They say all politics is local, which if it is true means the Republican Party may be digging itself a deep hole by engaging in some ugly purge tactics.

In the past few weeks two of my local state legislators have faced retaliation from their own party–the Republicans. The two have held their seats for over a decade, so they are anything but newcomers to the Party. Our district has traditionally ranked as a swing district, so their longevity has helped the GOP immensely. As they built seniority, they ascended to senior positions in the Republican legislative delegation. The local wisdom held that those seats were safely their for as long as they wanted them.

Policy-wise the two are solidly conservative. Last session, for example, one voted against an income tax increase, a sales tax to fund environmental and cultural programs, public funding of abortions, domestic partner benefits for State employees and a smoking ban. The other voted against the same measures except for the smoking ban. Suffice it to say, neither could remotely be termed a flaming liberal.

So what kind of trouble are they in? One representative recently announced she would not run again when party activists at a district convention opted to postpone her endorsement. The other was denied endorsement, although no one else was endorsed. Two other representatives fared less well, losing their endorsements. Two more face similar fates, but their conventions have not yet met. All six were stripped of their leadership posts. These actions can only be viewed not merely as punishment, but attempts to purge them from the ranks of Republican legislators.

What terrible sin did they commit to earn this treatment? Endorse Barack Obama? Speak out against the Iraq War? Urge that in the interest of equity the state should rely less on the property tax and more on the income tax? Come out in favor of abortion or gun control? Support more protections for the environment? Urge stronger measures for corporate malefactors? Ask for aid for those impacted by the mortgage crisis? Suggest more aid for schools and local governments? Recommend enlarging medical coverage for those who cannot afford it?

No, they did none of those things. What they did was to vote to override our Republican governor’s veto of an increase in the state gas tax–an increase designed to improve roads and bridges, like the one that fell into the Mississippi River. You know the one the bridge inspectors recommended by replaced. Here is exactly what The actual inspection document stated:

The long term plans for this river crossing need to be defined with replacement, redecking, etc. Due to the “Fracture Critical” configuration of the main river spans and the problematic “crossbeam” details, and fatigue cracking in the approach spans, eventual replacement of the entire structure would be preferable.

Even though that recommendation was on the governor’s desk last year, BEFORE the bridge collapsed he vetoed another transportation bill that provided for more highway funding via a gas tax.

Despite the serious question of whether our governor’s Scrooge-like attitude towards fixing our state’s highways and bridges may have contributed to what is now known across the country as the Minneapolis Bridge Disaster, Tim Pawlenty is being touted as a possible running mate for John McCain, for whom he has campaigned throughout the country, leaving the Governor’s mansion for places like New Hampshire. Oh yes, did I mention that the Republican convention will take place in Minnesota, in part because some people felt it might help Pawlenty’s chances to become VP?

Shortly after Pawlenty’s veto and a few days before the former Minnesota Speaker of the House pitched Pawlenty as McCain’s best Vice-President, state transportation officials closed a bridge in the regional center of St. Cloud because it showed serious defects. The St. Cloud bridge has the same design as the one in Minneapolis that fell into the river. The indefinite closing has also shut down a major state highway that uses the bridge to cross the Mississippi River.

The purge and the governor’s veto have their roots in a “no taxes” pledge that lobbyists prevailed upon all state Republicans to sign. The governor has been so serious about maintaining this pledge that he once insisted an increase in the cigarette tax was not a tax increase at all, but a “health impact fee.” Columnist Michael Novak has termed Pawlenty:

The most conservative Minnesota governor since Theodore “Tightwad Ted” Christianson in the 1920s.

“Tightwad” Ted, by the way, was an even more rigid-and quite frankly less intelligent–version of Herbert Hoover, who, like Hoover was kicked out of office when it became clear that being a tightwad was not the way to deal with the Great Depression.

Lurking behind all Pawlenty’s machinations is an even bigger machination. Pawlenty had designs on Paul Wellstone’s Senate seat, but a phone call from none other than Dick Cheney persuaded him not to run in favor of one Norm Coleman. So, in short, the GOP owes Tim Pawlenty.

Faced with the twin bulldozers of Pawlenty’s Vice-Presidential hopes and the rigid GOP stance against taxes, the two stalwart Republican legislators were plowed under for their votes to override the governor’s veto. That one of their reasons for doing this was to prevent any more falling bridges was lost on those for whom ideological rigidity matters more than people’s lives.

For several decades now what I have termed the Republican Counterrevolution has slowly purged those former moderates and liberals who did not support the Counterrevolution’s desire to return America to the Gilded Age of the 1890s. As a result people like former New York Mayor John Lindsay, Pennsylvania Governor John Lindsay and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller have become extinct, looked upon by current Republicans as the political equivalent of the dodo bird.

