This Burris Fiasco is the Most Laughable Political Theater!

It sickened me when I heard Representative Bobby Rush from Illinois defend the Burris appointment by embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich using language such as calling the U.S. Senate "the last bastion of plantation politics." I shook my head in disgust when I read that the same U.S. Representative asked the public not to "hang or lynch" Burris because of the charges against Blagojevich. But the clincher was Bobby Rush on Hardball last evening which has to be seen to be believed. Try to repress your gag reflex!


Hardball, 7 January 2009

The idea of Rush's that Obama's seat must be held by an African-American is laughable in light of Obama himself. If Blacks want to be elected to statewide office they must do the hard work necessary to win statewide office. Let the people decide who their representatives ought to be, and let the candidates make their case. There should not be a minority set aside or quota for Senate seats. Those who earn that privilege have all the more credibility for having done so the hard way (witness President-elect Obama). But to taint Burris's appointment with the canard that anyone chosen would have to be African-American is as sickening as it is wrongheaded.

We have seen writ large the internecine conflicts of Chicago politics, but here's a refresher of some of the ironies according to the same Washington Post article linked to above:

1. Bobby Rush defeated Barack Obama in the 2000 Democratic primary for the Congressional seat Rush now holds, dismissing Obama as an "educated fool" and an outsider to Chicago.
2. Obama endorsed Burris in the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary over Blagojevich. Blagojevich won and then went on to win the governorship.
3. Burris claims to have introduced Obama to Blagojevich and then to have persuaded the governor to endorse Obama to become Illinois Senator in 2004.

The madness only seemed to continue this week with Burris showing up to be seated as a Senator but then getting turned away in the rain. Most galling is Rush's comparing Burris's treatment to schoolchildren having dogs sicced on them in the overheated days of the 1960s civil rights movement. That analogy, like all such outsized comparisons, is an insult to the people who had to endure actual dogs and firehoses being turned on them while at the same time trivializing the very real struggles Rush actually lived through. Perhaps former Black Panther Bobby Rush ought to ask fellow Congressional Black Caucus Representative John Lewis if he thinks Burris's treatment was as bad as the beatings Lewis sustained in Selma, Alabama trying to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

What is equally galling about this whole fiasco is how the media seem quite comfortable in drawing on the worst imagery of the civil rights era (dogs and firehoses) to paint a picture of Burris being denied access to the Senate floor. Howard Kurtz did so this morning in the Washington Post, and the punditocracy is following through in lock step, unable to resist trying to appear sensitive to race, but having the simultaneous problem of seeming insensitive to reality. The greatest difficulty Burris had at the Capitol was trying to maneuver among the crush of cameras and journalists trying to document his being turned away from the Senate. Does anyone think we should have called out the National Guard?

The whole thing sickens me because it is antithetical to where the country is at the moment when we are about to inaugurate Barack Obama. But then again maybe this is part of that moment, the old way of thinking vs. the new. Even the Congressional Black Caucus is trying to redefine itself in the era of the first black president of the United States, first noncommittal on Burris's nomination, then after Reid and Durban relented, the CBC finally came up with a full-throated endorsement. Not exactly nominees for profiles in courange! Happy though the CBC members may be at this milestone in history, they must also acknowledge that the locus of power on black issues is moving from Capitol Hill to the White House in a way none of us has ever witnessed before. Hopefully, Bobby Rush's brand of politics will cede to a new way of getting things done sooner rather than later.

Middle East Conflict

This has to be the most logical and humanitarian view point I have heard. I agree 100%.

The Auto Industry is Next in Line to Board the Gravy Train

The financial services industry was certainly first in line. And now it seems that Hank Paulson, who was overly eager to help out Wall Street by buying up the bad mortgage assets, found out that things were more complicated than originally thought. So now we are following Britain's Gordon Brown model and injecting capital directly into the financial institutions after all. Doesn't inspire much confidence in a man who was first hailed as a savior of the economy!

As is always the case (and I know this as someone who works for a company that has a large presence in federal contracting), when the government creates a new spending plan, companies will line up to see if they can get a piece of the pie. So it comes as no suprise that the automakers are blaming their imminent demise on the recent economic downturn. What a joke! These companies have been badly run and held hostage by their union obligations for years, and now that the Federal Reserve's bank vault has been thrown open, they want theirs.

