The Know-Nothing Party

Check out this excellent diary about what the recent right-wing "outrage" about Obama's belief that we should encourage our children to learn at least one foreign language says about the Republican Party and the anti-intellectualism at its core:

GOP, the Know-Nothing Party
by smintheus, Daily Kos

Is "He's a Muslim" a More Socially Acceptable Way of Saying "He's a N****R?" (Repost)

[I'm going to repost this only because it is short, and I think it is a thought provoking question, which is the kind of question I'm all about:]

Is "He's a Muslim" a More Socially Acceptable Way of Saying "He's a N****R?"
by DHinMI, Daily Kos

I heard yesterday of a focus group done in Charlottesville, VA—home of the University of Virginia, thus not a particularly isolated locale—in which several of the undecided voters claimed to believe that Barack Obama is Muslim.  We've all seen and heard the examples.  We can joke that you've got to be thick to simultaneously believe he's a Muslim and decry his choice of church--Christian Church—-but it's out there, this belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim.  One can imagine the thinking: "his name, I mean, it sounds Muslim, his father was from somewhere over there, where they're Muslims, I saw that photo of him in that garb, and there are all those emails that say he's Muslim, so..."

In America, maligning Muslims is still too easily ignored.  In most circles people know it's not socially acceptable to express anti-Semitism, or racism, or increasingly even homophobia.  But too many people still find it acceptable to malign all of Islam and every Muslim.

For the moment, let's set aside the problem of anti-Muslim bigotry.  The question I have is how many people who claim he's Muslim and offer that up as a reason why they are uncomfortable with Obama's candidacy.  How many of the people insinuating that they won't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim are simply substituting opposition to his supposed religion for opposition to him based on his race?

I assume the Obama campaign has done extensive research to get an idea of who thinks he's Muslim.  Some of these folks are just ill-informed.  The video "A Man From Hope" shown at the 1992 Democratic convention was in response to research that revealed that a sizable group of voters believed that Bill Clinton came from a privileged background.  Eventually folks figured out he didn't, and it helped burnish his populist credentials.  Some people are educable, and a good campaign educates.

The people today expressing apprehension toward Obama because "he's a Muslim" include many who will vote for him in the fall.  We need to figure out how to reach them, and in a way that doesn't validate anti-Muslim bigotry.

But for others, who are saying they won't vote for Obama because he's Muslim when they really won't vote for him because he's black, we just need to write them off as people who probably don't vote for Democrats in any circumstances, and who won't vote for Obama because they're racists.

[Or look at it this way, do you think a white person with a weird name and a Muslim step-father s/he's had barely anything to do with be plagued by this repeated question of "Is s/he a Muslim?" even after attending a Christian church for over 20 years? We already know white people aren't held to the same standard concerning crazy pastors who say outrageous things.]

The Clinton Civil War (Repost)

[I apologize for not doing much more than a few reposts the last few days, I've been very busy, but hopefully the reposts have entertained and educated enough that no one is too let down. Here is a good one, in response to silly Hillary supporters who have moved past whining about the media, and have gone on to whining about the netroots being "anti-Hillary", as if we have some obligation to handicap ourselves with ignorance just to make sure 50% of us support Hillary no matter what. Enjoy:]

The Clinton Civil War
by kos

Al Giordano, on the laughable Clinton-supporters "strike" of this blog:

There was always something incongruous about the self-proclaimed “Hillary Bloggers” trying to use Daily Kos for their purposes. DKos has been defined as a meeting ground not for every Democrat, but for the kind that wants to change the party to be more grassroots oriented, adhere to a 50-state strategy, stop the war in Iraq, and blunt the influence of lobbyists, PACs and the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). That’s the glue that has always held the DKos community together and made it so large and strong.

Given that candidate Clinton is a member of the DLC, voted to authorize the war, accepts federal lobbyist and PAC money, clearly thinks that a lot (if not most) states “don’t matter,” and epitomizes a 1990s style top-down form of doing politics, it’s no surprise that for all of 2007 Clinton never exceeded 11 percent support in the monthly Daily Kos users straw poll.

