Dog Whistles from the Left (updated)

I've written before about how uncomfortable I am with the idea that Democrats need to figure out how to appeal to working class white voters. It's not that I object to building a bigger coalition. My concern is the often unspoken message that appealing to the unique concerns of people of color is the wrong message.

In an op-ed in the NYT today, Noam Scheiber makes that often unspoken argument overtly. He's writing about Mayor Bill DeBlasio's drop in the polls. But I don't want to get distracted with analyzing DeBlasio's performance. Instead, let's pay attention to the overall message.

From the get-go, Mr. de Blasio’s campaign fused two distinct strands of progressivism. The first was economic populism, not least his criticism that Michael R. Bloomberg had placed the interests of Wall Street and the wealthy above those of average New Yorkers.

The second was what some have called “identity group” liberalism, which appealed to black and Latino voters as blacks and Latinos, not on the basis of economic interests they shared with whites. The centerpiece of Mr. de Blasio’s identity-group agenda was his promise to win better treatment for minorities at the hands of the police.

The problem for Mr. de Blasio is that only the first approach has widespread appeal...

If you were to rank issues by their potential to unite whites and minority voters, the most promising would be populist economic issues like raising taxes on the rich. Somewhere in the middle would be an issue like health care, which has large economic benefits for both whites and nonwhites, even if opponents can portray it as a sop to the latter. At the very bottom would be issues with little economic content, but which different racial groups view in radically different ways.

What Scheiber is basically saying is that if you want to unite whites and minority voters, you have to focus on the issues that are a priority to whites. That's pretty much white supremacy in a nutshell. His big "tell" comes in what he leaves out of that last sentence. The reason racial groups view the issues he places at the bottom differently is because they affect racial groups differently. White people never had to be concerned about "stop-and-frisk" because it almost never happened to a white person. White mothers/fathers, wives, siblings don't spend much time worrying that their son, husband, brother will be harassed/beaten/killed because some police officer jumped to the conclusion that he was a "dangerous black/brown man." But that is exactly how police actions become a priority for voters of color. The fear of what can happen becomes a life-and-death issue for them - as we've seen lately.

White people were just as oblivious to the priorities of African Americans during the Jim Crow era. One of the reasons Dr. Martin Luther King was so revolutionary and successful is that he believed white people would reject the treatment of African Americans if they could see it...really see it. Here's how Ta-Nehisi Coates talked about that.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may have led African Americans out of segregation, and he may have cured incalculable numbers of white racists, but more than all that, he believed that the lion's share of the population of this country would not support the rights of thugs to pummel people who just wanted to cross a bridge. King believed in white people, and when I was a younger, more callow man, that belief made me suck my teeth. I saw it as weakness and cowardice, a lack of faith in his own. But it was the opposite. King's belief in white people was the ultimate show of strength: He was willing to give his life on a bet that they were no different from the people who lived next door.

For Scheiber, understanding and validating those priorities in today's America is a losing strategy for Democrats.

The real lesson is that Mr. de Blasio’s brand of liberalism isn’t a basis for Democratic dominance, as his boosters once enthused. Politically, economic populism trumps identity-group appeals.

I'll simply remind you that Scheiber himself described DeBlasio's brand of liberalism as a fusion of economic populism with things like a promise to end "stop-and-frisk." So it is that fusion politics championed by people like Rev. William Barber and the Moral Mondays Movement that Scheiber is rejecting - Democrats shouldn't embrace both. To rephrase what he said: "Politically, white people's priorities trump people of color's priorities." If it makes you uncomfortable to hear it said that way, you are tuned in to the dog whistle by which white supremacy is often communicated. Those messages are not the exclusive domain of people on the right.

UPDATE: On twitter Scheiber is responding to a critique of his op-ed (which I didn't make - but his response is still instructive) by saying that it was meant to be "descriptive, not normative." In a sense, he's right about that. What he did was describe how politics on the left looks these days from a white privileged perspective. I simply reject that perspective.

Dear liberal media: Change doesn't come from Washington

Yesterday Ezra Klein suggested that rather than changing things, President Obama broke American politics even further. After recounting some of the President's most important accomplishments, he said this:

But he didn't do all this by fixing American politics. He did all this by breaking American politics even further. Obama hasn't healed the divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Rather, he's one of the most polarizing presidents since the advent of polling.

