Category: politics

February 2 Stevie Wonder

 

 

This Black History Month I’m Grateful for Stevie Wonder

 

 

 “Just because a man
lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.”

-Stevie Wonder


 

Stevie Wonder is a living legend in an obvious way. The
owner of 22 Grammy Awards*, legendary songs and albums Wonder has had profound
success as a musical artist. It was largely Wonder’s success in transcending
the racial and musical barriers of the 1970s that paved the way for the
unprecedented crossover stardom of Black 80s singers Michael Jackson, Prince,
Whitney Houston and Lionel Richie. While these accomplishments are amazing,
Wonder’s greatest legacy may well be found in the ways he’s used his celebrity to
bring attention to social concerns. 


With the possible exception of Coretta Scott King#, no
individual deserves more credit than Wonder for the creation of the Martin
Luther King Jr. federal holiday. Wonder’s birthday song for King has even
become the model for birthday songs in Black homes today.


By the early 80s, Wonder had developed an emphasis on
pan-African identity, themes and issues. Wonder wrote about African politics,
Third World life and helped break Bob Marley into the US market. He also participated
in events designed to raise awareness and money to combat hunger, poverty,
drunken driving, AIDS, and drug use.


Stevie Wonder was also deeply committed to the end of the apartheid
system in South Africa. He was one of the most prominent Americans to argue
that our country needed to deliberately disinvest from South Africa. Wonder
helped provide public forums for Nobel Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu who had not
been widely known in this country.

 

The combination of Stevie Wonder’s sunglasses, head shaking
and broad smile have become a cliché as is his perpetual musical optimism. What
is not cliché is the sincerity of Wonder’s dedication to the causes of peace
and justice “all throughout the world”. 

 

Today, I am grateful for Stevie Wonder. You should be too.

 

FDO

 

*- the most for any male solo artist

#- check back later this month for more 

 

 

February 1 Frederick Douglass

This Black History Month I’m Grateful for Frederick Douglass

 

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

-Frederick Douglass

 

 

The accomplishments of Frederick Douglass are so numerous they seem mythological to many of us today. For a Black person, born a slave in the first half of the 19th century, to have become so accomplished was literally unimaginable until Douglass did it.

 

A few highlights:

Douglass freed himself after illegally learning to read; worked as an abolitionist and suffragist; published The North Star and other newspapers; wrote multiple autobiographies; expanded benefits for Black soldiers in the Civil War; received nominations for Vice-President and President.

His autobiographies captivated the country and, for many Northerners, provided the first clear demonstration that Blacks could be the intellectual equal of Whites. Douglass was the first Black person to garner a truly national reputation, the nearly universal respect of Whites, and to be treated as an equal by an American President.

In fact, I consider Douglass to be the original president of Black America. He was the first person who could be said to have represented the most urgent interests of Blacks to the whole country.
It’s nearly impossible to conceive even now but Frederick Douglass was born as a slave and died as one of the most important people in the world.

 

Today, I am grateful for Frederick Douglass. You should be too.

FDO

Four More Years

 

A week after the 2012 election, things feel back to normal. There
are no more TV ads telling us the other guys are all awful, no pollster phone
calls or political e-mail blitzes (Don’t worry, Black Friday is coming soon!),
no more Facebook virtual throw downs and no more questions about how much we
love America.

 

But in one important respect, I think things are really
different. For the past four years, I’ve had people telling me that Barack
Obama’s election was a fluke or an accident or a bizarre mistake. Yes, lots of
things went Obama’s way in 2008. Yes, he had some good luck. But I’ve tried
convincing folks that electing a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama President
of the United States went way beyond any Providence. I have always believed
2008 was a harbinger of things to come. I think that’s even clearer now.

 

For four years, Obama has been lied about, ridiculed,
threatened and slandered more than anyone could have reasonably anticipated. Questions
about every aspect of his life have been raised and accepted as fact by large
swaths of the public even when the questions were internally inconsistent, even
when they literally could not have been true. Americans had to see their
President demeaned and belittled, not because of what he did but because of who
he is.

 

The easiest, simplest way to stop all that would have been to elect Mitt
Romney last week. America could have gone back to having a President who looks
all the other Presidents. We could have stopped the hate parade in its tracks
and breathed a sigh of relief that the vicious, race based attacks would go
away for awhile. We could have said, ‘Okay, enough.’

 

Instead, we re-elected Obama. Despite the dire predictions
from the left and the overwhelming confidence
of the Romney campaign, Obama won a decisive victory. (I call it a Nixon
landslide.) America chose to go in the direction of the man who sings Al Green, embraces
gay marriage and welcomes
the children of undocumented immigrants. I am convinced that this election was
about more than Democrats and Republicans. It was about more than changing demographics
and the 47%. It was even about much more than Romney and Obama.

