Before I weigh in on the #blacklivesmatter controversy at Netroots Nation, I want you to take two looks at it and tell me what you think.
Then I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I’ll ignore Martin O’Malley for a second and just address Sanders.
As I commented over at AG’s thread about Sanders’ decision to run in the Democratic primary, this isn’t Sanders’ first run-down with having issues when POC bring their issues to the fore. It’s also not enough to say he was flummoxed at being interrupted. This is a continued pattern with him, starting all the way back to when he first started running for office in the 1970’s. It’s why I always say ideology, in fact, matters. Coming to the right side on this issue or that issue isn’t enough. How you come at it, and where you’re coming from, also matters.
Sometimes, people like Sanders and O’Malley need to just shut the fuck up, and listen. O’Malley, being a traditional pol, might at least want to attempt to “listen” (even if the words go over his head). And given that he gave the protesters a chance to speak, I think he will. Sanders, OTOH, seemed to want to speak over them, and almost treated their concerns as a non-issue, or one that he understands better than they understand it themselves (by pivoting back to jobs). It’s a delicate balance; you can’t “live” without economic opportunity. But you also can’t live when your environment is essentially occupied by an invading army of blue badged gangsters.
Looking for Bernie, Part 1; Sanders, ’72
Looking for Bernie, Part 2; Mr. Sanders Goes to Burlington
Looking for Bernie, Part 3; Sanders ’90
Looking for Bernie, Part 4; Turning Right Towards 2016
And apparently not getting the point, Zaid Jilani keeps tweeting about how good and awesome Sanders is with regard to issues of POC. Yes, Zaid isn’t white, but he’s responding how white people do when you talk to them about our white supremacist culture. “I’M NOT RACIST! STOP CALLING ME RACIST!” defense mechanism, if you will.
If that’s what Sanders is going to do from here on out, maybe I won’t have any candidates to support in this primary. Sanders is superior to Clinton on virtually every issue but guns, but I don’t want a part in your revolution if you treat these issues (or women’s issues like abortion access) as a “side-show”. That’s not my revolution.
Hopefully, Sanders sits down and listens and tweaks his message to give these protesters and their communities a “I hear you” nod. And saying, “Where a police officer breaks the law, that officer must be held accountable” isn’t enough.
And apparently not getting the point, Zaid Jilani keeps tweeting about how good and awesome Sanders is with regard to issues of POC.
You do understand why he says this, right? Do you ever see the polls that say what issues are most important to voters? Like from Pew and the like. You do know what those polls say, right? Also, did you watch Sanders event last night in Phoenix?
The very point of the Black Lives Matter movement is to move the polls so leaders are forced to take action in response. Polls are not fixed things; they respond to public discussions and events. We do not know everything that will be agitating the public when they place their Presidential ballots in the primary and general elections. That’s what this fight is about.
In what direction, though? The intentionally provocative Sister Souljah interview was driven by the same motives, but the establishment response wasn’t exactly what I would call progress for the underclass.
Bill Clinton attacked Sister Souljah with the goal of undermining the Black movement in order to build his personal political capital and electoral prospects. The Black Lives Matter movement is led by different people with different goals.
Thanks for bringing that up. I hope BLM are prepared for Hillary to do exactly that to them. Because she will if she thinks she needs to.
Are you sure?
I have immense respect for the creativity and astuteness of Sister Souljah. And Lani Guinier, Marion Wright Edelman, and Joycelyn Elders. All of whom Bill Clinton (and at least one with the participation/assistance of Hillary) threw under the bus. It’s one of the reasons I dislike him and his unbridled personal ambitions and the policies he supports in the service of his ambitions. And why it’s a really bad idea to put them back in power again.
Hillary is not Bill, and the cultural and political moment is vastly different. Most to the point, Hillry has actually made statements which are responsive to the BLM movement, not running from it.
There should be no pretense that this was anything other than an inescapable trap. If Sanders leaves, he’s a jerk, and who wants a jerk president? If Sanders stays, he’s a wimp caving to a few protesters, and who wants a president who’s too much of a wimp to stand up for himself? If he says nothing to the protesters, he’s flummoxed and has no idea how to handle the situation- not very presidential! And if he tries to talk with them, as he did, he gets shouted down and ignored, which makes him ineffectual. . . another unpresidential attribute! Amazing how no matter what he does Sanders just looks more and more unpresidential- a trait that isn’t very presidential in my opinion.
I would like to add that we should stop pretending that a politician is on some kind of ego trip if he actually wants to speak at an event set up with the express purpose of him speaking, but I’m not going to push my luck. Instead I’m going out to a restaurant, and then I’m going to berate the waiter for trying to force me to eat.
You do know that Twitter user Surlyurbanist says that Sanders was ambushed yesterday. That he was supposed to have a meeting after the NN15 fiasco with the BLM people but that Sanders cancelled said meeting after they ambushed him during said NN15 event.
No, I didn’t know that. Now that I know, I have an even lower opinion of Sanders than before.
Why is that?
So he’s supposed to speak with them (ostensibly), they decide that a better way (arguable) to have their voices heard is to interrupt the Q/A session, he fucks up his response during said interruption…and to top it all off, he blows them off afterwards over it? Petty, vindictive, and the tale of someone who isn’t willing to listen.
I see the same thing with him at his townhalls when someone brought up Palestine and Israel.
Fuck them. They never wanted a discussion. They just wanted to embarrass the Jew. Fuck them.
Yeah, ok. So O’Malley goes on This Week in Blackness to own up to his mistake, speaks to Goldie Taylor (see below)…while Sanders cancels his meetings. Fuck them? No. Fuck him.
So, one brief moment and the subsequent less than twenty-four hours (and he did have a major rally and speech to deliver a few hours after NN) outweigh everything he’s stood for and attempted to do in support of that for over fifty years? You’re behaving like those that trashed Howard Dean for the scream that wasn’t. For shame.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say it outweighs anything. All I said is that it gives me a lower opinion of him than I had previously. Further, it’s a continued pattern of his when he’s confronted in an uncomfortable space on issues he hasn’t thought of from outside of an economic lens.
Do you agree he made a mistake by cancelling meeting with these protesters? If there’s one thing I know Obama hates, it’s being heckled…and he normally handles it quite well, and even meets with them after his speaking engagement is over. However, my opinion lowered on him with the way he treated that transgender activist at the WH mentioned below by ishmael. Same applies here.
You said, “Fuck him.” So yes, you did discount his life in favor of a handful of bullies that had no intention of being civil towards him.
Was that a formally scheduled meeting with the group that he cancelled? Some of us don’t emotionally and cognitively recover quickly from an unwarranted and unexpected significant or brutal attack. Speaking for myself, sometimes never.
O’Malley was guilty of prior bad acts — and it’s to his credit that he remained and listened later. OTOH did he have a major pressing engagement for later in the day?
Sanders endorsed Jesse Jackson in 1998 for god’s sakes. And since you have never had to deliver a major speech in front 12,000 people, you have no idea what it takes to get oneself in the proper physical, emotional, and cognitive space/frame of mind to do that. I required over an hour for maybe fifty people — Beverly Hills Bar Assn — and then was barely in good enough shape to deliver a speech and the first ten minutes were rough and ragged.
