I would really appreciate if you would recommend this post, because I am responding to a really vicious smear in the recommended diaries.
I'm kind of stunned at the vicious reaction to my post on John Edwards and why he's not gaining traction with African-Americans and women in the Democratic primary. The post, Edwards Would Be Great If He Weren't Racist??, criticized a post I wrote about John Edwards and his rhetorical style in which I quoted an African-American blogger rikyrah at Jack and Jill politics.
Most of the diary focused on the comments Elizabeth Edwards made in which Edwards said:
"We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman," said Edwards, referring to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton during an interview with Ziff Davis Media about the Internet's role in the 2008 presidential election. "Those things get you a certain amount of fundraising dollars."
I criticized this as an excuse for poor messaging, and called her comments a little racist (playing off the Avenue Q musical 'everyone's a little racist'). But I was actually entering a conversation, not starting one. The use of the word racism didn't start with me, it started with a progressive African-American blogger rikyrah at a site, Jack and Jill politics, that helped lead the CBC fight against Fox News. This is not exactly Rush Limbaugh whose throwing around these arguments, people, and John Edwards does have problems with political reach to these communities. I'm not making that up.
My progressive political credentials are well-established. I was the first blogger to do a major piece on Lamont, and I was very aggressive in that campaign. I did a significant part of the blogging to highlight Donna Edwards in her primary campaign against Al Wynn in 2006, and I worked extremely aggressively on net neutrality and communications issues, developing the storyline around Mike McCurry's betrayal of the Democratic party and netroots [I corrected this sentence to reflect other blogs in the Donna Edwards race]. I raised money to send Tim Tagaris to New Orleans to cover the William Jefferson reelection. I have created the Open House Project to move more content from the House of Representatives online. I am the President of Blogpac where we fund a network of state blogs, and I am right now working on a Google adwords campaign to criticize the Blue Dogs who voted badly on wiretapping. In short, though I don't particularly think any of our Presidential candidates are progressive and don't see a lot of leverage in supporting any of them, I am an ally of the progressive movement, not a David Broder.
The question, though, for the people who criticized me as some sort of conspirator and did so dishonestly (no, I didn't equate poor people and minorities, my post actually separated the two political problems Edwards faces into different parts of the post), is why you didn't go after the African-American blogger who I was quoting. Why did you single me out, and to a less extent Mike Caulfield (another white guy)? Why did you leave out the African-American in the conversation who actually titled their post 'Why is nobody calling the Edwards Campaign on their recent racial ploys?'
It's a big problem when Democrats can't be honest about the divisions facing our world. And one them is race, and how our behavior brings out the subtle ways we reinforce tribal divisions. There is a lot of fascinating dialogue to have over the tribal nature of politics, and it's something we must work on a great deal more than we do. I would hope that, as we go into a Presidential election where race and gender are probably going to be determinative factors in the direction our country, we can approach the conversations more honestly and openly. Part of that dialogue is dealing openly and honestly with ourselves and our candidates when they reinforce these divisions with their own rhetoric and behavior, and that's what rikyrah did, and it's why I quoted what they wrote. I thought it was a good point, and something for Edwards to work on and watch out for. Edwards has shown a tremendous capacity for personal and political growth, and I don't see how he can't grow to embrace, say, marriage equality, should he become our next President. That growth will only come, though, from our criticism, so even though it's not always fun to point out where Democrats err, it's necessary that this criticism happen for the sake of our democracy and for the sake or our party.
This is a learning experience for all of us, and I'm glad to be having this conversation. I screw up a lot, I do things that are stupid sometimes, but I try to learn from criticism. I think the world of this open forum, and I think the world of all of you for giving it the legitimacy of your voices. We must all learn together and work together, even though we disagree, because there's a new world to create, just waiting there, for us to build. And in it, there's room for all of us and room for these kinds of fights. But let's make sure to argue honestly, so that at the end of the day, we can come together.
So how about it? Can we have an honest conversation instead of an attack on the messenger? Can you actually answer the question rikyah posed, which is 'Why is nobody calling the Edwards Campaign on their recent racial ploys?' That's not my question, and maybe you don't like the framing. But rikyah deserves an answer.