To back up that last point, he includes this chart.

I've always thought that Klein should stick to wonking instead of punditry. But on this one, he failed at both. On the wonk side, the problem with that chart is that it failed to take into account what has happened to the Republican Party in the last decade. We all know by now that the party has gotten more and more extreme in their views. And this chart shows the result.

What we see is that, when it comes to party identification, the Democrats have bounced around a bit in response to major events (the impeachment of President Clinton and the election of Barack Obama), but are basically at the same point today they were in 1990 (from 33% to 32%). Republicans on the other hand have lost a lot of ground - going from 31% of the electorate to 24%. Pretty much all of those who abandoned the party have become independents (from 29% to 38%). So it shouldn't come as a surprise to Klein that as the Republican Party is shedding their more moderate members, the remaining hardliners are more opposed to a president from the other party. That isn't about polarization, its about the potential death of the Republican Party.

On the pundit side of things, Klein swings and misses because he is totally focused on what is going on in Washington DC. He misses what President Obama has been saying all along.

Rev. William Barber takes note of history and the big picture to see the election of Barack Obama as the beginning of  a "Third Reconstruction" fueled by fusion politics.

In order to see movements like that, one has to have a long view of what is happening outside of the DC bubble...something Klein doesn't seem capable of, but people like Rev. Barber and President Obama know very well. 

Building a moral fusion movement

I know a lot of you will think that you don't have an hour to listen to Rev. William Barber's speech at Netroots Nation. The media ignored it because he's not likely to be a presidential candidate in 2016. But if you want to be inspired to build a fusion movement that takes our political discussion above the snake line to the moral high ground, I suggest you find the time. Lordy...this man is just what our spirits need these days!

What Democrats need to do to maintain the "coalition of the ascendant"

We've seen how it worked. In both 2008 and 2012, President Obama put together a "coalition of the ascendant" that recognized the changing face of America and beat the historical odds to win two national elections. That coalition was made up of people of color, millenials and college educated white people (mostly women).

But while pundits are warning Republicans that if they don't reach out to Latinos their Party is doomed in the future, most of the advice they are giving Democrats tends to ignore the very coalition that brought this success to Democrats. The narrative that we hear most often is all about a progressive populism that focuses primarily on income inequality.

And so I'd like to counter that narrative by suggesting that there are some things Democrats need to do in order to maintain the momentum started by President Obama and build on the success of the coalition of the ascendant.

First and foremost, they need to go "all in" on the 2014 mid-term election. Groups like Priorities USA that decide to sit this one out and wait for 2016 risk incurring the ire of those of us who know that what has halted progress in this country is NOT the lack of presidential leadership, but Republican obstructionism. That is a direct result of the 2010 mid-term election when too many Democrats decided to sit things out - giving the teapublicans the opportunity to win both Congressional majorities and governorships/state legislatures. The real base of the Democratic Party knows that winning presidential elections is not enough. And we'll be watching to see who puts it all on the line to do what needs to be done in 2014.

In terms of issues, supporting a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers as a necessary component of immigration reform is a must. The current status quo is not sustainable. End of story.

A HUGE issue for this coalition are the Republican attacks on voting rights. These affect nearly all components of this group - including people of color primarily, but also students and low income Americans. Protecting the franchise (and actually expanding it as AG Eric Holder has called for with the abolition of disenfranchisement of felons) will be a critical component of maintaining the coalition.

Anyone who really watched what Mayor Bill DeBlasio did in New York City to win his overwhelming victory there is aware that he did not simply champion the cause of income inequality. He also promised to do away with the odious Stop and Frisk policy of his predecessor. That garnered him huge support in the African American and Latino communities - as well as many of the millenials who were often subject to that policy.

Watching the reaction to the murders of young black men like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, we can draw parallels to the need to end policies like Stand Your Ground and the school-to-prison pipeline that affects so many young people of color. Much like the attacks on voting rights, these are issues that often fall off the radar screen of too many white middle class Democrats.  But they are literally life and death issues to many of the people who make up the coalition of the ascendant.

Of course continuing the work of President Obama on LGBT equality, women's rights, education and healthcare reform will be crucial as well as addressing the issues of income inequality and climate change. The point here is that there is no single issue that unites this coalition. All the voices must be heard.

