For those who are unaware, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are on a barnstormer of a nationwide radio tour, The Poverty Tour: A Call To Conscience, visiting ordinary impoverished families and sharing their stories with the nation. It is clear that one of their main aims is to reinject the forbidden term of "poverty" back into the national political discussion, and they are openly critical of Democrats, especially the President, who have allowed the present invisibility of the nation's poor to persist and/or even worsen over the last several years, even as poverty itself has grown enormously.
On CNN's American Morning yesterday, they demonstrated very concretely exactly what Obama could be doing more of, but so far won't, in fighting the evil republican trolls and tea party hobbits (transcript below):
Again, the transcript and a few more of my thoughts are below the orange cloud.
I strongly believe that for those of us who care about the poor, this appearance represents an invaluable lesson in rhetoric. Smiley makes a very powerful opening argument, and he and West are subsequently confronted with all the most vapid, vicious right wing talking points, which they handle them with style and grace. I would even go so far as to argue these men are on a righteous quest for the soul of the democratic party, and I sincerely hope that the President is made aware of this effort and decides to use words like poor and poverty once again. As Professor West points out, 20% of children in America are growing up in abject poverty, which should be morally repugnant to any American who calls themselves a liberal.
This was clearly a slam dunk for Smiley and West, who worked extremely well together as a team in debunking Costello. If you are familiar with either one of them, that should come as no surprise. To her credit, Costello may have very well been playing devil's advocate, and she did not filibuster, but I think these two orators could have taken their message onto Hannity and still remained effective. They are just so direct and no-nonsense, and their message has a ring of truth to it, coming as it does from the real stories of truly struggling Americans.
The use of the story is incredibly powerful, politically, argues Psychiatry professor Drew Westen, in a piece that rang true for millions of democrats, and this rhetorical level is where Obama, clearly a gifted Rhetorician, has fallen short. I agreed with Professor Westen despite Andrew Sprung's well written rebuttal, which I took a fair amount of time to consider, and so should you, if you haven't already. Until this morning there was no clear winner, to my mind, in this debate over Obama's rhetoric, though my instincts were to trust Westen.
Somehow, in watching this performance from Smiley and West, I suddenly saw concrete evidence of Westen's claim. Sprung chides Westen for the idea that Obama failed to include a villain in his story, because it would be divisive and lead to worse outcomes. Perhaps, if the villain is a human being. But what if that villain was poverty? This is in fact precisely the main villain characterized by the rhetoric of FDR, if you've ever listened to his fireside chats or his 1933 inaugural, and I truly believe, as does Westen, that his rhetoric helped move his policy agenda. But I agree with Sprung that simply attacking banks and republicans at the inauguration or in the stimulus fight would have been counterproductive. What about the real culprit, poverty itself?? West and Smiley are geniuses for seeing this so clearly, and their tour needs to get more attention. What we need from Obama, or from some other true Democrat, is for the Party of FDR to make a comeback on the national stage, from its incredibly weak, mealy-mouthed, neoliberal agenda and start standing up for the least privileged again.
For those who might re-raise the issue of pragmatism, I would say: do the thought experiment with me. If Obama were going on cable news shows and in front of the press corps and on his saturday morning chats using the words and statistics and stories of the poor in this country, as a class, would there have been a smaller stimulus? Would more or less Democrats have stayed home in 2010? Would the tea party be getting all the populist support from seniors worried about "government hands on their medicare?" I dare say not a chance.
So please spread the word of this crusade being undertaken by Professor West and Tavis Smiley, and listen to their show when you get a chance. Even Democrats become apathetic, and these two heroes are offering the perfect medicine. I really believe that we can restore the heart and soul to the Democratic party, and if/when we do so, there will be no heritage foundation report or piece of ALEC legislation or Super Pac that can stand in our way.
As the nation's middle class disappears the number of poor in this country is growing. If you listen to Tavis Smiley and Cornell West, nobody cares. The poor have become invisible.
To combat that, Smiley and West are traveling across the country to give the poor a voice. They call its poverty tour. Today, they are in the city of Detroit and they join us now.