But this is a winning issue for Democrats over Republicans on so many levels:

1. On the presidential level, Republicans feel forsaken by the voters in Michigan once again. Obama won not only Michigan but also Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the so-called rust belt. Understandably, Republicans in Congress are little interested in helping Michigan's Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, nor Democratic Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. Michigan has more Repbublican Congressional Representatives than Democratic and all have fiercely defended Detroit's interests...to Detroit's great detriment! Average fleet mileage standards? SUVs categorized as trucks instead of cars so that they're not part of CAFE standards? So if the Republicans are going to use the lame duck session to make their stand against one of the largest U.S. manufacturers and cede car production to the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese in the name of allowing the market to determine winners and losers, Democrats win and Republicans will be blamed for killing America's largest manufacturing sector.
   
2. Since President Bush and the Republicans got whupped, they have talked incessantly about going back to their "core principles," whatever that means! I suspect they wish to return to a vision of themselves as fiscally responsible, which might mean blocking any proposed bailout for Detroit on the grounds that the federal government has no business picking winners and losers. The market has rendered its verdict, and now the Republicans seem poised to defend their principles at the expense of the millions of jobs that will be lost. Seems politically disastrous, but the Repubs are suffering a severe identity crisis! But they're probably also hoping to break the backs of the United Auto Workers Union, a Democratic constituency.
   
3. Since Obama wants to help with a bailout, as do the Democrats in the House and the Senate, they will get to look like heroes to their base (unions), even as the Republicans alienate those same folks. Obama may also be able to seize this opportunity to put his health care program in place at one of the largest companies in the United States. One of Detroit's hugest expenses in health care coverage for the workers and retirees. I'm sure that GM would willingly give that obligation over to Obama's health care plan. And there's the foothold we need!

So as far as I'm concerned, Obama and the Dems should seize the opportunity to help Detroit and extract Draconian terms as part of the bargain. Might be the best way for Obama to get going on health care!

The Political Post Mortem

This is my favorite part of the political season, when the winners are lauded as geniuses and the losers exposed as backbiting and disorganized. Ann Kornblut of the Washington Post is a political insider who had the definitive story of how Hillary Clinton's campaign was in disarray following losses to Obama on Super Tuesday, and she did the same for the McCain campaign on Wednesday, as did Elisabeth Bumiller for the New York Times.

Frankly I'm not sure what to believe regarding the riffs between McCain and Palin or Palin and her handlers, but the knives are certainly out, aren't they? Campbell Brown had the best response to it all, blasting the McCain campaign operatives for dissing the the vice-presidential candidate that they themselves had picked and for telling us for weeks that she was ready to be one heartbeat away.



Are we to believe them now or what they were saying then? I'd rather believe them now, partly given that we saw how woefully unprepared Ms. Palin was to answer question during the Katie Couric interviews and partly because her stump rhetoric was just so mean spirited! It's ironic that Republicans channel Ronald Reagan in every election but they don't know anything about being positive in the way that he was. All their talk is fear-based. But I digress. I think these aides are devoted to McCain and trying to protect his legacy. Ironically, the more they bash his VP choice, the more people will conclude that John McCain was not in control of one of the most important decisions of his campaign, and how does that make him look deliberative or presidential? Maverick ain't lookin' so good these days!

Best Political Election Cartoons

The Boston Globe had some great links to political cartoons on its website. Many are moving, but this is one of my favorites that shows America "reclaiming" its place in the world. So many people in so many countries love Americans but disdain America's government. We have certainly earned our props this time!



But the ones with Lincoln, especially this one, moved me to tears yet again! Love that terrorist fist jab! Ha!

YES WE DID!

When the moment came I was unprepared. Having worked on the Obama campaign in Prince William County, Virginia since mid September, I was determined that I would do my part to help get this man elected. (I'll admit right here that Sarah Palin's selection scared me into action when McCain rose in the polls following the Republican convention.) Before this year, I'd donated neither time nor money to a campaign at any level, but somewhere along the line, say after the South Carolina primary, the race became personal to me. I'd written about this in an earlier post, but I identified with Obama on a gut level, especially with the early charges in the Black community that Obama was not Black enough, a sting that I too had felt during my college years at Brown University.

Early in the year, I became obsessed with political news and even began blogging in this space to record my thoughts. I played with online electoral maps, obsessed over statewide polling numbers on RealClearPolitics.com, treated Chuck Todd like a sage, and made good use of the picture in picture feature on my new TV so that I could watch both MSNBC and CNN at the same time (which drove my partner nuts!).

