’s really no other way to read what the Intelligencer transcribed.
But there have been cries of racism, there have been cries for resignation.
I don’t see it. A simple, vivid analogy is not racism, especially with appropriate limitations. To cry out otherwise is to avoid the substantive question of whether the ideology of Walton, whatever it may be, is truly so awful.
But now the first question is whether Jacobs brushed some legitimately raw nerve endings – or if we’re seeing some strategic anger. Either way, full comprehension and sober consideration does not appear to have been exercised here.
