DCDL

This has come up in a few DL conversations, so I wanted to pass along the link.

From last Friday’s Bill Moyers Journal, Shelby Steele gives some historical background on the race politics involved in the Obama campaign. He used two terms I hadn’t heard before in this context: bargainers and challengers. Here’s how he defines those terms: (transcript)

SHELBY STEELE: Well, the black American identity, certainly black American politics are grounded in what I call challenging. It’s basically, they look at white America and say we’re going to presume that you’re a racist until you prove otherwise. The whole concept is you keep whites on the hook. You keep the leverage. You keep the pressure. Here’s a guy who’s what I call a bargainer who’s giving whites the benefit of the doubt.

BILL MOYERS: Give me a simple definition of what you call a bargainer. And a simple definition of what you call a challenger.

SHELBY STEELE: A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Whites then respond with enormous gratitude. And bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the Sixties and so forth. Because they give whites this benefit of the doubt. That you can be with these people and not feel that you’re going to be charged with racism at any instant. And so they tend to be very successful, very popular.

Challengers on the other hand say, I presume that you, this institution, this society, is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference.

BILL MOYERS: Affirmative action.

SHELBY STEELE: Affirmative action. Diversity programs. Opportunities of one kind or another. And so, there is a much more concrete bargaining on the case of challengers. And you go into any American institution today and they’re all used to dealing with challengers. They all have a whole system of things that they can give to challengers, who then will offer absolution.

I should have posted this last week, but for local residents not yet registered to vote, time is running out if you want to participate in the presidential primary. In both Virginia and DC, Monday, January 14, is the deadline for registering to vote in the February 12 presidential primary election. For information, see the Virginia State Board of Elections or the DC Board of Elections and Ethics.

Maryland residents have until Tuesday, January 22, to register for their primary, which is also February 12 (see the Maryland State Board of Elections). The Maryland primary covers other races in addition to president. For example, Democrats in the 4th Congressional District will be deciding whether the progressive Donna Edwards will unseat the more conservative Rep. Al Wynn, so if you live in that district make sure you’re registered even if you think the presidential nomination will already have been decided by the time you get a chance to vote.

As always, many good discussions from the back room of Timberlake’s. Before I forget there were a couple of links I wanted to pass on.

The first regards voter suppression. It’s ironic that while Republicans are trying to suppress votes among the elderly, handicapped, and students through voter ID laws, and through techniques such as caging, Jonah Goldberg of NRO writes a book called Liberal Fascism. Fortunately, the always delightful David Niewert, writing at the American Prospect gives us this thorough take-down of Goldberg’s “opus”:

Goldberg, who has no credentials beyond the right-wing nepotism that has enabled his career as a pundit, has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It’s a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history.

Goldberg responds:

Neiwert, what with all of his credentials and seriousness might want to explain how a dogmatic individualist can be a totalitarian, since totalitarian in the academic literature he so esteems defines totalitarianism as anti-individualism. Totalitarianism is about trying to define the lives of others through state power. Individualists might be bad or wrong or selfish, but they aren’t any of those things because, again, they’re frick’n individualists!

Whatever.
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Friday, January 11, is the sixth anniversary of the transfer of the first prisoners to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and the ACLU, Amnesty International, Witness Against Torture, and many other groups are organizing a protest on the Mall.

George Bush’s embrace of torture, secret prisons, and denial of habeas corpus and other legal procedures to prisoners is one of the worst stains he’s going to be leaving on the country, and one of the legacies that will be hardest to clean up. If you’re able to take the time during the day, go participate. I plan to. If not, you can at least wear orange — if you can find any (not sure what I’ll do about that, but maybe they’ll have orange armbands to give out).

10:00 am - Gather at the National Mall for Orientation to Prisoner March (National Mall @ 12th street NW btwn Madison Dr NW & Jefferson Drive SW - near the Smithsonian Metro Stop)

11: 00 am - Permitted demonstration on the National Mall co-sponsored by Amnesty International and National Religious Campaign Against Torture

Noon - Guantanamo Prisoner Procession from the National Mall to the Supreme Court (2 plus miles)

1:30 pm - Funeral Ceremony at the Supreme Court remembering the four men who died in custody at Guantanamo and mourning the death of Habeas Corpus

Karl Rove (emphasis mine):

Sen. Hillary Clinton won working-class neighborhoods and less-affluent rural areas. Sen. Barack Obama won the college towns and the gentrified neighborhoods of more affluent communities. Put another way, Mrs. Clinton won the beer drinkers, Mr. Obama the white wine crowd. And there are more beer drinkers than wine swillers in the Democratic Party.

What’s this obsession that Republicans have with beverage analogies (or for that matter the word “swillers”)? I’m sure you recall this golden oldie launched against the 2004 Dean campaign:

‘I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government expanding, latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, New York Times reading …’ at this stage his wife leaps into finish off the mantra ‘… body-piercing, Hollywood loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.’

Rove’s message, I gather, is that Dean and Obama are elitist, while Clinton is regular people. You can tell that by the beverage of choice of their supporters.

I for one, happen to be an elitist beer drinker. Take that, Karl Rove. I’m sure that on a given DL happy hour we have plenty of salt-of-the-earth latte swillers.

Maybe our next straw poll should try to correlate beer/wine/latte drinkers with Clinton/Obama/Edwards supporters?