You said, “Fuck him.” So yes, you did discount his life in favor of a handful of bullies that had no intention of being civil towards him.
I see nowhere how that means, “Oh he did that to them? Now I’ll just stop supporting him altogether!” That was not implied; if that’s how you read it, well, then that’s how you read it. It is not what was intended.
Was that a formally scheduled meeting with the group that he cancelled?
I don’t know, ask Phil. He’s the one who brought it up.
Some of us don’t emotionally and cognitively recover quickly from an unwarranted and unexpected significant or brutal attack.
I wouldn’t call what happened a “brutal attack”. But even so, most of us aren’t running for president of the United States.
Kerry ran for President and three years later how well did he handle being challenged by a student? From the back of the room. Didn’t appear that the student intended to take over the floor for an extended period of time and planned to prevent Kerry from responding to what was his multi-part question about Kerry’s past actions/activities. How well did Kerry handle that?
Sanders is two and half months into his Presidential campaign — how about we allow him a four month learning curve? (Obama wasn’t so hot two and a half months into his first Presidential campaign either.)
Now if Sanders had remained on that stage and said nothing while a security guard came in and Tazed a BLM activist then I’d agree that he doesn’t have the right stuff.
While you’ve been critical of Bernie for what he didn’t do at NN, have you bothered to check and see if he did do anything in between that NN encounter and Phoenix rally? Like modify/change his stump speech in accordance with the BLM protest?
Yes, I did. And it’s still missing the mark. He needs a new social media coordinator, stat.
https:/twitter.com/goldietaylor/status/622859804013383681
https:
/twitter.com/knockturnalpro/status/622909928634630144
He should also seek out Al Giordano’s advice:
According to Elon James White, it sounds like it was a pre-scheduled discussion/talk that he cancelled.
Personally, I like bold, in-your-face, agitation protests. That said, there is an art to it. Lines not to cross and recognizing when “good enough for now” is the point to back off.
While I share the political orientation of Code Pink, I do hope that alone isn’t why I’ve never been offended by or critical any of their protests. They don’t randomly select a protest target. Or the protest issue. They recognize in advance which targets will not deviate from their prior existing positions and actions. And that they can do no more than get real loud about that and hope someone else will hear/see as Code Pink is hauled out of the forum and often off to jail. (Medea Benjamin on interrupting President Obama speech)
That not how Operation Rescue and Westboro
Baptist church protesters conduct themselves. They challenge defenseless individual people that are doing nothing illegal or wrong or attack grieving people.
Protestors also need to be mindful of potential negative repercussions and consider if there’s better way communicate their speech. An example that should have been exceedingly minor but linger on and on and the actual events of the original protest are distorted and the reason for it are lost. The feminist protest of the 1968 Miss America pageant. And specifically the “Freedom Trash Can.” Years later an older female co-worker was shocked when I mentioned that I was a feminist and said, “I don’t go in for any of that bra burning stuff.” I looked at her and asked, “Do you believe in equal pay for equal work?” She answered, “Well yes, over course.” To which I said, “That’s what feminsism is about, and by the way there were no bra burning protest.”
(Also while younger women had mostly dumped their girdles in two to four years before 1968, older women were still attached to theirs for at least one reason, a garment that held up their stockings and a runner (or ladder) in one leg was the loss of only half a pair of stockings. Technology and reduced production cost of pantyhose did more for the demise of girdles than feminists did.)
Bernie has a blind spot on race? Where the hell has Al been for the past 50+ years? Start here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZJ7f-3XGB4
Notice that video is from 1991!! Does Al know anything about Bernie besides that he’s from Vermont?
Not pure enough. Vote for Nader – there isn’t a bit of difference between the other two.
How many states is he on the ballot in?
Nader isn’t pure. Plus he’s even older than the other senior citizens running.
Doubt they have any awareness of or hostility towards Sanders’ religious/ethnic affiliation.
They want the spotlight on themselves. And have such a meager and distorted historical knowledge that they think Baker, Shakur, and King were wimps that had meager accomplishments.
Seem to recall some back in the late 1960s that had the same opinion. And what did they accomplish?
So he’s supposed to speak with them (ostensibly), they decide that a better way (arguable) to have their voices heard is to interrupt the Q/A session, …
How do you think any politician would act in that instance? You do realize what you’re saying here, right? Allegedly, there was a meeting set up after Sanders’s NN15 appearance. I say allegedly because I was going off of what Twitter user Surlyurbanist(whom you can find here: http://twitter.com/surlyurbanist) said. So Sanders campaign sets up a meeting in good faith. And then he gets bushwhacked before? You don’t see the problem there? I bet you wouldn’t appreciate it none to much. You wouldn’t be in any mood to listen to someone who you agreed to meet only for them to bushwhack you like that. He probably thought they were trying to embarrass him. Yeah, O’Malley stayed after. But then he has 16 years of awfulness he has to make up for.
You know, this whole event reminds me of something I saw long ago. Something about a Campaign for a Free Galilee and a Judean People’s Front.
Eclectablog seems to be written by the sort of lefty for whom no one is pure enough. But even he/she gives away the game in the comments by attacking Sanders’s record in the most immature way– by pretending to think that senators implement policy, etc. He knows he’s wrong, but is having a hissy fit to defend his ego.
I think that protesters pull stunts to draw attention to their cause and it is generally fine with me. I don’t attend political rallies because it attracts crazy people.
Politicians have not been paying enough attention to this problem of police abuse. They all deserve to be heckled.
The issue. This was supposed to be a question and answer session with convention participants, not a rally. The candidates showed up with supporters in rally gear. When does the public get a chance on a candidate with non-marketing argle-bargle?
We don’t ever get that chance.
The ‘public’, qua public, doesn’t. Nor has it ever, not really, not at the presidential level.
One-to-many, in both directions, has efficiency on its side when there’s resource limitations, and there are — there’s only one candidate.
The construction of bubbles has little to do with resource limitations and everything to do with wanting to run a marketing-oriented campaign strategy that professional consultants with a dog in the hunt prefer. It pays their salaries regardless of outcome.
I don’t think Netroots Nation is all that terribly relevant so I don’t think it really matters, but otoh ACT UP did this kind of thing at a lot of “irrelevant” functions and, while they can’t claim to be the sole reason why America is where it is today on their issue, nobody can claim that they didn’t have an impact. IDK, but I don’t like what the could portend for 2016 – if a candidate goes all in with #BlackLivesMatters then they will be decimated in the primaries, let alone the general. If they don’t then this primary could make South Carolina 2008 look like a racial hugest by comparison.
It looks like O’Malley is going to put my theory to the test – good on him.
It’s annoying no doubt, but there’s a reason for it. I am only 75% as likely to be killed by police as a black guy, but there’s no doubt I have lived my life wary of the police, knowing that if they want they can do all sorts of shit to me and I can’t do anything but take it.
What Sanders should have done is just switched over to that topic. You’re at net roots nation, it’s not like people will not be willing.
But I do criticize the article talking about white progressives sitting down irritated. As I said it’s annoying but at least to me it’s annoying because I can’t engage. Would the protestors have engaged in a dialogue? They seemed more interested in the performance aspect from those articles.
It doesn’t effect my support for Sanders because I don’t doubt that as a whole his presidency would be better than Clintons.
Black people are the base of the Democratic Party.