But the Minnesota purge signifies something even more frightening: the Republican Party has become as rigid and nasty as, dare I say it, a certain Eastern European political party that made political purges a household word. This is a party that will tolerate no dissent, no disagreement with “fearless leader” whether Tim Pawlenty or George W. Bush.

The contrast between America’s two major political parties could not be more stark as we enter another election season. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama duel it out and the Democrats argue over everything from the Iraq War to health care, the Republicans purge anyone with even one dissenting vote. Ronald Reagan’s famous Eleventh Commandment has become a tool to enforce conformity.

While some may see the Minnesota Purge, as I term it, as merely a local aberration, I see it as something much more consequential and scary. If Dick Cheney will pick up the phone to urge Tim Pawlenty not to run against Norm Coleman, it is hard to believe that the Purge did not have the blessings of those higher up.

This provides a stark preview of the kind of America favored by the GOP–an America where dissent of any sort is discouraged and even punished. The Democrats may appear to many right now like a dysfunctional family, but even at its worst dysfunction is better than dictatorship.

This is nothing new for the Republicans. It dates back to early days of the Counterrevolution, when the 1964 Convention when delegates booed Nelson Rockefeller. It is also where where a Republican sergeant-at-arms hauled NBC correspondent John Chancellor off the floor, ostensibly for blocking the aisles. This precipitated Chancellor’s memorable comment:

It’s awfully hard to remain dignified at a time like this. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody.

This is the America we face if the Republicans again control the White House, an America where no deviation from the Party line is permitted and those who dare deviate are punished. This is more than groupthink, more than mere political discipline, it is nothing less than tyranny.

Tagged with: 1964 Republican Convention • abortion • Add new tag • America • Barack Obama • bridges • Bush • convention • counterrevolution • delegation • Democrats • Dick-Cheney • election • equity • funding • GOP • governor • Herbert Hoover • highway • Hillary Clinton • Iraq • John Chancellor • john mccain • liberal • Michael Novak • Minneapolis • Minnesota • Mississippi River • Nelson Rockefeller • New Hampshire • New York • Norm Coleman • Paul Wellstone • pledge • Presidential • press • Republicans • retaliation • seniority • smoking • state • tax • taxes • veto

Given this Court’s penchant for sarcastic comments and put-downs, it seemed only a matter of time before a case let them unleash their inner comedians. On Wednesday the Court heard oral arguments in a case that showcased their talents as stand-up comics, revealing a great deal about the attitudes of some of the justices.

In the words of Thomas Fisher, Solicitor General of Indiana, Indiana v. Ahmad Edwards revolved around whether:

The trial court was justified in requiring a higher level of competency for self-representation in order to prevent the trial of Ahmad Edwards from descending into a farce.

Who should be first on stage but none other than Justice Scalia, who fancies himself this Court’s most accomplished put-down artist. He asked:

But why is it necessary to have a special rule in order to prevent the trial from descending into a farce?

Read that sentence over again and then think about it. If you don’t see two interpretations because of the grammatical construction and a smile doesn’t cross your face and maybe even a chuckle escape when you get the second one, I would be surprised.

Scalia’s point was why not let a defendant make a fool of herself or himself and then decide if that warranted depriving them of their right to represent themselves.

Why didn’t you wait to see whether he’s going to be able to pull it off or not?

Indiana argued that it might be too late at that point because the defendant’s conduct might have tainted the jury.

The Chief Justice was not about to give Scalia all the good lines:

What would happen if you started out with pro se representation [an individual representing themselves] and then the trial turned into a farce?

But Scalia pushed back on stage:

I’m sure under the old rule, if I can recall it the old rule, where you have a single standard or both the right to be tried — the — the ability to be tried and the right to represent yourself, there must have been instances in which the person who was representing himself was unable to cope and the trial was — was turning into a farce.

You have to wonder who their writers were because that insertion of “if I can recall the old rule” is pure comic genius, a signal to those watching that this was not to be your usual oral argument, but rather an occasion for the justices to unleash their inner comedian.

Justice Scalia got his first response from the audience a few minutes later, as they began to realize what they were witnessing:

I sometimes — I sometimes think that the lawyers cannot communicate coherently.

“Laughter,” records the transcript.

Roberts began to catch on with a sentence that surely will bring quizzical smiles to law students who read it:

What if he — what if he wants to communicate not self-defense, but that, you know, Martians did it?

I defy anyone to cite another case that asks whether it is OK for the defendant to say Martians did it.

Roberts couldn’t let go of a good line:

I mean, there are people who believe in Martians, but above competence to stand trial, but also that would still be coherently communicated, but would show that it’s a ridiculous defense that’s not going to be effective in representing himself.

Justice Kennedy decided to join in:

A very rational highly competent person might want to make the trial a farce. Why should that case be any different than where the person does so because he’s incompetent?

Why indeed?

