Heidi Li's Potpourri

In 1984, a great Democrat used the opportunity to address the Party and the Country about the Equal Rights Amendment

Today we have a Democratic President who is not a progressive, who is not, in my opinion, a liberal. He has expressed his admiration for Ronald Reagan. Thinking about our current president made me nostalgic for a time when a major Democratic Party player refused to play at wasteful bipartisan brinksmanship or speak of a fuzzy post-partisan era. Mario Cuomo spoke of unity, spoke of bringing the party together - but not just for the sake of collapsing the country into one politically mediocre middlism. He believed that Democratic unity - liberal unity - was what would bring our country prosperity and justice.

When Mario Cuomo spoke we on the left who did not have his platform knew we could outright criticize military adventures and trickle-down economic theories; we could demand that we take care of the old and the less well-abled; we could care about all races and orientations; and and treat women equally under our constitution. The 1980s were a lousy time for those of us on the left as they were so much the Reagan years. But at least we had leaders like Mario Cuomo who would speak out, publicly and courageously in the name of all these things, but even - oh my - the E.R.A.

Listen to Cuomo's speech here. My paraphrasing or even a reading of the text does not do it justice. Listen to it if you can.

Pay special attention to this passage:

"We speak -- We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not sin against equality," a rule so simple [applause, chanting] --I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A." [chanting, chanting]

It is over 20 years since Mario Cuomo dared to spell it out in three letters: E.R.A  -- while a convention hall full of Democratic delegates roared those letters back at him.

Can you imagine now a Democratic Party shining on the hill introducing the Equal Rights Amendment or fighting for the three state strategy or fighting, state by state - including all those supposedly newly blue ones - for its passage?

I confess I cannot imagine today's Democratic Party doing this. But may I be wrong. May the Democratic party wake up from its mediocre middlism and go to the mat for the majority, for the 51 percent of Americans who are not guaranteed the highest protection of their equality under the law.

E...R...A.....E...R...A......E...R...A.....E...R...A.

It is hard for an empty suit to take a stand - or perhaps even to understand what it means to take a stand

Richard Cohen's sister is canceling her inauguration party because of President-elect Obama's choice of Rick Warren to bless Mr. Obama's taking the office of the Presidency of the United State. According to her brother's column in the Washington Post, what made her do this is the way in which Mr. Obama's choice to pick this pastor for this occasion serves as a special sort of condoning of Mr. Warren's views about gays and lesbians. I agree with Richard Cohen, and apparently his sister, that these views should be regarded as totally unacceptable by anybody who has any sense of the importance of civil rights and indeed of human rights. I also agree with Richard Cohen's view that as a somebody running for the office of President and who was at the time a U.S. Senator, Mr. Obama had a particular responsibility for denouncing his then-pastor's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for giving the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan a special award during the primary season. I find it troubling that neither Mr. Cohen nor apparently his sister have not been, as far as I can tell, overly concerned by President-Elect Obama's equally eloquent silence and inaction regarding the sexism and misogyny directed at Senator Clinton and her supporters, particularly the sophomoric expression of these attitudes by Jon Favreau, the man writing President-elect Obama's inaugural address. (I shudder to think what the reaction of the Cohen family would have been if Favreau had been found on YouTube horsing around calling somebody a "homo" - maybe then Richard Cohen's sister would join us in our demand that the President-Elect fire this sophomoric bigot as his chief speech-writer. Whether a bigot is slick (Warren) or juvenile (Favreau), he is still a bigot.)

It is tempting to forget in this sort of dynamic who the real problem is. As is clear from what I have written so far, I wish Richard Cohen and his sister would be, respectively, writing about and canceling inauguration parties as much over Mr. Obama's inaction in the face of sexism and misogyny as they are in the face of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing. And yes, I wish that Richard Cohen's sister had paid attention to and given greater weight to the fact that she had the option to work to elect somebody who, both as a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, repeatedly marched in Pride parades and met with editors of gay newspapers across the country rather than working for somebody who would not even have his photograph taken with Gavin Newsome.