If you can’t answer questions that are of interest to us, you need to take your ass on home.
The Bernie-stans were in particular vicious on Twitter towards Elon James White (This Week in Blackness).
Elon is no Black Panther.
He’s not even a Black Panther-wannabe.
If you can’t handle the logical questions of Elon James White…
you need to sit down and STFU.
And, the entire, ‘ folks just need jobs’ approach by Bernie is tireseome.
How would a job have helped Tamir Rice?
How would a job have helped Trayvon Martin?
Sandra Bland was in Texas because she had just landed her DREAM JOB.
The PROBLEM, is the attack on Black people by the POLICE.
And, it’s a valid problem.
I’ve said several times….
That Pookey and Ray-Ray don’t believe in law enforcement should not bother you.
That my three-degreed self believes in law enforcement on the same level as Pookey and Ray-Ray IS the problem.
If it’s all about ‘just having a job’,
then take a look at this video from Mr. Bougie himself, Lawrence Otis Graham, on the dresscode and other rules that he has imposed on his children.
Between him and his wife, they have FOUR Harvard Degrees.
He ends his video:
” I just want to keep them ALIVE.”
https://youtu.be/EfeS-GYnuj0
Show me where a WHITE couple with FOUR Harvard degrees, has EVER expressed anything like this.
I believed that Trayvon was an 8.5 quake on the San Andreas fault for Black parents….I stand by that.
I’m highly persuaded by rikyrah’s points here. I have been distressed by the dead giveaways that are surrounding discussions by elected leaders responding to the Black Lives Matter movement. Sanders is far from the only leader on the left who starts nattering on about schools and jobs and other issues outside of justice and law enforcement practices. Those other issues are important, but they are entirely unresponsive to the issue of police officers who are allowed to oppress, maim and kill Black people in America with extraordinary impunity.
And the larger media and activists in the left-wing movement are not placing this liquidation of Black lives, health, wealth, even voting rights as front and center questions for the Presidential candidates.
I know just enough to be dangerous here, but it appears that Netroots Nation joined other portions of the left-wing movement in declining to prioritize discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement during the most important event of the convention, the live discussions with two Presidential candidates.
I’m persuaded by the larger point made by Chris Savage in the second linked post that this is an important fight within the progressive movement about what issues our movement forces candidates to respond to during this extremely crucial Presidential election campaign. In response to Oliver Willis’ post, I thought of Martin Luther King’ “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”, written at another time in our history when young Black leaders organized controversial actions in response to what they viewed as an utterly unacceptable status quo. I absolutely understand why today’s Black leaders must be willing to make even purported allies uncomfortable, the people King wrote to so powerfully from his cell.
I heard the following from a libertarian-leaning participant during Melissa Harris-Perry’s lengthy discussion of the issue this morning:
“Black Lives Matter is great as a kind of testimony of individual worth in the face of a system that (ha)s for too long not value(d) those people. The media hasn’t covered this, and now because there’s video and Facebook and Twitter and people can root around that. But as an organizing for changing criminal justice policy, I’m not sure it is as effective, because you’re going to take some fence-sitters on this and (make them) say, “I want to change the system but you just called me a racist.”
That may be the human reaction experienced by that white guy and many others like him. Hell, that response comes pretty close to the one offered by Oliver Willis, a Black man. Unfortunately, that unwillingness to push Americans and our leaders to get over these uncomfortable feelings and move on to real actions is always the friend of the status quo, a status quo which is unacceptable.
What I said at Daily Kos:
The first issue is one of my pet peeves about candidate and Congressional web sites. They have not invested the creativity to figure out how to screen out trolls from citizens who seek a more in-depth discussion with them without kicking in $10K. So they tie it to rigorously enforced topics and screen out by state and zip code the folks who will have live under their policies but do not happen to vote for them. This translates to the marketing of the candidate a the exclusive mode of campaigning to the peons who don’t have the big bucks. We live in a plutocracy because we allow it.
The second is the opening that the Charleston massacre has created in the Southern self-narrative. If the rest of the nation doesn’t force that further open, our grandchildren will be seeing a repetition of the violence, the “grace”, and the backsliding all over again. The issue of white supremacy and the legacy of that 1680 Virginia law must be ended now.
The third is simply. Punish the bad cops. Stop the killing. The police chief’s idea that the bad cops are somehow his ace in the hole in the fight against crime (cough, Bratton) must end.
All of the Democratic candidates (cough, Jim Webb) need to start acting like democrats first.
There is no other way to enlarge the map of deliver on a more progressive agenda.
Bernie’s staff have sucked up the marketing genius of capitalism in trying to run a democratic socialist campaign; that is a contradiction.
O’Malley is trying to hide from his record of racist policies as mayor (inspired no doubt by Malcolm Gladwell). Admitting a failed policy would be a good start for him to recover.
Hillary uses access extortion to blow off the progressives. If progressives don’t matter to Hillary, maybe the feeling will be reciprocated in November of 2016. Netroots Nation could be an in-depth candid conversation between candidates and people who can’t scare up the money for “real access”. It has turned into a circus because of the candidate’s desire to control the process and dodge the demand for candor.
Yes, I know the rap on politicians who tell the truth.
A third take, from my favorite Vermont blogger. For me, I’m not convinced that what happens at Netroots Nation is important, although it may be this kind of incident makes it less important (this is perhaps what makes Willis so mad, that people would rather show off than exert influence). And I’m sure O’Malley is not important.
The only really interesting question is about Sanders, and his apparent difficulty in showing how he feels about race issues. (He’s a civil rights movement veteran from the early 60s, but he hasn’t had much connection with it since he moved to Vermont.) I think Seabe above is right, and he ought to be doing some serious listening.
Thanks for the link; says what I would say but much better of course. Bernie needs to work on this. He needs to take on immediately someone who educate him on the centrality of the issue and make him comfortable w dialog on it in public forum. That said, I’ve been through some situations where the vocal protests for change were mostly about shutting down the institutional change – and successful at that. it’s more than agent provacateur, it’s a polarizing demand that shuts everything down to which white progressives are particularly vulnerable. (to the degree that that was/ is a part of it, I won’t speculate on who is behind it – could be a few narcissists or some group that has an interest in the status quo). On that score I’m glad Bernie didn’t fall all over himself expressing White Guilt and, say ok I’m going to put my agenda on hold to talk about what you want to talk about. Bernie, from his history, is in the strongest position of all the dem candidates but this event brought to the fore an issue he must address.
It’s a very valid protest and issue. It might not have been a good idea to interrupt a forum on issues for Latinos but maybe that’s a quibble.
I say the next speeches of O’Malley, Sanders and Clinton will contain the response. If the issue is not addressed in any of these 3 speeches, I think that would be a bad thing that shows an inability to listen.
Bernie’s failure to connect with the concerns of the Black Lives Matters activists at NetRoots reminds me of when Dukakis gave the infamously Vulcan answer about the death penalty in the the debate with Poppy Bush.
Running for president is, for better and worse, not a purely cerebral task, and if Bernie can’t draw on empathy as well as analysis, he’s a bad bet.
I think that the Democratic Party is doomed to go down in flames from 2018-2020 unless we catch the mother of all black swans.