When the defense began its argument, Justice Scalia, who has always fancied himself as the best stand-up act in that white marble building, went back to the Martians again.

I mean this man is living in a fantasy world. He understands that he’s on trial, but his whole world 8 is just — he not only believes in Martians, he thinks we are all Martians, or something like that.

Scalia then unleashed another zinger :

Why pick on just the ability to communicate? It seems to me there are a lot of defects that can turn the trial into a farce.

The final attorney, Mark Stancil, was not quite as good at playing the straight man to the justices’ desire for one-liners, but Justice Kennedy doesn’t let that stop him:

It’s two ships passing in the night or in the case of some defendants about five ships passing in the night.

That one earned another “laughter” in the Court transcript. Not to be out done Scalia rated his second “laughter” remark in the transcript:

Are there any psychiatric studies that show how accurate psychiatric studies are?

There’s another one for the law students. Why you could even use it as a great opening line for a law review article.

At this point a comment from Justice Scalia reminded us that this case goes far beyond comedy and involves the Justices’ opinions on one of the most critical legal matters in a democratic system: how much right do you grant an individual to jeopardize their own case:

And I don’t know why the mere fact that his defense is incompetent or even is making no sense would justify — if that’s what he wants to do instead of pleading guilty, that’s, it seems to me, what the right of an individual consists of.

Think for a minute about the full implications of this argument. Someone can be making an utter–pardon the word–farce of their case–maybe even one that could involve the death penalty–and Justice Scalia is willing to let them do it.

This goes to the heart of the idea of the level playing field. A rich defendant can afford all the best legal counsel that money can buy, but a poor one–or one with delusions–must take their chances–and we all know what those are. As the old legal cliche puts it: someone who represents herself or himself in court has a fool for a lawyer. Indiana, on the other hand, was arguing that government could level the playing field by intervening to provide the defendant with competent counsel.

Of course, the issue is at what point does the government’s intervention become intrusive? Does an individual have a right to “make no sense” even if it might cost their life? Does government in the interest of providing the individual with the best defense possible have the right to require they have an attorney other than themselves?

A relatively unheralded case highlighted one of the most fundamental tensions in our democracy and how the justices’ view it. Scalia and the three justices who usually vote with him lean towards keeping the government out of our lives, even if it is our lives that might be at stake.

Justice Souter cut to what was at stake with his usual astuteness:

Somebody who is totally polite to the Court, who does not scream and yell, who talks only when he is allowed to talk, but talks total and complete nonsense, can never be replaced, in your view, by a standby counsel in the middle of the trial after this has been shown to be the way he’s acting; isn’t that correct?

MR. STANCIL: I believe we’re dealing with — two responses.

JUSTICE SOUTER: How about “yes” or “no”?
(Laughter.)

Justice Kennedy must have had the next one-liner in his back pocket just waiting to deliver it.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: There are all kinds of nuts who could get 90 percent on the bar exam.

(Laughter.)

And so ends what must have been an oral argument that set a record for the number of times “laughter” is recorded in the transcript. But you have to ask, “At whose expense was the laughter?”

In this case it is defendants who may have a mental illness but still want to represent themselves in Court. There is more going on here than a clash over a basic civil right. This is the august justices of the United States Supreme Court making jokes at the expense of the disabled and mentally ill. Change the cracks about “Martians,” “nuts,” and “ships passing in the night” to negative stereotypes about women or people of color and you will see what I mean.

The cracks are unfortunate because according to one study, people with mental illness are more likely to be crime victims, landing them in court. In “Criminal Victimization of Persons with Severe Mental Illness,” the authors report:

Twenty-seven patients (8.2 percent) were victims of a violent crime in the previous four months, a rate of violent victimization well above the 3.1 percent annual rate of violent criminal victimization in the U.S. general population (42,43). On the other hand, the rate was comparable to the 8 percent annual rate found a decade earlier among mentally ill patients who lived in board-and-care homes in Los Angeles.

The study also uncovered a fascinating correlation:

Those [people with a mental illness] who were picked up or arrested for any offense were one-third more likely to have been a victim of a nonviolent crime and three times more likely to have been a victim of a violent crime.

Most of the literature on verbal abuse pertains to verbal abuse of women in destructive relationships. Several researchers have linked this type of verbal abuse with control: verbally abusing a woman is an attempt to assert dominance. This link between verbal abuse and domination has led some to speculate that is why verbal abuse can lead to physical abuse.

The justices’ remarks suggest little empathy, even compassion, for those for whom their day in court is no joke, even if the Chief Justice wants to make cracks about Martians. There also is a less-then-hidden contempt for psychological studies that surfaces in Scalia’s comment about psychological tests and this one:

What I object to in the proposal is making these judgments ex ante on the basis of — I don’t know — psychological testing or past behavior or anything else.