Back in 1981 Bernice Johnson Reagon (who is perhaps best known for founding the group Sweet Honey in the Rock) gave a speech on coalition politics that is a must-read for every Democrat/progressive/liberal. I'll simply give you a little taste - but seriously, go read (and study) the whole thing.

We’ve pretty much come to the end of a time when you can have a space that is “yours only”—just for the people you want to be there...To a large extent it’s because we have just finished with that kind of isolating. There is no hiding place. There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. It’s over. Give it up...

Some people will come to a coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not they feel good when they get there. They’re not looking for a coalition; they’re looking for a home! They’re looking for a bottle with some milk in it and a nipple, which does not happen in a coalition. You don’t get a lot of food in a coalition. You don’t get fed a lot in a coalition. In a coalition you have to give, and it is different from your home...

It must become necessary for all of us to feel that this is our world. And that we are here to stay and that anything that is here is ours to take and to use in our image. And watch that “ours’ make it as big as you can...The “our” must include everybody you have to include in order for you to survive. You must be sure you understand that you ain’t gonna be able to have an “our” that don’t include Bernice Johnson Reagon, cause I don’t plan to go nowhere! That’s why we have to have coalitions. Cause I ain’t gonna let you live unless you let me live. Now there’s danger in that, but there’s also the possibility that we can both live—if you can stand it...

There is an offensive movement that started in this country in the 60’s that is continuing. The reason we are stumbling is that we are at the point where in order to take the next step we’ve got to do it with some folk we don’t care too much about. And we got to vomit over that for a little while. We must just keep going.

In other words, maintaining this coalition is not about some Kumbaya moment designed to make you feel better. Its hard - even dangerous - work. And its not about getting our egos fed, its about giving rather than receiving.

But it is also exactly what Rev. William Barber is referring to when he talks about "fusion politics." And its what David Simon meant when he talked about "The Death of Normal."

America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. The America in which it was otherwise is dying, thank god, and those who relied on entitlement and division to command power will either be obliged to accept the changes, or retreat to the gated communities from which they wish to wax nostalgic and brood on political irrelevance...

We are all the other now, in some sense. Special interests? That term has no more meaning in the New America. We are all — all of us, every last American, even the whitest of white guys — special interests. And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment. And those who continue to argue for such retrograde notions as a political reality will become less germane and more ridiculous with every passing year.

Any political party - including Democrats - that wants to survive had better start listening to people like Bernice Johnson Reagon, Rev. William Barber and David Simon on continuing the work President Obama has begun to build the coalition of the ascendant.

The Faces of Change

I promised pictures of the Moral March, and here they are. These are just a few of the photographs taken by an amazing photographer Adrian Resa Jones. You can see her whole flickr page from the march at that link.

Those, my friends, are the faces of change. And when you put them all together - they look like this...

So if you are ever tempted to get discouraged and think the lunatics are winning, just go take a look at these faces and rest assured that, as Rev. Barber said:

So we're not confused, we're not schizophrenic, we are quite clear, we're clothed in our right minds, WE KNOW WHO WE ARE, we believe we've been born for this moment. Anybody that thought difficulties would depress us better look again. Resurrection always wins. Justice always wins. Love always wins. Courage always wins.

"North Carolina is ground zero" (updated w/ video of #MoralMarch)

The national media has collectively decided that the next wave of a liberal movement for Democrats will come in the form of populism fueled by income inequality. Occupy Wall Streeters take the credit for igniting this movement while liberal bloggers promote politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren as its leaders.

Meanwhile, only a few are paying attention to the actual movement underway in North Carolina...the one being led by Rev. Dr. William Barber and the NC NAACP called "Moral Mondays." Yesterday that movement drew 80,000 to 100,000 for the Moral March in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ari Berman is one of those few journalists who is paying attention.

The Moral Monday protests transformed North Carolina politics in 2013, building a multiracial, multi-issue movement centered around social justice such as the South hadn’t seen since the 1960s. “We have come to say to the extremists, who ignore the common good and have chosen the low road, your actions have worked in reverse,” said Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and the leader of the Moral Monday movement, in his boisterous keynote speech. “You may have thought you were going to discourage us, but instead you have encouraged us. The more you push us back, the more we will fight to go forward. The more you try to oppress us, the more you will inspire us.”