Our one, and I mean our one chance to avoid a demand-induced recession was if Bernie Sanders was strong enough in the primaries to force Clinton to pick up economically progressive positions against her will.
Well, after yesterday I can predict every single talking point economic centrists will make for the rest of the primary. And they will all be some variant of ‘lol, Bernie Sanders has trouble with blacks, white progressives have their head in the sand for not prioritizing issues important to blacks’. Clinton has been looking for months for a talking point she can hit Sanders back on and she found it. Whereupon Team Clinton will fuck this chicken to an easy primary and probably easy general election win, and casually saunter into the White House while being intellectually and politically validated in running an Obama-ish economically incrementalist election.
And lo and behold, the combination of a huge trade deficit, increasing household debt, declining federal deficit, record-high income inequality, and economic weaknesses with Japan/Europe/and now China causes her to take a post-hippie punching victory lap right into a recession. Combined with the structural advantage Republicans get in the Senate in 2018, this allows the GOP to run a strategy of pure gridlock to a surprise Presidential win in 2020. Just in time for gerrymandering and the real start of the tipping point for climate change.
disagree; Hillary won’t fool Black voters, and Bernie’s response actually won’t hurt him with lots of White voters. He needs to move quickly to include police/ criminal justice issues into his platform. btw his area of the country has been a prime location for prison industrial complex expansion; working vs. prison expansion in his part of the country is where I learned the ins and outs of the expansion.
I think that President Obama has shown the limits of what a President can do without a majority in Congress or a reliable caucus on his own side.
I don’t see any of the Democratic Presidential candidates acting like a Democratic majority in Congress is a personal to-do for their campaigns.
That is a huge problem. #coattailsmatter
President Obama had almost 60 senators and a respectable Congressional majority. And thanks to his economic centrism, which holds that deficits and debt is >>> jobs and wages, we got an inadequate stimulus such that it set the stage for defeats in 2010 and 2014 and made the victory of 2012 less than was needed to retake the House.
And this speaks of nothing of the other bullet he just barely dodged, that of Bowles-Simpson. As much as I loathe to say it, the Tea Party saved his damn Presidency. Well, I say that he dodged a bullet but depending on how the aftershocks of the sequester pan out he or his successor might suffer from his stupidity on negotiating with the Republicans on the debt ceiling.
A Congressional majority is meaningless without the will to do something with it. And right now it’s looking like Clinton, even if she does get her majority, is on the same course to hell that Obama was. We saw her so-called economically progressive ‘I get it America! (but not really)’ speech the other day and that just convinced me more than ever that the Democratic Party, thanks to the economic centrists, is fucking fucked. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it turns out that Clinton is a secret economic progressive and was just fronting until the moment of truth. Or maybe all of the conservative USSC justices will retire in that two-year window from 2016-2018.
Obama had 60 seats in the Senate for all of 72 days, after Franken was seated on July 7, 2009. The ARRA was signed on February 17, 2009 and got 60 votes for the final conference committee version.
We know that 60 votes is an effective requirement to get almost anything moving (unless the minority does not object) in the Senate.
The Senate was 58/41 when the ARRA was passed.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
I suppose that I should have said thanks to the Democratic Party’s economic centrism, not just Obama’s. Nonetheless:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/nobody-could-have-predicted-3/
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/krugman-stress-test-review-2014-6
And in any case, if the Obama administration really felt like the stimulus should’ve been bigger but that a bigger one would’ve been politically unattainable, then rather than just sitting with a thumb up their asses they should have done whatever it took to make this the number-one priority of the Party. It should’ve been prioritized above the ACA, immigration reform, and the Afghanistan and Iraq War winddowns.
I don’t put much faith in the bully pulpit, but it was pretty clear that Obama didn’t put half of the effort he put into getting the stimulus that he did into getting the ACA passed.
I think he put considerable effort into getting a stimulus package passed. The stimulus was not small. The problem is that it needed to be bigger and more effective (not 30-40% tax cuts) to improve the economy sooner and help Democratic prospects for the midterms.
for a long time.
Around October 2014 he seemingly finally realized the politics that Obama was facing.
And as much as I love and agree with PK, he didn’t say at the time that the ARRA should be $X Trillion over Y years. He said it should have been bigger. I agree. PK at the time seemed to think that Obama was trying to get 80 votes in the Senate. History shows that Obama was trying to get the most he could as quickly as he could – and that means 60 votes. The closest he came to a hard number (that I’ve been able to find) was saying there would be a $600B stimulus for a $2.9T hole. He wasn’t arguing anywhere for a $2.9T stimulus at the time (and hasn’t since, AFAIK, and the hole was actually much larger).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Great! He got his initial ARRA. So why did he just leave it at that? Don’t tell me that he didn’t have the political capital for it — why was he able to conjure up political capital for future fights? Are you going to make an argument that he wouldn’t have been able to get a second stimulus passed in that timeframe because of some nonsense about going back to the well for a second time? Okay, but even if we buy that, Obama still should have accepted a quarter-loaf measure. Trading in the ACA chip for a 600b or even a 400b stimulus would’ve been a bargain. Hell, even if the stimulus was just more goddamn tax cuts for the top 20% he should’ve made that devil’s deal.
And you know what? Even if you make the assumption that Obama accurately judged for the first and forever how big the stimulus should’ve gotten, it still does not absolve the Democratic Party as a whole for their idiotic foot-dragging on the stimulus. And it portends very poorly for the Democratic Party that our flag-bearer is going to be another one of these interminable drooling economic centrists.
Obama also tried for lots of other stimulus measures after the ARRA, but they went nowhere due to Teabagger opposition.
Transportation, Infrastructure, raising the Minimum Wage, etc.
A president who spends political capital on things that will not be passed loses that capital and weakens himself. Obama has been very, very good about getting as much as he can with the hand he has been dealt.
All of your questions about why Obama did or didn’t do X or Y have been asked and answered many times over the years. I don’t have the time or inclination to dig them up for you. 🙂
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
plus he did get unemployment insurance extended many times which is stimulative and the FICA tax cut went to working people which was additional stimulus
Teabagger opposition? I’m talking about 2008-2010. The time to go into headless chicken mode was then. That’s great that he saw the light later and all, but it was too late.
What, exactly, made the ACA more likely to pass than a second round of stimulus spending?
So, again, your memory of the legislative history is shown to be off. As pointed out, the 11th Congress did get a second stimulus through.
And your memory of TEA Party opposition is also very conveniently off. The big Congressional Town Hall turnouts, with angry angry angry white people screaming at the top of their lungs at members of Congress, was in the fall of 2009.
Finally, I love the way the ACA is stacked up against stimulus spending in your statement here, as if the Americans in most desperate need were not helped by both the ACA and the stimulus packages.
At the lame-duck session.
Who gives a shit about them, other than the fraidy-cat centrists? They might have been screaming their damn fool heads off about bank bailouts and deficits who knows what other nonsense, but when the rubber hits the road what the public really cares about is jobs and wages. If the Democratic Party tamped down on economic progressivism because they were worried about antagonizing these people then they were foolish beyond measure.
Getting the economy back on its feet was by far the most important of the two tasks. This shouldn’t even be in dispute. The damaged economy increased the GOP margin of victory in 2010 and 2014, prevented Dems from re-taking the House in 2012, and of course intensified the 2010 Gerrymandering debacle.
