A Racial Symphony

By Kleinheider Posted on August 8, 2008 at 9:43 am

Jackson Baker reports on the impact and implications of Rep. Steve Cohen’s substantial victory:

The result was that, as Cohen noted after his victory speech, he had come out ahead with every demographic - “with man and woman, with black and white, with Christian and Jew, with young and old, with the follically challenged …” (here he all but tapped his own balding pate) “..and with the hirsute.”

It seemed clear that the final margin was as large as it was both because Cohen and what he represented won convincingly and because Tinker and the divisiveness she was seen to symbolize just as clearly lost.

On the last two days of his campaign, she had seen herself repudiated by the Emily’s List PAC which had earlier endorsed her; by former congressman Harold Ford Jr., whom she had once worked for and whose aura she consistently attempted to invoke; and, most crucially, by Barack Obama himself, the current lion of Democratic hopes who will become the party’s presidential nominee at a national convention later this month.

As for Cohen, his triumph turned out to be a victory also for the dream of racial equality and political harmony, or so at least was the belief proclaimed Thursday night, spontaneously and separately, by such icons of Memphis civil rights history as Maxine Smith and Russell Sugarmon and Minerva Johnican. Cohen’s win was, they all agreed, the culmination of the racial unity and colorblind vision they had all set out to achieve.

There was yet another major development on display in Thursday night’s election results, and Cohen noted it, too, in his remarks - the final establishment of a long-building demographics in favor of Democratic candidates countywide.

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