What fascinates me is that this relatively obscure case revealed a great deal about the attitudes and motivations of justices I have nicknamed the Four Horsemen (remember you heard that nickname here first). Scalia’s one-liners, in particular, do seem to be the mark of someone for whom the put-down, the cutting remark is an indication of his barely-masked belief in his own intellectual brilliance and the incompetency of the rest of us. The Four seemed to especially relish a chance to put down lawyers in general.

But in this case the humor went beyond Scalia’s usual put-downs. Maybe the justices remarks inspired no public outcry because verbal abuse of the mentally ill has yet to become as disdained as verbal abuse of people of color or women. Here the link between verbal abuse and dominance theorized by some researchers is especially fascinating. Do Scalia’s frequent one-line put-downs betray a need for dominance? Legal scholars out there looking for a research project might want to take a look at that question.

Even more troubling is whether the put-downs at the expense of the mentally ill mask a larger disdain for others who are less fortunate? The Four Horsemen have a disturbing record when it comes to cases of discrimination. These are the justices who are threatening to emasculate one of the most revered Supreme Court decisions: Brown v. Board.

One imagines one of those Star Trek scripts in which the crew of the Enterprise stumble across the records of a now defunct civilization, among them this case. Mr. Spock with his unassailable commitment to logic, might see this case which received little public attention as a prime exhibit in understanding why that civilization failed.

Tagged with: Ahmad Edwards • America • argument • audience • case • chief justice • chuckle • comedian • competency • defendant • defense • Democratic • disabled • discrimination • farce • fool • Four Horsemen • genius • Indiana • justice • Justice Ginsberg • Justice Kennedy • Justice Scalia • laughter • law • Martians • mentally ill • money • Mr. Spock • physical abuse • representation • ridiculous • scalia • sentence • Spock • Star Trek • transcript • trial • verbal abuse • victimization

On the surface, the Democratic Party has a long history of partisan bickering. Is it any surprise it’s happening again? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

There is the most famous walkout of them all, the 1948 Dixiecrat rebellion when Strom Thurmond led a block of Southern states out of the convention to protest the Party’s Civil Rights stance. Then came the 1964 delegate fight in Atlantic City over the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Four years later there was Chicago.

Compared to those turbulent elections, the recent past has seemed relatively strife free, with perhaps only the 2000 Nader revolt the only sign of turmoil within the Party. Yet there is something about the Democratic Party’s lack of recent conflict and its past history that cannot help but make you wonder. Those fights of 1948, 1964 and 1968 were over serious matters the Party needed to confront: Civil Rights and the Vietnam War.

Both 1948 and 1964 revolved around the issue of whether the Democrats would continue their century-long hypocrisy over segregation. Essentially the Party had struck a Devil’s bargain where in exchange for the votes of what was then referred to as the “Solid South,” it refused to confront racial bigotry and murder.

It tolerated the vilest creatures including one Theodore Bilbo, a notorious Mississippi racist who was the author of the book Take Your Choice, Separation Or Mongrelization. A short, bespeckled man whose pictures show him as being almost as wide as he was tall, Bilbo had a long career peppered with charges of corruption, but his race baiting made him notorious even in Mississippi. In one speech he said, “One drop of Negro blood placed in the veins of the purest Caucasian destroys the inventive genius of his mind and strikes palsied his creative faculty.”

The beginning of the end of the Devil’s bargain came slowly, but 1948 and then 1964 signaled that its time was ending. In 1948 it was Harry Truman who coined the term Dixiecrats to describe the dissident segregationists. In the middle of the 1948 campaign, Truman took the courageous step of desegregating the military. When a friend asked him to “go easy” on the South during the campaign, Truman wrote back:

The main difficulty with the South is that they are living eighty years behind the times and the sooner they come out of it the better it will be for the country and for themselves. (see David McCullough’s Truman, p. 722)

By 1964, Civil Rights dominated the Democratic Convention. The compromise reached in Atlantic City was, in Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, “No compromise at all,” but still it said unequivocally to those Bilbo’s who were left that the Democratic Party that their days were numbered. The 1964 convention was followed by the Civil Rights legislation of the Johnson Administration including the Voting Rights Act.

The 1968 Chicago convention has earned its place as one of the most contentious in history, in part because those inside the convention hall were determined not to let the voices that protested outside disrupt the supposed “unity” of the Party. Their determination extended to fomenting a “police riot” that left the smell of tear gas drifting up to very doors of the convention and cracked skulls bleeding on the street in an eerie repetition of the actions used against Civil Rights marchers in the South.

Yet Chicago also sent a message: the Vietnam War had to stop. Hubert Humphrey, who had equivocated about Vietnam in Chicago and helped to kill the convention’s anti-Vietnam War plank, broke with Lyndon Johnson, urging a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam.