Kicking the can of health care reform would’ve hurt assloads of people. But giving the conservatives a legislative ‘in’ via a bad economy hurt assloads of people, too.
Just for the record, one of the significant accomplishments of the 2010 “lame duck” session of Congress was another $400 billion (or so) stimulus package.
Wow, “foot dragging on the stimulus”? That’s ahistorical as hell. Obama and the Democrats forced the stimulus through less than a month after the President took office. They had to scrape up Collins, Snowe and Specter from the Senate Republican caucus to get the vote through because, as pointed out earlier, the Senate Dem caucus only had 60 members during a few brief months during that Congress. The Senate careers of Specter and Snowe were terminated soon afterwards.
Democrats didn’t have more weeks and months to negotiate a larger stimulus, because we were losing 750,000 jobs a month for many months, and if that had continued into the summer the GOP would not have gotten the blame for that. Republican would have deserved the blame if that had happened, but we don’t have a public culture or a mass media which would have seen to it that that would have been the result.
And, far more important than assigning blame, if a stimulus package wasn’t passed that winter, many more millions would have been put out of work, and Obama’s first term would have almost certainly presided over another Great Depression. The President and his Congressional majorities would have had no room to maneuver, and no money to maneuver with. It would have been a much more severe problem than the abstract of “political capital.”
Fine. Let’s accept the premise first ARRA was truly as big as it could’ve been at the time.
So where was the follow-up?
See above.
Obama’s first Congress has a very, very distinguished record of accomplishment. They spent their political capitol and responded to many needs, and lots of Congressional Democrats lost their jobs as a result. Claiming that they were voted out because they weren’t liberal enough would also be pretty ahistorical.
facts don’t matter here – just believe my version of reality!!!
I didn’t say that they were voted out because they weren’t liberal enough. I’m claiming that they were voted out/had Pyrrhic victories because of the bad economy. And one of the reasons why the economy was bad as it was because they didn’t hit economic progressivism as hard as they should have.
I could find fault with Dems not running for re-election on their record during that Congress. Disrespecting their record and reporting it out falsely is not helpful. It’s pretty unrealistic to expect any set of policies to turn an economy that was suffering Great Depression-level losses from the fall of 2008 to the summer of 2009 and expect it do deliver a healthy economy throughout 2010. It was the Blue Dog caucus within the Democratic Congress that ran furthest away from the 111’ths record, and they suffered the worst losses. Good riddance, I say.
Okay, I’ll admit that maybe I was too hard on the Democratic Congress back then and I agree that you could make a good lifeboat ethics argument that the millions of people immediately helped by the ACA and its many provisions was worth the people hurt by a slower economic recovery/red states blocking Medicaid/slightly meliorated environmental policy/gridlock with immigration reform.
Nonetheless, what is their position now? Did the economic centrists learn something from all of this or do they still think that the DFHs don’t know what the hell they’re talking about and they’ll just do the same sorta-Keynesianism they always did?
The signs from Clinton are… mixed. She’s definitely starting to pick up the rhetoric, but she was short on specifics. And the one specific she did give was extremely suspect. Nonetheless, I was hopeful that Sanders + O’Malley would’ve been able to extract more weregild out of her over the course of the campaign. Events like last night make me worry that the Clinton campaign will backslide into the old yawns of ‘the debt is a crushing burden!’ and ‘sustainable entitlement reform needs to happen, like, yesterday!’
People do realize that the Democrats who were voted out were the Blue Dogs and similar ilk, right? What does that tell you?
I didn’t see the determination of OFA to get a progressive Democratic Congress in 2008. Nor did I see any Congressional crossover efforts in 2012. Campaigns that are independently funded by large donors don’t coordinate. In that sense, there really are no political parties any more. The national RNC and DNC structures are pretty irrelevant to elections except to provide the elephant logo and the donkey logo.
My point is that here in the last part of his term with a completely frozen Congress, the President has accomplished as much or more as he did his first year when he had close to working majorities in both houses. Be he exposes the limits of executive authority without Congress; it’s mostly in military and foreign affairs.
re: your first paragraph, didn’t Sanders have a critique along those lines recently? And that he promised not to make the same mistake. You know the old saw about how certain quarters are okay with defeat because they’ll still be in charge of what’s left? Well Sanders promised to upend that. He basically promised that he was elected president he’d not let his email list go dormant.
I’m waiting an watching to see how Sanders delivers on his promises with respect to his campaign.
IMO both candidates made an unforced error at Netroots Nation by not taking seriously the reason that Netroots Nation was originally created.
But at the moment my pessimism continues for the future of the country.
Obama lost his moment to be FDR. He lost it as much or more with Bowles-Simpson, as with a too small stimulus and an insurance company health plan that continues to cause bankruptcy through high deductibles. I heard him say once that ‘we all needed to tighten our belts and reduce the deficit’. I knew then he had no clue.
Economics is a critical component of policy, as much as social and foreign policy. Sanders speaks to that. I can’t trust Hilary any further than I can throw her, no matter what she says. But we know Bernie’s chances are slim at best. And we know that BLM, as a matter of social justice,is a democratic value. We also know that without congressional majorities there is little a President can do. Obama can hide behind that but then he did nothing to change it after losing his majority. And I understand the Max Baucus and Blue Dog argument. I can’t say it holds water. I do know Obama never fought it, as noted in the sequester and his obvious willingness to cut and gut the safety net.
All of which leads me to wonder aloud if Hilary’s biggest selling point is not she may have a say in appointing four supreme court justices. (even more at the outside) And maybe that will cause me to try to toss her as far as I can.
Bottom line on this post to me is just this. POC are the democratic base. We must make room and I hope Bernie takes it to heart.
The stimulus was probably too small but worse than that was the form/structure of it. It bailed out the banksters and GM, but didn’t little to increase employment. New hires at GM had to accept a crappy wage and benefit package.
I was pretty upset about it when it happened. What really matters is what happened/happens next. One, Martin O’Malley admitted he made a mistake.
Two, O’Malley began the conversation to learn more. I watched his interview on TWIB, and his interview with Goldie Taylor (Blue Nation Review on Facebook) which is far more informative, and then I calmed down. She asked great questions, and he gave very detailed answers. He actually does understand some of the issues that BlackLivesMatters have as their top concerns.
What I want to see next is O’Malley letting BlackLivesMatters have a say in his policy prescriptions. I had a conversation with Lis Smith about this, and she didn’t dismiss it. I don’t think she can speak unilaterally for her candidate on this, so that’s not surprising.
I got past the knee-jerk reaction and dug into the behind-the-scenes stuff, and learned some stuff. People dismiss candidates when they stumble instead of hoping the gaffe becomes a teachable moment.
That’s a really valuable point. Also, perhaps I’m really wrong to dismiss O’Malley. Thanks.
I appreciate it. Here’s the link to the video, btw: https://goo.gl/upFYFv Took me awhile to learn how to get a vid link from Facebook
Most gaffes occur from trying to avoid candor. What voters in 2016 want more than anything else is (1) no more bullshit and bafflegab; (2) a sense that someone is listening, and not just a Clinton point and smile or an Obama lecture about tough times. And some sense that within their lifetimes America’s long protracted nightmare will come to an end.