 

This election was about the future of America. A future of less
division and more integration. A future of fewer lies and
harder truths. A future of holding hands but not clenching fists. This is the
future we need. This is the future we want. And this is the future we are
choosing.

 

So no, thank God, things are not back to normal. But I think
I’m gonna like the new normal a whole lot more.

 

 

FDO

 

 

Four Days Out

 

I’m
lucky enough to work in an environment in which politics gets discussed
frequently, thoughtfully and kindly. One consequence of that environment is
that I’ve been asked to update my Electoral College prediction for next week’s
Presidential Election so here it is: I see the most likely outcome as Obama
332- Romney 206. That margin of victory would decisively outpace the popular
vote difference between the candidates by reflecting many close wins for Obama in
swing states but Romney landslides in deep red states.

 

I
think Obama’s EC vote total could range anywhere from 277 to 358. That’s a
lotta swing. I’m on the high end of this projection because I anticipate the
most important late leans are all moving toward the President. Early voting, Hurricane
Sandy, first time voters, Romney's rebuke by the auto industry and the unpolled masses… if there will be voting
benefits from any of those realities, Obama will get them.

 

332
reflects my thinking that states like Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
will almost certainly go blue. New Hampshire, Colorado and Iowa are very likely
to do so as well. And states like Florida and Virginia have a decent chance to
stay in the President’s column. Even North Carolina and Indiana have an outside
chances of sliding away from Romney in his worst case scenario.

 

Today,
Politico’s swing state map suggests that the
race will end up 290-248 for Obama. My guesses that both Virginia and Florida go
for Obama lead to my 332 prediction. Three things stand out to me in looking at
this map.

 

One-
This map is only about polling averages. No other factors are used.

Two- Florida and
Virginia are gravy states for the President. A few months ago, everyone assumed
those states would be critical battlegrounds. In fact, Romney announced his
choice of Paul Ryan in Virginia for that very reason.

Three- Perhaps, most
amazing, Politico’s current projection means Obama could lose Ohio and still
win the election!

 

Had you told Mitt Romney six weeks ago that he would win
Ohio but lose the White House, he would have been heartsick. If my prediction
holds up, at least he won’t have to wonder if he could have done something
differently. There’s always a silver lining.

 

 

FDO

 

Rape Without Rapists?

 

I am fortunate enough to have dozens of extremely thoughtful
friends. Some of them were kind enough to share their thoughts via Facebook
about the recent rise in attention paid to the GOP platform position that
abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape, incest and maternal health
concerns. Public statements by GOP Senatorial candidates Todd Akin and Richard
Mourdock have pushed the issue of pregnancy via rape into the national
spotlight. Something I’ve noticed and struggled with is that virtually none of
the public discourse I’ve heard about women’s choices actually talks about the initial
decision maker in this scenario: the rapist.  

 

In some ways, this whole debate is representative of the
broader dysfunction of our society. I have yet to hear important political
conversation about challenging America's rape culture. Everyone says rape is
bad then continues on to their talking points. No one's talking about how we
can ensure that sex is chosen, pregnancies are deliberate and all babies are
wanted. 

 

Instead of focusing on how to deal with the aftermath of
sexual violence, why don't we spend time and energy training our young people
to understand sex, abhor sexual violence and value others as themselves? That simply
isn’t happening. My goodness, who decided that sexual assault can't even be as demonized
in our culture as cigarettes?

 

Ultimately, I would love Akin and Mourdock's accidental
statements of belief to start a national conversation about sexual violence but
I have little hope that will happen. Instead, we will probably just keep
focusing on what we expect from the women who are victimized by rape. After
all, that's a lot easier than acknowledging that there are perpetrators of
sexual assault around us every day and our culture basically ignores them. It's as though we simply expect there will be a certain amount of rape in America. How awful. 

 

FDO

 

 

 

 

Can Obama Win Indiana (Again)?

 

A friend recently shared his suggestion that Hoosiers use
this year’s Presidential election to express their displeasure with the two
major party candidates by voting for a third party candidate. Here’s the reason
I don’t want my friend to make that choice this year: I think Obama has a puncher’s
chance to win Indiana again.

 

My friend’s contention is that Indiana will go red just as
surely as California will go blue so Hoosiers who are inclined to vote for
Obama have options since their votes won’t impact any outcomes.  I was immediately reminded of the massive
efforts to ‘swap votes’ in the 2000 election. In that election year, many
Americans viewed Ralph Nader’s campaign as an attempt to build off the
electoral successes of third party candidates Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura to
help promote a national multiparty system*. I had friends in Oregon and
Minnesota and California and Indiana and Arizona all talking about their fears
of ‘wasting’ their votes by supporting a Presidential candidate who had no
chance to win their state. While the typology of ‘red state’ and ‘blue state’
was not uniform until after the voting that November, the idea of that divide
was widespread and lots of folks wanted to avoid wasting blue in red places or
wasting red in blue places.