Looking back on those contentious campaigns and conventions, there seems little question that they were all but inevitable. The Democratic Party could not keep trying to live “half slave; half free,” nor could it continue to pretend that only a tiny group of “left wing agitators” opposed the Vietnam War.

I have written several essays over the last year about the need for unity in the Democratic Party, but last night during one of my all-too-familiar after midnight battles with pain, I lay awake wondering if maybe I have been wrong. Perhaps this year’s contentious battle is about something more than two candidates aggressively trying to win the nomination. The controversies over Reverend Wright and what happened on Hillary Clinton’s flight to Bosnia and whatever the press push as next week’s revelation are really sideshows to something more fundamental.

If you review the history of the Party over the last few decades, the Democrats have embraced another Devil’s bargain in the name of Party unity almost as passionately as they tolerated segregation. That Devil’s bargain has earned the disparaging nickname of “Republican Lite.”

What lead me to write the book The Strange Death of Liberal America and continue this blog is the belief that what the press refers to as the conservative movement in the Republican Party is actually a Counterrevolution against the ideals that brought us the New Deal and the reforms of Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

In the book I wrote:

In essence whether under the guise of Strom Thurmond’s Southern Manifesto, Reagonomics or the Bush tax cuts, the Counterrevolution believes that a tilted playing field is best for the economy and society. In their “survival of the fittest” view of the world lies a sense that the steeper the tilt, the more those who master this climb by whatever means become stronger, in turn strengthening society.

As far back as the turn of the century William Jennings Bryan defined the difference between the GOP and the Democrats in his famous “Cross of Gold” speech:

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

I have termed this idea as a belief in the level playing field. Since 1984, the Democratic Party has moved deliberately away from this idea, becoming an echo of the GOP. Walter Mondale’s loss in which he captured only one state, his own, lead directly to the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council and the philosophy of what has become known as the New Democrats.

The New Democrats resembled the nineteenth century Bourbons of Grover Cleveland in their capitulation to the main philosophy of the Republican Party. Cleveland’s Democrats believed in the laissez faire capitalism that ruled the Gilded Age. The New Democrats sounded as though they were channeling Ronald Reagan when they agreed less-government is better and embraced a pro-business philosophy not unlike Grover Cleveland’s.

At the center of this was Bill Clinton. He played a large hand in crafting the basic platform of the New Democrats which stated:

We believe the promise of America is equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

We believe the Democratic Party’s fundamental mission is to expand opportunity, not government.

We believe that all claims on government are not equal. Our leaders must reject demands that are less worthy, and hold to clear governing priorities.

We believe that economic growth is the prerequisite to expanding opportunity for everyone. The free market, regulated in the public interest, is the best engine of general prosperity.

This philosophy guided the Clinton Presidency and the campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry. Yet not everyone bought into this idea which is what fueled the Nader revolt of 2000 and the candidacy of John Dean in 2004.

Although the mainstream media have framed the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton mostly in terms of policy differences about health care plans and Iraq, I have come to believe that the contentiousness of this contest has nothing to do with differing “plans” and everything to do with the still unresolved conflict between the New Democrats and level playing field ideals of Bryan, Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman.

This contest is really about whether the Democratic Party will have four more years of the Democratic Leadership Council or affirm a new beginning based on the idea of the level playing field. Frankly, Barack Obama has yet to fully embrace this ideal, but I believe that much as it fueled the candidacy of John Dean, it is fueling Obama’s run. It is as if the pent up frustrations of years of DLC “me-tooism” and triangulation have finally boiled over.

Two events have helped to stoke this fire: the Iraq War and the mortgage crisis. With Iraq, many people saw for the first time that “me-tooism” and triangulation extended even to supporting one of the most misguided and immoral foreign policy mistakes in American history. With the mortgage crisis they have begun to see how the DLC’s support for measures such as the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act has brought us not economic prosperity but to the edge of a potential Depression.

Most of all, while think tanks such as the Brookings Institution have churned out report after report about our growing inequality and our dismal international rankings in everything from education to health care, people have looked around them and seen rising gas prices, too many “For Sale” signs, bridges collapse and heard someone they know relate a horror story about the perils of American health care which is not only expensive but mediocre.

Barack Obama has become a lighting rod for these frustrations, but he himself has yet to capture that lightning. To switch metaphors in mid-stream, Obama is currently riding a tiger and the question is how long will he stay on top? His much-discussed speech on race demonstrated how he could reframe a much-needed discussion. Now the question is can he reframe the debate over the level playing field? He has given the equivalent of John Kennedy’s Houston Ministerial Speech to deal with the issue of his race, now he needs to deliver the equivalent of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Forgotten Man” speech to deal with the level playing field.

Whether he does so or not, whether he is merely another Kerry, will play out over the next few months. But the larger battle between the New Democrats (who are really old Republicans) and a rebirth of the ideals of what Paul Wellstone referred to as the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” will not go away. The Nader and Dean candidacies brought it out into the open, but this year it has ignited flames that will not be so easy to put out.