Bafflegab! 🙂
Code Pink had to find a home somewhere…
It’s not that complicated, as per Max Sawicky’s tweet:
Diss Bernie, you help Hillary. A questionable choice.
#BernieSoBlack #HillaryNotSoBlack
And you thought it was a complicated issue…
She smirked and smiled while O’Malley was being yelled at and tripping over his tongue (and showed his later apology), while showing Sanders supposedly handling the situation correctly (she didn’t show him being yelled at). The slanted coverage turned me right off, it did.
I read both of your links. Both make some good points, it seems to me.
NN has a reputation (deservedly or not, I dunno) of being a fringe convention. Some kinda-sorta fringe conventions (like CPAC) have everyone show up. Part of the audience (30 people in this case?) taking over a session or shouting down a session wouldn’t happen there. If NN wants to have all Democratic candidates show up and treat it as an important event, then the organizers have to find a way to let loud groups get access to the candidates and have their concerns heard and addressed without disrupting the overall meeting.
I fear this NN/BLM issue will be a 12-hour news item and then BLN will again be lost as a real issue (until the next killing). A better approach would have probably been a long discussion, Q&A, etc., on the BLM issues (police control, justice reform, etc.). Maybe the candidates wouldn’t have wanted to attend. But its easier to force them to respond to concrete proposals developed with lots of input in something like that rather than “what are you going to do about it?” questions shouted from the audience.
We’ll see.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Lose-Lose on this one.
The two pols should have improvised. Al Sharpton/Jerry Brown/Obama/Reagan could have done that, I think.
The protesters should have telegraphed in advance their move for the takeover in order to allow the pols the opportunity to cede the floor and participate constructively.
OTOH, the protesters made it very clear that when spontaneously confronted even the most open minded, progressive white people will shut down on the issue.
OTOOH, I’m pretty sure that a spontaneous, out of context outbreak of The Marseillaise by French attendees at an EU event would not be appreciated by the Italians, etc.
Trending now on twitter- #BernieSoBlack
Oooo, harsh. But also hilarious.
What was the reaction towards the transgender immigration activist who interrupted/heckled the President a few weeks ago?
DoD got moving on transgender policies, for one thing.
I don’t think so. DoD takes forever to make policy changes. That one was likely in the works for quite awhile. It may have affected the timing of the release but it wasn’t the impetus.
I was actually referring to whether progressives thought it was disrespectful to heckle Obama in “his house” as he put it. She did draw attention but possibly more negative than positive.
Politics, as I have said before in this country is about one thing; Race. That must change.
In spite of being wrong about everything to now become what we call the stupid, Republicans have used Race to capture everything except the White House. Elections are about winning the argument. Race is the ultimate tribal wedge issue to not only win the win the argument but to define the argument. For this to work in the Republican’s favor the debate must remain defined by conservative versus liberal, right against left.
The NYT as well as many here see Bernie as a creature of the liberals that will result only in another sad protest vote. Bernie responded in the interview with the NYT that he was not a liberal. What a shock! Bernie went on to explain his target was working people whose way of life is being destroyed by Republicans and Corporatist Democrats, cutting across party lines. He wants to change the argument from left versus right to up versus down, if you will, ignite a progressive revolution.
The Black Lives Matter protesters provide the exact same function as the Confederate flag wavers and dog whistle Republicans from years past by moving the argument once again back to Race, left versus right, conservative versus liberal. Bernie refuses to play that game with Black Lives Matter same as he refused the game with Wolf Blitzer to deviate from progressive issues to say something nasty about Hillary. If Bernie has a political problem it is that he doesn’t suffer fools. Neither do I.
From this coverage it looks as thought neither sanders nor O’Malley showed much understanding of the issues important to the protestors, and worse, neither were very quick on their feet. A good pol would have turned this confrontation to his/her advantage.
What I think is the Netroots Nation doesn’t matter one bit to the overall race. No minds are changed there and everyone is kind of on the same team.
The activists had every right to do what they did and the candidates should have done a better job speaking to their issues which neither seemed to have the ability to do. In normal politics this should disqualify both of them but since Netroots doesn’t matter, nothing in the race will change.
Our candidates should do a better job speaking to these issues and listening to the true base of the party which is not Netroots.
Heresy! Get thee hence.
Why don’t you tell me what the true base of the Democratic Party is, then, and how do their differences differ from that of Netroots?
And don’t give me that stupid drivel about ‘appropriating the appropriators’ or whatever hippie-punching nonsense you usually give out to avoid these issues, DXM. Give me some actual fucking issues for once.
*how do their issues differ
I’m assuming they’re referring to this?
https:/www.laprogressive.com/netroots-nation-lacks-diversity
A 37 year-old, non-white, basically working class woman, but who thinks of herself as middle class.
Drives a 1999 Toyota Camry, and is the third owner of same.
Associate’s degree from a local community college.
Lives in a first-ring suburb of a medium-sized city, one too small to have anything but buses for public transport.
Has a non-unionized service-sector job for a firm with between 50 and 500 employees.
Wouldn’t know a public option if one turned up in her grocery cart.
That’s a very compelling case study, but I asked about issues. What are her issue differences with Netroots?
I think the point is that her issue difference don’t matter. Like, I presume, DXM, she’d vote for Cuomo over Teachout every time.
If the Democratic base doesn’t care at all about issues, then what’s with all of this talking about NNs not representing the real Democratic base?
Who gives a fuck about issues?
I’m not kidding. Progressive white activists, in general, are the only group remaining in American politics who seem to think that if only they make a compelling and rigorous and factual enough argument, why of course everyone will recognize the correctness of their argument, and their policy prescriptions, and rally to their causes and wisdom. Ask the Kucinich for President folks how well that works.
Low-information voters – which is to say, most voters – are going on emotion (especially ones connected with hope), not logic. They care about issues only to the extent that they signify values. They care about candidates’ perceived values, and they care about personalities. They want to personally like their candidate. (Or the marketing image and celebrity-driven coverage of their candidate that is the major or only source of their information.)
The base of the Democratic Party, in 2015, is not white. It most certainly does not look like or think like the pasty nerds (bless them) of Network Nations. Even if all the base’s policy prescriptions were identical to the NN folks (not likely), their priorities and the criteria by which they relate to candidates certainly aren’t. And that’s what matters.
It’s early, but so far none of the Democratic candidates, most especially the frontrunner, have acted like they care about this base. Obama, simply by virtue of who he is and the historical importance of his campaigns, got a pass that Hillary or any of the others won’t. And without buy-in from the party’s real base – not the NN crowd – downticket races in 2016 are going to underperform, and 2018 will be a bloodbath.
For the country’s sake, I hope Hillary and the others buy, or are forced to buy, a big fucking #BLM clue. Sooner rather than later, please.
Thanks for this, Geov. On point.
Since Kucinich was an idiot it is no wonder his issues went nowhere. He is a big reason I mostly can’t stand liberals. There is real pain and anger out there in the smoldering remains of what was once the middle class. You can see that anger expressed with the large crowds and rising poll numbers of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Both men express exactly what their base is really thinking. Trump is a loud mouth racist complete with celebrity status and red face. His base doesn’t think he’s crazy, just telling truth to power. The more he’s attacked, the stronger he becomes. Bernie Sanders is our only non-corporatist candidate is a very long time who talks about every issue Democrats should be talking about. For me he’s what I wish Obama had been when I voted for what I thought was progressive change.
