Tuesday, July 27th, 2004

Black President

(UPDATED LINKS 11am 7/28/04)

The hype came in the form of a skinny mixed-race Senate candidate with no opposition, Barack Obama (backgrounders here and here, perhaps the next chance for a real Black President in 2016.

Women screamed. Pundits creamed. Hillary and Jesse both beamed. This guy is for real and people will soon be talking about him as “the new face of the Democratic Party”.

What are his politics? Call them urban neo-progressive. He’s positioning himself right between Jesse and Hillary.

The fire in his speech was vintage Jesse ’88. Note how Obama used “hope” as his keyword. Note how thoroughly he’s absorbed the language of the multiculturalists of the 80s (yep, we’ve come a long way baby). And the speech will be remembered for this money line, also vintage Jesse/80s multiculti with a touch of 90s irony:

“Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

But even as he affirmed his urban background, he pitched himself to the so-called middle. The next line could have come out of a DLC playbook.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, the people I meet in small towns and big cities and diners and office parks, they don’t expect government to solves all of their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead. And they want to.”

But the key lines if you want to understand Obama’s politics were the next ones:

“Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you: They don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon.”

There it is. Here’s a Democrat who has absorbed the small-government mantra, who is telling conservative whites–and post-Farrakhan blacks–he’s not gonna be easy on his people. At the same time, he’s telling liberals and people of color he’s not gonna be easy on military spending. Anti-welfare and anti-war. Hillary and Jesse.

Now read the next section of his speech again, and recognize game. Obama is sharp, he’s a great orator, and he’s just a lot slicker than either neo-conservative Corey Booker or neo-liberal Bill Cosby:

“Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things. (APPLAUSE)”

He cut those lines real fine, didn’t he? Welcome to the neo-progressive.

This is a different politic than, say, those promoted by the Dean insurgency, which was essentially a one-noter: anti-war, anti-Bush. These are politics that could potentially play a major role in reshaping the Democratic Party. Centrism is dead. Clinton and Bush took that one to bed. People are searching for a new alternative, and Obama’s neo-progressivism–if it takes hold in the communities of color he can potentially energize–combines a shape-shifting ability to move right, while reviving the moral high ground of the left.

Don’t forget Obama once ran against Bobby Rush, the ex-Black Panther, on the Southside, in a race that held as much intergenerational intrigue as the Booker-James battle in Newark, even though the press never framed it that way. In the African American community, where Sharpton’s failed candidacy represents the exhaustion of the old model and where the hip-hop generation is still getting organized, neo-progressivism–and all the values it promotes-professionalism, wit, irony, and above all, an imperative to find a post-Jackson, post-Farrakhan hybrid–could become the intergenerational compromise.

New ideas always take the form of urgency and passion, two other values Obama upheld Tuesday night. By jumping into the U.S. Senate, Obama leapfrogs Jesse Jackson, Jr. and a host of others for the next generation of African American leadership. And in the Senate, he will only be able to move rightward.

Which brings us to the 2016 scenario, a distant question for now: is this the Democratic Party’s future? Can you get with that?

Anxious to see what Pop And Politics and Afro-netizen have to say.

posted by @ 8:54 pm | 4 Comments

Tuesday, July 27th, 2004

More Evidence The Republicans Are In Trouble

Who’s briefing Gillespie and these idiots? (Memo to strategists: Michael “Hundred Million Dollar Man” Moore is now officially no joke. Anyway, is Cheney on vacation? Did Karl Rove get captured by terrorists? Upside: this could be the most hilarious election ever.

posted by @ 2:02 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 27th, 2004

Look Who’s Talking

On tonight’s agenda: Howard Dean. Yeeeeeeaaaaaaargh! And Theresa Heinz Kerry. So shut the fuck up, you right-wing ketchup haters! Ohhhh, anticipation.

posted by @ 6:53 am | 0 Comments

Monday, July 26th, 2004

Shut Up Already. Damn.

The most powerful man in the Fleet Center was dude running the teleprompter. Everyone–including Bill Clinton (my son was disappointed it wasn’t George Clinton)–was rushing against time like Cinderella before her 11pm EST curfew.

Reverend David Alston’s gripping speech was hurt the most. It was a great one, could have been one for history, but live TV doesn’t wait for nobody.

So Bill’s punchlines–and he had some great ones–died on the vine. On the other hand, Hillary stretched her reported 4 minutes to like 10+. Take that, Edwards! I lay money she’ll do it again in 2012. What a rebel.

Hey, can anyone in Fleet get me one of those concert lightie things? I might have an extra Tipper Rocks! hand-drum around here.

BTW Michael Moore chillin with Jimmy and Rosalyn? Word.

posted by @ 7:45 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, July 26th, 2004

The Convention 7

Enjoy these fine writing establishments…

1) Pop and Politics (relaunching today!)

