Historians Love the Democratic Party

For what it is worth, according to a new poll, 79.2% of all historians self-identify as Democrats, more than any other academic discipline...

... during the election, there was even a group called Historians for Obama.

BREAKING: Obama Gets NE District 2 (Omaha-land) Electoral Vote!

Great news! It has just been announced here in Nebraska that Obama earned the District 2 electoral college vote in Nebraska. District 2 is made up of Omaha-land, essentially. This is the first time in 40-odd years that a Democrat has won an electoral vote in the state and the first time ever that the electoral votes of Nebraska have been split. It is a HUGE victory for us locally and a nice thank-you for all the hard-work so many local people did around here to make this a reality.

Politics and Faith in the Democratic Party

It's Sunday! NPR's "Speaking of Faith" looked at the role of faith and spirituality within the Democratic Party this morning and I thought some of you might want to check it out. If you click here, you will find a few different options on how you can listen. Here is their brief intro to the program:

The Religious Right has gotten a fair amount of coverage in recent years, while the political Left has rarely been represented with a religious sensibility. Our guest, a national correspondent for Time magazine is a political liberal and an Evangelical Christian who has been observing the Democratic Party's complex relationship with faith and the little-told story of its response to the rise of the Religious Right.

Any thoughts about the nexus between spirituality, faith, religion and the liberal/left in American politics? I'd be interested to hear what you think...

Good Ideas: Push Health Care Back to the Center of the Debate

Check out "Not What the Doctor Ordered", The Toldeo Blade's excellent, extensive and damning probe of the U.S. health care crisis. It highlights already well known struggles of folks without any health insurance, or with woefully inadequate insurance, but also concludes that even "people with health insurance were harmed because insurance interfered" in their case.

Here is a brief video introduction to the Blade's series...

Health care is a winning, bread & butter issue for the Democrats and they need to get it back in the forefront of the political debate.

To that end, I heartily agree with journalist Bill Boyarsky, who argues in "Prescription for a Democratic Win,"

As Barack Obama moves into the Democratic National Convention, he should speak out more clearly and forcefully on an issue that clearly distinguishes him from his do-nothing opponent—national health insurance.

Nothing illustrates John McCain’s dedication to laissez-faire economics more than his plan to change, although not to improve, a health insurance system that now increasingly fails to meet the needs of Americans.

And nothing illustrates Obama’s failure so far to put some meat on his campaign than his inability to nail McCain on this issue and to speak specifically and powerfully about his own excellent plan, which he announced early in the campaign.

This is important advice; I hope someone in the Obama campaign is getting the message...

The Larger Meaning of Obama's Nomination...

Before we all jump into the deep end of the general election swimming pool, I think Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic Party primary begs for some deeper historical meditation. Whether or not Obama wins the White House, his nomination is already a triumph over an incredibly racist past inside the Democratic Party. Yes, that is right. We need to remind ourselves that until fairly recently, the Democratic Party was the party of white supremacy.

During slavery days, the Democratic Party was the great defender of that tragic institution. In one particularly murderous incident, Democratic Representative Preston Brooks, a South Carolina slave-owning white supremacist, bludgeoned nearly to death Senator Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican (the "liberals" of their day) from Massachusetts, after he gave a speech denouncing slavery in 1856.

Two years later, in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Illinois Democratic Senator, Stephen Douglas stated,

"For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon Negroes, Indians and other inferior races."

Yet, Douglas was too moderate on race to become his party's presidential nominee in 1860. The Democrats instead nominated a more hard-line slaver, John C. Breckinridge.