In 1968, the Democratic Party tried to pretend there was no large conflict even as the battle raged in Grant Park. This year no matter how hard the Party denies there is a conflict, it will be hard to keep it off the convention floor. Anyone have a “Cross of Gold” speech ready?

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In 2006 the Democrats executed a remarkable turn-around that promised to pave the way to the White House. Two years later the Party has wandered from that path, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The 2006 CNN exit poll data tell a story that needs repeating. In Ohio, African Americans voted 85% for Brown. Seventy-two percent of those with incomes under $15,000 voted for Brown and 64% of those with incomes under $30,000 were Brown supporters. Once you get above $30,000 the support for Brown goes down steadily, the higher the income. Then come the union members–75% of them voted for Brown. In short, Brown’s most enthusiastic supporters were African Americans, low income people, and union members. Without them Brown would have had a much closer race. The poll also asked whether voters felt they were getting ahead, staying the same or falling behind. Seventy-six percent of those who felt they were falling behind voted for Brown.

Moving to the too-close-to-call-until-Allen-conceded Virginia senate race we see a similar pattern. Eighty-five percent of African Americans supported Webb. As for income, 64% of those with incomes under $15,000 were Webb supporters as were 59% of those making under $30,000.

In Pennsylvania, 90% of African Americans supported Casey–an incredible number. The income figures for Casey parallel those of the other winning Senate candidates with 76% of those with incomes under $15,000 supporting Casey. Sixty-eight percent of union households also supported Casey.

I could go on and cite similar figures for other winning Democratic senate candidates, but if this party is to retain control of Congress and capture the White House in 2008, they had better remember who it was that got them where they are: people of color, the poor, and union members. Without them they would have won none of those 1966 races or they certainly would have been a lot closer.

These are people who probably don’t read blogs, who are trying to get by on what little income they have, who know the playing field has already been tilted so steeply it looks to them like an unclimbable cliff. They are people who maybe long ago should have lost faith in democracy, who should have joined that still growing largest party in America–the nonvoters, but they did not. These are people who the GOP has been trying to intimidate out of voting, who after 2000 and 2004 could have been expected to give up hope. But they did not. In their optimism, in their refusal to quit on democracy is a message we should all take to heart as we ponder the current Presidential contest.

This election is about whether America will help level the playing field that has been tilted away from these people by Republicans who believe the heart of democracy lies in those who live in mansions and ride in chauffeured cars not in those Americans who go to work each day and just try to make ends meet.

As anyone who has followed the closely fought Democratic Presidential contest knows, the triumvirate of voters who were largely responsible for those 2006 victories have had a wedge driven between them. The two candidates have accomplished what the GOP could not–split the coalition into warring camps. In 2008 African Americans who have overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama now openly wonder if they can support Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile the low income and union voters who won Clinton Ohio just as they won it for Sherrod Brown, wonder if they can support Obama.

The biggest question that the Democratic Party faces is whether the winning combination of 2008 can be put back together? If it cannot, the Party might as well concede the White House. Yet Party leaders seem to be ignoring this serious split, naively figuring none of those groups will desert the Democratic candidate for John McCain.

McCain could pull a Ronald Reagan and capture enough of the blue collar and low income vote to win the election. Meanwhile, African Americans could just stay home. That the possible has now become the plausible constitutes a major casualty of this divisive campaign. The mistake the Party made with what became known as the Reagan Democrats was to assume leaders of these groups could move the rank and file. if 1980 taught anything it was that those days were over.

To ask Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to not campaign hard for the nomination would be a mistake, but as they engage in this contest they need to remember to not alienate voters they will need in November. They need to remember the lessons of 2006.

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Tuesday night, John Kennedy, Barack Obama and the African American basketball coach John McLendon visited my house. It has taken me several days to understand that night.

Everyone in America who pays any attention at all knows that Tuesday night Obama delivered one of the most extraordinary speeches in recent memory. Readers of this blog know that by some strange coincidence, Tuesday night I chose to publish John Kennedy’s speech to the Houston Ministerial Association in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. I finished my essay at about the same time Obama was polishing up his speech.

Few people know about John McLendon, which is a shame, because he deserves mention in the same breath with his mentor James Naismith, the founder of basketball, and UCLA Coach John Wooden. John McLendon’s story aired as part of an extraordinary ESPN documentary, Black Magic, whose second and final episode appeared Tuesday night.

Black Magic tells the story of basketball at America’s historically Black Colleges and Universities, but that night it also provided the link between John Kennedy and Barack Obama. Only by understanding McLendon’s life can you truly comprehend the importance of what Barack Obama said Tuesday night and why his words rank with Kennedy’s speech as one of the most important public statements about equity and justice ever delivered in this nation.

