Day of Reckoning

Today, we get what many are considering a preview of the upcoming fall midterm elections -- and an acid test of the strength of the Tea Party, not to mention progressive Democrats' ability to push their party further to the left.

The Washington punditry -- which I try to avoid, whenever possible -- has it that the primaries in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Arkansas and Pennsylvania all are bellwethers that can tell us whether voter discontent will help drive incumbents out of office, as well as further calcify the already rigid red-blue divide.  Watch out, they tell us, for angry hordes storming the ballot box to deliver a message about rising deficits, taxpayer bailouts and a negative referendum on the not-so-new-anymore Obama administration.

Or something.

Rachel Maddow, one of my go-to sources, validates something I've always long suspected: the Beltway punditocracy is a collective ass. Well, maybe not an ass, but certainly not thinking very broadly or creatively about this whole midterm-election thing.

Her key to understanding today's election results:  turnout.  Take it away, Rachel!

Oilpocalypse Now

President Obama's "Katrina"?

Has a nice ring to it, especially on the right. While it's easy to pin the tail on this particular donkey, the analogy seems flawed, especially when you examine some key differences.

For openers, Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, President Bush was fully informed about the scope of the potential disaster from Katrina, and had ample warning that the worst-case scenario could happen, with accompanying, large-scale loss of life.  Second, the Bush administration cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget to maintain a flawed levee system that dates back decades.  Third, there were real people calling for help from their govenrment -- on live TV in many cases -- as the White House stumbled.

By contrast, when the oil disaster first broke, British Petroleum was slow to 'fess up about how bad things really were.  In fact, government monitors were first to sound the "uh-oh" alarm when they first realized that more than 5,000 barrels of oil was spurting from the well each day -- more than double BP's original assessment of 1,000 barrels per day.

And while we know that global warming made what would have been a relatively sane Category 2-3 hurricane in Katrina into a deadly Category 3-4 hurricane, the oil rig disaster was a man-made deal, due largely to human error and an oil giant's arrogance about its technical capabilities.

Not to mention that the White House -- probably pretty mindful of the Bush Administration's ineptitude on Katrina relief -- has kicked things into high gear, and made a high-profile presence almost immediately after the scope of the disaster became clear.

Nevertheless, this by no means is a disaster under control: oil is still pouring unchecked into the Gulf, shorelines from Louisiana to the mid-Atlantic are bracing for slicks, and the increasingly fragile environments will likely be ruined, for perhaps generations.  The disaster has the potential to wreck lives in ways not seen since 1989 -- or maybe 1979 , or 1986, or ... well, you get the idea.

The BP well disaster was not insignificant, its cause has yet to be determined and, like Katrina, the damage will likely echo across decades.  But for me, the analogy pretty much stops here.

This Week in Race Relations

This really isn't surprising.

Arrogant, yes.  Borderline racist: you betcha.  Journalistically negligent, and further contributing to right-wing ignorance of American history -- absolutely.  But not surprising.

What was interesting, at least to me, were reports that President Obama struggled to contain his emotions during the funeral for Dorothy I. Height, one of the quiet titans of the civil rights, and women's rights, movements.  Obama has a well-deserved reputation for remaining cool under virtually all circumstances in public; some have questioned whether he can actually show his warm human side from time to time.

It's hard to imagine what might have been going through his mind of the first black president, a man whose background is way more complex than so simple a descriptor as that.

Obama's story is familiar, but in moments like these it seems especially poignant:  born biracial, with roots in Hawai'i by way of Indonesia, Kenya and Kansas;  educated in elite Ivy League universities but who cut his political teeth fighting for poor black people in Chicago's South Side; a charismatic politician who had to appear non-threatening enough, long enough, to collect votes from the nation's white majority, but a self-identified black man whose African American street cred perhaps will always remain in question -- even though he broke what generations of black people believed was an unbreakable barrier.

Given that, it would have been a profoundly emotional moment to eulogize a civil rights pioneer who also could legitimately be called his friend -- someone who quietly helped pave the way for his own brilliant place in history.  So I may as well let the man speak for himself.

