a LA times article reports that the person who leaked Obama's small town bitter remark is getting death threats:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-bitterweb15apr15,1,5375351.story
this is one of my biggest issues with obama's leadership... it is that he has almost none when it comes to rejecting and denouncing support from people who propagate hate.
he remained silent when :
* he receives support from anti-semetic leaders like Louis Farrakhan
* his pastor Wright makes anti-american,anti-government, anti-clinton remarks
* his supporters write horrible derogatory comments about the clintons in the blogosphere, recycle republican trash of character assasination
* his advisors let loose of unprofessional comments about their democratic colleagues
* his wife goes on television talking about how she will not vote for clinton if she's the nominee
* the MSM fawns over him and propagates mysogynistic attacks on clinton
if he remains silent even when he has knowledge of what his supporters are doing, he is CONDONING their behavior. if he waits until someone holds him to it, then he is an self-serving opportunist. as a national leader, if he cannot even provide the correct & positive leadership that he espouses to in a campaign, imagine what would happen if he actually had the power of presidency. as a national leader he needs to recognize that he needs to lead on conduct. if he cannot inspire positive action, what does that say about him? i can think of many historical figures who have abused their popular support and fueled hate to advance their selfish agenda.
the amount of ridicule, disrespect and hate that comes out of the obama supporters is outrageous. it is even more apalling they are directed at their democrat colleagues, who want very much the same vision for america's future.
i remember in the msnbc debate, obama was confronted with questions about farrakhan's support. he fumbled and stuttered things about how he cannot tell someone to not support him and that he has publicly denounced their behavior. but when tim russert pressed him to ask him if he would reject their support, he says he cannot. it wasn't until hillary related of her experience in the new york senotorial election where she had to stand up and reject the white supremist groups support to show what it means to provide leadership, did obama then back track and corrected to say that he both renounce and reject the support of farrakhan.
his ambiguity on being able to stand up strongly in the face of such obviously clearly acknowledged hate mongering, and in front of national television nonetheless, should be a point of grave concern.
these are not positive leadership quality that you look for in your president at all. i want a president who will make it clear that hate mongering is not tolerated in any form, no matter how benign the current situations might seem. hate is like cancer. he needs to provide leadership now so that his supporters, especially those young and easily influenced, will not fall under false guidance.
i sincerely hope obama is better than what he appears to be now.
i will end with a somewhat positive note. The following is from a comment i pulled out of www.hillaryclintonforum.com under the thread : "Obama thugs issue DEATH THREATS to woman who exposed Barry Obama's San Francisco comments"
Today, 06:36 PM
AdrienneJ
Posts: 139
Poster Rank: #95
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You know what really pisses me off? That these African American politicians put their reputations, their careers, and their own safety at risk to stand up for what they believe in-- to stand up for their belief in Hillary Clinton---but there are spineless superdelegates out there who will not. That makes me so angry I can hardly see straight. These cowards who would prefer to have Clinton but will not risk stepping out to be counted before
they are absolutely forced to are a disgrace to America and their positions in it. How brave it is for Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Brenda Lee Jackson, the gentlemen from Ohio and those mentioned above to go everyday and do their work in our name and be subject to this kind of hate-filled crap from lousy people. To stand and get boo-ed by your own constituents, to get death threats, and to still do what you feel is right. To contrast that with someone like Sherrod Brown-- sitting on the fence, happy, safe and warm, or my own superdelegates Baucus, Tester and Schweitzer taking no stand, saying nothing. Political cowards all in my book. You want to go beyond race? You want to go beyond politics as usual? You want to find real heroes in all this muck? Look no further than the African American superdelegates who stand up for what they believe in- in spite of this disgusting war that is being waged against them.
*****
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6 comments:
oh ho ho look what popped up in my reader! i can't help but comment.. though i'm not even sure you'll see it, since you don't expect them. does it freak you out that you have a reader? :)
i think your argument has one fundamental flaw, and i'd like to know to what degree you actually believe it... here's the quote:
"if he remains silent even when he has knowledge of what his supporters are doing, he is CONDONING their behavior."
now, the nytimes, for instance, posted what essentially was a smear piece on john mccain some weeks back. the nytimes is clearly a democrat supporter.. were obama and clinton condoning the nytimes behavior by not coming out vocally against it? let's suppose they are against it. do they need to pipe up? why? parents pipe up when their kids do wrong and need disciplining. candidates maybe should pipe up in certain situations, but i think you develop too much of a parent-child relationship between candidates and their supporters when you make your arguments here.
of course, if someone asks them about their supporters/advisor behavior/etc.. then they need to give a reasoned response. but we shouldn't expect them to be chiming in at all moments. on the wright and advisor points for obama, i think he has responded -- we may not agree with his response, but don't say that's being silent.
in the end, i think both candidates will be very strategic. if someone asks obama about his treatment in the MSM, and clearly cites his preferential treatment, he could respond in a lot of ways, some of them honest and reflecting disgust with our MSM. but i bet he wouldn't do that. and i'd expect the same of hillary if she were in his situation. because there is a liability in being totally upfront with all your opinions.
