Jesse Jackson: “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man”

Via Weasel Zippers. Just tossing it out there as a public service announcement, as a friendly reminder to black conservatives that they’re not really black.

The power of excommunication is an awesome power indeed, my friends. I wonder if he and the Pope ever kibbitz about it.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Davis’s overly conciliatory yet drily withering response:

Davis referred to Jackson’s 1988 run for president in a statement, issued through his office, that said he would not engage Jackson on his criticism.

“One of the reasons that I like and admire Rev. Jesse Jackson is that 21 years ago he inspired the idea that a black politician would not be judged simply as a black leader,” Davis’s statement said. “The best way to honor Rev. Jackson’s legacy is to decline to engage in an argument with him that begins and ends with race.”

Ironically, Jackson might have done Davis a favor here. Davis is running for governor of Alabama and doubtless feels pressure, as Obama did, to prove that he’s a Democratic candidate, not a “black candidate”; getting demagogued by this race-baiting bottom-feeder helps him in the same way that getting demagogued by Sharpton early on helped The One. In fact, it’s useful enough that I might suspect collusion, if not for the fact that Jackson has been bullying people this way for decades.

Speaking of telling black conservatives what is and isn’t okay for them to like, here’s some deep thoughts from tonight’s “Hardball” via Greg Hengler. Exit question: Will our post-racial president be coming to Davis’s aid on this one or will he be left to suffer in silence in the interests of passing ObamaCare?

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