Sunday, May 22, 2011
DEMOCRATIC PARTY FACTION FIGHTS
by Adaoma
Whether or not anyone agrees with Cornel West's criticisms of President Obama or stands with those who criticize West for doing so is irrelevant. What is relevant is not a critique of Barack Obama's personality , but a critique of the Democratic Party for which he stands, in general, and a critique of capitalism by which both the Democratic and Republican Party enable multinational corporations to continue exploitation of the working class, specifically.
Cornel West and his detractors either participated in the endorsement, campaign, support, publicity, and/or the election of the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. They are all, therefore, responsible for US domestic and foreign policies, funding of the wars, soaring of profits, scarceness of employment and the state of workers, in as much as they endorse the Democratic Party.
From the corporate bail outs, to the funding of wars, to the tax cuts of record profit-making companies, to the cutting-off of public sector workers, to the cutting back of funds for education, elderly, the poor, the sickly, and the student, it is clear that Democrats in every area of national and local government worked in bipartisanship (with Republicans).
This is a squabble amongst Democrats over personality. Obama's and West's. This media blitz over Obama/West is a rant between factions of the Democratic Party.
Having campaigned for Democratic Party majorities in House and
Senate, the 'left progressive' faction of the Democratic Party,
the Democratic Socialists of America [DSA] faction, together with
Michael Moore and Amiri Baraka, want not to be held accountable
for the results of the government policies of the Democrats they
campaigned for and placed in office.
The other faction, the 'pragmatic left' are the apologitic faction,
represented by MSNBC's Ed Shultz and Lawrence O'Donnell, Melissa
Harris-Perry of Nation Magazine, and Salon.Com's Joan Walsh.
What were and are the results? The "Bush-McCain" would be 'fascist'
policies were ratified by the Democratic Party's Congressional
majorities in House and Senate, and is administered by Obama - 'this
Administration'.
The present ad hominem attacks on Obama and each other
notwithstanding, as they remain members of this Democratic Party, none
of the so-called "progressives" have suggested any other party outside
the Democratic Party.
Last presidential election season, the strategy of some "progressives" was to scare workers into voting for Democrats to avoid the "Tragic Errors of the Weimar Republic" and Republican fascism.
See:
http://www.seeingblack.com/article_485.shtml
None of these so-called "progressives" have suggested any other party outside the Democratic Party, only to criticize or not to criticize Obama. He is one man. It is in the interests of the Democratic Party to keep the discussion about Obama and not about the Democratic Party, in lieu of 2012 elections. It is in the interest of the Democratic Party to keep the discussion going about personality rather than political issues.
It didn't work. Fascist-like policy is alive and well in American politics.
So, is the "progressive" strategy now simply to call Cornel West "tragic"?
Joan Walsh of Salon.com, who refers to West's criticism of President Obama as 'tragic', proposes a solution to anyone who has "issues with Obama". Walsh writes: "The larger subtext here is a boiling progressive debate about whether, how and how much to criticize the president, and unfortunately, some of it is racial. I'm on record saying that despite my disappointments on the economic and civil liberties front, I support Obama's reelection: He's as progressive a leader as we're able to elect right now, and if you have issues with him -- as I do -- it's time to work to elect strong Democrats at the state and local level. I'm pro-Obama -- and also pro-reasonable organizing efforts to push him left."
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/?story=/opinion/walsh/2011/05/19/cornel_west
What evidence is there to support that voting for more Democrats, on the State and local level will push Obama to some nebulous "left"? There is none.
Having a Democratic Party majority in the House under this administration ended no war, defunded no war, brought about no universal healthcare for all, strengthened no union, ended no P.A.T.R.I.O.T. ACT, provided no more education and created no jobs.
Perhaps, Walsh is borrowing from some teaparty strategy of electing Republican on the local and State level. Those Republicans who were elected were those who toed the Republican Party line. They voted unanimously in most all of their votes.
Whatever is the Democratic Party "party line" , like the Republican Party, it is not in the interests of the working class, as evidenced by its actions. According to its actions, they are complicit and in tandem with Repbulicans.
