This is a troubling blind spot of white liberalism: the idea that smart/educated people can't be racist+ that the solution to racism is individual absolution (*I* am not like that. *I* have never said the n-word in my life. *I* voted for Barack Obama) rather than systemic change.
I think it's tempting for us to believe we can just sort of delete the Confederacy app off our phone and be done. The idea that it's the whole operating system--that no part of our culture, even the good bits, is untouched by it--is too big to think about.
"Who do you become when you panic?" is a pretty good measure of who you really are. That instinct she had--that she could rely on the cops *even when it was she who broke the rules*--isn't something you get over in 1 afternoon of sensitivity training. That is firmware.
Anyway, this is all to say that, even if you've got a master's degree and you've read Marx in the original German and you always recycle, if you are white, you are probably running some of that firmware. You, me, all of us. It's in the background. It doesn't care how you vote.
(As a PS, I realize none of this is new or noteworthy to people who aren't white--but the 'racism is ignorance/ignorant people are racist' was such a constant drumbeat in my childhood that it almost began to seem like you could defeat racism by maintaining a GPA of 3.6 or higher)
President Barack Obama speaks at Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, N.H., at a town hall meeting about health care reform on Aug. 11, 2009. Photo by Pete Souza
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Jamie Utt: Interrupting Bernie: Exposing The White Supremacy Of The American Left
Because here’s the thing – what’s powerful about these interruptions from Black women is less how it has changed the tone of the Democratic campaigns and more about what they have exposed in the White left. I see these protests as less about the individual candidates themselves and more about how their White base refuses to center Black lives and Black issues. It’s notable that White Bernie supporters, who consider themselves the most progressive of us all, shouted down and booed Black women who dared to force Blackness into the center of White space. Because let’s be honest, every Bernie rally is White space.
Protesters interrupt Sanders to talk about police tactics and disregard for black lives and his supporters shout “taze them”
What was true in King’s time is true in ours: the greatest stumbling block to racial justice is not the KKK; it’s well-meaning White people who would rather maintain injustice than risk the decentering of our Whiteness and White comfort. And when I watch and hear the reaction of a mostly White Seattle crowd to a Black woman naming that the event is taking place in the context of Indigenous genocide, the new Jim Crow, and the everyday violence that Black, Brown, and Indigenous people face in Seattle, I’m ashamed. Two Black women called for a moment of silence for Mike Brown a year after he was gunned down, left bleeding in the street for 4.5 hours, and White “progressives” shouted, booed, and chanted the name of a White man throughout that moment.
President Barack Obama jogs from backstage before delivering remarks at Johnson Controls, Inc., in Holland, Mich., Aug. 11, 2011. Photo by Chuck Kennedy
President Barack Obama tours Johnson Controls Inc. with Elizabeth Rolinski, Vice President of Operations, in Holland, Mich., Aug. 11, 2011. Photo by Pete Souza
President Barack Obama talks with Senior Advisor David Alexrod and Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), on Air Force One en route to Portsmouth, N.H., for a town hall meeting about health care reform on Aug. 11, 2009. Photo by Pete Souza
President Barack Obama talks with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, left, and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk in the Green Room of the White House, following the Manufacturing Enhancement Act of 2010 signing ceremony, Aug. 11, 2010. Photo by Pete Souza
When President Bush II left the White House in 2009, the 13 U.S. courts of appeal were firmly under Republican appointees’ control. Ten appeals courts had majority GOP judges, two were evenly split and only one had a majority of Democrats. President Obama’s 49 appeals court appointees have dramatically altered the landscape. As of the Senate’s recess on May 23, nine of those courts had majority Democratic appointees and four had Republican majorities.
(There are 10 vacancies in the circuit courts. One Obama nominee is awaiting a Senate vote and three nominees pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.) The change, much feared by Republicans, is not necessarily shocking. But the transformation, in just 5 1/2 years, said University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur D. Hellman, an authority on the federal circuit courts, marks ”a huge shift in a very short period of time.” And it means that Democratic appointed judges “have the ability to control every important case if they wish to” in those nine circuits, he said.
Timothy B. Lee: Obama Has Secured Democratic Majorities On Most Federal Appeals Courts
A president’s Supreme Court nominees get a lot of attention, but presidents shape less visible parts of the judiciary too. Barack Obama is no exception. The Washington Post has a chart showing how the president has changed the composition of the nation’s appeals courts over the last five and a half years: Now, it’s important to say that courts are not supposed to be partisan institutions.
Still, Democratic judicial nominees tend to be more liberal than Republican nominees. And so the growing number of Democrat-appointed judges in our appeals courts will push American jurisprudence to the left on a wide range of issues. And because Obama’s nominees will stay on the bench long after Obama leaves office, these nominations will be one of his most durable legacies.