 

Part of the magic of elections is that they can amaze and
surprise. In 2008, I told everyone who would listen (and many who wouldn’t!)
that Obama was going to win Indiana. More than a few people laughed and some
wondered if I’d simply forgotten that Indiana is much more than Indianapolis. I
smiled at the laughter and often reminded folks that I was deeply aware that
many Hoosiers would have literally voted for the corpse of Ronald Reagan before
they voted for Barack Hussein Obama. But in 2008, an odd coalition of Hoosiers
coalesced enough to give Democrats their first Electoral College votes here since
1964. That coalition has frayed but not fractured. Relatively few of those
voters are going to be excited about voting for Romney; if anything, they may
need to be given reasons
to vote for Obama again.

 

Certainly an ad blitz is unlikely at this late stage but
here’s one ad
that would play fantastically well here.  A White, blue collar, middle aged Hoosier guy talking
about Romney making $100 million by closing his plant? That would be a winner.
It also seems pretty clear that Romney and Senate candidate Richard Mourdock
are a bad pair for driving GOP turnout. In fact, due to Mourdock’s most recent verbal
train wreck it’s possible he will produce a generic bump for the Democrats.
That may happen even though his Senatorial opponent is in a weak position
to benefit. There are an awful lot of folks who typically vote GOP who just won’t
be excited to show up at the polls in November.

 

However, relatively few people are immune to the largest
media waves and this election will be one of them. Even the folks who are least
inclined to vote will hear about the election all day Monday and Tuesday.  Between smart phones and nearly ubiquitous access
to social media, I anticipate a great amount of social pressure to vote. That
means more people showing up to vote without a deep well of engagement,
interest, knowledge or understanding. As cynical as it sounds, the Obama team
can take advantage of that situation to pull off a real ‘November surprise’ in
Indiana. There are also a lot of folks who are typically not voters but were
directly impacted by recent policies like Governor Daniels' Scott Walker style efforts
at union busting. Not only are those folks off the political grid but they'll
lean strongly toward the President.

 

With the combination of all these different realities
swirling about and the continuing strength of Obama's Get Out the Vote
campaign, I think this is an election with genuinely different possibilities
than in 2000. Remember that’s when vote swapping reached its apex… and perhaps
helped George W. Bush win the Presidency#. I want Hoosiers to vote for the
person they think will do the best job as President. And I believe their votes
may count more than they might anticipate.

 

FDO

 

*- I love the idea of a multi-party system and believe it
would help politics and our country as a whole. But it’s a long process and
certain short-term costs seem too high to me.

 

#- My argument on this point is very complicated. Lemme know
if you’d like me to share it with you. 

 

Mourdock or Milquetoast

 

With less than two weeks before the election, I need to
vent. Indiana’s Democratic Party is just plain stupid.

 

There, I said it. It’s really stupid. They simply refuse to
nominate an actual, true to life liberal to run for Senate. Instead, it’s one
milquetoast moderate after another. Hoosiers consistently have to choose
between a Republican is proud of his political perspective and a Democrat who
barely has one.

 

The biggest national political story
this morning is Richard Mourdock’s insane soliloquy about rape, abortion and
the will of God. Mourdock has gone the way of Todd Akin, Joe Walsh and the far
right wing of the Republican Party in making explicit their previously
subterranean desire for their vision of a 1950s fantasy America to be “inflicted”
upon 21st society. Specifically women.

 

Yet, the Indiana Democrats can’t take full advantage of this
opening because their own Senate candidate Joe Donnelly is also opposed to
abortion rights and, in many other respects, is a retread of the same watered
down elephant in donkey’s clothing. It’s the style candidate Hoosier Dems have
tried over and over again. Eventually, Evan Bayh developed some liberal bona fides but Donnelly has hewn closely
to the Brad Ellsworth playbook of accepting conservative orthodoxy.  The strategy seems to be simple: say
conservative things while smiling instead of sneering.

 

Obviously there are some important differences between
Donnelly and Mourdock and I plan to vote for Donnelly. I also have hope that if
Donnelly were elected he would discover the value of leaning left in the
Senate. What’s sad today is that had Donnelly been willing to make the leftward
move sooner, his election would be a fait
accomplit and Mourdock would be on the way to the next John Birch Society
meeting.  As it is, Mourdock may well
weather this storm. Cause after all, who wants milquetoast? 

 

FDO

 

 

Mitt Romney, Come on Down!

 

I’m
excited to watch the Republican National Convention over the next few days. It
seems odd to consider the range of very different interests Mitt Romney needs to
attend in Tampa to enhance his chances of winning the Presidency. I’d say the
GOP needs to thread the needle but most needles only have one hole. Team Romney
has an awful lot to do in just a few days.

