by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
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Harold Ford Jr's latest senatorial hopes have been shot down, but the Black Blue Dog who lied that his own grandmother was white and avowed his “love” for George Bush, can be counted on to ooze up yet again from the corporate swamp.
Good Riddance Harold Ford…Again
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Before Wall Street and Barack Obama discovered each other, Harold Ford was the Great Black Hope of the super-rich.”
Harold Ford, Jr. rises periodically like muck from a sewer to pollute the national political conversation with corporate obscenities posing as public policy. After a brief but nauseating bid for the Democratic senatorial nomination in New York, the former five-term Tennessee congressman has thankfully flushed himself back to his Wall Street cesspool. Ford backed out of the race this week, claiming he wants to save the Democratic Party from a bruising battle between himself and incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand, who was the most right-wing Democrat on the New York delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives before being appointed to the Senate last year. Harold Ford made Gillibrand look like Angela Davis. Ford is truly a prince among corporate political prostitutes. That’s why the Merrill Lynch investment house, which is owned by Bank of America, pays him the princely sum of $2 million dollars a year – a guaranteed salary to a lawyer who has never passed the bar and has no history or visible talent in the field of investment banking. But his racial background is what has always made Harold Ford special in the eyes of the financial oligarchy. Before Wall Street and Barack Obama discovered each other, Harold Ford was the Great Black Hope of the super-rich – the up-and-coming young politician who would make corporate predation palatable to African Americans at-large. Ford was an instant darling of the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Council, the mechanism for distributing corporate money within the Democratic Party. In return for Harold Ford’s worthless soul, the DLC anointed him keynote speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention – the same prize they would bestow on Barack Obama, four years later.
“Harold Ford made Gillibrand look like Angela Davis.”
Thirty-year-old Harold was catapulted to national prominence, his reward for having created a small right-wing faction within what had previously been an almost uniformly progressive-leaning Congressional Black Caucus. Ford became one of only two Black Blue Dog Democrats, and one of only four Black members to support the invasion of Iraq. But Ford’s faction in the Caucus grew, nurtured by corporate contributions. By 2005, the Congressional Black Caucus had been rendered all but useless to progressive politics – Harold Ford’s great service to the right wing. Ford became George Bush’s favorite Black politician, an ally in the Republican assault on Social Security. In his unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid in 2006, Ford flirted openly with the racist Tennessee redneck vote.
Harold Ford may be a whore with no shame – but he is Wall Street’s whore. He's still pulling down $2 million a year as a Black front for white capital. He's still chairman of the DLC, the corporate headquarters of the Democratic Party. And he's still filling the air with flatulence on MSNBC. Harold Ford will never have to pass the bar or sell a toxic security to make a living. He's a made man for the corporate mob, and loving it.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
This week’s featured author is Amanda Lock Swarr. Swarr is Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
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