It's My party and I'll Cry if I Want to

Sophia Nelson writes in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post...'It's my party, but I don't feel part of it'...and goes on to say how she pretty much had to hold her nose in order to vote for then Senator Barack Obama, and seems to suggest that the only reason the Senator won the election was because of the disaffection felt by Black and Latino voters to the Republican Party.

The Republican Party she describes existed for only a short period, a period of less than a hundred years, when it began to align itself with the most extreme elements in the American political landscape. The modern Republican Party, at least since the late 1940's has been the party of exclusion, isolationism, and xenophobia. There seems to be this tendency among Republicans that their party has been the party of progressive growth with a commitment to diversity. Where is the justification for this delusion?

Let's call this hallucination for what it is; at no time in modern history has the Republican Party made any real effort to reach out to the so-called minority community. Those who did come to the Republican Party, in my view, were practicing what I call ' political Darwinism', or rather, they become big fish in a small pond. They are held up as useful tools in order to appeal to some sort of 'pull yourself up by your boot-straps' fable. The role of class cannot be underestimated in this discussion of the Republican Party. Let's not forget that the so-called 'progressive' wing of the party is the 'country club' or Rockefeller wing of the party.

Yes, I said "class", that elephant in the room that no one seems to notice even though that elephant has been at the center of racial and class strife since at least the Goldwater years. The revisionist view of the GOP would have you forget Joe McCarthy, Goldwater's' eagerness to bomb the hell out the Vietnamese and his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and let's not forget the Birchers, the KKK in Indiana during the twenties, and on and on. Sophia Nelson would have us believe that Lee Atwater and Karl Rove really had the interests of African-American and for that matter the interests of Latino\as at the forefront of their ugly political machinations.

Now, the Sophia Nelsons' and Michael Steeles' of this world would have you believe that the Republican Party of the 1850's is the party we should be remembering, and not the more modern iteration; the Jesse Helms wing, or the not so subtle appeals for 'law-n-order' during the Nixon campaigns. that finally exposed the Democratic Party of the south for the racists that they were.

Sophia Nelson notices that out of the more than 2000 delegates, only thirty-six or so were African-American, and I would imagine that the number of Latino\a delegates could not have been much more. Voting against one's own self-interest has always fascinated me, I don't understand the disconnect that must occur in order to continually identify with a group that has made no secret of its' disdain for the African-American and Latino community.

Will President Obama be able to salvage a successful first term with all that needs to be done, i have no clue. However, looking to the Republican Party for solutions in the twenty-first century is a little like fixing your toilet by installing an outhouse in the back yard.

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The Obama Paradox

I believe that we watched the unraveling of more that twenty years of the so-called conservative ascendancy, or as Fred Barnes quoted W.D. Burnham, Professor Emeritus at The University of of Texas at Austin in the Weekly Standard, November 2004..."If Republicans keep playing the religious card along with the terrorism card, this could last a long time. Referring of course to the 'permanent majority' being bandied about by the leading lights of the right wing, DeLay, Limbaugh, ad nauseum. They were partially correct.

The terrorism card did not have the desired effect, in spite of the 'dog whistles' within the McCain\Palin and the outright lies of the 527's acting on behalf of the Republican right wing. However it is my opinion that the religion card is still in play.

The Obama Paradox is that while the campaign was able to GOTV in communities largely ignored by the Republican Party, it also brought to the voting booth many of the socially conservative elements of both the Latino and African-American population.

The sad truth is that while many people who voted for Obama\Biden voted proactively to bring the past twenty some odd years of political disgrace to an end; there are a good number of people who are still uncomfortable with the idea the of "gay" rights, as if those rights rights are somehow greater than those afforded to us by our Constitution.

It is not fantasy to believe that a member in good standing at your local Black Church in Oakland can vote for Obama\Biden on the one hand and then pull the lever approving Prop 8 with the other, or that while a Latino or Latina in Orlando may be chanting Si Se Puede, that they too would be approving Amendment 2.

We are doing a decent job at exposing the 'Terror" card for the cynical tool it is in the hands of right wing demagogues.

