"I'm here because of Ashley"

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Barack Obama, March 2008

Respect Yourself

Time for a little wisdom from the past.

No More Drama

Excuse me for a moment while I draw on my past as a therapist to share something that I think is critical if we're ever going to understand what it means to "be the change we want to see in the world."

The thing I see that keeps us from getting there was described years ago by Stephen Karpman as the Drama Triangle. Its a way of seeing the world that leaves us emotionally immature because it takes the "I" out of the equation. In other words, it strips us of all of our power. When we engage each other from this perspective, we do so from one of three positions.



Most often liberals enter the drama triangle from the position of "rescuer." We see some injustice in the world and want to make it right. The problem is...the role of rescuer requires that we define someone as the victim and someone as the persecutor. And that's where we get locked in. We not only deny our own self-interest (that's where we take the "I" out of the equation), we strip the victim of their power and blame/demonize the persecutor.

Once we've bought into this frame, from which the "I" is excluded, we're locked in and travel around the triangle playing the other two roles as well. If you've seen situations where you or others are at the mercy of circumstances or another person, you're identifying with the victim role. And when we attack anyone who doesn't agree with us, we're playing the persecutor.

All of the positions on the drama triangle are there to deny one thing...responsibility for oneself. It's all a massive game to find a place for blame. Of course, no one on the triangle is ever willing to accept the blame and so the conversation merely escalates...hence the drama.

Too many of our political conversations are caught up in this kind of drama. As I just noted in my last post, Markos provides a perfect example. He wants to capture the role of victim because President Obama is not fighting for him. He defines Obama as the persecutor by making him the cause of the despair among Netroots Nations attendees. Finally, he alludes to his own persecutor role by suggesting he won't fight for Obama. Nowhere in any of that does Markos talk about using his own power to fight his own battles on the issues he cares about.

We do this as well when we imply our own powerlessness against the money in politics or the media's role in defining the issues/candidates. Of course there's some truth in those claims. But the minute we see ourselves as powerless against them, we've entered the drama triangle.

Once the drama is engaged, there is no potential for solutions. That's because at every turn we've given up the one tool we have to affect change...ourselves. Our focus has turned completely to the "other" on the triangle. And so we feel powerless. Because we are.

The only way to avoid that is to completely step off the frame of the triangle and put the "I" back into the equation. We are not the victims of anyone else. And we don't need to rescue or demonize anybody. We need to act on behalf of our own self-interests by doing what we can to change things. As Gandhi once said, most of the time those actions will seem insignificant, but its important that we do them. The truth is that blaming someone else accomplishes even less.

So if we want to see change, and if we actually see ourselves as "the change we've been waiting for," our motto should be NO MORE DRAMA.

Get Over It!

It sounds like the Netroots Nation crowd wasn't quite as hostile to President Obama as they were last year. But they still managed to present an image that does nothing but dampen the hard work the rest of us are doing during this critical campaign.

It was particularly interesting to note what Markos had to say.

I asked Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas if he was worried about the level of despair at the conference. He replied, “The administration should be worried about the level of despair here.” Like many attendees, he brought up the failed recall election in Wisconsin. The Republicans, he pointed out, sent all sorts of surrogates to the state to campaign for Gov. Scott Walker. “Obama stayed away,” he says. “Why? Because he would be embarrassed if he lost. I’ll tell you what. If he shows that he’s going to fight for the things that I care about, I will fight twice as hard for him.” And if he doesn’t? “Then I’ll vote for him,” says Moulitsas.

First of all, did I miss an appearance by Mitt Romney - the Republican nominee - campaigning in Wisconsin for the recall? No? But he feels comfortable bashing President Obama for not going.

Secondly, I have to wonder if this is the same Markos who said this a little over 5 years ago about the left's interest groups who fight for their cause over our Democratic candidates.

There's no better way to illustrate the self-centered myopia of today's progressive interest groups. That's not to gloss over their many contributions to the cause, but we lose if our interest groups remain in their silos, focused on their own narrow agenda to the exclusion of the broader progressive movement...

Together we can move mountains. Divided, we can help Republicans get back into the game.

I remember that because I was reading Daily Kos back in those days. Markos used to regularly rail about interest groups who put their own issues ahead of electing Democrats. His position today is a complete reversal of that.

When Markos says that "the administration should be worried about the level of despair" at Netroots Nation, one of my first thoughts was to remember the inspiring words of President John F. Kennedy.