President Barack Obama talks to Secret Service Uniformed Division officers as he walks through the magnetometer in the Northwest Gatehouse at the White House, following his visit to Blair House, Dec. 9. The President told a reporter as he exited the gatehouse, “I just wanted to see what it was like getting in here.” (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Pool report: Pool was out of earshot during the president’s two or three minute visit to the gate house but (radio talk show host) Bill Press was at the stakeout spot and generously passes along some color.
Obama: “I just wanted to see what it was like getting in here.”
Bill Press: “Not so easy, is it?”
Obama, patting his pockets, as if for keys or phone: “I think I beeped a couple of times.”
Afterward, Bill talked to agents:
Potus shook hands all around. Talked football, said he was Chicago Bears fan. Wanted to know how entry worked. Went through metal detector. Set it off. Guard told him he’d probably left cellphone in pocket.
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Tomorrow:
2:05 The President departs the White House en route to Landover, Md.
2:15 Arrives Landover
2:30 Attends Army v Navy game with VP Biden and Jill Biden
5:25 Departs Landover
5:35 Arrives White House
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A Statement by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:
Plan B One-Step is an emergency contraceptive, sometimes referred to as the “morning after pill.” Plan B One-Step is currently labeled over the counter to women ages 17 years and older, but is sold behind the pharmacy counter. It is available by prescription only to women 16 years and younger. My decision does not change any current availability of the drug for all women.
In February 2011, Teva Women’s Health Inc. submitted to the FDA a supplemental new drug application for Plan B One-Step. This application sought to make Plan B One-Step available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age. The science has confirmed the drug to be safe and effective with appropriate use. However, the switch from prescription to over the counter for this product requires that we have enough evidence to show that those who use this medicine can understand the label and use the product appropriately. I do not believe that Teva’s application met that standard. The label comprehension and actual use studies did not contain data for all ages for which this product would be available for use.
Keith Humphreys (Washington Monthly): African-American Liberals Know How to Love Their President
Jonathan Chait’s much-discussed essay in New York magazine indicted the left for being perennially, loudly and unrealistically disappointed in Democratic Presidents. In Chait’s view, much of the left ignores the constraints on Presidential power (e.g., Congress, of which Drew Westen et al seem to be in ignorance) and doesn’t have the stomach or attention span for the slow, daily grind of governance. He also charges the left with crippling their own leaders with faithlessness and then blaming them when they are thereby forced to compromise with the other side. Chait sees these patterns as almost entirely independent of Obama, being instead a style, outlook and set of norms among liberals that goes back for decades….
All of this is true of a certain type of liberal in the U.S., but I wish Chait and Kristof had taken the time to exempt from criticism the most stalwart segment of liberal America: African-Americans. Perpetually indignant white liberals could learn a lot from them.
…. I cringe at the white, alleged liberals who call on Obama to acknowledge that his is a failed presidency. They want the first Black President in history to, effectively, announce that he is a bumbling affirmative action baby, apologize for being so uppity as to have ever assumed otherwise and resign in disgrace so that Hillary Clinton or some other qualified (i.e. white) person can lead the party…..
But all that said, my own question of why Blacks so love Obama elides the broader reality evidenced by their very high approval ratings of a white Democratic President, Bill Clinton. Blacks have a special place in the hearts for Barack Obama, but fundamentally, if you are a Democratic President, Black people in this country have your back…..
Business Insider: When President Obama makes his pitch to voters next year on why they should elect him to a second term, he’ll likely point to some version of this chart.
What the chart shows is that Obama inherited a bum economy but that, under his watch, things have begun to turn around. In the past year, the unemployment rate has dropped a full percentage point amid improving job growth….
President Barack Obama signs legislation that will provide tax credits to help put veterans back to work during a ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. From left are, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Sen. Patty Murray. D-Wash., first lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki and Vice President Joe Biden
Jason Hansman (WH): Today is a historic day for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. When President Obama signs the VOW to Hire Heroes Act into law, an entire generation of new vets will be provided much-needed practical support to transition from combat to careers. As an Iraq vet I am privileged to lead the membership team at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the country’s first and largest nonpartisan organization committed to our newest veterans. And I speak for all of us when I thank the lawmakers who worked so hard together, putting aside party, to get this bill passed. We also thank the President for his leadership on the issue – for acting so quickly on this legislation and for bringing national attention to the veterans’ unemployment crisis.
Michael Walsh (National Review): ….. the WaPo’s Chris Cillizza makes the same point I made …. You may think Obama is eminently beatable, but unlike Mitt Romney, he has a solid base that is a dead-certain lock to be there for him next year ….
