Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine writes—Stacey Abrams and the New Democratic Coalition in the South:
It has all but been forgotten that in Stacey Abrams’ own state of Georgia, two ideologically centrist African-American Democrats were elected to statewide office in three consecutive elections (1998, 2002 and 2006) before flaming out in unfortunately-timed bids for higher office. Attorney General Thurbert Baker actually ran to the right of former governor Roy Barnes (who himself ran behind African-American Andrew Young in a 1990 gubernatorial race won by Zell Miller) in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary, and lost. Labor Commissioner (an elected position in Georgia) Michael Thurmond actually won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate that same year, which was a terrible year for any Democrat to take on popular U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, who defeated another rare African-American statewide nominee (and another perceived centrist), U.S. Representative Denise Majette (best known for upsetting Cynthia McKinney in a U.S. House primary in 2002) by a similar margin in 2004.
You see the pattern. African-Americans in the South have struggled to construct two-way biracial coalitions within the Democratic Party, and when they could it often required conspicuously non-progressive messages. As the parties have continued to polarize, that path has become less viable than ever. There just aren’t that many white swing voters to whom to “reach out,” as the saying goes. Some may still try the old formula: in Mississippi, former congressman and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, a darling of Clintonian New Democrats, is given some chance to win a special U.S. Senate election with the GOP split between appointed senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and conservative firebrand Chris McDaniel, though there will be a post-November low-turnout runoff that will likely pit Espy against just one Republican.
But the very different strategy pursued by Stacey Abrams looks like the future of biracial Democratic politics in the South: a strongly progressive (though not abrasively so) African-American who can expand turnout among a rising minority population while still appealing to increasingly liberal white Democratic and independent voters as well.
Sean McElwee at The New York Times writes—The Rising Racial Liberalism of Democratic Voters:
During her 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton invoked concepts like intersectionality, white privilege, implicit bias and systemic racism. She warned of “deplorables,” while Mr. Obama once gave a speech arguing that“to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns” was something that “widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.” According to the American National Election Studies 2016 survey, Democrats perceived Mrs. Clinton as more racially liberal than they had perceived Mr. Obama in 2012, when his strategy was not notably different.
This shift in political rhetoric has coincided with an underappreciated trend: the rapid increase in the racial liberalism of Democrats, including white Democrats, which I analyzed in a recent report by my think tank, Data for Progress. The General Social Survey asks a question about the causes of racial inequality and allows respondents to select whether they think various factors contribute to inequality. Two possible answers are “discrimination” and “willpower,” which are the two variables I explore here (respondents could select both if they chose). The first roughly measures whether respondents take a structural view of racial inequality and the second whether they take a more individualistic view of racial inequality.
Elizabeth Bruenig at The Washington Post writes—NFL kneeling isn’t just a protest. It’s a plea:
Like all civil peace, American contentment depends on its people believing in a certain story about how this country functions. Elementary school civics lay the groundwork: We live in a democratic republic, wherein the organs of government reflect the will of the people and the legitimacy of every act of governance can be traced back to the collective consent of so many rights-bearing persons. Individual rights are to be protected above all else because individuals matter above all else. Somewhere way downstream of all this comes football.
There’s some patriotic pageantry with all highly televised and profitable sports, but the National Football League has always seemed to approach its displays with a grim determination. Maybe it is because, for a while, at least, they were a business transaction. A 2015 joint oversight report commissioned by Arizona Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain found that the Pentagon had paid the NFL nearly $7 million for salutes, color guards, anthems and more during games. The Pentagon and the NFL both say they’ve cut it out since.
So I guess it must be love, not money, driving this latest spasm of patriotic fervor. NFL team owners agreed upon a rule Wednesday (without consulting the NFL Players Association, naturally) that would give players the option of staying in the locker room if they would rather not stand during the singing of the national anthem, but would issue fines if those players chose to kneel publicly during the anthem instead.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—A New Southern Strategy for Democrats in the Old South:
As I mentioned previously, some commentators are attempting to put a spin on this race that doesn’t fit the dynamics and avoids the key issues that are at stake heading into the general election. On the one hand, it is true that Abrams is breaking the mold of how Democrats have typically run in the South.