I am personally struck by how well Rev. Barber learned the lessons taught to us by movement leaders like Martin Luther King. He is building a coalition of citizens who are committed to clear principles that speak to the very real concerns of the people. Here are their five demands:

• Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;
• Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
• Stand up for the health of every North Carolinian by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;
• Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
• Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.

Notice that there's no railing against the 1%ers in that platform. They are not this movement's concern. The focus is on justice and equality for the rest of us. Added to a national call for immigration reform, these are the policies that have attracted a diverse coalition that covers the gamut of race, creed, gender and sexual orientation...exactly the kind of coalition that will be needed to secure victories in the future. 

But right now Rev. Barber is focusing all his energy on changing things in the relatively small swing state of North Carolina. That reminds me of what Pete Seeger once said that he learned from Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

When you face an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim at the opponent's strong points. You aim for something a little off to the side. But you win it. And having won that bus boycott...13 months it took him to do it...then he moved on to other things.

Rev. Barber has been at this in North Carolina for 10 months now. And as we speak, Moral Monday movements are being planned in places like Georgia and Alabama. As the Reverend says, "We know we're in the South - the crucible of change - where hope has always had to be chiseled from the stone of despair. We understand that North Carolina is ground zero and the nation is looking at us."

The other lesson Rev. Barber learned well is that successful movements are built on hope, not cynicism.

So we're not confused, we're not schizophrenic, we are quite clear, we're clothed in our right minds, WE KNOW WHO WE ARE, we believe we've been born for this moment. Anybody that thought difficulties would depress us better look again. Resurrection always wins. Justice always wins. Love always wins. Courage always wins.

As we've learned, cynicism is the refuge of the privileged while hope is often the only thing available to the oppressed.

For someone sitting on the very edge of survival, hope is extremely important. Often it is only hope, sometimes even false hope, that allows him to make it to the next day... Cynicism is deadly for someone on the edge of survival. Even in the darkest night, he cannot afford to be cynical. That cynicism just might push him over the edge.

If you're in need of an infusion of hope, I suggest you go to Rev. Barber's youtube channel and listen to more of what he has to say. Here's one of my favorites.

And so I expect that when the history books are written, it will be movements like the one being built in North Carolina that will actually "bend the arc of history towards justice." That's why I'm going to be keeping my eye on this one.

P.S. My friend Denise Oliver-Velez was in Raleigh yesterday for the Moral March. She promises pictures that I'll share here when I get them :-)

UPDATE: Here's video of the Moral March with Rev. Barber calling us all to "higher ground."

An excerpt:

You don't have enough political power to vote us away. You don't have enough insults to taunt us away. And you don't have enough money to buy us away.

We will not give up, NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

We will never abdicate our birth right and sell it for a bowl of porridge.

Left/Right Libertarianism as the developing threat to progressive change

Three years ago when Jane Hamsher decided to team up with Grover Norquist to try to defeat Obamacare, most of us were shocked by her obvious Obama Derangement Syndrome. And yet today, that effort to hoodwink progressives into signing up with tea party libertarians is a pretty common phenomenon. Lately we've watched these folks:

1. #StandWithRand on his ridiculous anti-drone filibuster
2.  Suggest that we should join forces with the tea party to defeat a budget deal
3. Tell us that America's only hope is Ron/Rand Paul and the Drudge Report
4. Team up with tea party Rep. Justin Amash to defund the NSA
5. Agree with Sarah Palin's "Let Allah sort it out" on the gassing of civilians in Syria 

As someone who is addicted to looking at the big picture, I think it behooves us to take a look at what is happening here. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is exactly the direction folks like Assange and Greenwald have wanted to see things go for a long time. But the question still remains, "why is this sort of movement gaining traction with progressives these days?" There are two things that make this all seem counter-intuitive:

1. The Republican Party is pandering to its most reactionary lunatic base. Not in my lifetime have I seen so much distance between where the two parties would take the country, and
2. We now have the most liberal President we've seen in a generation.

But if we dig a little deeper, those are exactly the things that are providing a platform for this movement towards libertarianism. We all know that Ron Paul actually getting the Republican nomination for president was a pipe dream. But with the disarray that we've seen recently, his son Rand is actually being seen as a serious contender. The Republican neo-cons failed so disastrously during the Bush/Cheney years that they gave an opening to the libertarian alternative.

