Political Climates

Maybe I have the gift of stating the obvious, and all the world clearly understands that there is such a thing as "the current political climate." Sometimes I wonder, though, because every day I hear comparisons between W and Bill Clinton that completely overlook the differences in the prevailing political climates then and now.

A conversation is unfolding elsewhere about Samantha Power, in which one person observed that Power didn't criticize Clinton for not going into Rwanda and Sudan to stop the genocides. He could have, and he should have. But he didn't, and a primary reason was the political climate. Republicans controlled Congress throughout his presidency, and railed incessantly about his going into Bosnia to stop that genocide. Maybe the criticism would better target those Republicans for creating a political climate that made further overseas interventions more expensive than Clinton's political capital could afford. There hadn't been anything approaching a 9-11. Not even minor attacks on foreign-based US assets can compare. They simply do not have the catalyzing power that an attack on home turf possesses, and so they don't create the political capital necessary for taking the nation to war.

This political capital thing is one point at which "we, the people" intersect with our elected officials to bring about or retard action. Instead of blaming Clinton--which has replaced thinking--we might blame ourselves for not raising such a loud outcry that not even Mitch O'Connell, Trent Lott, and Tom DeLay could have ignored it.

Steinem, Just Shut Up

My bad.

Having just excoriated Jesse Jackson, Jr.,for dragging us deeper into a sexist/racist slime fest, I have to say that I should first have taken on Gloria Steinem’s op-ed piece, “Women are Never Front-Runners,” which came out first (January 8, New York Times).

Leading with a hypothetical candidate bio that presumably approximates Obama’s and involves both race and gender, Steinem wants to persuade us that “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.”

First off, I think it’s seriously irresponsible of Steinem, who knows better, to inject “Oppression Olympics” into the current charged atmosphere in the first place. On reflection, I see why her piece has triggered a lot of anger in the African American community, and may indeed have helped open the door a little wider to media spokesperson idiocies about the presumptive effects of sex and race on this election. Certainly it has raked open the wound that some white liberal feminists--not all, by any means--created in the Second Wave of feminism by implying that all women are equally affected by sex regardless of race, class, and culture. She surely should have been wiser than to go there.

Second, it’s inane for anybody to make that pronouncement. The assertion is immeasurable, it’s foolishly reductive, it solves nothing, and it goes nowhere good. Ipso facto, the only people who might know first-hand would be women of color, not white women, and among women of color, I really doubt that there'd be unanimity on the question across time and space, let alone across culture and context. Why? Because ethnicity, age, class, education, wealth, urbanity, and gradations of color and gender, not to mention context, are immense complicators, making Steinem’s simplistic binary equation meaningless and needlessly polarizing.

Third, that question just isn’t something any white person can speak authoritatively about. When we do, we really piss off a lot of people—not least, women of color, who feel utterly erased by the remark. They are “disappeared” in the conceptual chasm set up by the race/ gender equation. Besides, when a white person says race is trumped by gender, then his or her whiteness itself becomes a judge in the court of opinion, rendering the verdict a matter in which white and privilege obliterate race still yet again one more time. It’s not cool.

Fourth, in this case. Steinem is on really shaky ground. Women generally have held more powerful House and Senate seats in Washington than men of color. I just don’t know what “women are never front-runners” might mean in that political context. I do know that basing the argument on women’s suffrage is pretty dumb because voting isn’t the only criterion and because it’s a shallow analysis of the history of suffrage. As Anxious Black Woman points out:

I take issue with Steinem using, as her historical analogy, the 14th Amendment - which granted black men the right to vote long before white women did - to suggest that "race" trumps "gender" every time! Considering the way the women's suffrage movement was immediately divided over this amendment - and then encouraged white supremacist women to argue that, to ensure white supremacy, white men must support the right of white women to vote - we may want to complicate our analysis of race and gender in this presidential race.

Even if it had the inclination, today's MSM don't have time, knowledge, or skill to disinter, let alone take account of, all the grim, fluctuating, and sometimes contradictory realities of American history around dynamics of sex and race. Few columnists do, either. So it’s probably best not to try to compare them, as Steinem does here, because grotesque oversimplification is inevitable, and because nobody wins the oppression Olympics. Everybody just gets madder. I'm not saying to pretend they don't exist. I'm saying they can't be ranked.