Workers need a party that serves their economic and political needs of workers. The Democratic Party is not it.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laborpartypraxis/message/27007
Adaoma
Obama's No Revolutionary, He's a Politician
http://www.theroot.com/views/why-cornel-west-wrong-about-obama?page=0,1
Cornel West Spars With Ed Schultz About Obama (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/cornel-west-ed-schultz-obama_n_863492.html?view=screen
The marginalization of Cornel West
Fri May 20 2011 6:15 am
by Ross Levin.
If you’ve been watching the recent controversy over Cornel West’s statements that Obama is “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats,” among other things, you have been witnessing an interesting phenomenon. What you are seeing – perhaps most prominently from West’s Princeton colleague Melissa Harris-Perry, although certainly extending to other sycophantic academics and corporate commentators craving to be seen as the most centrist – is the use of a familiar tool of those who hold the power in our country.
Cornel West is being marginalized. I obviously can’t say whether this is because there is some nefarious plot to do so or whether he offended too many narrow-minded, vindictive people’s delicate sensibilities or if there is some other explanation, but the same is occurring to him that has happened to so many American political, intellectual, and even entertainment figures. Once you venture outside the realm of comfortable, acceptable, Democrat vs. Republican politics, you’ve gone too far!
The best example I’ve seen so far during this most recent controversy, is Joan Walsh’s piece on Salon.com. Walsh characterizes West’s “meltdown” as “tragic.” Apparently, if you don’t agree with Joan Walsh – even if you have a long history as a talented speaker and activist and Ivy League professor – you have gone insane. Walsh then goes on to temper her insulting and pedantic critique of West with the most milquetoast critique of Obama that could possibly be written by a human. “I’m on record saying that despite my disappointments on the economic and civil liberties front, I support Obama’s reelection,” she writes. And that’s all you need to know. Either Walsh cannot credibly be called a progressive since she supports corporatist Obama or progressives as a group have lost any credibility they once had. In addition, her critical judgment has clearly been suspended in favor of worship at the altar of elections, Democrats, and the presidency. And if anything other than those topics, if any idea relating to politics that shows some honesty and complexity, is brought up, the person bringing it up is crazy in the eyes of small-minded pundits like Joan Walsh.
Now I’m going on a bit of a tangent, but if I weren’t borrowing a family member’s computer, I would be vomiting on the screen after reading what Joan Walsh wrote. She seems to be the archetypal “progressive” Democratic pundit. Avoid uncomfortable tensions (like real racial issues), always remain loyal to the Democratic Party (especially while it betrays you), focus on trivialities rather than the meaningful message of what you’re criticizing, and never EVER rock the boat (“This is the discussion we’re supposed to be having,” Walsh wrote in a typically Democratic authoritarian fashion about a more mild criticism of Obama). The truth is that, given his harsh criticism of Obama, there’s little to nothing Cornel West could have done to soften the blow of it for people like Joan Walsh and Melissa Harris-Perry. West is being criticized not for the racial aspects of what he said – which are in fact much more complex than he is being given credit for, while avoiding these issues as Joan Walsh does only serves to exacerbate them – but because he dared to show some backbone in standing up for his principles.
This is but one tile in a grand mural of political demonization directed at anyone with slightly original ideas in politics. If you are a prominent American and you voice an opinion beyond what is deemed acceptable (or, and this is very much the same thing, you challenge the two party system or the way it shapes our collective political consciousness), you’re marginalized and shut out of the mainstream debate. Noam Chomsky has not only explained this countless times, he has been an example of it countless times. Ward Churchill lost his job as a professor for saying something unpopular. If you haven’t heard of Roseanne Barr’s new book “Roseannarchy,” ask yourself whether that would still be true if it had been a noncontroversial book about her television career. Ralph Nader has become the pariah of the American left – even though his positive accomplishments probably surpass any modern president – because he directly challenged the ideology of the two party system. Even the one hero of the left whom no one can say anything against today, Martin Luther King, was marginalized in a similar fashion when he started focusing on poor people and Vietnam.