After the collapse of slavery and the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, it was the Democratic Party which undermined and then destroyed the "experiment in inter-racial democracy" we call Reconstruction. It was the Democratic Party that "redeemed" white supremacy by sweeping aside the multi-racial governments of the Reconstruction era and establishing a new system of white supremacy, the Jim Crow system, with its hundreds of laws segregating the races, with its various mechanisms to disenfranchise black voters, and with its horrific system of debt peonage, otherwise known as sharecropping. Of course, this new system of white supremacy, while backed up by laws, court decisions, tradition and custom, was ultimately backed by unspeakable violence. Black people were killed in large numbers for asserting their political, economic and social rights. And, the Democrats were the political party that countenanced this violence, stoked the passions of racial hatred and encouraged other southerners to become murderous mobs. The Ku Klux Klan was, in essence, an extension of the Democratic Party. Democrats brought back chain gangs to force black labor back to the land in the most submissive and unjust way. And, Democrats passed the first gun control laws to keep victimized African Americans defenseless in the face of this violence.

During the so-called "progressive era," it was Democratic President Woodrow Wilson who extended formal segregation throughout the federal bureaucracy and named a number of open white supremacists to his cabinet. It was Wilson, who earlier as President of Princeton, refused to admit African Americans to that school. As Governor of New Jersey, Wilson refused to grant black workers patronage even though African American votes were the margin of his victory. And, in 1915, it was President Wilson who watched a private viewing of "The Birth of a Nation," one of the most racist films of all time, and approvingly called it "History written with lightening."

Throughout his presidency, Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, consistently accommodated southern white racism in order to get other legislation passed. This meant nominating a lifetime KKK member from Alabama to the Supreme Court and replacing his Vice President, a true supporter of racial justice, Henry Wallace, with another racist and former KKK member, Harry Truman. This meant opposing federal anti-lynching legislation and thereby tolerating the torture and murder of African American citizens. It meant signing into law a Social Security Act that purposefully left out farm workers and domestic laborers, the two biggest employment categories for black people.

It was the southern Democratic Party that, until the mid-1940s, conducted "all white primaries" to block black electoral power and assure the perpetuation of white supremacy. And, because the South was a one-party region (there was no Republican Party after the collapse of Reconstruction in the 1870s) whoever won the Democratic nomination, won the general election!

In 1948, as some in the party began to get hip to the increasing power of black voting rights in the North, southern Democrats bolted the party and formed the racist Dixecrat, or "States Rights," Party, with South Carolina's Strom Thurmond as its standard bearer.

In 1964, it was racist Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, another KKK member, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours. Throughout the civil rights era, it was Democratic representatives at the local, state and federal level who provided the primary institutional bulwark against racial change.

It was the Democratic Party that produced George Wallace, the segregationist Governor of Alabama who pointed the way toward modern racist politicking when he figured out that racially-coded language could animate the underlying racist antagonisms of whites and win lots of votes, North and South, East and West.

And on and on and on...

But, you say, the Democrats are now the party of "special interests," one of those Wallace-inspired code-words for the party of black people, and brown people, and poor people and women and gays and lesbians, and anyone else who is disenfracnhised. Today, it is the Republican Party that rules the South and which is home to the most racist sentiments in our politics. Today, it is the Democratic Party that is the party of civil rights! And, this is true, to a large extent. During the 1950s and 1960s, the combination of thousands of people engaged in one of the most inspiring social movements in our nation's history and the increasingly embarrassing gap between U.S. leaders' Cold War rhetoric of "liberty," "democracy" and "self-determination" and the domestic reality of rampant and violent white supremacy, compelled liberal Democrats to embrace civil rights and, in the process, alienate southern white racists. In turn, those former Southern white racist Dems jumped ship and became Republicans. Similarly, it was those divisive racial appeals that I mentioned above which also brought over to the Republicans thousands of disgruntled working class white voters looking for a scapegoat for their own increasing economic misery due to deindustrialization and conservative social and political policies in the 1970s and 1980s. So, YES, the Democrats did ultimately make the change and embrace civil rights, not mainly because it was the moral or just thing to do, but because they were shoved by external forces (the civil rights movement and the logic of the Cold War). But, even so, that window was a brief one. As a reinvigorated and reactionary new conservative politic rose from the late-1960s through the present, Democrats found themselves increasing on the defensive. In order to try to regain political power, Democrats have moved rightward, largely abandoning the civil rights agenda of the 1960s and early-1970s. Recall that the only two Democratic presidents since the civil rights era have been conservative southern white guys. Recall, Bill Clinton picking a fight with Sister Souljah to prove he could be tough on "those people." It was Bill Clinton who saved his campaign in 1992 by going home to Arkansas to publicly preside over the state murder of a mentally deficient black man, Ricky Ray Rector, again to prove to reactionary white voters he could be "tough on crime." (note the association of crime with blackness) It was Bill Clinton who pandered to the racist smears against social welfare programs by signing into law the Welfare "Reform" Act of 1996... And on and on. He did all of this to pander to the racist sentiments still so powerful in our society so that he could win political power.

