Jim Webb is Growing on Me
Wed May 21, 2008 at 02:09:11 PM PDT
I didn't see any recent diaries on this. If one exists, I'll be happy to delete.
Right now, my sig line says "Obama/Sebelius 2008" and it links to the YouTube video of Governor Sebelius endorsing Senator Obama a few days before Super Tuesday.
I think Governor Sebelius would bring a lot to the Obama ticket. As a female governor from a red state, she reinforces Obama's message of unity and could bring frustrated Clinton voters back into the fold, among other things.
On the flip side, I haven't been all that open to the idea of a Vice President Webb. I like Senator Webb, but have never been as impressed as others are with his political skills. Furthermore, I'm concerned that if Obama chooses a running mate with a strong military background, he could potentially reinforce the idea that he is weak on foreign policy.
That said, I have remained open-minded. I'm more than willing to be persuaded, and Senator Webb, recently, has been pushing all the right buttons.
"Rechanging Populist American Politics" below the fold...
Will Thomas at HuffPo just posted an article about Senator Jim Webb's appearance on Morning Joe today, where the Senator addressed the disconnect between the Obama campaign and BigMedia's new favorite demographic, the white working class, specifically in Appalachia. Senator Webb emphasized that the problem is not necessarily with Senator Obama himself, but the frustration and dare I say, bitterness of the economic situation in which these generally Scotch-Irish Americans find themselves:
[Obama is] saying a lot of good things that will appeal to this cultural group in time.
Webb scoffs at the idea that this group is racist, offering an example of one source of their frustration:
This isn't Selma, 1965. This is a result of how affirmative action, which was basically a justifiable concept when it applied to African Americans, expanded to every single ethnic group in America that was not white, and these were the people who had not received benefits and were not getting anything out of it...
Black America and Scotch-Irish America are like tortured siblings. They both have long history and they both missed the boat when it came to the larger benefits that a lot of other people were able to receive. There's a saying in the Appalachian mountains that they say to one another, and it's, "if you're poor and white, you're out of sight.
Where have I heard this basic argument before?
Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. - Senator Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union, March 18, 2008
But Webb takes it one step further:
If this cultural group could get at the same table as black America you could rechange populist American politics. Because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government.
I appreciate Senator Webb's willingness to discuss race-based frustration in honest terms, speaking to Americans not in sterilized sound bytes, but like we're grown ups. I think his life experience affords him the ability to speak about racial tension articulately and in a way that is not offensive.
As Senator Obama said in his now famous speech:
[R]ace is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.
Perhaps Senator Webb is the right person to help Senator Obama advance the conversation.
Watch the whole interview. The discussion on the Kentucky Primary and the race chasm starts around 4:25:
<iframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/24758234#24758234" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
Update: Well, so much for the video. MSNBC needs to work on providing more user-friendly online content. It's embedded in the original article which is linked above if you're interested.
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