Tavis Smiley and Cornell West host of "The Smiley and West Radio Show," thank you for coming on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks, Carol.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
COSTELLO: So we do this thing called talk back every morning on AMERICAN MORNING. This is the question we asked our viewers this morning. Do the poor share responsibility for our economic woes? I got to tell you, I'm going to read you a response and then Tavis, maybe you can respond to this.
This is from Stacy, she says welfare in theory was a good thing, but it -- but it is now -- but it's become a way of life for generations. The poor actually have it better than the middle class. Tavis, do you think there's any real understanding about who the poor are in this country?
TAVIS SMILEY, CO-HOST, SMILEY AND WEST RADIO SHOW: I think first of all, with respect to the person who wrote that, that's complete lunacy number one and that's as charitable and kind I can be about a comment like that and that's really the problem, Carol, right now in America.
When you talk about poverty, there's always been a connection, a link between poverty and crime, but now, it's become a crime in this country to be poor and that's the problem. The poor get dumped on, the poor get piled on, the poor get demonized.
We cast aspersion on them and somehow blame them for their lot in life. Here's the bottom line, I heard your earlier segment talking about this debt ceiling deal. I think this debt ceiling deal, Carol, was really a declaration of war on the poor.
The Congress, the president, respectfully, have declared war on the poor. You can't sign into law legislation that raises the debt ceiling, but opens up a crater in the floor. Put another way, no unemployment extensions for poor people.
No closing of a single corporate loophole, not one new tax, not one cent of new tax on the rich and the lucky, so once again, the corporations get off scot free. Wall Street and the banks get off scot free and all these cuts aimed at the poor. How do you blame the poor for that?
COSTELLO: But, Cornell, put it this way, Cornell, the Heritage Foundation, this is conservative organization. They did this study. They say the poor in America today, are unlike the poor in America years ago. In fact, most of the poor in America live in a decent house. They have TVs. They have microwave ovens and they even have a refrigerator. What are they complaining about?
CORNELL WEST, CO-HOST, SMILEY AND WEST RADIO SHOW: Yes. I think that's a lie. I think what we've seen and most poor people recognize the lack of food, the lack of housing, the lack of quality education, which is for white, black, red, and yellow, across colors across cultures is very real.
But look at it this way, when you have the top 400 americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million, that 1 percent of thepopulation have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent --
COSTELLO: Yes, but the argument --
WEST: -- Heritage Foundation --
COSTELLO: Those people pay the taxes in America and the poor don't pay any.
WEST: No, but that's a lie too. Most of the taxes are paid by middle class. One out of four corporations don't pay a penny of taxes. They got offshore havens. They got offshore subsidiaries.
The very head of President Obama's job commission, of GE, hasn't paid a penny of taxes in the last two years. So all these misconceptions is what brother Tavis and myself came up with the idea of the poverty tour.
The legacy of Martin King, keep track of the dignity and humanity of poor and working people shatter all these lies being told about them.
COSTELLO: Tavis, what is President Obama, what would you like President Obama to do because you have several bones to pick with him?
SMILEY: Well, we don't have enough time to give you a list of things I think he ought to do respectfully. Number one, the president ought to start using the word poor, p-o-or, don't be afraid to talk about the poor to say the word poverty.
In three presidential debates the last time around, between Obama and McCain, the word poverty, poor never came up one time. Last year in his state of the union address the president became the first president since 1948 in that speech to not say the word poor or poverty.
We have to call it what it is. Number two, they ought to be a White House conference on poverty. We have conferences on everything else in the White House, why not a White House conference on poverty. Why not a plan, just like we had a plan to raise the debt ceiling, why not a plan over 10, 15, 20 years to eradicate poverty.
COSTELLO: The president represents everybody in America, not just the poor and not just the middle class and the wealthy.
SMILEY: Precisely.
COSTELLO: Dealing with a lot of stuff right now so why concentrate on one segment of the population?
WEST: When the banks had a national emergency, they bailed out and found $700 billion. When we go to war, we find $1.3 trillion for the poor and working classes living in a state of emergency, a matter of national security, especially the children.
We got 21 percent of our precious children of all colors living in poverty and that's morally job seen in the richest nation in the history of world.
COSTELLO: I wish we could continue this conversation, but we have to wrap it up here. Thank you both for joining us this morning. You're in Detroit, you're stopping to talk to the poor across the city of Detroit and then on to other places.