while i'm in this little comment box, this brings me to my latest interest, the "bitter" comment by obama. i think today's salon article about that post has it quite wrong, as does hillary, and so too obama. i think they are all wrong because their unit of analysis is inappropriate. first, salon.. they characterize the comments like so:
"In the words of Todd Gitlin, Obama "did indeed fall into the Tom Frank vulgar Marxist trap of seeming to say that love of guns or religion (or antipathy, even) is merely derivative, not fundamental." The attempt by eminent figures on the left to belittle traditional values by reducing them to personal pathology dates back at least to 1950, when the German Marxist émigré Theodore Adorno, in "The Authoritarian Personality," attempted to explain fascism (and by implication American McCarthyism) in terms of repressed individuals who take out their psychic frustrations on minorities. Similarly, the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset explained the Goldwater-Reagan conservative movement as the product of "status anxiety" on the part of socially insecure Americans. This line of thinking, inspired by absurd comparisons between Weimar Germany and post-1945 America and between libertarian conservatism and Hitlerian totalitarianism, has been discredited by scholars like Lisa McGirr, who shows in her 2001 book, "Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right," that Goldwater-Reagan activists tended to be successful, educated people for whom conservative ideology was not a mask for something else but a coherent belief system. Nevertheless, the cliché that working-class and even middle-class social traditionalists, when they are not simply ignorant, "low information" hicks, are maladjusted misfits whose political views are nothing more than feeble gestures of misdirected rage, persists as an article of faith among many progressives, who then wonder why the Democrats cannot win over more of the voters they despise."
i think they get caught up in this personally fundamental vs derivative situation, which is misleading. people don't live in a vacuum. most of our opinions, beliefs, habits are derivative -- they are first imitated! we don't have the energy to think everything through clearly. so when does something become fundamental, let alone personally fundamental? that's a somewhat strange question, in my mind. furthermore, the way to turn this around may not be to call the people making the "bitter" comment elitists, but question to what degree those people actually rationally construct their voting decisions. it would've been so awesome if obama's speech in sf also contained a quote along the lines of "and what about you people sitting in this room? if you were voting your pocket books, voting selfishly, maybe all ways point republican. if you valued smart CEOs with clear experience and results, as many of you must, you might vote clinton. so why are you voting for me? think hard about this. how'd you hear about me? are all your friends doing it? was this decision a long, conscious struggle? maybe your voting beliefs are just as derivative as we suggest they are for rural, poor americans. but don't worry, i'm your man!"
the people who must be really enjoying this debate are the marketers, especially those who have gone to work for campaigns. i think they've long ago realized that many of our beliefs are socially constructed and socially reinforced and hinge not on clearly rational bases. with that observation, they are then able to develop campaigns that either attempt to reinforce or disrupt those beliefs. i want to see the MSM or the blogosphere write about that possibility!
oh here's the salon article i'm talking about
omar,
thank you for your thoughtful comment.
i just wanted to answer to your question whether campaigns already know that people are voting more via how they are affected socially than rationally. look at the campaign results of 1992,2000,2004 and today. i think the republicans learned from the clintons, and honed that strategy for bush. the media essentially annointed bush in 2000 and 2004. and if you recalled the spin after the debates, you would remember how the media turned everything that came out of the Bush's mouth to be some deep cryptic bites of wisdom. there was so much of voting because of him being the leader chosen by god and all that stuff that changed the way we perceive american politics forever. the death of rationality had long happened and already recognized by many political theorists. (i remember reading about pragmatism, where it underlied the hope that oneday we would all be able to set the right policies and politics would be reduced to a minimun because science and reason can bridge and differences... the political activism that was based on such philosophy spurred much of what happened in the 60s and 70s, but have since been rendered obsolete. )
i like how u noted that even elitist democrats fall under not voting rationally. it is certainly a fallacy that we presume only hicks do so.
what i don't quite agree with about the salon article, is that it presumes hillary's supporters are all prone to those stereotypes, which is in contrast to the fact that she carried overwhelmingly in primary outcomes of states that were bastions of liberal elitism. how to explain that? there is none. the article is just smoke and mirrors to detract from the real reason why the other 1/2 of democrats can't vote for obama, that he is simply not qualified.
the whole article seemed to me more of the academic intellectual analysis that is rationalizing obama's gaffe. at the end of the day, it is a mistake that no seasoned politician would want to make, not even hillary... if hillary were to make the same mistake, she can kiss her campaign goodbye.
few things:
- yup i think it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away that someone realized that appealing to senses other than rationality was far more effective to achieve short-term goals (perhaps long-term too, though i'm not so sure of that)
- i think it's likely a mistake to think that there were great "rational" days of politics.. oh those halcyon days, where did they go? so instead of lamenting the death of rationality, it's likely more productive to look and see what doesn't seem to be working and see how we might use the same techniques as the effective campaigners to encourage more informed electoral behavior (well, if you believe that should be the goal). for instance, all in all, i think the number of debates this time around, and the accessibility of the debates, is on the whole a good thing. it's a start of something good, anyway.
- i'm a bit disturbed by this quote, because i think it reflects such a strong polarization.."why the other 1/2 of democrats can't vote for obama, that he is simply not qualified." i think this is too extreme. because, while i support clinton, i'd say one of the reasons is not because obama is not qualified, but because there is the availability of a candidate who is more qualified, AND qualifications matter very much for me.
and i think that is likely true for many hillary supporters.. ie, they can and will vote for obama if he is the candidate, because he's not unqualified.. if they really thought he was unqualified they wouldn't vote for him, no matter what (though i guess there will be those who think he is completely unqualified but still vote for him to avoid repub).
sometimes i wonder if the reason i value "being qualified," especially as it relates to "having experience" is because of some latent elitism.. but that's another topic!
- minor point: i think you may agree more with salon than you seem to say. the quote i give shows that whatever might be wrong with the salon article, it is not trying to rationalize obama's comment. it is calling it a huge blunder.
boourns
L: african american participation will come down significantly from primaries if hillary is the candidate.. that voting group seems to have lost trust in clintons
L: i like ice cream yay!
L: i agree that david's butt is not as hot as it should be
O: dems will win in the general election, getting 55% of the popular vote
O: o!
LOL
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