But I am not falling into the trap that lies that way. Just because people got it wrong before does not mean they cannot help matters now. People can learn. So despite the bit of complaining above, I am not going to point a finger at Richard Cohen's sister (or, for that matter, at Katha Pollitt for decrying the misogyny involved in the Warren choice when Pollitt, like Richard Cohen's sister, opted to support Mr. Obama for the presidency when it was already obvious that he was complacent, to say the least, about sexism and misogyny). I am just pleased that they are starting to pay attention now and apparently coming to understand better who they voted for. To quote Richard Cohen: "The real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama's inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something."

Aye, there's the rub. During the primary season and the general election a friend of mine who spent some considerable amount of time listening to me lament the Democratic Party's poor judgment in making then-Senator Obama their poster-child, kept saying to me that the real problem with Mr. Obama is that he is an "empty suit".

That term seemed to me too tepid back then. But I have come to see it as the essential problem behind the problem of Mr. Obama's inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader, and possibly any kind of leader. To be a moral leader, to stand for something means that you have to fill out your suit, your office, your position. To be an "empty suit" is to be a person who cannot draw a line in the sand, precisely because you do not have an arm and hand within that suit to use to reach out and draw that line. To be an "empty suit" is to be devoid of the weightiness that real leadership requires, including the gravitas to admit to a mistake and change one's position (drop the bigoted minister and lose the bigoted speechwriter; say you have been wrong to dig in your heels rather than listen to the concerns of so many of the people who worked so hard to elect you). To be an "empty suit" is to be a moral vacuum.

I refused to vote for John McCain for a number of reasons but among them was the fact that while I knew he had the capacity for moral leadership, I did not care for the directions toward which his moral commitments would lead my country. I refused to vote for Barack Obama because I knew he came up empty on the capacity for moral leadership.

In some ways, moral emptiness, especially in a President, is worse than moral wrong-headedness. The morally wrong-headed leader takes a stand, e.g. George W. Bush's legitimization of torture, and one can rally people against the stand she or he takes. The morally empty leader takes no stand. Under these circumstances, her or his silences often allow people to forget that the blank that exists in lieu of a leader is the appropriate target of criticism. After all, it seems easier to go after people who actually do take stands (Rick Warren, for example) rather than the person who silently enables wrong-headed person to gain in stature. But this is sleight of hand. The real problem is the enabler, the person who allows the sophomoric sexist to put words in his mouth, the person who lets bigoted clerics and their churches affiliate with him.

So, to Richard Cohen's sister and to Katha Pollitt, I say welcome to my party - the one that got lost in 2008, the one that expected moral leadership of a certain kind from a Democratic president. Now that you are here, I hope you can help me figure out what we are going to do with the empty suit about to occupy the Oval Office. If that empty suit thinks he can pick up sufficient evangelical money and votes in 2012, he is not going to listen to bloggers and op-ed columnists whose votes and followers he thinks he can replace with the support of the evangelicals, regardless of the detestable content of many of their views and some of their conduct. Personally, I do not think we can give the empty suit the backbone necessary to resist the lure of that support. If we cannot give this empty suit some backbone, we need, as I have written before, to start figuring out how we can have a better candidate on offer in 2012. So to the people who are canceling their celebrations, may I suggest that they use the time and effort saved to start solving that problem. We need to coalesce now around somebody who can fight for a nomination by a major Party - probably the the Party formerly recognizable as the Democratic one - who is what Obama's supporters hoped he would be and what I fear he is not.

Let's pull off a real upset

Want to create a real November surprise?

Here's my suggestion. Let's get Senator Clinton's primary debt retired but quick - long before the DNC can ditch that 15 million dollar debt David Plouffe is hawking T-shirts for.