This marginalization plays very much into the hands of those in power. It keeps new, exciting ideas that challenge their systems of power out of the national political debate, thereby limiting peoples’ political thinking, philosophy, and subsequent actions. We are trained to think that the answer is either a Democrat or Republican. If someone challenges that with support for a third party or the radical idea that elections aren’t everything, they are shut out of the mainstream media’s dialogue so that its initial flawed assumptions – which, needless to say, always help the corporate power elite – are never criticized in a meaningful way on a large enough stage to really matter.
This has happened so many times before. Now, perhaps we can only stand up as individuals for Cornel West and hope that these stupid charades will be seen for what they are.
http://polizeros.com/2011/05/20/the-marginalization-of-cornel-west/
Thursday, May 19, 2011 09:01 ET
Cornel West's tragic meltdown
A few fair complaints about Obama drown in a sea of personal racial attacks. Is this how identity politics ends?
By Joan Walsh
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Barack Obama and Cornel West
Melissa Harris-Perry and Adam Serwer wrote majestic takedowns of Cornel West's vicious and deeply personal rant against President Obama published this week, so I didn't think I had to. But there's one thing missing in the torrent of reaction to West I've seen this week: a recognition that maybe this is the way identity politics had to end, not with a bang but a whine. Dizzying racial and personal insults have come from all directions, and they're beginning to lose their meaning.
Much has been made of the personal pique that animated West's attack on the president: How dare the bellhop at West's hotel Inaugural Weekend wind up with tickets to the event itself when West didn't? How could Obama stop returning his calls? West's animus was impossible to miss, and it clearly drove the awful, ad hominem anger of West's invective.
The most tragic thing, to me, about West's meltdown was the way he tried to frame it as a universalist defense of poor and working-class people -- who in fact haven't gotten enough help or attention from this too-close-to-Wall Street administration -- but then somehow descends into personal attacks on the president as "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." If that wasn't bad enough, West claims Obama's problem is that he is afraid of "free black men" due to his white ancestry and years in the Ivy League. "He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want," West claimed.
Give Brother West credit for consistency: On MSNBC's "The Ed Show" Tuesday night, he repeated his criticism that Obama is too close to "upper-middle-class white brothers and Jewish brothers."
Oh no, the Jews again. Haven't we been here before?
How did the man who wrote in "Race Matters" that it's time "to replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning" come to this? I don't disagree with some of West's critique of Obama, but Ta-Nehisi Coates is exactly right here:
Was there something more Obama should have done to get a public option? Should he not have traded the Bush tax cuts for extending unemployment benefits? Did Obama settle too quickly on a small stimulus package? Was he wrong to allow the GOP to shut down planned parenthood in DC? Is the strategy of increased drone attacks in Pakistan inhumane? Was the financial reform bill he signed ultimately too weak?
I think all of this is fair game. I think Charles Ferguson's critique in Inside Job was really solid. I think calling someone a "black mascot" or a "black puppet" because they don't agree with you is much less so.
The Washington Post's always terrific Jonathan Capehart says that, essentially, West is "no better than a birther," challenging the president's credibility on specious, deeply personal racial grounds.
But there's a way in which this whole controversy looks like progressives devouring their own tail. From the left, West attacks Obama for not being black enough; I've written about being attacked as a clueless, entitled white progressive for criticizing Obama; in a pro-West backlash, black Obama supporters are being dismissed as "elitist" fronts for white liberals and that half-white guy in the White House. It's crazy. The only good thing about the fracas is that maybe, finally, America will learn that there's no monolithic "black community" and no one set of black leaders: The diversity of African-American opinions about the West-Obama tangle has been fascinating. And the ways that race comes into play when debating the achievements of our first black president shouldn't be surprising. But it's starting to obscure more than it reveals.
The focus on identity is stifling: I've seen people take potshots at many of the players involved based on their status in various Ivy League debates over the last decade. Preposterously, West attacks Obama's Ivy League background -- yes, the president has degrees from Harvard and Columbia -- when West has been sheltered beneath the cool ivy himself for most of his career. West defender Boyce Watkins of Syracuse University continued with the Ivy League slurs, trashing Melissa Harris-Perry as "a darker-skinned staple in the white liberal establishment" and an "Ivy League" pro-Obama sellout; other critics have suggested the Nation writer is attacking West because they didn't get along at Princeton. (Disclosure: Harris-Perry is a friend of mine who has brought me to speak at Princeton; now she's headed to a new post at Tulane University.) A few people have linked West's beef with Obama to his clashes with former Obama advisor Larry Summers back when Summers was Harvard's president, and West decamped to Princeton. Is our troubled country really supposed to care about who didn't get along with who in the Ivy League? Can I dismiss what all of them say because I went to a fine land-grant college, the University of Wisconsin? That would be stupid, right?