Obama’s speech evokes Kennedy’s in another way, for just as Kennedy needed to confront the issue of his religion, Obama had to confront the issue of his race. In the media version of the tale, which these days becomes the only version, the trigger for Obama’s remarks came from his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but frankly the Reverend Wright’s remarks were merely a pretense for something that was bound to happen at some point in this campaign.

In 1960, Kennedy knew he would have to deal with the religious issue, but the original plan was to deliver a speech in October, late in the campaign. Remarks by the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, who is now a footnote in history but in 1960 was the most-well-known religious leader in America, forced Kennedy to deliver the speech earlier.

Wright’s words spread across the Internet like one of those science fiction creatures which expands at a ferocious rate into something at once ugly and terrible. What fed that creature was racism, that now-forbidden fare that once had openly fed the baser impulses of the American mind, but now we keep hidden away like an alcoholic hides bottles of liquor to fuel a craving that is at once inexplicable, inescapable, and indefensible.

If it has not been Wright it would have been someone else. As Obama recognized in the speech, the media had tried to fan the fires of prejudice the week before with its story on Geraldine Ferraro’s remarks. Even before then, it was clear that race had become the over-riding issue of the Democratic Presidential race. It lay behind all those veiled references to exit poll data and the almost perverse way the media seized on any small reference to race, something Obama recognized in his speech.

The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

The time and place of Obama’s speech reverberate through American history as the opening lines from his speech testify. Just as Kennedy deliberately chose the heart of the Bible Belt for his speech, Obama chose the place where the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and Betsy Ross’s house all lay within walking distance of where he spoke. Here America gave birth to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Of all the immortal words penned there, Obama chose to pick the opening phrases of the Preamble to the Constitution:

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy.

Much has been made of the famous crack in the Liberty Bell, but I have always thought that crack was race. True freedom could not resound through the land until all Americans were truly free. According to the history at the Liberty Bell website, no one knows when the bell really cracked, although the site relates several apocryphal stories. Our memories of race are like that.

What we do know, but prefer to not acknowledge is that even as Thomas Jefferson penned the words to the Declaration of Independence that stated “all men are created equal” and even as the framers of the Constitution argued about what percentage of a human being lay in an African American, a slave named William Lee lived in Philadelphia, serving as the valet to the father of our country, George Washington. In his will, Washington freed William Lee, writing:

And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which ha<v>e befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so: In either case however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, whic<h> shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive, if he chuses the last alternative; but in full, with his freedom, if he prefers the first; & this I give him as a test<im>ony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.

Those “faithful services” included being in charge of Washington’s most important papers, a role that put him at the very center of the founding of American democracy.

Obama’s words acknowledged the hypocrisy of our nation’s founding.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.

One of those Americans was William Lee, a name few Americans know, fewer still know what role he played, and no historian has written his long-overdo biography. Not even during Black History Month is the name of William Lee mentioned.

John McLendon would understand William Lee’s story only too well. Barack Obama could have been speaking about him when he said:

They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

As Black Magic tells the story, McLendon enrolled at the University of Kansas where he studied under the legendary James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Curiously, as the Black Fives website points out, Naismith never acknowledged McLendon or African American basketball in his seminal book, Basketball: Its Origins and Development.

What McLendon would take from Naismith is a belief that basketball was made to be played at a fast pace that was complemented by an in-your-face defense, from which McLendon created one of basketball’s most sophisticated and innovative styles. Black Magic tells the story of McLendon and that style with some of the most remarkable hoops footage I have ever seen.

But most white folks have never heard of John McLendon any more than they have heard of William Lee. The why of that goes deep into the heart of racism. McLendon, his players and teams suffered deeply from prejudice, but what Black Magic forces you to acknowledge is that there was an even deeper cultural prejudice at work.

McLendon’s fast-break style was so radical for its time–and still is today–that it put to shame the slow, deliberate pace of the dominant white basketball coaches. Former player Harold Hunter, the first African American to play in the NBA testifies:

McLendon invented a game that was vigorous, lively, at top speed.

In the 1950s when white college teams routinely played games averaging in the 50s, McLendon’s teams scored at a pace almost double that. Black Magic documents not merely how the white majority never gave this style a chance, but also turned it into a parody of itself, a hoops minstrel show with the Harlem Globetrotters as headliners. Former Temple Coach Don Cheney talks about how he couldn’t take playing for Globetrotters because he didn’t know any tricks; he could only shoot and dribble. Obama had this one in his sights when he said:

We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news.

Watching Black Magic you cannot help but ask what would American basketball have been like had John McLendon been permitted to bring his style to the entire country just as you have to ask what would America have been like had William Lee been a free man?

It was here that Obama’s speech attempted to reframe a centuries-old debate. At the heart of this reframing was Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A line that has not received much attention caught my ear:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic.