Now, let me be clear. I am a registered Democrat and an ardent Barack Obama supporter. I am not writing this to uplift Republicans and beat down the Dems. The Republicans have a pile full of their own racist sins to atone for and they don't seem to be showing any signs of change anytime soon. Rather, I merely hope to set what is happening through the Obama campaign within a much longer trajectory of racist politics in our country. White supremacy has always been a foundational set of values and ideas in our society and politics. It has historically been the NORM, not the exception to the rule. In this context, Obama's victory is H-U-G-E and inspiring on a grander scale.

So, today, as we reflect on the meaning of Barack Obama's nomination for President on the Democratic Party ticket, let us be conscious of this long and terrible racial history. Let us be aware of the truly seismic triumph over a horrible past that this represents within the party. Let us be clear of the magnitude of what has already happened in this election, regardless of what is to come in the general election. Let us give thanks and praises to the most high for this historic turn of events...

Viewed through the lens of racial justice and history, Barack Obama's triumph in the Democratic Primary is deep and resonant and somewhat mind-blowing. Let us all take a few moments before we jump into the general election fight to reflect on this deeper meaning. Let us all be proud of what Obama's candidacy means...

DNC Native American Caucus Chair Endorses Obama

Earlier today, Frank LaMere, Nebraska superdelegate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee's Native American Caucus, endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President and released the following statement:

"We, as Native Americans, have always stood four square with the Democratic Party and they have always stood four square with us. We will continue to do so in 2008 as we elect a Democratic President to restore the national vision that has been blurred during the last eight years. I ask your help in this endeavor.

All in this country know that Native people continue to suffer disproportionate need. In light of the service and sacrifice of or young men and women during times of war it is hard to reconcile why this should be. We must continue to pray that things be better for the children, the elders, the sick and incarcerated, all of the dispossessed among us. We must pray for those who have no voice. More importantly, we must continue to hope. Our forebears have taught us that the survival of the generations to come is dependent on our willingness to hope and to change things for the better.

To this end, there is a man who talks of this audacity of hope and of the need for change. He is Barack Obama. He has engaged the Indian Nations with his message and we have listened. It is now time to act.

Hope has always been the basic tenet of the Democratic Party and not an obscure backdrop. Change should be looked at in terms of generations and not what we might be able to do to win the next election without affecting anyone's comfort level.

Hope and change require that we be audacious and Barack Obama knows this better than anyone. We must acknowledge this bold man among us and the good heart that he has for all of the people.

As Chairman of the Native Caucus of the Democratic National Committee and as a Winnebago Indian mindful of what I may leave for my children, my grandchildren, and all of the generations to come I am humbled but pleased to endorse Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.

I beg your indulgence and respectuflly as that Native people from the four directions join with me in this work as we are all related. It will be good. Pi-nah-gi-gi. Thank you.

Frank LaMere

BONUS: The image to the right is Chief Standing Bear (1834?-1908). Standing Bear was a member of the Ponca Tribe in what we now call Nebraska. It was a suit by Standing Bear in 1879 that prompted the Supreme Court to rule, for the first time, that "an Indian is a person." Standing Bear is often called the father of American Indian citizenship. We are proud of this history in our region.

