Door Harold Meyerson

De twee-Staat van Clinton In twee stappen: De tot afgevaardigden het maken van van Florida en van Michigan een oorzaak voor democratie en feminism maakt een spot van allebei.

Kroniekschrijver - Harold Meyerson
Voor Zaterdag, wanneer het Comité van Regels van het Democratische Nationale Comité samenkomt om het lot van de delegaties van Florida en van Michigan aan de overeenkomst van deze zomer te bepalen, zal het wat bedrijf hebben. Een groep de verdedigers van Hillary Clinton heeft aangekondigd het buiten zal aantonen.

Dat Clinton heeft gloedvolle verdedigers, veel van wie haar kandidatuur met de feministische oorzaak verbinden, nauwelijks kwalificeert als nieuws.

En het is zeker waar dat langs de campagnesleep Clinton wat outrageously heeft ontmoet seksistische behandeling, enkel aangezien Barack Obama op het ontvangende eind van is geweest dweepzieke behandeling. (Obama is zelfs onderworpen aan anti-moslimbigotry ondanks het feit dat hij niet Moslim is.) Maar op de een of andere manier, zijn een aantal verdedigers Clinton de plaatsing van Michigan en Florida niet slechts met de vooruitzichten van Clinton maar met de oorzaken van democratie en feminism komen identificeren - een vergelijking die een spot van democratie en feminism maakt.

Clinton zelf is grotendeels de oorzaak van deze absurditeit. Over the past couple of weeks, she has equated the seating of the two delegations with African Americans’ struggle for suffrage in the Jim Crow South, and with the efforts of the democratic forces in Zimbabwe to get a fair count of the votes in their presidential election.

Somehow, I doubt that the activists opposing Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe would appreciate this equation.

But the Clintonistas who have called Saturday’s demonstration make it sound as if they’ll be marching in Selma in support of a universal right to vote. The DNC, says one of their Web sites, “must honor our core democratic principles and enfranchise the people of Michigan and Florida.”

Had Florida and Michigan conducted their primaries the way the other 48 states conducted their own primaries and caucuses — that is, in accord with the very clear calendar laid down by the DNC well before the primaries began — then Clinton’s marchers would be utterly justified in their claims. But when the two states flouted those rules by moving their primaries outside the prescribed time frame, the DNC, which gave neither state a waiver to do so, decreed that their primaries would not count and enjoined all presidential candidates from campaigning in those states. Obama and John Edwards complied with the DNC’s dictates by removing their names from the Michigan ballot. Clinton did not.

Seating Michigan in full would mean the party validates the kind of one-candidate election (well, 1.03, to give Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel, who also remained on the ballot, their due) that is more common in autocracies than democracies. It would mean rewarding the one serious candidate who didn’t remove her name from the ballot when all her rivals, in deference to the national party rules, did just that.

What’s particularly outrageous is that the Clinton campaign supported the calendar, and the sanctions against Michigan and Florida, until Clinton won those states and needed to have their delegations seated.

Last August, when the DNC Rules Committee voted to strip Florida (and Michigan, if it persisted in clinging to its date) of its delegates, the Clinton delegates on the committee backed those sanctions. All 12 Clinton supporters on the committee supported the penalties. (The only member of the committee to vote against them was an Obama supporter from Florida.) Harold Ickes, a committee member, leading Clinton strategist and acknowledged master of the political game, said, “This committee feels very strongly that the rules ought to be enforced.” Patty Solis Doyle, then Clinton’s campaign manager, further affirmed the decision. “We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” she said, referring to the four states that the committee authorized to hold the first contests. “And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role. Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC-approved nominating calendar.”

Not a single Clinton campaign official or DNC Rules Committee member, much less the candidate herself, said at the time that the sanctions imposed on Florida or Michigan were in any way a patriarchal plot or an affront to democratic values. The threat that these rules posed to our fundamental beliefs was discovered only ex post facto — the facto in question being Clinton’s current need to seat the delegations whose seatings she had opposed when she thought she’d cruise to the nomination.

Clinton’s supporters have every right to demonstrate on Saturday, of course. But their larger cause is neither democracy nor feminism; it’s situational ethics.

To insist otherwise is to degrade democracy and turn feminism into the last refuge of scoundrels.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Popularity: 15% [?]

In desperation, Hillary Clinton is now explicitly referring to her appeal to “Hard-Working Americans, White Americans,” adding that she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Clinton’s blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, notes quite correctly that at the end of the day her primary support doesn’t prove she’s more electable. Either Democrat will get “the vast majority” of the other’s primary election votes in a general election, he said, adding that Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.” …..[more]

I construe Hillary’s comments as a suggestion that “blacks are lazy,”….a racial stereotype I expect to come from a ReTHUGlican and not a Democrat.

“Her statement seems to exclude African-Americans from being hard-working,” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist and CNN contributor, aligned to the Obama campaign, who is black. “Also, there are a lot of white Americans for Barack Obama. So it’s misleading and it’s not true,” said Mr. Simmons.

Mr. Simmons added:

“There is a very particular feeling that this couple(Bill and Hillary Clinton), that African-Americans had such regard for and trust in, has been at best dismissive towards Barack Obama and in many ways has used race and differentness as a weapon against him.”

Senator Diane Feinstein, a Clinton backer, has also indicated she wanted to hear “what Clinton’s strategy is,” adding: “The race is reaching a point now where there are negative dividends from it in terms of strife within the party.”