On the other hand, folks are talking about an ascendant Democratic Party for the foreseeable future unless the Republicans can get their act together (which is clearly not happening yet). The trouble is, too many progressives have spent so long on the outside, that they don't know how to behave when they're finally on the inside. They've convinced themselves that any attempt to actually govern in a democratic republic (ie, compromise) indicates that our leaders have simply sold out to the oligarchs, plutocrats, and military industrial complex. They've perfected the art of tearing down the opposition but don't have a g-d clue about how to rebuild. And so, in their frustration, they simply continue to tear down - opening the gate to libertarianism. 

Oh, and did I mention that both the President and the ascendant Democratic base are neither white nor male? Yep, what's happening is that its time for the good ol boys to regroup.

Make no mistake about it...this is a re-invention of a 21st century southern strategy aimed at the idea of forming a national coalition of white male libertarians during a time when the rights of women and people of color are on the line.

I would suggest that going forward, this developing coalition between left/right libertarians will be a bigger threat to actual progressive change than the vestiges of the Republican Party in its previous incarnation. In the near future, keep your eye on Rand Paul. As long as his bid for the presidency is under the banner of the Republican Party, he's toast. But if he makes a break and runs as a third party candidate, its because he thinks this coalition is big enough to give him a shot.

In the meantime, lets keep our eye on the prize of what a true fusion politics has always looked like and the kind of opposition it has historically engendered. As the saying goes, "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it."

President Obama's long-term strategy on racism (updated)

One of the things that many people noted about President Obama speech on racism back in 2008 is that he not only addressed the anger of African Americans at the legacy of racism in this country, he addressed the anger/fear of white people that produced it.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze — a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding.

 That's the same history Tim Wise recounts in this video clip on "the creation of whiteness."



The President returned to this theme in an interview this week with the New York Times.

And that’s what people sense. That's why people are anxious. That's why people are frustrated. That's what they talk to me about and that's what they write to me about: “I'm doing okay right now, but what I've seen over the last 20 years and what I learned profoundly during this crisis is that the ground under my feet just isn't as secure, and that the work I'm doing may not be rewarded.” And everything that I am proposing and everything I will be proposing over the next three years goes right at that issue. And if that’s not what Washington’s talking about, then we will be missing the boat.

And racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot. If the economy is growing, everybody feels invested. Everybody feels as if we're rolling in the same direction.

So while President Obama's African American critics are wrong - his administration is tackling some of the most insidious civil rights issues of our time - his vision is (once again) much bigger than that. He doesn't just want to ameliorate the affects of racism on black people. He wants to tackle the roots of racism...in white people.

The truth is that all "isms" stem from fear and insecurity. As the President said, we've had a political and economic system that has exploited those fears for decades now. And we're seeing a conservative movement attempt to ramp up those fears to paranoia levels lately.

The President is suggesting an antidote to those fears.

Some might call that crazy. But I'd say its good crazy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates commented on that:

Here is where Barack Obama and the civil rights leaders of old are joined -- in a shocking, almost certifiable faith in humanity, something that subsequent generations lost. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may have led African Americans out of segregation, and he may have cured incalculable numbers of white racists, but more than all that, he believed that the lion's share of the population of this country would not support the rights of thugs to pummel people who just wanted to cross a bridge. King believed in white people, and when I was a younger, more callow man, that belief made me suck my teeth. I saw it as weakness and cowardice, a lack of faith in his own. But it was the opposite. King's belief in white people was the ultimate show of strength: He was willing to give his life on a bet that they were no different from the people who lived next door.

That's the same bet President Obama is making today.

UPDATE: Go read this article about Rev. William Barber - President of the NC NAACP and founder of the Moral Mondays movement. He's enacting this very vision on the ground in North Carolina.

"We have a new demographic emerging that is changing the South. The one thing they don't want to see is us crossing over racial lines and class lines and gender lines and labor lines. When this coalition comes together, you're going to see a New South."

"Change is a motherf*cker when you run from it"

As the backlash develops to what Dr. William Barber II calls the "third reconstruction," I am reminded of how perceptively Derrick Jensen described what we're seeing these days in his book The Culture of Make Believe.

