Juan Williams: Dean=Shutout for Blacks

     Juan Williams offered this parting shot on Faux this a.m. just as Chris Wallace cut off his " ridicule Dean" panel (Mara, Brit, Juan, WSJ Guy):  "Democrats electing Dean means a shutout for Blacks and Latinos by the party!"  (paraphrase, but 'shutout' was his actual word.)

     Yet again, Juan shows himself to be just one more lazy journalist who has bought into the media caricature of Dean without looking at anything in his campaign.

     Not one of the Dem presidential candidates-- not even Reverend Al-- connected with minorities better than Dean.  I hope as Chairman Dean will inflict instant death on lying media memes about him and the party as soon as they pop out-- and he could start with this one.

     I still don't know how to post links.  Maybe somebody more adept could put up some of Dean's stuff from the primaries showing WHY he was endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep.  Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc., and why his speech on civil rights presented in SC was called by Black leaders "the greatest speech on civil rights since Martin Luther King."  

     Remember, he gave great speeches in front of Black groups that some of the candidates, and of course  Bush, didn't  even bother to attend.  And I am convinced that it was Dean's support of civil rights that was one of the big reasons that Gore endorsed him.  In his last years it got pushed under the media radar, but one of the driving forces of Gore's political life has been his personal and passionate commitment to civil rights-- partly as a reaction to his father's moral crisis on the subject.

     As for Latinos and other minorities-- it was Dean, not Kerry, who was endorsed by the Hispanic groups, the migrant workers, the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the Native Americans-- who else even bothered to talk to them?  Dean worked in the Hispanic labor camps in Florida as a young man and speaks excellent Spanish.  Dean had Spanish language ads out in the summer before the primaries.  Dean often punctuated his speeches with the minority-- and universally-- empowering  "Si se puede!" and "You have the power!"

     I would love to see Dean debating the Chimperor on the issue of Native American "sovereignty"-- I doubt W even knows how to spell it.

     No, Juan, Dean's election does not mean a shutout for Blacks.  They were shutout by the clueless Dem insiders who allowed the Republicans to mislead African Americans into voting against their interests through the spectre of gay marriage  (worth another diary).  The same Dem insiders who threw away Dean's winning message and took minorities for granted and wrote off the South.  

     Dean is our best chance to reach out and re-energize minorities.  I hope the party leadership will let him do it-- and will defend him, and our party, against charges like this one.