Jesse Jackson, Jr., Crossed a Dangerous Line

Democrats need to be very careful that the Obama/Clinton competition does not deteriorate into a race v. gender battle, in which we are split into a nasty, bitter, and needless war with potentially enduring consequences.

How could it happen? If either campaign accidentally or intentionally walks onto--or is whispered to have walked onto--that sensitive territory fenced by ugly stereotypes, old wounds will be opended and latent fury will be rekindled, causing a chain-reaction of backlash attacks.

If that happens, the victor will be racists, sexists, and the GOP.

We could be seeing something like that now, nascent still but nonetheless worrisome, in the hyped-up matter of Clinton's tears and the way in which at least one Obama spokesman has chosen to use it.

For starters, there was no "crying." There was an emotional moment and a break in her voice as she spoke about her love for and concern for the nation, a powerful exercise of control, and a very rapid recovery. One Newsweek reporter who was present at the meeting corroborates that, and also clues us about the kind of media manipulation we can continue to expect:

Even as she spoke, a local television reporter was broadcasting live that Clinton had started crying. Other reporters tried to correct him, even as he was still on the air. No, she didn't cry.

WTF? No mystery here. Many interests would be served by a ceaseless incantion that Hillary is too weak (read "woman") to hold down the Oval Office. Republicans, anti-Clintonites, and sexists of both genders apparently wanted that Muskie moment so badly that they were willing to manufacture it. Then, predictably, a MSM snearfest ensued that even John Edwards stooped to join, full of snipes about her sincerity and her timing, and bristling with insinuations about what showing emotion might mean for a US President at war.

Garden variety smear stuff, offensive and sexist and obnoxious. But when Jesse Jackson, Jr., grabbed the opportunity to imply that Clinton never once cried about Katrina (read "the poor African American people of New Orleans") or the troops (read "the mostly poor non-white kids dying for our country"), it went way past routine media misogyny.

If my own reaction is a microcosm, the potential for angry division is unnerving. Of course, maybe it's just me and we can all go back to snooze mode. In case not, however, I want to deconstruct Jackson's nasty little smear both to explain my anger and, I hope, to show the kind of thing we should be vigilant about and quick to stamp out.

We can skip the part about how Jesse Jackson, Jr. isn't in a position to know when Hillary weeps and why, and the part about how no American politician distinguished him- or herself in the aftermath of Katrina, and the part about how any presidential candidate who had called a press conference to weep before St. Louis Cathdral would have been DOA. Those are dime-a-dozen smears and implied untruths typical of slimeballers.

But Jackson took this a step further. His was a callous, calculated, and obscene effort to politicize a national disaster in order to trash a fellow Democrat and a woman, using Rove-worthy smear tactics: the gender card, innuendo, race-baiting, and putting Clinton in the unwinnable, impossible position of proving a negative. I not only don't want this kind of crap in our party and resent it. I also fear it greatly.

His message, decoded, is that Hillary was lying about her feelings and put them on display jus' like a woman to manipulate the voters (read "male" voters). Translated, she's just one mo' manipulative bitch who's too frigid to care about, let alone weep for, desperate, drowning African Americans and poor kids being blown to bits in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thanks, hear?

This privileged son of Civil Rights legend, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., hasn't earned the chops to attack Clinton about anything. Unfortunately, by voluntarily putting out a string of sexist stereotypes, he didn't just piss off a lot of women. He enacted live and on national TV the equally divisive, ugly stereotype that African American men despise women. And in the service of what? In order to inject an uncommonly nasty dose of sexist race-baiting into a contest for the presidency? Brilliant, dude.

The likely achievement here is a bunch of infuriated women and a bunch of infuriated African Americans, all jumped up for no good reason--merely on the basis of Jackson's petty little war of choice. (I would expect this kind of thing from Huckabee, but not from someone who knows the Clintons' civil rights record, and not from a fellow Democrat.)

So yeah, Jr. hit a nerve. He and any other Obama handlers who think this is an effective way to fight Clinton need to sit down, shut up, and let the grownups handle this--people with extreme sensitivity to the potential for mutally assured destruction--or they will stir up a whirlwind that the party, the nation, the candidates can't afford to deal with.