 

Mitt
Romney needs to appeal to his base, particularly evangelicals and social
conservatives who distrust him for his previous apostasies on a whole host of
issues. At the same time, Romney needs to present himself as a compassionate
conservative to the independents and moderates who think folks like Todd Akin
represent the true core of the GOP these days. Mitt tried to convince
CBS that the President is irrelevant regarding abortion policy.  He’s hoping to deflect attention from abortion
(and ‘women’s issues’ more generally) because he’s stuck in a horrible spot on
that issue. (This is in part because of his own struggles
to develop a coherent position on abortion. And stick
with it.)

 

Even
though George W. Bush happily talked about himself as America’s CEO, it’s
Romney that really fits the description. He’s trying to convince America that
his corporate experience puts him ahead of President Obama as a potential
economic savior. But Mitt embodies all the negative stereotypes of the 1% too.
His Gore-like woodenness and helmet hair enhance the images of him as an
automaton. The reluctance of his campaign to reveal more information about his
taxes also helps move Romney’s image from hard working entrepreneur to robber
baron. The gap between those images is massive.

 

My
guess is that in reality, Romney’s probably a staid but wonderful person.
Nobody outside his inner circle is quite sure of that though. And unfortunately
for him, the typical strategies used to soften a politician all carry a high
price tag. Talking too much about his family life immediately brings up
Mormonism. Talking about his all-American upbringing calls to mind the overwhelming
advantages of his early privilege. Talking about the personal obstacles he’s
overcome will, uh, well, they’ll get back to us on that one.  Overall, it’s gonna be tough to convince
average folks that Mitt ‘gets it’. Today, CBS describes this as the empathy gap
as its polling shows
that “only 41 percent of Americans
said Romney understands their needs and problems”.  Ouch.

 

Problems
need solutions. While candidate Obama was often criticized for being so focused
on hope and change, his themes were clear and consistent. I really have no idea
what Mitt Romney wants to do if elected President.

 

Okay,
so he wants to cut the deficit. He’s willing to cut programs. (Just not the
ones you like.) He wants to save Medicare. His plan doesn’t sound like it will
actually do that in a way that resembles Medicare. And he’s also focusing on
making America great. Or maybe proud. Or maybe proud of its greatness. Sigh. That
worked for Reagan because the country was dramatically different in 1980. And
Reagan made people feel better. Romney struggles to make people feel at all.

 

So
this week Romney has to create buzz about moving the country in HIS direction,
not just a different direction. This week and this year should be about
competing visions of America but I don’t know that this will happen. Romney
should have already learned that defeating weak incumbents can be done but only
if you demonstrate that what you offer is something people genuinely want.

 

Maybe
that’s the biggest reason I want to watch this convention unfold. I am very
interested to discover what Romney thinks America wants for its future.

 

 

FDO

 

 

 

Romney’s Troubles Begin in New Hampshire?

 

New Hampshire?!?

 

It’s amusing to watch the coverage of the GOP Presidential nominating process in New Hampshire.  For the last year, Mitt Romney’s camp has attempted to create an aura of inevitability around his candidacy with some success.

 

Even last week, after the photo finish in the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum’s success there was portrayed as a boon to Romney as Santorum could help clear the rest of the field of candidates. To some extent that worked with Michele Bachmann dropping out and Rick Perry’s hours long exit. Overall, though, it appears to me that this race will continue much longer than Romney guessed it would. I anticipate today’s New Hampshire primaries will make Romney’s inevitability strategy look incredibly vulnerable.

 

My guess is that Romney will win with something less than 40% of the vote. That will be a classic case of losing by winning. It won’t be LBJ in 1968 but it’s gonna make things ugly for Romney.

 

If Huntsman continues his surge and finishes in 2nd place, he will receive the boosts in money and media that will make him a viable candidate in Florida and Nevada in a few weeks. Santorum and Gingrich will continue to point to South Carolina as a state they can win and is more representative of the GOP than New Hampshire is. Ron Paul will stay in this race for the long haul.

 

This means that for at least the next month, Romney will have to stave off attacks from at least 4 other candidates. All the unflattering stories, all the gaffes and the harsh glare of contention will continue to dog his campaign.

 

While I think Romney is still a solid front runner, his candidacy is in great peril for the long haul. A weak showing today may be a harbinger of more trouble to come for him.

 

 

FDO

 

Update: It's worse for Romney than I anticipated. Huntsman underperformed and Perry has no momentum at all yet they are still committed to running. Between their continuing campaigns and Gingrich's scorched earth policy, Romney will be forced to continue competing. Exactly what he doesn't want. 


Tweet Your Way to Third

 

Well, it looks like Ron Paul finished a disappointing third in the Iowa caucus. That's despite having the very best social media campaign as evidenced by this CNN piece. Unfortunately for him, Iowa's demographics are still Iowa's demographics. 

 

 

FDO