Bernie’s recent address to more than 11,000 people in all places, Phoenix, AZ, spoke to all the issues raised by BLM. Listen to it then tell me what he missed. Bernie’s base is not BLM nor should it be. His base, if he can pull it off is the angry working class screwed by Republicans and Corporatist Democrats. By the time he pulls this off it may be too late find the right progressive candidates to challenge Republicans and primary Corporatists Democrats but by 2018 that will happen. This could completely change the direction of our country improving the lives of all people instead of the multinational corporations. You are wrong. The base could be white. The base could also be Brown and Black. Bernie wants us to stand together. Listen to the Phoenix speech.
There’s still time but the window of opportunity is closing quickly. Probably already closed for the purposes of fielding excellent and viable candidates in to run in primary election in those states that have an early primary schedule.
You know, one of the things that gave me some real hope for the future about the Obama Coalition was that we wouldn’t have to do this New Deal Coalition shit of speaking out of both sides of our mouth and repeatedly making unnecessary Sophie’s Choices and treating our followers like a bunch of brain-damaged puppies. When the Democratic Party shooed out all of the mouthbreathing Dixiecrats and after two decades put together an ideologically coherent coalition that was on the right side of science, progress, human rights, and multiculturalism and then by virtue of brute demographic force managed to win with it those days were over.
But no.
Sounds like you’re telling me that it was a vain hope all along and that Obama Coalition liberals shouldn’t be treating the base as adults. What we should be doing is putting on Respectable Person clownsuits and vapidly pandering and lying our asses off and cajoling our base into doing the right thing.
Guess we can do that. I mean, if the planet depends upon it I don’t mind putting on a happy face and doing this song and dance again. What kind of empty tribal symbols does the base prioritize in lieu of these issues? What are their favorite foods, songs, fashions, entertainment interests, what?
I feel like if we knew the answer to this that Republicans would never be near any position of power…
We can’t even figure out or agree on the “real reason” Trump is running.
Not much is gained by screaming at a national candidate and the snail pace change they can muster over what should be confronted at a precinct by precinct local level.
The magic wand is in your hand.
A Camera.
Exactly.
Also, be curious to see what changes occur in Ferguson after the majority population voted and got some representation in their local government, which is the only place where militarized police, steroid abuse by cops, and citizens being used as ATMs can actually be affected, eh?
Sad to see the ease with which economic populism is still being deflected. After 35 yrs, would think we might have wised up to the need. Even Greece doesn’t faze us….
I think activism is a good thing, even when people tut about how rude it is.
But I also think it makes LOADS more sense to pressure the actual president on this stuff. If it’s doable, we’ve got a guy in the White House right now, who is tremendously good at speaking to these issues, and has a personal stake in a way that Sanders and O’Malley don’t. So I’m not quite sure I understand the focus.
Still, anything to make the issue politically un-ignorable is a very good thing.
In real time, how many on the left perceived the hand of COINTELPRO (early/mid-1960s through 1970s) or CREEP (in the 1972 election cycle)? Precious few and even they couldn’t articulate what exactly was up, who was doing what, and why.
That perceptual difficulty was hampered by activities of politically and socially well meaning people with the political astuteness and knowledge of adolescents. And like the BLM protest action at NN yesterday, those activities divided the left. Being young and impatient with the glacial speed in correcting socio/economic wrongs, I supported and refrained from criticizing any minority or leftie activities. Often ignoring my gut sense that I wasn’t seeing nor absorbing the full and long-term picture.
Since then, I’ve learned to respect my gut a bit more. To exercise caution in taking one side or another. Seek possibly hidden information or data. Search for ways to articulate compatibility between what appears to be known facts and my gut.
This leads me to ask if Black Americans and their white fellow travelers are so astute, where were they when Bill Clinton was empowering police departments and signing draconian, and racist, drug laws? “Ending welfare as we know it?” Where were they in the early going of the 2008 Presidential election when another Clinton sought the office?
Where were they in Baltimore and Maryland as O’Malley supported and implemented bad and racist law enforcement policies?
When has Sanders ever supported, much less implemented, similarly racist public policies? Who among us with a lifetime record of being on the right left side of an issue wouldn’t be caught flat footed when attacked by those that by all objective measures should be allies?
Whether it’s serendipitous or a conspiracy, I smell a rat. Or am overly supspicious because I haven’t forgotten Fred Hampton and many others.
Among the #blacklivesmatter bunch, a lot of them were not yet in school when Clinton was president.
IMO, the issue is not about policies, it is about access.
We have long memories. A lot of these folks are inventing the movement from scratch as they go. There are a few older ones who are mentoring, but this IMO is an honest collision of the American political process and the movemental politics that has arisen because of that process’s failure.
Well if they’re my age…elementary school.
○ A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza [2014]
Interview with Patrisse Cullors lays out the rationale @NN15 (Video)
Chris Reeves @dKos
○ What the #blacklivesmatter Protest at NN15 Shows Us
Excellent coverage in The Guardian …
○ #BlackLivesMatter: the birth of a new civil rights movement
Your take on this, BooMan? You did set this up with you eventually telling us why we’re wrong.
The manner of delivery overwhelmed the message.
That’s exactly what the good people of Montgomery said about Rosa Parks.
Who, exactly, was the Bernie Sanders of Birmingham? You know, the white guy who was on their side but apparently not enough.
Meanwhile, Bull Connor chortles.
Ugh. Montgomery. But really either works.
Meet the black KKK.
Cut them some slack for being young, impatient, and politically naive. That they don’t know and appreciate the difference between grabbing center stage and the spotlight and having a clear and well formulated agenda and strategy on how to succeed. That they’re borrowing from the only movement they’ve seen, the teabaggers, and then haven’t looked beyond the superficial public noise/screaming of the teabaggers.
Well, we know where you stand.
At least I know when I run into mine after 50 years of hard scrubbing. It still surprises me when it happens. We are all only human.
They did not have hoods. They did not have robes. They did not burn a cross. They did not threaten the candidate. They just insisted that the most urgent issue facing the country have a serious hearing and not be sidelined by a marketing speech.
It was process. Political process. We haven’t had any for quite some time. We forget what it was before marketing took over and money buried the process.
That’s how you perceive this?
I think you’ve really gone round the bend on this persecution complex you seem to have developed lately.
The BLM movement has no interest in killing, maiming, harming, or terrorizing anyone. They just want want their voices heard and people to care about their lives.
Their voices and nothing else. By acting as bullies they tarnished their cause. They had a meeting scheduled but chose to be disruptive instead.
their voices and nothing else? Who cares if they had a scheduled meeting? If the candidates can’t speak publicly on this issue they shouldn’t be running.
It’s not like this just came out of nowhere this weekend, they’ve had time
any interest is walking back the black KKK comment? – you don’t think that was a little hyperbolic and over the line?
But this doesn’t.
The “activist disturbance” at the ’68 Chicago convention cemented Nixon’s victory and that was about an entire government trying to kill any draft age male in the nation. (And I say that in no way to minimize the crisis of militarized police killing way too many black males).