From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with—and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with—the perceived entitlement...

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

In other words, this is not some new sexism, racism, homophobia that is showing its face. Its been there all along - disguised as tradition (Paula Deen) or religion (Mike Huckabee). What has changed is that women, people of color and LGBT are developing the "power and wherewithal to not go along with the perceived entitlement." Fear and hatred can no longer be normalized and are thus being exposed.

I think its important that we recognize this so that we see what is happening as the result of progress rather than feed our own fears about going backward. The beast is in its death throes and everyone - I mean EVERYONE - knows how this story is going to end eventually. That's what they're so afraid of.

America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. The America in which it was otherwise is dying, thank god, and those who relied on entitlement and division to command power will either be obliged to accept the changes, or retreat to the gated communities from which they wish to wax nostalgic and brood on political irrelevance...

Hard times are still to come for all of us. Rear guard actions will be fought at every political crossroad. But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable...

Regardless of what happens with his second term, Barack Obama’s great victory has already been won: We are all the other now, in some sense... And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment. And those who continue to argue for such retrograde notions as a political reality will become less germane and more ridiculous with every passing year. 

"There's something happening here..."

As regular readers here know, I've been talking for awhile now about how what we're witnessing is the white male patriarchy in its death throes. Yesterday 5 Justices on the Supreme Court were the latest to lash out when they basically issued a ruling that guts the Voting Rights Act.

What I've also been suggesting is that we are in the midst of a third wave of a movement to remedy this country's original sin of slavery and racism. Of course the first was the Civil War that ended slavery and the second was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's that ended Jim Crow. In both of those movements white people gave African Americans legal standing. Over the course of the last 50 years, they've used those legal rights to raise themselves up. The challenge white people are facing today is that it is finally time to look African Americans (and other people of color) in the eye - face to face as equals. And even occasionally see them as our leaders. That's not going down real well. And so the dying beast is lashing out.

All of that came together in this fascinating video by Dr. William Barber II, President of the NC NAACP. I know most people won't take the time to listen to a 7 1/2 minute video. But you need to watch this and learn how what is happening RIGHT NOW is informed by our history.

In Rev. Dr. Barber's view, we are currently going through the third reconstruction. The first Reconstruction took place after the Civil War. Fusion politics — a governing coalition including Lincoln Republicans, freedmen and former slaves, and populists — made it possible for former slaves to become business, community, and political leaders. But fusion politics was snuffed out by a violent backlash, and replaced by Jim Crow laws that blocked African Americans from voting through poll taxes, impossible "tests," and terrorism.

In the 1960s, there was another attempt at reconstruction, better known as the Civil Rights Movement. The progress we made was met with another violent backlash, culminating in the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Rev. Dr. Barber identifies the possibility of a third reconstruction, one that could actually succeed, with the launch of Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008. Once again, this attempt at fusion politics has been met with a hateful backlash. The backlash against integration, equality, and trans-racial governing coalitions has, in all three instances, included attacks on voting rights of African Americans and other minorities. Rev. Barber believes that change is inevitable because of demographic shifts in America and the effectiveness of fusion politics.

Last night we saw a wonderful example of what fusion politics looks like in - of all places - the Texas legislature. Senator Wendy Davis - who owes her seat to a VRA Section 5 challenge - launched a real filibuster to stop a bill that would have stripped most women in Texas of their constitutional right to have an abortion. After standing in the senate well for hours without being able to sit or eat or drink, buoyed only by the crowds that had gathered to cheer her on, she put on a back brace - with an assist from a friend...Senator Rodney Ellis. Here's fusion politics in picture form folks.

That "assist" was against the rules of the filibuster - according to the Republicans in charge. It was one of "three strikes" against Davis that finally ended the filibuster. But in the remaining minutes of the session, the gallery crowd had a little fusion politics to play as well. They shouted until the clock ran out and defeated the bill. 

For quite a while now President Obama has been trying to light a fire under us - telling us that we need to engage as citizens in this democracy. I'd say its time we started watching the good people of Texas and the folks participating in North Carolina's Moral Monday movement. As the song says..."There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."

Somebody noticed.

Something special is happening in Austin tonight: http://t.co/RpbnCbO6zw #StandWithWendy
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 26, 2013