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

In other words, he was forecasting the idea that "we are the change we've been waiting for" instead of simply whining about the President not fighting hard enough for the things we care about.

The loss of that kind of sentiment is, to me, a perfect example of how so many of us have bought into this age of entitlement. I get pissed off about that. And when I do, I want to shout, GET OVER IT!

A Pic, a Poll, and a Tune

This is one of my all-time favorites. Her eyes tell us that this woman knows a thing or two about the long haul nature of hope.


This week Latino Decisions published a new poll.


The Latino vote in 2008 was Obama 67 McCain 31.

Finally, here's a song Jill Sobule performed at Netroots Nation last year. I was in the audience at the time and we went absolutely MAD for it. I just found it on youtube today.

Race and the Social Safety Net, part II

Yesterday as I was writing about race and the social safety net, of course I thought of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum equating Medicaid recipients to "blah people."



While he claims to have substituted an "h" for the "ck" that wanted to slip out, this is perhaps the most obvious attempt to paint the picture of black people as the beneficiaries of the social safety net.

But the truth is, examples abound. I just came across another one today from right wing preacher, author, activist David Barton.

Wouldn't it be interesting to do a study between those that are on welfare and see how much and how often they read the Bible. You know, if Booker T. Washington is right that Christianity and reading the Bible increases your desires and therefore your ability for hard work; if we take that as an axiom, does that mean that the people who are getting government assistance spend nearly no time in the Bible, therefore have no desire, and therefore no ability for hard work? I could go a lot of places with this. I would love to see this proven out in some kind of sociological study, but it makes perfect sense.

Notice the dog whistle there...the use of Booker T. Washington. Of course there has never been a white person who said something similar (?). And I'm sure that Mr. Barton has a storehouse full of quotes from black people that he uses when talking about most any subject < snark off >. But we all know that welfare is all about black people. And so we've implanted the vision of a black man in the context of remarks about it and have the "good negro" telling all those shiftless ones what they should do.

There is also the assumption that people are on welfare because they have no desire or ability for hard work. I guess its incomprehensible to him that the need for support might come from a lack of education/training, no jobs available, divorce, lack of affordable child care, or even health problems.

Finally, I'd just note that the word "welfare" has now come to represent any type of government assistance for most conservatives (including Medicare, SS, and Medicaid). That's because in 1997, what we once referred to as welfare was reformed and became Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But after over 40 years of associating "welfare" with "black," why bother updating?

"I'd rather be us than them"

Ever since the last jobs report, the media has been in a tailspin about President Obama. Yesterday was a perfect example. To them, of course Obama lost the election when he said "The private sector is doing fine." Talk about hysteria!

Meanwhile, Romney was suggesting we don't need cops, firefighters or teachers, dissed the owners of the restaurant in Iowa where he held a town hall discussion, and demonstrated that he doesn't know what a doughnut is. The guy is a walking gaffe.

I think a lot of this comes down to expectations. The media expect President Obama to be smooth, cool and inspirational ALL THE TIME. They're content if Romney gets through the day staying on script. And so folks like Michael Tomasky wind up responding to yesterday by saying dumb sh*t like this:

But be that as it may, the fact is that the Obama campaign is in a hole right now, and until they figure out how to tell a story that makes Romney answer some questions, it’s going to get deeper.

The Obama campaign is in a hole right now? Really? Compared to who? Surely it must be the goddess herself because he certainly isn't in a hole compared to Romney.

Let's take a look at some actual facts about who is currently leading this race. Once again, the best way to judge that is by looking at the electoral map. Right now President Obama has a likely 270 electoral votes. If we look at this from Romney's perspective, his task is to not only run the table on the 5 states where the race is currently tied (Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Colorado), but he has to also take one state where Obama is currently leading (the one to watch is Virginia).

If you haven't checked out Nate Silver's place in a while, you might want to go take a look. He's got all of his prediction models up and going for the presidential election. Right now it shows President Obama with a 61.6% chance of being re-elected. Romney's shot at winning stands at 38.4%.

What I really enjoyed about Silver's work is that on his map of "State-by-State Probabilities," he comes up with the very same projection that I did a few weeks ago. It basically boils down to 303 electoral votes for Obama and 235 for Romney.

Soak all that information in and then tell me...who is the one in the hole right now? As David Plouffe said recently:

This is going to be a very close race, but I’d rather be us than them.