Abrams isn’t just idly proclaiming herself a “candidate of the future,” the way young politicians are contractually compelled to do. She is a living, breathing vision of the South’s likely political future, as well as the national Democratic Party’s. She makes a clean break, too, from the black middle-class candidates, especially in the South, who practiced a version of “respectability politics” to get ahead. (Picture Condoleeza Rice of Birmingham.) Far from “knowing her place,” as “good” blacks in Georgia were always supposed to do in the eyes of “powerful white men,” Abrams is sharp-witted as well as sharp-elbowed…
The strategy that Democrats have been using in the South (and nationally) to try and win for 40 years – business-friendly centrism, with heavy doses of gunfire and Jesus – is rapidly being inverted.
On the other hand, cable news hosts like Stephanie Ruhle are wrong to suggest that the primary between Abrams and Evans was a repeat of the Clinton/Sanders primary. Interestingly enough, Abrams won the endorsement of both Clinton and Sanders in this race and when it comes to positions on the issues, there wasn’t a lot of daylight between Abrams and Evans.
Joan Walsh at The Nation writes—Stacey Abrams Makes History:
The real difference, though, was Evans’ and her coalition’s belief that victory lies in appealing to white rural and suburban voters, even Trump supporters, while Abrams bet on the new Democratic majority of voters of color, women and young people. Evans sometimes trimmed her progressive sails in pursuit of that goal, telling New York magazine: “I see myself as a champion for common sense. Sometimes that makes me moderate, sometimes that makes me liberal. Maybe every now and then it makes me a conservative.”
The Georgia Democratic establishment was “looking at her as trying to resurrect the Roy Barnes playbook,” Emory University’s Anita Gillespie toldThe Atlantic, referring to Georgia’s last Democratic governor who lost reelection in 2002. But using that playbook, white centrist Democrats Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter lost their bids for senator and governor in 2014.
”Establishment Democrats seemed to be churning out the same tired playbook. I guess they think this climate is different this year [given Trump],” agreed Louise Palmer, a suburban Atlanta co-founder of Indivisible in Georgia’s fired up Sixth District who was an early Abrams supporter. “Abrams will turn out the minority coalition, and progressive activists will help her do it,” Palmer predicted.
Jamilah King at Mother Jones writes—Last Night Was Huge for Black Women in Georgia—and Not Just Because of Stacey Abrams:
There was plenty for progressives to celebrate on Tuesday night in Georgia—and it was a moment that signaled a huge milestone in black women’s political power ahead of November.
In a downtown Atlanta Sheraton packed with supporters, Democrat Stacey Abrams celebrated becoming the first black woman to be nominated from a major party for governor in American history. But another victory of sorts was playing out in nearby DeKalb County, where first-time candidate Lucy McBath earned the most votes in the Democratic primary for Georgia’s sixth congressional district. Though it wasn’t the same kind of celebration as Abrams’—McBath didn’t top 50 percent of the vote, so she will now advance to a July run-off against businessman Kevin Abel—many in the chattering classes considered even getting to this point a real long shot. McBath is a black woman running on gun safety in Georgia, and, what’s more, she only entered the race for GA6 in April. If elected, McBath would be the only black woman in Georgia’s congressional delegation.
That said, it wasn’t such a long shot for people paying attention.
Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—A Party for Women. A Party for (White) Men:
Stacey Abrams made history on Tuesday night by winning the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Georgia, becoming the first black woman nominated for governor by a major party. If she defeats her Republican opponent in the fall, she’ll make more history yet. “There have been nearly 9,000 opportunities for a black woman to have been the governor of a state in a year,” Philip Bump noted in The Washington Post, “but of those, all but 331 have gone to white men. More than 850 of those opportunities—81.1 percent—have gone to white men.” Nearly all of the remaining opportunities went to white women and men of color, with two exceptions. A black woman has never become governor.
Yet there are signs that 2018 is a major turning point, at least for one party. Abrams’s win wasn’t an outlier but part of a major trend: The Democratic Party is nominating more women than ever, while the Republican Party moves in the opposite direction. “With wins for female House candidates in Kentucky (Amy McGrath in KY-6), Texas (Lizzie Fletcher in TX-7 and Gina Ortiz Jones in TX-23) and also in Georgia, the total number of female House nominees is already up to 72—with 62 of those being on the Democratic side,” Benjy Sarlin of NBC News observed on Wednesday. “As of last night’s primaries, more than 40 percent of Democratic nominees so far are women, compared to less than 10 percent for Republicans.”