“Duck Hunting” Ma. Clinton however, appears unmoved by the “sniper-fire,” telling cheering supporters yesterday, in Charleston, West Virginia that the state’s primary next Tuesday, which she is expected to win, was “a test for me and a test for Senator Obama.”

I also find it odd that Latino voters who have been supporting her in large numbers are not included in the “Hard Working White” coalition….and what about blacks? Won’t she need the most consistently loyal Democratic party voting block, if she becomes the nominee?

The “Bitch of Chappaqua, New York” is in full Kamikaze (suicide) Mode….The “Hill” has become so selfish she doesn’t mind destroying the Democratic Party,…. and the “bitching and moaning” does not bode well for future female candidates.

LOL!

This woman is running amok, and if the DNC does not quickly “reject and denounce,” her — she will drive such a monumental wedge between the voters so much so that it will be next to impossible to unite the party for the general election.

Al Gore, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and other big-wigs of the Democratic party need to step in and get this witch out of the race, before her “toxic waste” does extreme damage to the party…..and to Bill’s already “Lewinsky-Stained” legacy.

On the other hand, if she decides to ’surrender’ within the next week or two, it will a ‘joy’ to watch Hillary stumping enthusiastically for Obama in the general election — essentially denying her current charge(s); that Obama is elitist and out of touch with middle-America.

Can’t wait for that… LOL!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Columnist - John Sammon
The controversy over Reverend Wright and his torpedoing of the campaign of his parishioner Barack Obama proves how childish and paranoid the American people have become.

If this happened in Europe, Europeans being more sophisticated and somewhat more intelligent on average than Americans, there would be no controversy. Europeans wouldn’t hold Obama accountable for the statements of his pastor.

We’re operating under the allusion that if Wright says it, Obama believes it too. Guilt by association. It’s amusing to hear McCain call Wright’s remarks extremist, a few months after he sang a Beach Boys song, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran (sung to the tune of Barbara Ann).

Nobody called McCain’s sick joke extremist.

What has Wright said? Wright has the right to say it. He said instead of God bless America, God should damn America. In fairness. If the truth be known. Some of America should be damned. Such as the below.

1. America annihilated its Indian population and stole their land.

2. Americans kept others in slavery and then after a war to end it, kept African Americans in virtual servitude for the next hundred years with racist segregation.

3. Other crimes including Agent Orange for which there is not space here.

Wright called America an “imperialist” power. Well. We are. At times. We have a tendency to invade poor little countries much smaller than ours in an attempt to make them see it our way. We’ve invaded Nicaragua a half dozen times. Maybe instead of calling it “imperialist,” we should call it “concern” for Nicaraguan affairs.

President Bush wants the right to torture prisoners, and that’s not called “extremist.”

Wright’s statement that AIDS is a government plot to get rid of black Americans is a little bit far fetched and I can’t go along with that one.

That Obama’s campaign will go down the tubes because of statements made by someone over whom he (Obama) has no control is an abject lesson that to play the political game, you have to be foolishly optimistic and upbeat and never tell Americans very much of the unpleasant truths about their country. Thus, we can always feel superior, that we’re better people.

God only blesses America. God must be American and Republican.

Clearly, there is a price to be paid when you’re too candid.

It’s also another example of how the American people want to fixate on personality rather than issues. It has a long history from the Willie Horton episode that sank Michael Dukakis’s presidential hopes, to Thomas Eagleton, the vice presidential candidate who had prior mental problems, was replaced, but helped to terminate George McGovern’s campaign, or the Swift Boat right wing smear campaign against John Kerry.

You simply can’t be too truthful with the American people, if the truth is unpleasant. This is not new either. They forced Socrates to take poison.

I don’t believe America has sole ownership of morality, that we’re above reproach, that we’re God’s chosen people (especially white Republicans). Does that make me unpatriotic?

Wright is voicing frustration with a system that he thinks (with good reason) has treated he and his flock unfairly. He doesn’t speak for Obama just because Obama attends his church any more than commentator Bill O’Reilly speaks for McCain because McCain appears on his TV show.

The lesson here is clear. If you want to win office, don’t associate with big-mouth preachers, and don’t be too honest with the American people.

Copyright 2008 Sammonsays.

Popularity: 25% [?]

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America

Editorial Reviews

Book Description: On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 PM, while he was standing on a balcony at a Memphis hotel, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and fatally wounded. Only hours earlier King–the prophet for racial and economic justice in America–ended his final speech with the words, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

Acclaimed public intellectual and best-selling author Michael Eric Dyson uses the fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination as the occasion for a provocative and fresh examination of how King fought, and faced, his own death, and we should use his death and legacy. Dyson also uses this landmark anniversary as the starting point for a comprehensive reevaluation of the fate of Black America over the four decades that followed King’s death. Dyson ambitiously investigates the ways in which African-Americans have in fact made it to the Promised Land of which King spoke, while shining a bright light on the ways in which the nation has faltered in the quest for racial justice. He also probes the virtues and flaws of charismatic black leadership that has followed in King’s wake, from Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama.

Always engaging and inspiring, April 4, 1968 celebrates the prophetic leadership of Dr. King, and challenges America to renew its commitment to his deeply moral vision.

About the Author:Michael Eric Dyson, named by Ebony as one of the hundred most influential black Americans, is the author of sixteen books, including Holler if You Hear Me, Is Bill Cosby Right? and I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr. He is currently University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Other Books By Michael Eric Dyson

Popularity: 29% [?]