The point of doing this is not so much to empower Senator Clinton - ultimately she will have to do that herself, and I confess to sharing some of columnist Bonnie Erbe's puzzlement about Senator Clinton's efforts in that direction.

The point of retiring Senator Clinton's debt is to let the DNC know that many of us Democrats (and former Democrats) do not condone the various tactics the DNC used this election cycle to undermine the franchise of all Americans by consistently interfering with Senator Clinton's right to pursue her Party's nomination no more or less encumbered by the Party than any other candidate.

If we want to get that message across to the DNC, the single best way I can think of to do it is not only to refuse to contribute to the debt the DNC ran up but to relieve the debt of the candidate to whom it did not give a fair shake.

Senator Clinton has about 8 million in debt (after forgiving the 13 million dollars in personal money she lent her campaign) and, yes, 5 million of that is owed to Marc Penn's firm and, yes, I think Penn's firm could have done a better job.

But: part of why Penn's firm has not received a payment since July is because President-elect Obama's fundraising team does not want to see any money raised by them go to Penn, who advocated for tough attacks on Senator Obama during the primary season. According to the Washington Post, "[S]everal fundraisers for Obama said there was a strong conviction inside the Obama camp that they did not want their efforts to benefit Penn, who was Clinton's chief strategist and advocated for the toughest attacks on Obama, according to published reports, during tense internal Clinton campaign debates on strategy."

This seems rather petty considering Senator Clinton's dedication to seeing Senator Obama win the general election.

But there's nothing I can do about other people's pettiness. There is something we can all do to tell the DNC it has lost the automatic loyalty of millions of voters. I know that the folks at the DNC think this is not a problem, as they believe they have replaced those voters with those who turned out to elect Senator Obama. Only time will tell if the freshly minted Democrats are as steadfast as the ones the DNC was willing to kick to the curb.

If you have not contributed $2300 already to Senator Clinton's primary campaign, you can contribute now to retire her primary debt. Believe me, I know money is tight for most Americans right now. But if you've got even five dollars, you can help tell the Democratic Party that you will not be taken for granted. What we can tell the DNC now, within days if enough people step up, is that we prefer to help a politician who displayed loyalty and grace than a political PAC (which is what both the DNC and the RNC are) that displayed neither.

There is not much we can do now to demand reform within the DNC. But we can make a statement in terms all politicians understand by retiring Senator Clinton's debt immediately without giving a care to the DNC's. This is just one step toward showing the DNC that a new voting bloc is forming. But if we take that step decisively we will prove both to the politicians and ourselves that this voting bloc has arrived.

Again, if you did not previously donate $2300 to Senator Clinton's primary run, you are eligible to donate to retire the debt from that effort. All funds raised over here at HillaryClinton.com go to retire the debt and not to any other purpose.

What is missing from this picture?

Apparently, women's rights and interests just are not part of the "official" progressive agenda. I am so sorry to be writing this because the Center For American Progres (CAP) is an institution I have supported, by promoting it and by contributing to it. I have great respect for John Podesta who heads CAP and is now serving as President-elect Obama's transition team adviser. CAP has been touted as the source of an agenda for the incoming president and I'm sure it would like to play that role. Over at CAP's website, one finds this, front and foremost:

Suggestions for President-Elect Obama's To-Do List

The Economy...

National Security...

Health Care...

The Climate Crisis...

See any mention of women's rights? Representation of women in government? Empowering women?

While I cannot say I am surprised by this, I can say I am outraged. I can also say that I think "official" progressive voices are acting incredibly stupidly. I think they are blinkered and blindered and have no idea how many Americans will not join their enthusiasm for the President-Elect so long as he and they continue to be silent on the double-standards that continue to render women second class citizens in our own country let alone around the world.