Now we should work just as hard in exposing the cynicism that 'religion' is playing in our national discourse of human rights.

There ya go.

update: the money poured into the pro Prop 8 movement in California was largely funded by the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, and that good ol' standby, Focus on the Family.

later update: The Florida Amendment 2 moneybags seems to be limited to the Southern Baptists Convention

Originally posted at Talkingpointsmemo.com, TPMCafe on November 6th, 2008

Unlucky or Just Plain Incompetent

I almost lost my lunch when I read the following two days after the Presidential election;
"Historians: Bush presidency 'battered,' 'incompetent,' 'unlucky'
So says CNN on Thursday, November 6, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/bush.legacy/

That there is any discussion on whether the presidency of George W. Bush was unlucky seems to be the leif-motif of the true believers in this failed administration. That the Bush administration used it's sense of destiny to push an agenda espoused by the Christian Right is an historical given. From the appointment of political hacks like Monica Gooding who used political fealty and religious litmus tests to make hiring decisions in the Department of Justice to the clearly incompetent Michael Brown to head the FEMA response in New Orleans, the term "unlucky" is not a word I would use to describe the train wreck of the last eight years.

The CNN report found at the following link http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/bush.legacy/ attempts to make the case that all the Bush administration is the victim of some unforeseen mojo that will be better explained through the passage of time.

Now I will agree that the temptation to foresee how any particular administration will be viewed in the future is an exercise in Nostrodamian tea leaf reading, but there a few things that I can state with a degree of certainty; it is not the "unlucky" things that may or may not happen that determines the character of an individual or an administration, it is the response to that "unlucky" event that will reveal the true grit of an individual, a community, or an administration.

It was not the attacks on September 11th that defined us as a nation, it was the response of the community and country that came to the aid of the stricken that showed our true colors; a people who will stand together to heal a national wound.

It was the incompetent response to that tragedy that will mark Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, who with their own agenda to re-fight the First Gulf war, led to four thousand plus Americans and untold thousands of Iraqi's to die and allowed Bin-Laden and his cohorts to escape into the Tora Bora area. The net effect is the trashing of the Geneva Convention rules against torture, maintaining secret rendition sites, and establishing an POW camp in Guantanamo, Cuba.

It was not the "unlucky" turn of events that led Hurricane Katrina to strike with such ferocity that left New Orleans no better than a waste land, leaving many dead and countless others homeless.
It was the incompetent response to that event by the Bush Administration that will forever define the old Reagan adage..."I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

This presidency is the logical progression of those intent on destroying what little is left of the New Deal programs and undoing the benefits that Union members were able to achieve.

The current financial crisis is the outgrowth of of the Reaganite Club for Growth policies that permeate not just through the current administration, but with the tacit approval of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Unlucky or just plain incompetent?

Gimme a break!

Two Days to Go

Two more days, and I already feel like a junkie looking for his next fix. Two more days and I'm wondering, will everyone go back to sleep after what might be the most important election of the twenty-first century.

What arrogance.

We really have no idea how important or unimportant this election is really going to shape up compared to the truly horrendous problems we will surely have to come to grips with in the very near future. Some of them are obvious, some of them are not.

• The immediate problems in our financial sector is, in my opinion, have no easy solutions, yet, everywhere you turn only the most bland of ideas are getting any attention. We have chosen to infuse banks with capital, while leaving those who failed to see the oncoming train in charge. We, the taxpayers, own banks, yet we cannot set policy. We will be the last to be paid for our investments and the first to lose.
• Eleven trillion dollar debt.
  
• Health care costs are driving many families to the brink. Deductibles are too high, care is less than adequate. As long as health care is 'market' driven, I doubt that there will be much relief on the horizon. Unless of course of you are a member of Congress, then, no worries.
• Loose nukes. need I say more.
• Global warming and energy independence. Obvious problems. Not so obvious solutions.

If this election is going to have any historical effect, then we will have to look beyond the obvious and lay the groundwork for true sensible solutions.

Oh...my Wednesday morning prediction...Obama\Biden...we pick up six Democratic Senate seats...and thirty-five in The House...

How's that for pulling out something out of ones' arse.