Nebraska Caucus

If you are in Nebraska and are a Democrat, we have our caucus a week from tomorrow, February 9. If you are not registered, or are registered elsewhere (like Omaha), you can register the day of the caucus at the site. Registration begins at 5:15pm, caucusing gets underway at 6pm and everything should be done by 7:30pm. If you do not know where you should go to caucus, go to the following website and punch in your address. It will tell you where to go as well as all the other basic info you need for next Saturday: Nebraska Democratic Caucus Info

Finally, believe it or not, Nebraska's Democratic caucus might matter. If things remain tight after Super Tuesday, then the caususes and primaries right afterward will be hot contests. So, c'mon out and exercise your democratic rights!

And, spread the word...

Beware: The Race Card is Still in Play...

For sure, it was a HUGE victory for Obama tonight in SC and he gave another spirited and moving speech. It was exactly what was needed: a surprisingly big win and a rousing, positive, transcendent speech. Obama feels back in the game. I hope he can now parlay this into some momentum going into the February 5th contests. But, beware... the race card is still in play. In fact, what happened tonight is a part of the Clinton plan to "blackenize" Obama.

"What??!!?!?" you say... "He won by 29%!! You are crazy! The SC numbers were a clear repudiation of the Clinton's divisive race strategy. Everyone is talking about it."

Indeed, Obama won by a much larger margin than anyone thought possible. Shocking, really. And, it is true, he won with a bigger than expected proportion of the white vote, particularly in some key constituencies (under-30s, white men, etc.). So, I suspect he'll argue that this victory proves that his appeal transcends race and that he can, indeed, put together a winning coalition in the fall; and he might. But, the point all along for the Clintons after Iowa, was to "blackenize" Obama. To knock him off the race-transcendent groove and reduce him to a more narrowly defined "black candidate." In recent history, it has been proven again and again that "black candidates" do not garner much white support. Now, the Clintons have known for some weeks that Obama was going to win in SC. So, their plan, by playing all this racial crap, has been to racially polarize the electorate, which they have successfully done. They have tried to brand Obama as the "black candidate" and denigrate the SC primary as essentially a narrow "black primary." Here is the twist. By Obama winning so big, and with damn near 80% of the African American vote, the Clintons can argue, subtlely and not so subtlely, that this is just a black guy winning the black vote. I already heard a report that the Clintons are banking on the fact that "in SC Democrats vote for black guys, in CA they vote for white women." The Clintons are hoping that she can win the women, white and Hispanic votes in the remaining states. Even if he continues to get 80% of the African American vote, she wins.

What, you still don't buy it? You still think tonight was a repudiation of Clinton's racial innuendo? You think he has to back off?

Exhibit A: Bill Clinton tries to minimize Obama' landslide by equating (read, dismissing) him with Jess Jackson in '84 and '88.

Or, click here, or here, for a text analysis of the same issue.

Exhibit B: According to AP, here is how the Clintons spun the massive loss in SC:

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," a tag that could hurt him outside the South.

Ahhhhh, yes. Deny that you are playing the race card, but then suggest someone else might play it later... Either way, the racial doubt is put out there into the political ether. This way, the Clintons claim plausible deniability. Classic psycho-politics. Classic Clinton.

Still think they aren't playing the divisive race card?

Keep your eyes on the prize. In politics, never get distracted by the sideshow... or the smiling face and twinkling eyes.

It remains unclear which politic will carry the day, ultimately. The good money is still on Hillary. She has the structure to do well in the Feb. 5th elections and that is key. She also has polarized the electorate, at least to a degree. While not unanimous, we do see broad patterns in the SC vote: white men voted for Edwards, African Americans for Obama and white women for Hillary. She has been racking up large polling numbers among women, whites and Latinos in the Feb. 5th races. This bodes well for her. Yet, tonight's numbers suggest that this is at least a partly risky strategy. Obama did win enough of the white vote and he won overall by a decisive enough margin, that he just might be able to change the tide and...

Stay tuned. This just got REALLY interesting...

Experience and Electability?