***

As long as race relations is the topic, I have to admit I'm puzzled:  why is this man not in prison?

Drill, baby dri--... oh s#@$.

President Obama has been on a roll lately.

He scored a big win on health care reform, showing a nasty crossover dribble against Republicans in the process.  He's put his stamp on the Supreme Court and gets another opportunity before summer's end.  He's even sounding more presidential: after declaring he wants a Wall Street reform bill, he vowed to veto one that doesn't include restrictions on derivatives, a bit of welcome political flexing.

Got that, Harry? 

And then, there's this.  Which came less than a month after this.

The president's decision to study lifting the moratorium on offshore US drilling is fast becoming a rare discordant note in what had been Obama's virtuoso performance this spring.  It's led some pundits to shake their heads and wonder why the president went there in the first place.

It angered Democrats on the left, who got pissed that a man who seemed to have a broad, bold, common-sense vision on how green energy could remake the US economy.  And if it was designed as a light, sweet, black-gold bouquet to woo obstinate Republicans on an energy-climate bill, ... well, that sure worked out well.

Given what could become the biggest oil disaster in US history -- bigger than even the Exxon Valdez accident from the 1980s, and a catastrophe that gets worse, literally, by the minute -- Obama has wisely declared that the accident will become "part of the conversation" on lifting the drilling ban.

But he could have been ahead of the curve if this one stayed in his hip pocket back in March.

The Gulf rig explosion and the so far uncontrollable oil leak -- one that is poised to cause damage that could take decades to reverse -- would have been a ready-made, easy-to-understand argument for keeping the drilling ban in place.  It could also have served as a withering rebuttal to the "drill, baby, drill" nonsense from Republicans, as well as been an object lesson to jump-start global warming legislation and bring Senator Lindsay Graham back to the table.

But for lack of a crystal ball, the president will take a left hook, so to speak, on the chin, though he's proved adept and able to roll with the punches.

Nevertheless, sometimes the best move is to not make one in the first place.

Mr. Mojo Rising

It appears that Senate Democrats have regained their mojo, and are poised to go two-for-two in major policy initiatives on President Obama's agenda.

Early reports are that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, after threatening to hold the Senate in session all night, finally broke Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's filibuster on Wall Street financial reform.  That means the Senate will now begin debate on much-needed legislation designed to slow down, if not stop, any future meltdowns like the one that crippled the economy during President George W. Bush's final year in office.

That follows passage of health care reform legislation, after a nasty, year-long battle that seemed to demonstrate that Democrats were determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and squander unprecedented power: the largest congressional majorities they've seen in decades, and a charismatic, popular Democratic in the White House.

Critics argued that the Democrats wasted time and power by seeking the bipartisanship President Obama promised to deliver to Washington after his historic election.  Anyone with a pair of functioning eyes and a brain quickly realized, however, that Republicans were not interested, and had decided to take on the mantle of opposition party quite literally.

To me, the turning point came when Obama decided to do some political jiu-jitsu.  The "question time" with the Republican caucus was pure genius, followed quickly by a live-on-tee-vee session with GOP opponents.  That seemed to energize the Democrats, who  eked out a narrow but important win on health care.

Now Reid, in a tough re-election battle in Nevada, played a little hardball with Republicans, and the chin music seemed to have worked.

Better late than never, said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who has been calling for the party to stand, deliver and "show some guts" against the lockstep, opposition-for-oppositions'-sake GOP strategy.

Interestingly, the get-up, stand-up strategy may pay some dividends for Democrats, who, according to conventional political wisdom, are going to take a shellacking at the polls this fall.

I, for one, disagree with that take, and the Washington Post kind of backs me up on it.  So does Rendell -- deep in the above-linked interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the gov opines that the Dems' losses won't be nearly as big as the punditocracy predicts.

I also think, come November, this will pretty much say it all.

Law and Border

By now, it's widely known that Arizona has passed the most absurd, draconian and unseemly anti-immigration bill the nation has seen to date, one in which police are required to stop and ask, "Papers, please," of anyone who looks like they might be in the country illegally.  

