The Democrats’ choice to have a response to Bush tonight by Bill Richardson simulcast in Spanish is a good one on both counts: The Democrats can use Spanish without hypocrisy because unlike the GOP, they haven’t been fighting to keep the fastest-growing language in the US out of schools and voting booths (certain elements, of course, can be depended on to deride this, like any move for inclusion or any policy benefiting people of color, as patronizing/ race-baiting/pandering); and Richardson is a successful and respected Southern Latino Governor who recently came into the spotlight negotiating with North Korea – and an excellent candidate for Vice President.
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
A couple thoughts on the Iowa caucuses, a topic on which much ink (real and virtual) has and no doubt and will be spilled:
As someone who, despite significant reservations, believes Dean would be the best of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, I was disappointed to see him come in third. As someone who believes with great conviction in the organizing model that Dean has employed, I was disappointed to see that it was not enough to win him the Caucus. That does little to take away from the tremendous progress the Dean campaign has made and the ways it which it’s destabilized some of the unfortunate Clintonian paradigms of building power in the Democratic party. I’d also argue that losing Iowa does less than many think to hurt Dean’s chances of seizing the endorsement. One of the ways the press has hurt Dean over the past months, besides applying a level of cynicism and scrutiny to him denied in coverage of, say, the sitting President, is by raising the bar for his importance impossibly high. It’ll be interesting to see whether Dean is as effective as Clinton at seizing on and drawing momentum from underdog status. Some have argued that losing Iowa is better for Dean because it leaves several “anti-Dean” candidates in the running going into New Hampshire and stymies efforts to coalesce behind one Dean alternative – I guess we’ll see how that plays out as well.
It’ll be interesting to see what Kerry makes of the new attention and the new media narrative offered to him. Specifically, I wonder to what he and his staff attribute his late surge. The role he takes over the next weeks may hint at who it is they he thinks is propelling his rebirth as a candidate.
Looks like the zenith of Dick Gephardt’s political career has passed. The interesting story here may be his failure to marshall stronger support from the labor movement – instead of garnering the endorsement by the AFL-CIO as a body some expected, he saw the two largest unions in the body go to Dean. I think the Cold War AFL-CIO (there’s a reason they used to call it the AFL-CIA) model suggested to some by his support for the war in Iraq, and the tension it created, speaks to shifts in the American labor movement.
This, if true, is interesting:
Further complicating efforts to predict the outcome, Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said today that he and Mr. Edwards had reached an agreement specifying that if neither reached the 15 percent viability threshold for delegates tonight, the supporters of both would unite behind the candidate with greater support.
“John and I are friends,” Mr. Kucinich said. “He and I have complementary constituencies. I’m going to do well in college towns and urban areas. He is going to do well in rural areas. Rather than leave it up to chance, we’re letting our supporters know to support the other guy.”
On April 3, 1968 Dr. King declared:
We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say “God sent us here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.
This morning, following a righteous service at First and Summerfield Church, hundreds of New Haveners of all backgrounds marched to the New Haven Savings Bank to declare their plans to withdraw their savings unless the Bank changes its current destructive course. Afterwards clergy and community members joined undergraduates in Yale’s Woolsey Rotunda, where a year ago students were threatened with arrest for leafletting, and spoke our about Dr. King’s vision for progressive radical social change and the work ahead of us to realize it. Because it’s not enough to have a dream – you have to be willing to fight for it.
A Kerry boomerang:
“In the Senate four years — and that is the full extent of public life — no international experience, no military experience, you can imagine what the advertising is going to be next year,” Mr. Kerry said. With a grin, he added: “When I came back from Vietnam in 1969 I don’t know if John Edwards was out of diapers then. Well, I’m sure he was out of diapers.”
Mr. Edwards, who is 50, was two months short of his 16th birthday when Mr. Kerry returned from his tour of duty in Vietnam.
Later Sunday evening, Mr. Edwards responded: “I honor his service in Vietnam. In 1969, I was sitting around a kitchen table with my parents trying to figure out how we would pay for college like so many Iowans do every single day. And that is a difference between me and Senator Kerry.”
Late Sunday night, Mr. Kerry called Mr. Edwards to apologize for the remark, Mr. Edwards’s advisers said.
In today’s Times Reagan archivist Kiron K. Skinner takes the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to claim MLK as Reagan’s soulmate:
Dr. King invoked God-given and constitutional rights in defense of extending civil rights to every man. He believed in his country’s distinct ability to maintain a steadfast commitment to its values even when institutional realities pointed in other directions. Dr. King personified the American creed. That it was Ronald Reagan who bestowed on Dr. King the honor of a national holiday should no longer come as a surprise.
Skinner acknowledges that Reagan first came under the national radar pushing the explicitly anti-Civil Rights Goldwater candidacy, but argues that Reagan’s personal sympathetic behavior towards Blacks and his shared vocabulary of God, democracy, and constitution constitutes more common ground than division. It’s an absurd argument which depends on the falacious reasoning that
In the president’s mind, the values Dr. King championed trumped political differences.
The distinction between “politics” and “values” is always suspect, but few times has it been manipulated more cynically than here in arguing that whether or not Black men and women are to be systematically discriminated against in all spheres of life on account of race and poverty is a more superficial issue than whether the American constitution is suitable for appeals to political change.
Skinner obscures the historical Reagan, who kicked off his Presidential Campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights activists had been brutally murdered, with a call for “states’ rights” and an excoriation of “welfare queens.”
And Skinner obscures the historical King, the radical who deserves celebration today, who wrote:
I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.”
When is a political ad not political? When it’s from Republicans.
“We are fallible human beings who do not have Solomon-like wisdom but try to make rational decisions based on the ads we receive,” Martin Franks, executive vice president of CBS told MediaChannel. “Taking into account the deep pockets in play in this election we don’t want to appear to favor one side over the other.”
Too late to worry about that now, I think.
The Des Moines Registers selects its top five Caucus Boo-Boo Awards.
David Corn questions just how special a counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will be in the Plame scandal.
Ruy Teixeira compiles recent polling suggesting that be the issue Iraq, education, healthcare, or the economy, Bush goes into the State of the Union facing a public at odds with his administration’s agenda and sceptical of its record. He also argues that what went up – Bush’s approval in light of Saddam’s capture – has already made its way back down to earth. Liberal Oasis argues that this continues a pattern. Meanwhile, new polling shows Bush’s disapproval ratings higher than those of any President in January of the year he ran for re-election in the past few decades.
For those who believe that the conditions which precipitated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and the movement which gained power in response, are historical anachronisms, check out this piece in the Times on Wal-Mart’s policy of locking its workers inside the store:
It was 3 a.m., Mr. Rodriguez recalled, some heavy machinery had just smashed into his ankle, and he had no idea how he would get to the hospital.
The Sam’s Club, a Wal-Mart subsidiary, had locked its overnight workers in, as it always did, to keep robbers out and, as some managers say, to prevent employee theft. As usual, there was no manager with a key to let Mr. Rodriguez out. The fire exit, he said, was hardly an option — management had drummed into the overnight workers that if they ever used that exit for anything but a fire, they would lose their jobs.
“My ankle was crushed,” Mr. Rodriguez said, explaining he had been struck by an electronic cart driven by an employee moving stacks of merchandise. “I was yelling and running around like a hurt dog that had been hit by a car. Another worker made some phone calls to reach a manager, and it took an hour for someone to get there and unlock the door.”
Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. Their explanation? It’s for the workers’ own protection. Strange then that none of the workers get keys.
Josh Eidelson 