God forbid that someone comes out now to retaliate with a comparable slur that pits gender sensitivities against race sensitivities. Unfortunately, that's just the kind of thing a push-caller planted by the GOP would do. We know that this happens. Thsi isn't speculative. Remember the phone campaign in SC that implied that McCain had fathered a Black child? Here's the race-baiting counterpart for Obama: "Would it affect your decision if you knew that Obama is a wife-beater?" Again: that's a hypothetical, utterly untrue. I use it only as an example of a plausible smear campaign that could create a rupture among Democrats along race and gender lines.

I don't need to tell you how that would go down. If such a whisper campaign were laid at Clinton's door, we would inherit a storm of rage that could last a generation whether it came from Clinton's campaign or not. And obviously, there are similar possibilities when the table is turned. If Jackson or anyone else continues in this nasty divide-and-conquer vein, I think we could be in trouble as a party, and potentially lose the election even as we claw each others' eyes out for no reason at all.

I really want you to let me know if you think I'm over the top on this. I want to hear from you, and if you see the potential I see, I'd love to know how you think we can sidestep this kind of mutually assured destruction. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us.

Obama!

He's not my guy, but I'm thrilled that he pulled a victory in Iowa. He has run a brilliant campaign, he has inspired a rural white farm state, he has touched, arguably, the thread of decency that runs underneath and through this poor, divided, often angry, reactionary, and racist country. Please God he will toughen up if elected and forget about holding hands with Mitch O'Connell and Dick Cheney.

I'm thrilled that Edwards placed second. I think he's just begun to be heard. Take account of the degree to which the MSM have ignored and condescended to him and his showing in Iowa is remarkable.

I'm sorry that Hillary didn't place second because I want this woman to do well. I'm also glad that she didn't place first. Now she will sharpen her thinking, improve her campaigning, and whatever she achieves will indisputably be due to her personal effort, not because she is Bill Clinton's wife or the beneficiary of the vaunted (and alleged) Clinton "machine."

There's a terrific op ed in the NYT today about Huckabee. I recommend it. The nice thing about his win is that he kicked Mitt's butt. But I don't think Huck has national appeal. We've just had a clod-hopper in the White House. I'm going to enjoy watching the GOP get hoisted on its own evangelical dimwit petard.

Edwards?

Conventional wisdom has made much of how the GOP is divided and unhappy with its slate, and, IMHO, not given enough attention to the similar feelings among Democrats. At first I was more pleased with most of them than not. Now I'm less pleased with all of them but for different reasons. And that's why I've had little to say about this election so far. All I know at this point is that I'll support any Democrat over any Republican. I wish I felt the enthusiasm and hope I did when Bill ran first, but I don't, though I am tending now for John Edwards.

Capitulation to conservatives isn't the way of the future. It's the way of now. No change, no hope. Anyone who trends to the Right or hopes to run the country by reaching out to the GOP is dangerously out of touch with the needs of the country and the world to the extent that the US affects it. On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that corporatists have far too much power--over the media and over the purse--for a true Left Democrat to get in office. Hence the loathesome reality that Democrats run more conservatively even when decades of national polls show strong American support for progressive values on abortion, health care, energy, the environment, and foreign policy.

This is why Edwards is not given more attention by the media and not shown in the Iowa polls as its front-runner. I would bet real money that he represents the policy choices of most Democrats in Iowa, but that they don't believe he can win the White House because of establishment opposition. It would really delight me if he comes out of Iowa in a powerful second slot and charges into New Hampshire in a position to take that state.

I have considerably more trust in Edwards than in Clinton or Obama. Anybody the corporatists hate has to be my kind of guy. Besides, Clinton does not speak with fire about her core positions. As a result, I don't know where she stands. And to my great dismay, Obama has begun the fight with signals of concession to the GOP, and that's not where I mean to be, for all the reasons noted in "Obama? What's At Stake in Making Nice." He may play well in Midwestern Niceland, but excuuuuuuuuse me, hasn't he noticed the relentless assault from the Right on everything the Constitution and Bill of Rights stand for?

Edwards, on the other hand, has a big house, a $400 haircut, and a career as a trial lawyer. The house and the haircut make me sick. New rich, bad form, not my style at all. And the Right has made good use of this to raise questions about his core values.