Jon Stewart, America's most trusted newsman, had it right when he called Arizona the "meth lab of democracy."  Rachel Maddow revealed that an Arizona conservative activists with strong ties to white supremacist groups and the eugenics movement helped write the bill that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law -- even though Brewer herself admitted she had no idea what an illegal immigrant looks like, and failed to coherently explain how the bill could be enforced.

Even Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a former Republican congressman and Tea Party darling who at times makes Rush Limbaugh look like Paul Krugman, said the law goes too far.

For progressives, attacking the new law is kind of like bashing a refrigerator-sized pinata with an aluminum baseball bat, no blindfold necessary.  The reactions were swift and furious.

Racist. Mean-spirited.  Probably unconstitutional. And that's just the reaction from this guy.

But, not surprisingly, the WashPost's Eugene Robinson adds a bracing dash of realism to the left-wing feeding frenzy.  After condemning the law for the first half of his column, Robinson astutely points out that Arizona is on the front line of an immigration crisis that Washington -- and, more specifically, Washington Republicans -- have failed to deal with.

Maddow agrees, and offers concrete proof of the hypocrisy.

Robinson didn't even get to the estimated 460,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona today, or the nearly 23,000 people killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since a government crackdown in 2006.  That crime wave has begun to lap at the metaphorical shores of the United States, and border states like Arizona are largely left alone to deal with the crisis themselves, by any means necessary.

Arizonans, by a wide majority, have given the law a thumb's up, helping explain why Brewer put pen to paper and went for it.  She'd apparently rather take her chances with a convoluted, unenforceable law the Supreme Court will probably swat into the cheap seats -- not to mention the bad publicity, and the hundreds of millions the state will lose through tourism boycotts -- than risk being portrayed as weak on immigration.

And, in the national hullabaloo over the new law, news coverage seems to have overlooked a big, last-straw reason Arizonans are good with state-sanctioned racial profiling: last month's headline-grabbing murder of a popular, gun-toting rancher who was killed while tending his own property.

Police believe his assailant was in the state illegally, and that he fled back to Mexico after the crime.

To be clear: the Arizona law is short-sighted and bigoted, IMHO -- are undocumented immigrants from Ireland going to be stopped? What about European students whose papers have expired?  But, placed in context, it's easy to see why it happened, particularly in such a political climate of heightened us-versus-them fear.  The question is, where do we go from here.

What this means for Democrats' call to move immigration reform up on their to-do list, with White House backing, is unclear, especially since the issue has replaced race as the third rail of American politics, at least for the moment.

Just ask John McCain.

What if the Tea Party Was Black?

I normally don't post on Sundays, but this one was too good to keep to myself (h/t to Tink, bonjouryall.blogspot.com).

Tim Wise, who happens to be white, is one of the preeminent scholars and thinkers on race, specifically the notion of white privilege -- the concept that racism occurs because whites have created a society that gives them an overwhelming advantage because of skin color.

It's a somewhat radical theory that lies mostly on the fringes of the racial debate.  But it's becoming more and more accepted among mainstream race analysts, and it's worth exploring in a wider arena, if only to challenge one's own preconceptions about race relations. 

Wise's essay, which is making the rounds on the progressive far left, is a clear, logical object lesson supporting something I've believed all along: the Tea Party shenanigans and paranoid mind-set feels a lot like a backlash to Obama's historic election, which smashed a racial barrier that generations of African Americans -- myself included -- thought they'd live a lifetime without seeing. 

That notion has been difficult to prove, given that the TP'ers -- and the Second Amendment gun-rights crowd, and the Birthers, and the Deathers, and the rest of the astro-turfed, Fringey McFringerson noise-makers on the far-right margins -- couch their agenda in reasonable calm rational theoretically sane, albeit alarmist, conservative rhetoric that reaches so far over the top that it all but obscures a racist agenda.

But you just have to look carefully -- and sometimes not even all that closely -- to see it.