I also know, unfortunately, that in the short term, as "official" progressives bask in the Democratic victory there is almost nothing that can be done to get an Obama administration to take women's issues, rights, and empowerment seriously (let alone gay rights or the rights of D.C. residents to be represented in Congress. We knew that an Obama victory would be taken as license to ignore women's voices; that it would not matter how many women or women's organizations sold their souls (in my opinion) to put a Democrat in the White House. We knew this because we watched an entire primary and general election campaign unfold in which Senator Obama made no commitment to women's empowerment and never once spoke out against the misogyny that ran rampant through this election cycle.

I am ever more convinced that Americans who care about the problem of misogyny and sexism are going to have to use the same methods - resistance, demonstration, noncooperation - that forced white Americans to heed the moral unacceptability of racism and bigotry to get male Americans to heed the moral unacceptability of sexism and racism.

That this level of struggle is required is a tragedy. It is particularly tragic because Senator Obama and the "official" progressive crowd had a golden opportunity to spare us all. This year a progressive woman candidate, who also happens to have stood up repeatedly for women's rights, a woman who has the respect of millions of Americans could have been asked to play a prominent role in Obama administration or in the incoming Senate session. Her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton. But rather than ask her to play a prominent role, Senator Obama's surrogates have in fact told Senator Clinton that she is out of order for seeking a leadership role on an issue that DOES make the "official" list of progressive causes: health care. (Apparently, it is just too, too presumptious for somebody who won more votes to become the Democratic Party's candidate than any other person in the history of the Democratic Party to expect to be empowered to act in the name of a cause in which she has major expertise. Odd, because it was not considered presumptious by his fellow senators for Senator Obama to run for president as the junior Senator from Illinois with less than 200 days of experience in that position. Oh wait, not odd - Senator Obama is a man, so he was just being a brilliant politician.)

Senator Clinton says her only goal is to be the best Senator from New York she can be and to do what she can to aid Senator Obama's administration. Good for Senator Clinton. She has set goals that she will attain easily - she will be, as she has been, great for the people of New York; and she's proven that she can be of tremendous assistance to Senator Obama, helping him win voters he would otherwise have been likely to lose.

Now, the rest of us will have to set some goals, without the sure knowledge that we can achieve them, without yet even a sure path to how to achieve them. My list:

• Resolved: to continue to refuse to accept that we must live with a politics awash in private money;
• Resolved: to hold the media accountable and demand that they provide full information regardless of the editorial tilt of owners, editors, or reporters.
  
• Resolved: to continue to refuse to accept so-called progressive or liberal leaders who do not make the issues of sexism and misogyny front and central in the fight for a more just America;
• Resolved: to demand reform of the Democratic Party and particularly its leadership, or, in the alternative, work to form a rival to the current DNC if reform is unattainable;
• Resolved: to make sure that the pipeline to elected political leadership is flooded with talented women, so many that eventually no major party will be able to refuse support for a woman at the top of the ticket;
• Resolved: to use the skills and connections forged this season, including the fundraising skills, to support the aforementioned goals.

For a good read on related ideas go here, and here.

Who will be the current Democratic Party's Hubert Humphrey?

Hubert H. Humphrey

1948 Democratic National Convention Address

In 1948 Hubert Humphrey stopped the tradition in the Democratic Party whereby the Democrats ignored Jim Crow in order to keep in coalition with the Southern States and thereby win elections. Humphrey's speech on behalf fractured the Democratic Party - it had nothing to do with unity and everything to do with justice.

Today's Democratic Party is giddy on the heels of winning the Presidency. But what the Democratic Party needs is a modern-day Hubert Humphrey: somebody who will risk losing political power in the name of justice. We need a modern-day Hubert Humphrey who will use his or her existing political stature to hold the Democratic Party accountable for recognizing women's rights and GBLT rights.

The current President-Elect, Barack Obama, is consistently described as risk-averse and cautious by his supporters.

