Yesterday I said things of which I am ashamed and that I believe were borderline racist. I suggested that many black people only support him because of the color of his skin, that they are less than objective in evaluating his performance, and that there's a problem when 91% of any group supports a particular figure. I spent much of the night thinking about this and realized that were a pollster to contact me I too would say that I support him, that I want him to succeed, and that I will vote for him. I would be among the 85% of democrats that support the president. If I characterize myself as both supporting the president and disagreeing with him on a number of points, why would I see members of the AA community any differently?
That support does not entail that I am pleased with all of his policies, that I agree with all of those policies, or that I won't criticize him and seek to put pressure on the administration on those points where I think the wrong positions are being pursued, but I do nonetheless support him and certainly have no desire to see him primaried or ever to vote for a republican. As is the case with any politician in the democratic party I both support him and find points of disagreement.
Issues of race have been among the most fraught and difficult here at dailykos. Every time I see expressions like "white progressives", the "professional left", or see certain lines of criticism branded as "racist", I wince and physically recoil. I find myself even more angered when I am told that I am not part of the base despite being a gay, Jewish educator making 50K a year. Seriously? Education is not a core democratic issue? Seriously? I'm some wealthy elitist academic fat cat that's out of touch with democratic politics? Claims that such and such a group doesn't belong to the base are, I believe, extremely ugly.
For decades I have believed that political economy is the central political issue in the United States. In my view, economic policy is related to every other issue in American politics. I believe that our system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and that the vast majority of us are under assault by neoliberal economic policies. I do not believe that tax cuts for the wealth create jobs for the rest of us, and I also believe that deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy are a direct attack on all of us as a result of the manner in which they destroy social programs upon which we rely, destroy education which we need to prosper, take away jobs, destroy the environment, corrupt our government, and further disempower us. I also believe that free market solutions in the realm of healthcare and education are deeply destructive to the social good. Finally, I believe that free market economic policies are particularly destructive to minorities and single mothers.
I have literally fought these things for decades and thus find it incredibly frustrating and painful to see them slimed as somehow being the domain of "white progressives" or as being fringe leftist positions. Such criticisms strike me as reinforcing rightwing frames and further disempowering the vast majority of Americans. Consequently, when I saw Cornell West being attacked for arguing very similar positions, I was filled with anger. West has been one of my heroes for years and advocates a political philosophy similar to my own. In witnessing the treatment he received for his interview I felt as if I was seeing all these questions of economic justice and the importance of political economy in our politics completely dismissed. I felt as if I was witnessing my fellow democrats declare that these issues are completely unimportant and that they are somehow fringe issues within American politics. I was filled with frustrated rage.
As my diary history will attest, I supported Obama before he even announced his run for the presidency. If I supported Obama over Clinton, then this was because I witnessed Bill Clinton embracing neoliberal, free market economic positions, heard Hillary Clinton embracing the very same policy positions, and believed that the central problem facing all of us as working class Americans is the free market ideology that pervades our government. I had hoped that Obama would be stronger on these points, yet he has more or less embraced exactly the same positions. Here I won't go into the details as you've all heard them before. What's important is that it be recognized that my criticisms of Obama are exactly the same as my criticisms of the Clintons. It is not about Obama the man, Obama the person, and has everything to do with a set of policies that I believe to be extremely unjust and destructive.
I believe that there needs to be more recognition around dailykos that these criticisms come from a principled place and have nothing to do with Obama the man. There is a tendency to dismiss these criticisms when, for many of us, these issues are the core of progressive political struggle and democratic politics. This dismissal makes it more difficult to right these injustices. I apologize for my ugly outburst yesterday. It was totally uncalled for. I truly wish, however, that we could stop attacking the messenger rather than the message, stop attacking progressivism, and treat the positions of each other with dignity and respect.