2) Boston Indymedia

3) Afro-netizen (Re-corrected, sorry! Blame Ashcroft, MyDoom, Britney Spears, William Hung, etc. etc. In any case, definitely catch the adventures of the self-proclaimed “only credentialed blogger of Negroidal descent”. Brother, as one of a small crew of under-35 reporters of color in Los Angeles–Los Angeles!–4 years ago, I feel your pain. Cop all the free food and martinis you can!)

4) Alternet

5) Tom Paine

6) TalkLeft

7) Wonkette

posted by @ 10:10 am | 0 Comments

Sunday, July 25th, 2004

Here We Go!

And let the protests begin.

I wish I was out there in Boston with yall, but I had to be realistic. Truthfully, covering the 2000 protest season almost killed me, literally. I ended up in the hospital after the Republican Convention, and nobody wanted to let me go to L.A. I did, and it was great, but I’m older now with more adult responsibilities, so I’ma live vicariously through yall. At least for the Dem Convention.

In the meantime, the run-up has been hilarious and chilling, at the same time. Thursday CNN breathlessly reported that the latest security threat was an alleged band of “domestic anarchists” who were set on blowing up downtown Boston. Anyone remember the New York 21? Same plotline. These wag-dogging narratives all seem to come out of a standard-issue handbook, they’re used so often.

Here is indymedia’s report on the on-the-ground surveillance that precedes any protest season, and another on the free-speech zone set up to specifically to contain that protest.

More info on today’s protests as they stream in…

posted by @ 3:43 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, July 23rd, 2004

What Blogs Are Great For

Discussions like this and this, continued here and here and on a host of other blogs (Gimme a bit to catchup, and thanks to Funk Digital.)

posted by @ 9:01 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, July 22nd, 2004

What Blogs Are Good For

Mind dumps from people with fascinating minds. Today’s example: Jess Harvell on Nas, including gratuitous Polyphonic Spree disses. But leave Jimmy Buffet alone, brah. Best concert I attended in 8th grade.

posted by @ 10:24 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 21st, 2004

The Most Intellectually Honest Republican

is Kevin Phillips, hands down. His book American Dynasty is a must-read, kinda like a bloodier-and-oilier-and-scarier version of Fahrenheit 9/11, and without all the references to Michigan.

Phillips is the star of the new Harper’s cover story, a roundtable on the future of progressive politics with such luminaries as Frances Fox Piven, Eric Foner, Ron Daniels, and a strange golem-like Republican-backed creature named Ralph Nader.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt in which Phillips holds forth on what we like to call Republicans dumb, Democrats dumber:

Daniels: Instead, the word “liberal” is a word that the Democrats distance themselves from. They avoid it as if it were the plague.

Nader: And if you get on the defensive in politics, you remain on the defensive for a long time. (Jeff note: Word to Florida, Ralphie!)

Phillips: The reason, of course, is that Democrats have been anesthetized by campaign contributions. And I should add that they have been anesthetized cheaply. During the last 20 or 25 years, the Republicans have been able to take money for granted, but the Democrats know they need to get it, and so they’ve become willing to soften their language and back away from their convictions. Their neediness cripples them.

Nader: The Democrats could be hammering on the money that Bush raises at these $3 million dinners. They could say, ‘This one is for pharmaceutical money, this one’s for oil.’ They could make an issue about it every time. But the Democrats are caught in the same net.

Phillips: It would be devastating if they could attack the conservatives for having used public money to bail out Wall Street and the corporations. But they can’t. the Republicans have so many weaknesses that the Democrats can’t exploit, because they have taken a second, smaller helping form the same trough. What hands you a political opportunity in the United States is when something goes very wrong for the people who have power. Today the Republicans are in trouble, and the main thing they have to keep them from imploding is that the Democrats are not much better…

And later in the roundtable, he adds this in response to what issues could motivate the electorate:

Phillips: the obvious thing is the mess that the Bush Administration is making in Iraq. The imperial approach has lost us credibility all over the world. If this can’t be used as an indictment against Bush, I don’t know what can. The man is the least competent military leader since James Madison let the British burn Washington. Other issues moderates are concerned about are deficit spending and campaign finance. You’ve got to assemble a new progressive movement with disaffected elements of the existing Republican coalition…

posted by @ 7:24 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 21st, 2004

7th Inning Hero

Props to Carlos Delgado for taking a stand in (the somehow appropriately named) Yankee Stadium.

Here’s yet another good reason to hate Steinbrenner. Yeah, I still hate the player, what.

For the record, none of this was an issue earlier this week here in Oakland where the only song sung during the 7th inning is “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”. As it should be, yo.

posted by @ 6:52 pm | 0 Comments



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