So now we need a politician who is not risk-averse and cautious, who is brave enough to stand up to his or her own Party and tell it that it can and must do better than it has, and it must start improving immediately. Just as Humphrey voiced controversial ideas to the very successful Democratic Party of FDR, we need a Democrat who will voice controversial ideas to the new Democratic administration.
Humphrey's address appears below (emphases added). You can listen to the speech here.

Mr. Chairman, fellow Democrats, fellow Americans:

I realize that in speaking in behalf of the minority report on civil rights as presented by Congressman DeMiller of Wisconsin that I'm dealing with a charged issue -- with an issue which has been confused by emotionalism on all sides of the fence. I realize that there are here today friends and colleagues of mine, many of them, who feel just as deeply and keenly as I do about this issue and who are yet in complete disagreement with me.

My respect and admiration for these men and their views was great when I came to this convention. It is now far greater because of the sincerity, the courtesy, and the forthrightness with which many of them have argued in our prolonged discussions in the platform committee.

Because of this very great respect -- and because of my profound belief that we have a challenging task to do here -- because good conscience, decent morality, demands it -- I feel I must rise at this time to support a report -- the minority report -- a report that spells out our democracy, a report that the people of this country can and will understand, and a report that they will enthusiastically acclaim on the great issue of civil rights.

Now let me say this at the outset that this proposal is made for no single region. Our proposal is made for no single class, for no single racial or religious group in mind. All of the regions of this country, all of the states have shared in our precious heritage of American freedom. All the states and all the regions have seen at least some of the infringements of that freedom -- all people -- get this -- all people, white and black, all groups, all racial groups have been the victims at time[s] in this nation of -- let me say -- vicious discrimination.

The masterly statement of our keynote speaker, the distinguished United States Senator from Kentucky, Alben Barkley, made that point with great force. Speaking of the founder of our Party, Thomas Jefferson, he said this, and I quote from Alben Barkley:

He did not proclaim that all the white, or the black, or the red, or the yellow men are equal; that all Christian or Jewish men are equal; that all Protestant and Catholic men are equal; that all rich and poor men are equal; that all good and bad men are equal. What he declared was that all men are equal; and the equality which he proclaimed was the equality in the right to enjoy the blessings of free government in which they may participate and to which they have given their support.

Now these words of Senator Barkley’s are appropriate to this convention -- appropriate to this convention of the oldest, the most truly progressive political party in America. From the time of Thomas Jefferson, the time when that immortal American doctrine of individual rights, under just and fairly administered laws, the Democratic Party has tried hard to secure expanding freedoms for all citizens. Oh, yes, I know, other political parties may have talked more about civil rights, but the Democratic party has surely done more about civil rights.

We have made progress -- we've made great progress in every part of this country. We’ve made great progress in the South; we’ve made it in the West, in the North, and in the East. But we must now focus the direction of that progress towards the -- towards the realization of a full program of civil rights to all. This convention must set out more specifically the direction in which our Party efforts are to go.

We can be proud that we can be guided by the courageous trail blazing of two great Democratic Presidents. We can be proud of the fact that our great and beloved immortal leader Franklin Roosevelt gave us guidance. And we be proud of the fact -- we can be proud of the fact that Harry Truman has had the courage to give to the people of America the new emancipation proclamation.

It seems to me -- It seems to me that the Democratic Party needs to to make definite pledges of the kinds suggested in the minority report, to maintain the trust and the confidence placed in it by the people of all races and all sections of this country. Sure, we’re here as Democrats. But my good friends, we’re here as Americans; we’re here as the believers in the principal and the ideology of democracy, and I firmly believe that as men concerned with our country’s future, we must specify in our platform the guarantees which we have mentioned in the minority report.

Yes, this is far more than a Party matter. Every citizen in this country has a stake in the emergence of the United States as a leader in the free world. That world is being challenged by the world of slavery. For us to play our part effectively, we must be in a morally sound position.

We can’t use a double standard -- There’s no room for double standards in American politics -- for measuring our own and other people’s policies. Our demands for democratic practices in other lands will be no more effective than the guarantee of those practices in our own country.