I would add one more item to the list above -- this site has also been hostile to the corrosive consultant class that gave us our timid and weak party until Howard Dean shook it up in 2004.

Now I'm willing to stipulate that on the consultant front, there's likely not much difference between the Obama and Clinton campaigns (I don't know if it's true, but I assume it is). But on everything else, Clinton fails the test of the guiding principles of this site, and of my first book, Crashing the Gate.

Clinton isn't just a member of the DLC, she's in their leadership. Obama, by the way, repudiated the organization three times (it's a great story, which I tell in my forthcoming book).

Clinton hasn't just rejected a 50-state strategy, she has openly attacked it. CTG has a great quote from former Virginia Governor and future senator Mark Warner on this very topic:

The Democratic Party is in the upswing in the Mountain West and the South, in places like Montana and Virginia, because Democrats there have made a serious effort to compete for votes everywhere, rather than make a nominal effort to be an "also-ran" outside the Democratic-density areas. As [former Virginia Gov. Mark] Warner asks, how many more times will the Democrats run presidential campaigns where they abandon thirty-three southern and western states and "launch a national campaign that goes after sixteen states and then hope that we can hit a triple bank shot to get to that seventeenth state?"

Well, given Obama's map-changing 50-state mindset, it's clear that the answer to Warner's question is "one more time" if Clinton is the nominee, and "never again" if Obama is the nominee.

Clinton didn't just vote for the Iraq war and refuse to apologize for it, she voted to give Bush the same authority on Iran.

And if we want to talk about which party is the most grassroots-oriented, it's no contest. We've seen it in the caucuses, we've seen it in the netroots, and we saw it in the Iowa county convention this Saturday. The party's activists are busting their butts for Obama, while Clinton's campaign is counting on low-information Democratic voters selecting Clinton based on little more than name ID.

But I could deal with all of that, really, if Clinton was headed toward victory. I see this as a long-term movement, and I've always expected setbacks along the way. Clinton isn't the most horrible person in the world. She's actually quite nice, despite all her flaws, and would make a fine enough president.

If she was winning.

But she's not, and that's the rub.

First of all, the only path to victory for Clinton is via coup by super delegate.

She knows this. That's why there's all the talk about poaching pledged delegates and spinning uncertainty around Michigan and Florida, and laying the case for super delegates to discard the popular will and stage a coup.

Yet a coup by super delegate would sunder the party in civil war.

Clinton knows this, it's her only path to victory, and she doesn't care. She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

If the situations were reversed, and Obama was lagging in the delegates, popular vote, states won, money raised, and every other reasonable measure, then I'd feel the same way about Obama. (I pulled the plug early on Dean in 2004.) But that's not the case.

It is Clinton, with no reasonable chance of victory, who is fomenting civil war in order to overturn the will of the Democratic electorate. As such, as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't deserve "fairness" on this site. All sexist attacks will be dealt with -- those will never be acceptable. But otherwise, Clinton has set an inevitably divisive course and must be dealt with appropriately.

To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she doesn't care.

That's why she has earned my enmity and that of so many others. That's why she is bleeding super delegates. That's why she's even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That's why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That's why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That's why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party.

Meanwhile, Clinton and her shrinking band of paranoid holdouts wail and scream about all those evil people who have "turned" on Clinton and are no longer "honest power brokers" or "respectable voices" or whatnot, wearing blinders to reality, talking about silly little "strikes" when in reality, Clinton is planning a far more drastic, destructive and dehabilitating civil war.

People like me have two choices -- look the other way while Clinton attempts to ignite her civil war, or fight back now, before we cross that dangerous line. Honestly, it wasn't a difficult choice. And it's clear, looking at where the super delegates, most bloggers, and people like Olbermann are lining up, that the mainstream of the progressive movement is making the same choice.

And the more super delegates see what is happening, and what Clinton has in store, the more imperative it is that they line up behind Obama and put an end to it before it's too late.