…. Meanwhile, “electable” Romney stays moored at around a quarter of the GOP primary electorate, and as a “frontrunner” has been happily chucked overboard for every not-Romney flavor of the month, including Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and now Mr. Newt. Head-to-head with Romney next year, Obama will sink him handily.
….. Say-Anything Mitt has no home port and is unlikely to find one beyond the generic anti-Obama vote. Which, alas, will not be big enough or motivated enough to evict Cap’n Barry from the White House bridge …. Indeed, the campaign will begin and end with this photograph:
Sorry, but that’s the truth. Say what you will about Sarah Palin, but she would have brought a super-energized base of productive taxpaying citizens with her that might have competed favorably with the Obamabots. But she broke their hearts – and damaged herself – by teasing and then not running, leaving the GOP bereft of a candidate who could match BHO II’s charisma.
What can be done at this late date, I have no idea. And neither do the Republicans.
😉
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Jonathan Chait (NY Mag): …. Here is my explanation: Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president …. they compare Obama with an imaginary president – either an imaginary Obama or a fantasy version of a past president.
…. His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades. Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like. The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.
Beneath these headline measures is a second tier of accomplishments carrying considerable historic weight (see article for list)
…. Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes ….
So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?
Adam Sorensen: …. one can understand why California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom might have thought his recent venting session at a gathering of fellow Democrats in Half Moon Bay would be met with approving clucks or, at very least, silent nods. Not so much.
“Among the Newsom jabs: Obama should have pushed his agenda harder when the Democrats still controlled both houses of Congress,” recounted the San Francisco Chronicle, “a remark that drew a handful of boos from the audience.” … Newsom ran smack into what seems to be a common misconception about the Obama presidency: Though many of the left’s opinion makers have turned away from Obama, broader liberal flight is a phenomenon that simply doesn’t exist.
Real Clear Politics’ latest data crunching pegs the President’s average approval among Democrats at a robust 76.8%. (For comparison, in October of 1995, soon-to-be-re-elected Bill Clinton’s Democratic support was a near-identical 77%, according to Gallup.) And what of the real left? The ones whose disappointment has been given voice by people like Drew Westen to Paul Krugman? It turns out self-identified liberals’ support for Obama isn’t far behind at 72% in Gallup’s latest tracking data. (The same group gave Clinton 65% approval in 1995)….
…. Gavin Newsom, who rumor has it might run for Congress next year when Rep. Lynn Woolsey is likely to retire, should know that in the liberal bastion of San Francisco, there’s little political upside in breaking with Obama.
He’s lost the base, right? It’s true: well, he’s lost a masssive 14% of them, leaving a teeny 81% who approve of him. Doomed! (See here)
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He’s lost the youth? Sadly, yes – listen to the stony silence that greeted him at North Carolina State University today:
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He’s lost the African American community, right? Like this young man at North Carolina State University today?
They’ve turned against the President, now taking their leadership from inspirational figures like Cornel West and Tavis Smiley?
Well, yes, an enormous 5% of the African American community, according to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, disapprove of the President, a tiny 92% approving of him (up 9% from July). Vindication for West and Smiley, then.
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But what about Hispanics, his figures are tanking there, right?
Well yeah, look at their outright hostility towards the Obamas at tonight’s Congressional Hispanic Caucus Gala:
See? An ugly, baying mob, just looking for the President’s blood.
But, back to that poll – it has him at 57%-38% with Hispanics, up from 45%-48% in July. Crikey, that’s rather friendly baying.
Honestly, it’s just so hard to imagine why Hispanics/Latinos aren’t more attracted to the GOP:
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He’s looking at you. Have you contacted members of Congress yet about the jobs bill?
The ever magnificent What is Working has all the contact details you’ll need
Enough of this positivity: the New York result was a disaster, right?
Well, it certainly wasn’t pretty, the fool that is Weprin (D) was trounced in Brooklyn (but actually won in Queens) but the notion that the district had ever been an Obama-loving hot-spot is kind of comical – as Nate Silver put it, “I doubt that there was any district in the country (in 2008), perhaps outside a few remnants of the “Solid South,” where so many enrolled Democrats voted against Mr. Obama”.
And as Steve Kornacki pointed out, “Obama performed one point worse there than John Kerry had in 2004 and 12 points worse than Al Gore had in 2000”.
So, New York’s Ninth Congressional District was never big on the President. I’ll leave you to speculate why.
Nate Silver: “Roughly 40 percent of voters in the Ninth District are Jewish, 20 times the rate in the country as a whole. Moreover, and perhaps more important, many of those voters are Orthodox Jews, who often have starkly different political viewpoints than Reform or secular Jews, and who are extremely rare in the United States outside a few spots in the New York region.”
So, no, Jews haven’t turned against the President, it’s just that Orthodox Jews oppose him – as they always have done.