Friends, delegates, I do not believe that there can be any compromise on the guarantees of the civil rights which we have mentioned in the minority report. In spite of my desire for unanimous agreement on the entire platform, in spite of my desire to see everybody here in honest and unanimous agreement, there are some matters which I think must be stated clearly and without qualification. There can be no hedging -- the newspaper headlines are wrong. There will be no hedging, and there will be no watering down -- if you please -- of the instruments and the principals of the civil-rights program.

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. People -- human beings -- this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds -- all sorts of people -- and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they’re looking to America for precept and example.

My good friends, my fellow Democrats, I ask you for a calm consideration of our historic opportunity. Let us do forget the evil passions and the blindness of the past. In these times of world economic, political, and spiritual -- above all spiritual crisis, we cannot and we must not turn from the path so plainly before us. That path has already lead us through many valleys of the shadow of death. And now is the time to recall those who were left on that path of American freedom.

For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two billion members of the human family, our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. And I know that we can, and I know that we shall began [sic] here the fuller and richer realization of that hope, that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely well.

My good friends, I ask my Party, I ask the Democratic Party, to march down the high road of progressive democracy. I ask this convention to say in unmistakable terms that we proudly hail, and we courageously support, our President and leader Harry Truman in his great fight for civil rights in America!

The midnight hour - November 5, 2008

(source for image)

Senator Obama: Congratulations on your victory.  May you live up to the highest and best hopes of your most fervent supporters. May you make this country the better place you have said you want it to be.

Kay Hagan, Jeanne Shaheen: heartiest congratulations upon your respective elections to the United States Senate.

A number of Democratic women with terrific policy positions who were running for House seats have, unfortunately, lost their bids. It appears that Alice Kryzan (NY), Victoria Wulsin (OH), and Lisa Stender (NJ) are among these losers. At the time of this writing, it is less clear how women running in the western states will do.

Even if all women running for the Senate yesterday were to prevail, only one additional woman in the Senate, will be added at best (source). Best case scenario for the house, 5 additional women (source). Governors, no matter what, one fewer woman holding that position (source).

This is not good news for those still hoping to see a woman President any time soon.

Nevertheless, human rights advocates of both genders will now be working to win the fight for full political and economic recognition of women, both in the U.S. and abroad. 

President-Elect Obama: What will you be doing to increase representation by women in elected office? Will you support a woman who clearly supports such increased representation to head the DNC? Will you support Senator Clinton for Senate Majority Leader? Will you support a change to the Democratic Party rules that makes for winner-take-all primaries and eliminates caucuses? Will you and Senator Biden support women to fill your Senate seats? Will you create a Presidential Commission on Women?  

Will you announce that you will send Congress the Equal Rights Amendment for passage during your first hundred days? Will you be sending Congress a new version of the Lily Ledbetter law and other legislation aimed at eliminating the wage gap between men and women? Will you go on record as opposing the creeping restrictions on women's access to abortion that the Supreme Court's post-Roe jurisprudence allows?

Will you speak out against regimes around the world that deny women the right to the ballot, that force women as a matter of law to wear required garb?

Having won the Presidency, will you, Senator Obama, prove that you are going to join us in the greatest civil rights battle of our time, the fight for full political and economic recognition of women both in the U.S. and abroad?

The women of America, Mr. Obama, are waiting. The women of the world are watching.

Resolved

Sadness is not despair.

Yesterday I wrote of the sadness I feel as I listen to people attempt to justify tactics and measures taken by the DNC and the Obama campaign to prevent the Democratic National Convention from being the occasion for a genuine decision as to who the Party's nominee would be.

Today, I feel a new resolve.

• Resolved: to continue to refuse to accept that we must live with a politics awash in private money;
• Resolved: to hold the media accountable and demand that they provide full information regardless of the editorial tilt of owners, editors, or reporters.
  