I did this once before and thought it might be good to make a tradition of it. Here are some links from the discussion at DCDL last night:

• Public Knowledge, where our speaker, Art Brodsky, is communications director
• Donna Edwards, the progressive candidate challenging corporate incumbent Rep. Al Wynn in the February 12 Democratic primary for Maryland’s 4th congressional district
• The Carbon Tax Center (where one attendee volunteers) and whether cap-and-trade is really as good as a carbon tax
• Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s comments on South Africa and the Palestinians, as discussed at Crooked Timber
• Stopping counterfeit designer goods as a priority in fighting terror
• Mark Kleiman’s comments on Christopher Hitchens’s Slate article bashing Hanukkah
• The DC Democrats’ holiday party and straw poll on Monday and whether we’ll see Marion Barry participating in the karaoke
• Rudy Giuliani’s connections with a Qatari royal who protected Khalid Sheikh Muhammad
• The movie Death of a President and whether it’s on Netflix (it is)
• Murray Waas’s new article on Mike Huckabee and serial rapist Wayne Dumond

If you want to share other links from last night’s discussions, leave a comment.

This Thursday, December 6, DC Drinking Liberally is pleased to have as our final guest speaker of the year Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge. The event will be at the usual time and place: 6:30-9pm in the back room of Timberlake’s (1726 Connecticut Ave NW, Dupont Circle Metro). We’ll start off with happy hour from about 6:30 to 7, followed Art’s talk and Q&A from about 7 to 7:45, and then we’ll probably hang around until 9 or so.

You may have seen Art’s posts on TPMCafe or the Huffington Post on net neutrality, telecom policy, and copyright — for example, this post on Comcast and net neutrality or this post on Verizon and the FCC.

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Support your local Democratic Party and vote for your preferred presidential candidate:

THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEMOCRATIC STATE COMMITTEE (DCDSC)
CORDIALLY INVITES YOU TO A HOLIDAY PARTY
&
PRESIDENTIAL FORUM AND STRAW POLL

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2007
7:00 to 11:00 pm

The 18th AMENDMENT RESTAURANT
613 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE
(one block from the Eastern Market Metro station)

Karaoke, Buffet, Cash Bar

Admission: contribution of $10 and book for youth up to the age of 12.
Make checks payable to the DCDSC.

At 8 p.m. there will be brief presentations from representatives of the presidential campaigns.

HONORARY CHAIRMAN
A. Scott Bolden

CHAIRPERSON
Philip Pannell

SPONSORS

The Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton The Honorable Marion Barry The Honorable Sharon Pratt The Honorable Arrington Dixon The Honorable Jack Evans The Honorable Philip Mendelson The Honorable Kwame Brown The Honorable Harry Thomas The Honorable Tommie Wells The Honorable Yvette Alexander The Honorable Sandy Allen The Honorable Paul Strauss The Honorable Michael D. Brown The Honorable Robert Bobb

James Bubar Marilyn Tyler Brown Anita Bonds Ward 2 Democratic Committee Ward 3 Democratic Committee Ward 4 Democrats Ward 5 Democrats Ward 6 Democrats Wards 7 Democrats Ward Eight Democrats Gertrude Stein Democratic Club DC Federation of Democratic Women DC for Obama Shelley Tomkins

Washington Teachers’ Union The Fellas (Eugene, Juan, Kemry) Fred Allen Jan Eichhorn Phinis Jones Keshini Ladduwahetty Linda Lingle Jeffrey Norman Jeffrey Richardson Juan Thompson Dan Wedderburn Paige Wedderburn

Our friends at the Sierra Club’s DC chapter are having one of their “Sierra Club and Beer” nights on Tuesday, October 23, from 7 to 9pm at Temperance Hall (3634 Georgia Avenue NW, Georgia Avenue–Petworth Metro):

Enjoy free beer. Meet new people. Protect the planet.

Join us for free beer and become part of Sierra Club’s mission to explore, enjoy, and protect the planet. Meet other folks who care about local and national conservation issues, win prizes, and find out how you can help make DC a leader in the fight against global warming.

There’s some controversy about why Bush vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) bill. Was it a previously dormant desire to hold down government spending that suddenly awakened in him? Was he determined to do what he can to slow the unstoppable juggernaut of socialist medicine? Does he simply hate poor and sick children? Bush gave an answer at a press conference yesterday:

Q I wanted to ask you about S-CHIP and why you even let that get to a situation where it had to be a veto? Isn’t there a responsibility by both the President and congressional leadership to work on this common ground before it gets to a veto?

THE PRESIDENT: Right, as I said, we weren’t dialed in. And I don’t know why. But they just ran the bill, and I made it clear we weren’t going to accept it. That happens sometimes. In the past, when I — I said, look, make sure we’re a part of the process, and we were. In this case, this bill started heading our way, and I recognize Republicans in the Senate supported it. We made it clear we didn’t agree. They passed it anyway. And so now, hopefully, we’ll be in the process. That’s why the President has a veto. Sometimes the legislative branch wants to go on without the President, pass pieces of legislation, and the President then can use the veto to make sure he’s a part of the process. And that’s — as you know, I fully intend to do. I want to make sure — and that’s why, when I tell you I’m going to sprint to the finish, and finish this job strong, that’s one way to ensure that I am relevant; that’s one way to sure that I am in the process. And I intend to use the veto.

So it’s not about any of that. He’s just trying to remain relevant and “sprint to the finish”. What if it happens to be a Defense appropriation bill that lands on his desk next time he’s feeling a bit irrelevant and winded?