So, here we are on the cusp of the first caucus/primaries of the '08 election and a desperate Clinton campaign is pulling out all the stops, including dispatching another surrogate, this time Nebraska's own Democratic hack, Bob Kerry, to smear Obama by using coded words, like "Madrassa." Oh yeah, Hillary's husband made a big announcement last night, too, which should dispel any thought that she is a candidate of change: He said George Bush I would help a Clinton Administration regain its standing in the world. Exactly. Clinton and Bush, together again in '08! Uh, how is that change????? In that one moment, Bill destroyed any vestiges of the change argument for Hil... I thought this guy was supposed to be the ultimate campaigner. It is clear his ego and ambition have gotten the better of his sound political judgement. Bill, please remove foot from mouth and get the heck off the stump. With friends like you, Hillary doesn't need many enemies...

But I want to take on two other claims. First, that Hillary is the candidate with more EXPERIENCE. In fact, she is tied for the LEAST amount of elected experience among Dems, along with John Edwards. Here is how it breaks down on this point:

• Biden: senator 1973-present (34yrs)
• Kucinich: City Council 1970-75, 83-85, Clerk of courts 75-77, Mayor 77-79, Senator (state) 95-97, Congressman (federal) 97-present. (23yrs)
• Richardson: Congressman 83-97, Ambassador 97-98, Energy Sec. 98-01, Governor 03-present. (23yrs)
• Dodd: Congressman 1975-81, Senator 1981-present (22yrs)
• Gravel: Senator 1969-81 (12yrs)
• Obama: Senator 97-05 (state), 05-present (federal). (10yrs)
• Clinton: senator 2001-present (6yrs)
• Edwards: Senator 1999-2005 (6yrs)

Moreover, the Clinton campaign likes to claim it is the more "ELECTABLE" candidate. Again, the evidence just does not support this. For instance, Hillary clearly leads the "anti-vote." A full 40% of all Americans say they would actively vote to block a Clinton presidency, that is more than twice the second place candidate, Giuliani, who had a 17% "anti-vote." Overall, 64% of Republicans, 42% of third-party or Independent voters and nearly 20% of Democrats say the candidate they most want to keep from the White House is Hillary... again, numbers that far surpass her closest rival in this area.

Or, there's the new poll by USA Today that states

In hypothetical matchups for the general presidential election, Clinton and Obama each led Giuliani, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Romney, although at times narrowly.

Obama was somewhat stronger, besting Giuliani by 6 points, Huckabee by 11 and Romney by 18. Clinton had an edge of 1 point over Giuliani, 9 points over Huckabee and 6 points over Romney.

For me, here is the clincher when it comes to ELECTABILITY. I don't have any scientific data on this point, just my anecdotal experience, but if you are a Democrat think long and hard about what I am about to write: Not only does Hillary energize the conservative base in a way no other Democratic candidate does (which is a HUGE strike against her nomination and the idea that she is electable), but also the prospect of a Clinton restoration dispirits and demoralizes a large number of Democrats, myself included. Admit it. Every Democrat knows several other Democrats who are simply and totally turned-off by Hillary and the Clintons. Sure, most will probably hold their nose and vote for her anyway given the alternative, but they won't be energized and they won't work for her or the party. In a tight race, that very well could be the losing margin. This is the most damning evidence against the argument that she is most electable.

Finally, even the prospect of a Clinton campaign is hurting the party already down the line. For example, in Omaha in '08 a good Democrat, Jim Esch almost pulled off a HUGE upset by beating Lee Terry for Congress. This is really quite incredible, in fact. There was much hope he would run again and win in '08. Again, this would have been a major pick-up. But, a few weeks back, Esch announced he would not run again. In his announcement, among other things, he cited the likelihood that Clinton would be the party standard-bearer as one of the major reasons for his decision against running. In essence, he argued that Hillary at the top of the ticket hurt his chances of electoral victory at the bottom of the ticket, particularly in moderate-to-conservative state, like Nebraska.

What do you think? Do you buy Clinton's "experience" and "electability" arguments?