Nixon’s victory though extended the Vietnam war by probably four years, set back the civil rights movement in way we are still seeing, and massively increased cynicism for and dysfunction of the government.
They are in no way the same but BLM antics look the same to many as Tea Partiers hijacking meetings and candidates. The country is pissed and on fire. It can react with fear or hope and it needs a candidate who helps them make the right choice.
I think the families of the Charlseton victims provide the best example.
That’s not a good analogy. Chicago ’68 protestors weren’t bullying and shouting down the remaining anti-Vietnam War Presidential candidates, McCarthy and McGovern. They were protesting the process that had led to the nomination of HHH and HHH’s continued courting of pro-war Democrats. The suppression came from the police who proceeded to riot against the protestors.
Nor did it cement Nixon’s victory — he won the popular vote over HHH by a mere 0.7%. The electoral map was difficult because the south unleashed its racist id. However, a breakthrough in the Paris Peace talks could well have cemented the election for HHH — that’s why Nixon/Kissinger had to make sure it didn’t happen.
There was — as least in the near term — a positive outcome of the protests. The “smoke filled back room” selection of the Democratic nominee ended shortly after ’68.
Sure it is, but maybe you are taking the analogy further than I intended. Net nation is not the convention and won’t likely have the same impact but in the era of YouTube, foxnews and Internet pundits I can’t say for sure. Remember Rev Wright?
In 68 voices felt abandoned by their party. Others were afraid of the consequences of losing to Nixon. The South, as in all wars, was over_represented in Vietnam and saw a national crisis the number of people opposed to the war. Long hair Yankee hippies most of all (I sided with the hippies and would soon basically become one) Hard for me to say if that in fact scared them more than giving blacks civil rights but it certainly added to the fear in the south. Enter Wallace. In total it made it possible for Nixon to win.
People were afraid. Nixon’s tough on crime platform seemed the safe choice among a lot of voters and with the southern strategy (another evil legacy we are still living with) he won.
The comparison to today is both the real and perceived dysfunction in the country people see and the possibility that without a calm, reasoned and effective leader in (or running for) the White House some really bad possibilities open up.
Lots of issues there. Netroots Nation is not the Democratic National Convention. The process of railroading through Humphrey at that convention while Daley’s thugs were beating people in the streets, an event that was officially labeled as a police riot by an investigative report is far and away different from a candidate asking if he should leave just because protesters want something other than his canned speech.
If you think the country is on fire now, wait for further inaction in the issue of killer cops.
Paying attention to white feelings is why we are 50 years after the civil rights act trying to reclaim ground. In the 1960s, there was briefly enough white understanding to get something done before the Lost Cause campaign kicked in again. And it always seems to be those liberals outside the South who want to let the racists avoid accountability.
Are we going to miss another opportunity because the white Democratic candidates can’t figure out how to deal with that dead weight of the past?
At what point to black activists qualify to have allies as strong as white bankers?
“At what point to black activists qualify to have allies as strong as white bankers?”
Good points here. This one made me think about rikyrah’s comment that blacks are the base of the Democratic party. I think she’s right and wrong. It is true that Democrats have been able to count on ~90% of the black vote but that vote is highly concentrated and affected by the same drop in turnout that plagues Democrats in mid-term and irregular elections.
Its very difficult to win statewide elections in the south, for example, when 90% whites are voting for a Republican.
White bankers have the power and influence that money delivers. I think blacks will be able to leverage their power and influence better in future elections working in concert other minority groups and working class whites. A candidate like Bernie should be able to appeal to these groups if he can at least address their separate concerns.
The 1% will do everything in their power to prevent a linkage between people of color and working class whites. Addressing their separate concerns is the difficulty in a campaign operating within a marketing framework. The media will frame those separate concerns as competing zero-sum policies although they are not.
Sanders will have to create a different sort of local political processes to involve a unified populist campaign that reaches out and is not captured by the limits of data mining.
everything about it sucked.
i suppose we can be grateful #blm didnt show up with giant puppets.
the candidates….how could they possibly deal effectively with it if they dont have well formed feelings of personal outrage.
even my outrage over police killing non white people is dampened by the fact that i am not at risk every day. my response is going to be more intellectual (although i will say when i watched the video i cried because i really do feel all that pain).
#blm is suffering from surplus powerlessness. and they havent figured out yet how to empower themselves beyond the feels. they arent going to like it but eventually they, like all of us who had a cause that brought us in, have to learn to work on the issues from the inside and with policy. that doesnt mean they should stop yelling. scream on.
and also…..i will have a lot more respect for #blm when they know and recite the names of the thousands…thousands….of black lives that dont matter to black people. whether its in american cities or african villages. i left my beloved inner city neighborhood and all the crime (being shot at, having my block burned down, watching students struggle in school because no one bothered to feed them or help them do their homework)because i had to finally admit some of these people were their own worst enemies and yelling at everyone else wasnt helping anything. nothing was helping and i wanted to live and raise my kids and because i COULD leave (that was my privilege and im glad i had it and no i wont feel bad about it.) yes i know the issues that lead to people being in that place, and i know that the institutional racism creates most of that environment. but clean your house. blacks killed by blacks matter as much as blacks killed by militarized police. and there are way more of them. and it can stop today!!!!
as far as the way #BLM handled their protest and as far as the response of the candidates and how they handled being drowned out……they are both right and wrong. in the words of johanna russ; do you want to be right, or do you want to change things?
….. haven’t logged in to comment in years, but….
“and also…..i will have a lot more respect for #blm when they know and recite the names of the thousands…thousands….of black lives that dont matter to black people.”
What type of horse-shit is this comment?
I’m so sick of the faux outrage on “black on black” crime. As if Black people don’t have countless candlelight vigils and meetings and conferences and prayer meetings and fund raisers and forums and town halls and articles and documentaries and stop the violence songs and weekend specials and on and on about the violence in the community. These things happen just about weekly all over America.
As well meaning as i’m sure you believe you are, that sentiment belongs on “Red State” or “Hot Air”.
“lets stop killing each other” is unreasonable?
people didnt go out of their houses because they were afraid of being shot, not by cops, by their neighbor.
30 years of candlelight vigils, prayer meetings, masses, protests, meetings where residents begged officials to send in the national guard, and the murders continue and there are more of them.
but hey look over here, a cop shot a black kid. you know his name, you dont know the names of any of the people killed by their own neighbors. you would have to look up their names on google. you wanna know why? because their lives didnt matter.
Uh, you realize you’re admitting my point right? You postulated about the lack of outrage in “black on black crime”.
Then you admitted that there had been 30 years of protests about that very issue, by the very community that you claim ignored it?
So….. i win the debate right 🙂
ah the black on black crime BS, I’d hope we wouldn’t see that on this blog
I guess I was wrong
Giant puppets might have been a good idea.
There are certain things that liberals/progressives are never, ever to mention or think. For good reasons because they aren’t objective and contextual truths and exist in the public arena to denigrate certain demographic groups in service to maintain the existing societal power and economic imbalances. “Black on black” crime is one of those things.
Unless invited, outsiders must butt our of intra-family or inter-group problems or issues. How, when, why, or if a members of a group work on issues/problems within their group does not deny them the right to speak out about inter-group matters that directly hurt and impact them. Thus, if I’m a terrible housekeeper, I still have the right to demand city trash and street cleaning services.