• Resolved: to continue to refuse to accept so-called progressive or liberal leaders who do not make the issues of sexism and misogyny front and central in the fight for a more just America;
• Resolved: to demand reform of the Democratic Party and particularly its leadership, or, in the alternative, work to form a rival to the current DNC if reform is unattainable;
• Resolved: to make sure that the pipeline to elected political leadership is flooded with talented women, so many that eventually no major party will be able to refuse support for a woman at the top of the ticket;
• Resolved: to make sure that whatever the results of the general election, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's political power is enhanced and her unprecedented dedication to her own commitments is recognized both within the Democratic Party and across America.
  
• Resolved: to use the skills and connections forged this season, including the fundraising skills, to support the aforementioned goals.

*******************

With regard to Senator Clinton

From an article in today's New York Times:

“She has done more for Obama than Dean did in 2004 for Kerry, more than Bradley did for Gore in 2000, more than Kennedy did for Carter in 1980,” said James A. Thurber, the director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. “As much as this must hurt her, she has been the ultimate trooper this fall.”

Senator Clinton has also done more for dozens of downticket Democrats than any other Democratic , not least by encouraging her friends and supporters to donate to HillPac, Senator Clinton's vehicle for direct fundraising for other Democrats.

While I cannot share Senator Clinton's unqualified support for the Democratic nominee's candidacy, I continue to be inspired by her grit and determination. By her resolve.

Historical precedent for a new wave of empowerment for those left hungry for it by this election season

Often as I have written about next political steps after November 4 - regardless of what happens on November 4 - in terms of remedying the misogyny run rampant this election season. But I do not mean to suggest that it has been only women who were disregarded or disrespected this political season. On the Democratic side of things over 18 million people found themselves with a Party leadership that decided that regardless of how people voted an indeterminate result was for that leadership to decide the candidate. Millions of those 18 million were men, and not all were even Democrats - some were Independents or Republicans. (I cannot speak with any authority about the Republican side of things - a better source might be found here.) After the election and post-election frenzy subsides we will need to come together to find a way to make our political parties, the legislature, and the executive more responsive to more of the electorate. To prepare myself, I am studying a number of leaders and historical movements that achieved more democratic, more responsive government, without resorting to civil war. I have discussed the  black civil rights movement of the latter part of the twentieth century; the noncooperation movement led by M.K. Gandhi; Franklin Roosevelt's implementation of a New Deal between government and governed, business and labor; and have begun now to examine more closely the American suffragist movement. I will continue to gather and share information and ideas from a variety of democratic struggles.

Each of the photographs below comes from the Women of Protest collection in The Library of Congress. This collection is a treasure trove for those men and women considering precedents for organizing the expansion of political opportunity not just for women but for all those whose votes were ignored this political season and who will be seeking Democratic Party reform or, in the alternative, the formation of a new party (still in my opinion the harder route, but not one I would rule out). There are further photographs and background notes on the National Women's Party's lobbyists and national organizers, among other notable NWP members. Consider starting with the excellent online historical overview of the NWP, and downloading full essay on the topic. Then delve throughout the site - there's more there than I can highlight here.

Iris Calderhead, daughter of former Representative Calderhead and wife of John Brisben Walker, of Colorado. Miss Calderhead is a graduate of the university of Kansas, and Vermont. Gave up teaching literature in Wichita (Kansas) High School to organize for the National Woman's Party, and was one of the group arrested for picketing the White House with suffrage banners.

Ernestine Hara, New York City, young Romanian, arrested for picketing Sept., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.

Nell Mercer of Norfolk, Virg., was a member of the Norfolk branch of the NWP. She was a business woman. In February 1919, she was arrested for participation in the final watchfire demonstration and sentenced to five days in the District Jail.