The larger subtext here is a boiling progressive debate about whether, how and how much to criticize the president, and unfortunately, some of it is racial. I'm on record saying that despite my disappointments on the economic and civil liberties front, I support Obama's reelection: He's as progressive a leader as we're able to elect right now, and if you have issues with him -- as I do -- it's time to work to elect strong Democrats at the state and local level. I'm pro-Obama -- and also pro-reasonable organizing efforts to push him left. I also believe that there's a cruel racial component to the right's revolt against Obama, and in that context particularly, I understand that many African-Americans are understandably protective of our besieged president, and bothered by what they see as carping from the unrealistic left.
But I continue to observe a disturbing ad hominem campaign against Obama critics (the Twitter war rages on, with or without me). If you're white, it's "white privilege" speaking. If you're black, you're old or jealous or angry you're left out of Obama's inner circle. If you're neither white nor black, you just don't get American race relations and you should "STFU." Just today on Twitter, I saw two (white) progressives I respect make wildly contradictory and nasty generalizations about a grouping of Obama critics (of different races; I wasn't among them): One suggested they're trashing the president for fame and money; the other that they're angry they've been marginalized by Obama's popularity. Which is it?
It couldn't possibly be that any of these people, whatever their age, race or social class, wherever they went to school, have genuine differences with the president? (Or conversely, in the case of Obama defenders being attacked racially and personally, have wonderful and sincere reasons for continuing to support him fervently.) No one can be given credit for speaking from genuine moral or political conviction anymore; everyone can be dismissed or derided with a nod to their personal background. This may be the logical end of identity politics, where ultimately we're each locked inside whatever little box we check, tiny caucuses of one, and common ground is impossible.
Ironically, this is a relatively ancient -- circa 1967 -- left-wing Democratic Party debate: How much do you push the most liberal president you've had to date, and is there any situation in which you abandon him? I'm not saying Obama is Lyndon Johnson, or that any of his foreign policy troubles add up to the nightmare of Vietnam, but some of the current tension reminds me of the split mostly between labor and the New Left, and a little bit within the civil rights movement, about the "Dump Johnson" movement. Only a few fringe characters, West among them, are suggesting anyone "Dump Obama" and challenge him in a Democratic primary (or even more nihilistically, with a third-party run). But the tensions are similar, even if the players are different; much of labor sided with Johnson, the New Left abandoned him, while Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came out strongly against Johnson's war, and other civil rights leaders balked at bucking the president. One of my favorite figures of the time, the gay, left-wing visionary Bayard Rustin, surprisingly (to me) argued in favor of sticking with Johnson and avoiding the antiwar movement, terming it "distinctly unprofitable and possibly suicidal" for civil rights leaders to abandon the president over the war. Race played in multiple ways in that painful schism. These have never been easy choices; for anyone to pretend there's a right answer now is silly.
The saddest thing is, West thinks of himself as a great left-wing universalist. "This discussion is in no way about me, it has to do with poor and working people having low priority in US governmental policy," he Tweeted Tuesday, as his words ignited a firestorm. Yet he critiqued the president in deeply personal and racial terms -- and now he himself is critiqued the same way. Maybe it's justice.
Former Biden economic advisor Jared Bernstein wrote a really great piece about why he left the White House: It's pro-Obama, it's compassionate, it's fair-minded and it's also critical. This is the discussion we're supposed to be having. That West mess is a lamentable sideshow.
Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More: Joan Walsh
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/?story=/opinion/walsh/2011/05/19/cornel_west
Cornel West v. Barack Obama
Melissa Harris-Perry
May 17, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/160725/cornel-west-v-barack-obama
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