* A Racist! I’m not sure that I want that turning up at the top of the Google but it’s true enough and you are now free to justifiably accuse me of cowardice in this instance.
He grew up an Alex Keaton Reaganaut in about the whitest town in Connecticut (which is saying quite a lot actually, we have many very White Towns including Stars Hollow which is 97% White).
I’ve chosen to highlight certain statements, but included the whole context so you should really judge for yourself and if I get SLAPPed it’s because I’m being fair and balanced and allowing Matt to speak in his very own voice.
Democrats seem to be mistaking progress for prejudice
By Matt Bai, Washington Post
Jan. 13, 2020
There’s a very early, very funny Bob Dylan song about a guy who joins the John Birch Society so he can expose all the Communists hiding in plain sight. Eventually, he runs out of places to search and declares: “Now I’m sitting home investigatin’ myself!”
Now wait. I have to stop right there and say Matt Bai is not of an age to have experienced any but “Jews for Jesus” Dylan and according to my source hated everything except Top Ten Pop.
I was reminded of that song after nine of the Democratic presidential candidates signed a letter last month protesting the party’s handling of its latest debates, because no candidate of color — other than businessman Andrew Yang — had made the cut. There’s been yet more consternation in the run-up to Tuesday’s debate in Iowa, which will feature six white candidates. (After New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s withdrawal Monday, Yang and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick are the only nonwhite hopefuls remaining.)
It seems that this year’s candidates, having gone to great oratorical lengths to outdo one another when it comes to being the most woke in the bunch, have concluded that their own party — a party whose chairman, by the way, is Latino, and whose last successful nominee was African American — is itself the instrument of racial oppression.
Umm… Two things. Number One. Two Words. Michael Steele? Number Two. So electing Barack Obama, a Black man, was enough to erase centuries of racial oppression?
You’re an asshole Matt. To continue-
That’s one way to look at it. Another is that, in their zeal to root out racial injustice, Democrats are actually mistaking progress for prejudice.
Yup, all the way down.
I’ll be the first to stipulate that the party’s criteria for allowing candidates to debate are boneheaded and not terribly democratic (small “d”) in spirit. If you’re going to choose your field based on polling and fundraising data, turning presidential politics into a fantasy football league, then you should create a third metric to recognize service in statewide or federal office.
It’s insane to create a process where voters get the chance to hear from billionaire Tom Steyer, who talks like an audible encyclopedia of every political cliche from the past 20 years, but not from the likes of Patrick or Sen. Michael F. Bennet (Colo.), who’ve actually won multiple elections and governed. Especially when you hold yourself out as the party that values public service.
But shallow and arbitrary as that process may be, it’s hard to see how it’s been any shallower or more arbitrary for candidates of color than for anyone else. It certainly wasn’t any kinder to John Hickenlooper or Beto O’Rourke (you remember: tall guy, big teeth, breaks into Spanish for no reason) than it was to Booker or Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.).
No, the whiteness of the debate field isn’t telling us that the process is somehow stacked against other candidates. What it’s telling us is that simply being nonwhite isn’t enough to propel your candidacy anymore.
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I think Identity Politics is ultimately a dead end compared to Class Warfare but yeesh, “simply being nonwhite isn’t enough”?
Do you see the implicit assumption of “Whiteness” as normal? I keep telling people I’m Ben Franklin, that’s how I know.
About privilege that is, and I’m also a Class Traitor which is really far more important.
Oh look, he’s not finished digging yet.
When Barack Obama ran in 2008 on a theme of “hope and change,” identity was the thing that made him possible. Obama’s governing philosophy was as squishy then as it remained for most of his presidency; what mattered to his supporters was that he embodied a turning of the page, racially and generationally.
Ok, get it through your head Barack Obama governed as a Conservative Republican. He bragged about it publicly about 10% as often as Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio has lied.
So naturally a bunch of this year’s candidates seemed to think they could re-create that magic by putting identity front and center.
Harris made race the theme of the first debate, jumping at the chance to lecture Joe Biden on busing. Except it turned out that Harris didn’t really have anything new to say on the issue — or any issue, really — and she squandered huge crowds and fawning coverage in about two weeks.
Former housing secretary Julián Castro talked endlessly about growing up Latino in Texas, but his actual plan on immigration was too extreme to be taken seriously. Booker has long been an inspiring figure in his party, but his campaign left you wondering what it was he’d inspire anyone to do.
On the contrary, I could offer you a one-sentence argument for every candidate who made the debate stage in Iowa this week. I might not agree with them, but at least I know what they’re about.
I’m not saying candidates such as Harris, Castro and Booker didn’t have the experience or the intellectual heft to advance a more thoughtful idea for how to govern. They just didn’t seem to think it mattered very much.
Actually, you are.
And after Obama, just showing up and offering to break barriers are not enough. Voters now tend to see nonwhite candidates as candidates, period. That’s a step forward.
Unproven, and how is this a step forward?
In fact, the most damaging thing about this posturing over debates is that the candidates who complained have advanced an oddly retro idea of social justice. They’ve argued that fairness is defined not by equality of opportunity, but by equality of outcomes — something the last two Democratic nominees explicitly rejected.
They’re saying that there ought to be a place onstage for a candidate who diversifies the field, whether that candidate has been disadvantaged in any way or not.
So the fact that 40% of people are Racists and don’t think you’re a human being who qualifies for the same rights as “White Folk” is not a disadvantage. In your Ayn Rand Libertarian dreams.
That’s not the way most American voters — white, black or otherwise — think about racial equity. And if you want to lose another election, it’s not a bad place to start.
Instructional on what an asshole Jennifer Rubin can be also if you click through. That Bai chooses these links displays his deep, deep Conservatism though he likes to troll as a “Pragmatist”.