But remember: A trial lawyer is a pit bull who has kicked corporate butts for 30years and made a profit winning at it. That's not a bad thing.

I want a person in the White House who knows what Appalachia means, and why unions are essential to the future of middle America, and why the much-abused white southern blue collar family is a valued part of the sadly neglected heart of America.

If I had it to do again, as a Lefty activist/theorist, I'd do two things differently. I would give as much effort to ensuring the job security and dignity of working people as to ensuring the civil rights of minorities and women, and I would focus on buying up as much media as possible. That last is another subject. As to the first, the interests of poor white people are identical to those of poor black and brown people. The mistake we made was ever allowing the Right to see daylight between the emphasis we gave them. So hear me clearly. I'm not saying that we should have, or must now, advance the interests of working poor whites over those of African Americans, Hispanics, women and others.

I'm saying that when the tide rises for working people, it rises for us all.

I'm not underestimating the challenges we all faced in the South and elsewhere fighting for civil rights, don't think we're done by a long shot, and would be a fool to suggest that white working poor people were on board as one. The racist division was real. Where we dropped the ball, however, was in allowing the Right to shut out unions, outsource jobs, and thus leverage race as a huge wedge in the way it has.

But I digress. Edwards understands that we have two choices. Either the Left can continue to treat working white people with the contempt embodied in words like "trailer trash" and "red neck" and wonder why they're getting redder and meaner by the year, or we can treat them with real respect when possible and with anticipatory respect when necessary, and lift them up as we continue to lift up African Americans, gays and lesbians, Hispanics, and women. It begins with ensuring the jobs, defending and growing the economy, protecting the environment--acid rain and strip mining aren't funny--and making damn sure that the working people receive their fair share of the profit. And it begins with a change of tone, with regard and consideration for the conditions of their lives. And it continues with education and with demonstrating the lies embedded in the Far Right's divide-and-conquer strategies.

Easy? Nope. But it beats the alternative so lavishly laid before us by the Right.

I could change my mind, but Edwards career, tenacity, and personal experience of deep wounds to the heart speak to me more persuasively at this time than anything else I've seen out there.

Sullivan Drops in from Planet Make-Believe

From The Daily Dish, which rarely fails to punch my buttons, this fit of political prissiness:

Fading memory has helped some to forget about the Clintons, their political machine and their ruthlessness. A rising black politician in the Democratic party is a threat to them and their power over blacks. So they are doing what they can to crush him, and punish any Democrat who associates with him. As Hillary Clinton's poll numbers rise, her leverage increases. As does the fear of those Democrats who know what follows if they cross the power-couple from Hot Springs. I don't know what prompted Lewis to back Clinton; he marched between Obama and Clinton in Selma, but worshipped with Obama afterwards as you can see above. But I very much doubt that Bill did not have a word with him. Again: the way in which Hillary uses her marriage to advance her own power is striking. No real feminist would do this; only someone who postures as a feminist while using her husband as a tool.

Peculiar of Sullivan to berate the Clintons for acting like successful presidential politicians. Does he think the Bushes, or the Reagans, or the Nixons didn't or don't have a "machine," or that they don't "have a word with" people who might be inclined to differ with them? Oh puhleeze. Berate the Clintons for something no other successful politician does, not for exhibiting the sine qua non of the species.

And, could it be just that Lewis hadn't quite made up his mind in Selma? Could it be that he wanted to see where the odds would fall before needlessly pissing off one or the other candidate? That's what I would have done in his shoes. Furthermore, one might argue that Clinton deserves the post more than Obama, having far stronger credentials, and that Lewis reckons accordingly, figuring that Obama will live to run another day.

But noooooooooo. In classic boythink, Sullivan, unable to see Hillary as anything other than an appendage of Bill, projects his own fallacy onto her, and then presumes to give Hillary feminist lessons. Like, as if!

No feminist politician I know would fail to make use of her husband's political capital in the game of politics. That would be stupid, and I don't know any stupid feminists. Again, Hillary is a politician. Don't berate her for behaving accordingly. And try not to be jealous that she's married to the greatest politician of our time.

Andrew is visiting from Planet Make-Believe this week.