Obama’s speech would have been better had he left this paragraph out. In its pure form, endemic means that a “disease” like racism is tied to its region, like dengue fever is tied to the tropics. Even at his most outspoken, Wright never implied racism sprang from the American soil like a plant, but rather saw it as endemic to its culture–something Obama acknowledged in his speech:

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.

In his attempt to unify Americans, Obama sought to compare what John McLendon and William Lee faced with the grievances of white Americans. A key paragraph in the speech begins by evoking what drove white voters to Ronald Reagan:

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends.

No matter how hard anyone tries to rationalize it, white anger is not the same as white racism. In fact white anger often fuels white racism, as it did with John McLendon and William Lee and as it did during the Reagan era. This is where Obama’s speech and Kennedy’s have a large philosophical and rhetorical difference. In dealing with the anti-Catholic prejudice that threatened to derail his campaign as it had that of Al Smith, Kennedy purposely did not venture into the past. In fact he does not even mention America’s history of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish prejudice. Instead he looks to the future, acknowledging that he will not let his religion guide his decisions.

Obama could have followed Kennedy’s lead, for the history of racism in this country is well-known as are the contemporary racial grievances Obama acknowledges.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education,

The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.

Instead in his attempt to link racism and white anger, Obama picks on America’s favorite target, corporate greed.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

In his Houston speech, John Kennedy did not delve into history, or attempt to diagnose the roots of anti-Catholic prejudice nor point fingers at who was to blame for it. Instead, he turned the argument upside down saying he will not let the past guide the future. The rhetorical strategy he uses is a continual repetition of the phrase I believe:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President — should he be Catholic — how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish.

Had Obama followed Kennedy’s strategy would he could have done was to say while he understood the Rev. Wright’s remarks, he believed differently. Interestingly, he does this in the most memorable part of the speech–its final section. He begins this part the speech by stating:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

A bit later comes the line for which that this speech should be remembered:

This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

Curiously, that is one of the main messages of Black Magic, for even as it details the sad stories of great African American players who were denied a chance to play professionally in the National Basketball Association, its also shows how the NBA went from being an all-white league to one where African Americans now have become the stars.

It may be that race has so polluted this country that no one could possibly deal with it in a single speech and certainly not in the midst of what has become a racially-charged campaign. Barack Obama could have easily dismissed the Rev. Wright’s remarks in a variety of ways. He could have even thrown him under the bus and announced he was switching churches. That he chose not to do so reflects both moral and political courage.

In end what Obama’s speech teaches–and what makes it such a remarkable document–is that it affirms maybe it is time we quit ignoring our problems but rather, as Obama did, confront them and deal with them.

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A red herring will poison this upcoming Presidential election and cost the Democrats the White House if they are not careful. Red herrings have a habit of doing that. Remember the Silent Majority? Compassionate Conservatism?

This year’s red herring involves the Iraq War and has seduced more people than weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda combined. It is the Bloodbath Myth.

What has made this myth so powerful lies in the apparent impossibility of refuting it. After all, who can predict what will happen when we leave Iraq? The country could break into a bloody civil war that turns the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers red.

In reality Iraq has lived with a bloodbath for decades. We will never know how many died during Saddam Hussein’s brutal reign, which was driven by the same religious and ethnic rivalries people fear today. Hidden mass graves still lie under the sands that supposedly covered weapons of mass destruction.

A much-quoted article by Stephen Cass notes:

The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam’s needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam’s reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam’s 8,000-odd days in power.

These numbers have become part of a debate that has raged for several years over the number of deaths under Saddam and those since the American invasion. One interesting note that leads one to question these numbers is that the Documental Centre first had an office in London, but two sources, SourceWatch and Wiser Earth now list its office as in Tehran. The trial of Saddam might have cleared up some of the debate about how many Iraqis died under his rule, but unlike the careful documentation of Nuremberg, the trial of Saddam was a mess. In the end his execution came about because he was convicted of one event–the 1982 murders of 148 Iraqis from the predominantly Shiite village of Dujail.

More pointedly, American newspapers routinely publish the names of Americans killed in Iraq, but we forget the number of Iraqis who have died since what Frontline terms Bush’s War began. Estimates are as difficult to nail down as estimates of the dead under Saddam. In a study published in the October 14, 2006, edition of the peer-reviewed scientific journal, The Lancet, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated:

As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions…The deaths from all causes—violent and non-violent—are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion.

Other key points in the study noted:

[A] majority of the additional deaths (91.8 percent) [were] caused by violence.

The proportion of deaths attributed to coalition forces diminished in 2006 to 26 percent. Between March 2003 and July 2006, households attributed 31 percent of deaths to the coalition.

About half of the households surveyed were uncertain who was responsible for the death of a ho