On election night I knew the only path to victory for McCain lay through Pennsylvania and that Obama's team worked to ensure that they would have more than one path to 270 electoral votes. That was why I volunteered in Virginia to help turn that red state blue after all! But watching the results at Station 9, a restaurant/bar near my home, I really got caught up in the moments. Each state win was greeted with cheers and high fives as if we just couldn't be sure it was going to go our way. But of course the networks all had their plans to call the election at 11:00 p.m. when the polls in California, Oregon, Washington State, and Hawaii closed (77 electoral votes in total). When Pennsylvania and Ohio were called before 10 p.m. Obama had 195 electoral votes, so it was just a matter of waiting for the polls to close on the west coast. When New Mexico (5 electoral votes) and Iowa (7) were called for Obama before 11:00, Obama had 207 so at 11:00, Wolf Blitzer could announce that "Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States!"


The condensed evening on CNN leading up to the big win

A DJ played music like "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang and "Can You Feel It" by the Jacksons, Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" etc. Tears and hugs were free flowing. Everyone danced and pulsed together for 15 minutes. I cried on Brian's shoulder, I looked at the screen, I cried some more (and I know it was an ugly cry!), I danced, I marveled at the sea of younger people surrounding us and just felt so powerfully moved to have been part of such a movement. I'll never forget that night and its historical impact.

We snuck out after McCain's gracious concession speech so that we could watch Obama's first words as president-elect at home. Already fireworks were going off and people were pouring through the streets just letting their joy flow in whatever way they felt appropriate. Horns honked, people beamed, and more hugs went around. During his speech (in which he seemed more somber in tone than I would have expected), again the tears flowed and have been flowing every time I see images like the new first family bedecked in black and red walking out on that stage together.

The next morning, I had to go to the Newseum and see all of the front pages of the country's and the world's newspapers. Others made pilgrimage to the Lincoln memorial. A fellow African-American of my age told me how he'd cried and that he sat his children down at breakfast that morning to say that in America anything is possible with hard work and determination. Again the tears flowed at the power of that notion. A black man is poised to become the most powerful person in the world! I myself, educated at elite institutions, never thought that I would see a black men elected president. I even thought that the first black president would be a Republican like Colin Powell, someone who would not come to the American people with racial grievance in his (or her) history, but I never anticipated Barack Obama. So much of the commentary has been to the effect that Obama's victory marginalizes Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton even more. Hallelujah! Let President Barack Obama carry that torch now. He will lead by example that he is president of everyone in the United States and certainly not by overt racial appeals. That's not how he ran and not what the country expects of him. I look forward to crying at his inauguration and taking part in this historic moment fully.

The Bradley Effect Will Be Reborn as the Obama Effect

The "Bradley Effect" is one of those oft-repeated myths in politics. The idea centers around believing that whites would tell a pollster that they intended to vote for a black candidate but then in the privacy of the voting booth would change their minds and vote for the other candidate. The more extreme view is that an individual would outright lie about supporting a black candidate in order to sound racially accepting knowing full well that as a voter he or she could never vote for a black candidate. In Tom Bradley's case, though he was favored by 10% in polls leading up to election day in 1982, he lost his bid for the California governorship to Republican George Deukmejian.

But let's break this notion down. Why would a voter lie to a pollster, i.e. would someone with overt racial prejudice state for some reason an intention to vote for a black candidate? Does a voter stating an intent to vote for an opponent of a black candidate somehow automatically imply racial bias? Seems like a stretch to me. Then I found out from listening to Tell Me More on NPR and following up by reading an op-ed in the New York Times, the Bradley Effect is--surprise--an oversimplification! The only racial bias is that used by the media in attempting to explain the results of a complex election with the simplest of explanations. What may also have lost Bradley the governorship was that Republicans had a ballot issue on guns that year which energized Republicans (guns, God, and gays!) to come out and vote. In addition, more than a million absentee ballots were cast that year (another stealth effort of the Republicans) and their votes were not included in any of the pre-election polling models.

So the Bradley Effect, as it is widely understood, had little to nothing to do with racial politics. And in fact, I would submit that this year we may see an effect that should be called the Obama Effect. Kathleen Parker noted this last week in the Washington Post, and I'm quite sure after canvassing in Virginia, that there may be a considerable number of voters who would never admit intending to vote for the democrat to their families, co-workers, and friends. But in the privacy of the voting booth, seeing that the Republican party of today is bereft of its stated ideals, some voters who would never declare so in public may pull the lever for...Democrat Barack Obama.