Elizabeth Stuyvesant, State Organizer, National Woman's Party, her great-grandfather died in the Revolution, her grandfather in the Civil War, and her brother is fighting in France. Five years of social work in New York City brought her to the determination to join the fight for woman's political liberty--Suffrage. Stuyvesant was a professional dancer. She was active in settlement work and in the campaign for birth control. On July 4, 1917, she was arrested while picketing the White House for suffrage and sentenced to three days in District Jail.

Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."  Helena Hill Weed of Norwalk, Conn., was a graduate of Vassar College and Montana School of Mines. She was a geologist, a daughter of a member of Congress, and a vice-president of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). She was a prominent member of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the NWP. She was one of the first pickets arrested, July 4, 1917, and served three days in District Jail. In January 1918, she was arrested for applauding in court and sentenced to 24 hours, and in August 1918 she was arrested for participation in Lafayette Square meeting, and sentenced to 15 days.

Disaffected Democrats, Objectors to Misogyny, Those Underwhelmed by Senator Obama: You are not alone

You are not alone if you find yourself unable to hang with the current incarnation of the The Democratic Party. Wendy Button feels the same way.

Meanwhile, at Real Clear Politics, "Senator Obama, your silence is dangerous and unforgivable" has received, at last count, 129 votes, almost twice as many as the next most voted upon. So if you are sick of the misogyny you are not alone.

And Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, with whom I had an extensive conversation about the politics-as-worse-than-usual during the Democratic primary season,  has finally spoken out about the hypocrisy of Senator Obama's campaign. Check it out.

Racism is vile. Misogyny is vile. And election tampering does not redress either.

Unfortunately, in the new era of the Democratic Party, brought to us by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, when one objects to misogyny people assume that one condones racism. I have been writing in recent posts about the misogyny that has surfaced in this political season. In various places and in comments left for me, some have complained that I have not objected to racism directed at Senator Obama.

Racism is vile. To demean, degrade, threaten, or disrespect anybody because of the color of her or his skin is unequivocally unacceptable and reprehensible. To refuse to vote for somebody simply because of the color of his or her skin is unacceptable.

I believe the same holds with regard to gender. To revile misogyny is not to accept racial bigotry. Bigotry, in all its forms, is a pervasive problem in American life. That this must be spelled out in the year 2008, among Democrats, is a sorry reflection upon the state of the Democratic Party and the state of the union.

I lay the blame for the need to state that my objections to misogyny are no excuse for racism squarely at the feet of Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi.

When confronted with the end of a primary season where the two leading contenders for the Democratic Party nomination happened to be a black male and a white female, Chairman  Dean and Speaker Pelosi choked. Instead of leaving the nomination to a free and noncoerced floor vote - or votes, if balloting took more than one round - Dean and Pelosi chose to rig the eventual nomination, risking the legitimacy of the outcome. This has opened the door to suspicions that those who object to the outcome base their objection on something other than the fact the Democratic Party, the self-proclaimed party protector of voting rights since the mid-1960s, tampered with its own election.  I do not know why Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi chose to rig the Democratic nomination; I do not know why they chose to rig the nomination in favor of Barack Obama, a black man, rather than Hillary Clinton, a white woman. Doing this has damaged both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. Senator Obama appears to have profited from a corrupt process at the expense of Senator Clinton. Senator Clinton seems to have had to do back flips to demonstrate her commitment to the Democratic Party, thereby costing her credibility with many primary voters who shared her primary season objections to Senator Obama's qualifications and substantive positions.

As for the rest of us, the Dean-Pelosi decision means that we must state the obvious, at the risk of being boring.

At that risk, here's the obvious:

Objecting to corrupt electioneering practices or corrupt elections (within a political party or in general elections) is an entirely separate issue from condemning racism or misogyny. And condemning misogyny, and those politicians who will not step up and object to it, is an entirely separate issue from condemning racism and those politicians who will not step up and object to it. Election corruption and bigotry are bad and bad for America. Bigotry in all forms is bad and bad for America. Election tampering is bad in any democratic venture, bad for democracy and bad for America.