Al Sharpton Gears Up to Take On the Dems

Sharpton’s combination of black-power politics and personal sensitivity to insult means he rarely distinguishes between a personal attack, a legitimate political criticism of his politics and a racist insult to all black people. Already he has shown that he’s planning to play the race card as a way of rebuffing normal questioning during the 2004 campaign.

“To even question why I’m running is insulting,” he writes in Al on America. “Pundits ask me why not run for Congress or a local office, an office they say I might have a better chance of winning. That question, too, is insulting. If I’m good enough for Congress, why aren’t I good enough for the highest office? It shows me the question is more about assigning me to a place rather than whether or not I represent a segment of this nation and am worthy of leading. What they’re really saying is, ‘Why don’t you stay in your place?’ Why didn’t Jackie Robinson stay in the Negro League? Why doesn’t Tiger Woods only play in Harlem?” The American Prospect

And: Conservative but straight-shooting Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote today of Democrats’ hypocrisy in cozying up to Sharpton, although he muddied his point by trying to contrast it with his notion that Republicans appropriately repudiated Trent Lott’s racism. The Jacoby column is not online but you can track his interest in the issue, and his vituperation about Sharpton and the Dems, in this Google Search.