And don’t forget, Anthony Weiner won the seat in the first place thanks to some real classy race-baiting – see here
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Open for Questions: Youth and the American Jobs Act
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Harry Reid’s (first!) Twitter Town Hall on Job Creation
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Vice President Biden Hosts a “Campaign to Cut Waste” Cabinet Meeting
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Dublin, Ireland, May 2011
But Europe hates him, right?
Ahem.
President Barack Obama remains highly popular in Europe, with 75 percent in 12 EU nations approving his handling of global affairs, a poll said Wednesday.
He is also much better liked than his predecessor George W. Bush, whose rating in Europe was just 20 percent in 2008, said the Transatlantic Trends poll by the German Marshall Fund.
Obama’s success in eliminating Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appeared to be a factor in his popularity in the EU, with 73 percent backing his efforts to fight international terrorism.
(There’s a PDF at the link with all the poll findings)
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Yep, he’s still looking at you.
If you love him and everything he has achieved and everything he stands for, fight for him – contact Congress now, and donate if you can.
Ben Heineman (The Atlantic): Many liberals are furious with President Obama over the policies in the debt ceiling deal. But, as usual, their critique – Paul Krugman’s is one example – ignores, or is naïve about, the hard realities of divided congressional politics.
When a “yes” vote was required to extend the ceiling, how should the president have negotiated with a Republican House which had been transformed by the 2010 election and which had a sizable number of ideologically driven republican members who wanted to say “no”? That is the key question.
… We are witnessing for the umpteenth time liberal criticism that ignores the diversity in our political system and the dispersion of power in our constitutional system. From time immemorial, Democratic presidents are harshly criticized by liberals for deviating from their “one true faith,” without much regard for politics. Invariably, they say, if the president had taken a principled public position, he would have mobilized the “base” and countered the forces of darkness (i.e.those with whom they don’t agree), but they don’t offer a cogent political analysis. As in this case. To repeat, how should Obama have negotiated with a transformed House of Representatives when he needed their assent?
…. many liberals don’t want to discuss the politics of this negotiation where one House of the Congress has a large majority and blocking power. Far easier, as always, to hurl ideological imprecations down upon the president (how about Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid folks?)…
To be sure, those on the Democratic side can have a spirited debate about the policies and the politics of Obama presidency, which came into office facing terrible conditions caused by the worst decade of public and private leadership in years…
But, one thing is for sure. Spouting policy vitriol from the comfy confines of an office at Princeton is not going to solve problems in a deeply divided country with strongly held views across the political spectrum. In our system, policy only become important when joined with the power of politics. And that power, ultimately, is in elections.
Liberals should be working every congressional and senatorial race, starting yesterday. Grassroots politics against conservatives, not Olympian op-eds against President Obama, is the best answer for liberal critics of the debt-ceiling deal.
RollCall: Despite their grousing about the administration during the Netroots Nation conference, liberal activists and bloggers are relatively happy with President Barack Obama’s performance.
A straw poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research showed that 80 percent either approve or strongly approve of the president …. The results broke down to 27 percent strongly approving of Obama and 53 percent approving “somewhat.” Thirteen percent said they “somewhat disapprove,” and 7 percent strongly disapprove of the president.
Adam Serwer: ….I realize that killing bin Laden was popular, but as someone who believes that the fight against terrorism can and should be conducted according to the rule of law, it’s important to make clear why killing bin Laden was legally justified.
Assassination is illegal under U.S. law! The executive order banning assassinations doesn’t apply to the targeting of lawful military targets during wartime … the Congress of the United States authorized the use of military force against bin Laden in full view of the public in 2001….
Killing bin Laden was illegal under international law! Human Rights First Daphne Eviatar: “As the leader of al Qaeda – an armed group against whom the U.S. is at war – who appears to have had a significant role directing its fighting forces, [Osama bin Laden] is targetable. It’s similar to the targetability of the commander-in-chief of any regular armed forces at war.”
But he was unarmed! …It would be illegal to kill bin Laden if he had surrendered or been captured first … Combatants aren’t legally required to allow lawful targets to arm themselves before killing them, rather the onus was on bin Laden to surrender.
Didn’t we violate Pakistan’s sovereignty? Maybe, but Jeremy Scahill reported in 2009 on the existence of a secret deal between Pakistan and the United States to allow the U.S. to go after bin Laden if they found him in Pakistan, while Pakistan would condemn any such operation after the fact.
What about Nuremberg? The Nazis got trials! In my view, a trial would have been morally preferable to killing bin Laden, but the absence of one doesn’t make his killing illegal. … I would have preferred seeing bin Laden face a federal judge. Of course, there’s another issue to consider here: How the hell do you find a fair and impartial jury to hear the case against Osama bin Laden in the United States?
The Obama Diary 
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