Scott Ritter at TruthDig writes—Mike Pompeo’s 12-Step Plan for Disaster With Iran:
In what The Washington Post—no friend of Iran—has labeled “a silly speech,” Donald Trump’s new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, provided an American answer to the charge made by French President Emmanuel Macron during his State visit last month that, when it came to the Iranian nuclear agreement (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA), there was “no Plan B.” Macron’s observations were made in the context of President Trump’s threat to withdraw from that agreement, even though Iran had been determined by all parties (including the United States) to be in full compliance.
Trump made his decision to withdraw official on May 8, and since then the United States has been struggling to articulate a strategy to deal with the consequences of that action. Pompeo’s speech—titled “After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy”—was intended to provide America’s “Plan B.” Upon reflection, however, Pompeo’s speech failed to accomplish this. Worse, the unrealistic demands made upon Iran in Pompeo’s address, coupled by the absolute detachment from reality and historical fact and/or context these demands were made, made Pompeo’s speech far more dangerous than silly. [...]
Pompeo stated that the Department of Defense was being directed to work closely with America’s “regional allies to deter Iranian aggression” and prevent Iranian regional dominance. Moreover, Pompeo noted, “If [Iran] restarts their nuclear program, it will mean … bigger problems than they’d ever had before.”
Thomas Frank at The Guardian writes—Striking teachers show that cutting education to fix it is a neoliberal myth:
What I like best about the wave of teachers’ strikes that have swept America these last few months is how they punch so brutally and so directly in the face of the number one neoliberal educational fantasy of the last decade: that all we need to do to fix public education is fire people.
Fire teachers, specifically. They need to learn fear and discipline. That’s what education “reformers” have told us for years. If only, the fantasy goes, we could slay the foot-dragging unions and the red-tape rules that keep mediocre teachers in their jobs, then things would be different. If only some nice “tech millionaires” would step in and help us fire people! If only we could get a thousand clones of Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor who fired so many people she even once fired someone on TV!
Now just look at what’s happened. We’ve seen enormous teacher protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, with more on the way. Actions that look very much like strikes by people who, in some of these states, are legally forbidden to strike. It was the perfect opportunity for education “reformers” to fire people, and fire them en masse. It was the politicians’ chance to show us what a tough-minded boss could do.
And in most cases, it was state governments that capitulated. It was hard-hearted believers in tax cuts and austerity and discipline who caved, lest they themselves get fired by voters at the next opportunity.
Elaine Plott at The Atlantic writes—The GOP’s 'Unbelievably Absurd' Response to Santa Fe:
At a press conference on Friday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Texas attributed the Santa Fe massacre to the high school having “too many entrances and too many exits.” He suggested it might be time for officials to “look at the design” of schools moving forward. “There are not enough people to put a guard in every entrance or exit,” he argued. “Maybe we need to look at limiting the entrances and exits into our schools so that we can have law enforcement looking at the people who are coming.”
Democrats were quick to condemn Patrick’s remarks. “Blame the doors?” tweeted California representative Eric Swalwell. “Anything but the weapon. Got it. Enough Is Enough.” Another California official, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom—a staunch gun control advocate who is running for governor—issued a similar broadside on Twitter: “Updated @GOP talking point: guns don't kill people, doors kill people.” Their criticisms betrayed a certain fatigue: Patrick’s comments indicated that Republicans will, in fact, consider new solutions to gun violence—so long as they don’t actually deal with guns.
Kimberly C. Ellis at In These Times writes—Want To Know How To Fix Facebook? Listen to Black Twitter:
In their 2002 book The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy, Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres warned, “Those who are racially marginalized are like the miner’s canary: Their distress is the first sign of a danger that threatens us all.”
This metaphor holds true on social media, in particular among the online communities making up the cultural phenomenon known as “Black Twitter.” Issues from fake news to trolling have long affected Black Twitter users, and we have long been raising the alarm and fighting back.
After Trayvon Martin was killed in February 2012, white supremacists took to social media to send pictures of his dead body to Black users. Some went further and turned his tragic murder into a game they called “Trayvoning.” They would dress up in clothes vaguely similar to Martin’s, and then pose in his death position, often with a can of soda and Skittles.
This harassment was psychologically traumatizing, resonating with a racist tradition that goes back at least to the post-slavery South, when white supremacists circulated postcards with photographs of lynching victims. The goal is to put Black Americans “back in their place,” or, as they say now, to “Make America Great Again.”
Mari Margil at The Guardian writes—Our laws make slaves of nature. It’s not just humans who need rights:
The Amazon rainforest is often called the earth’s lungs, and generates 20% of the world’s oxygen. Yet in the past half-century nearly a fifth of it has been cut down. The felling and burning of millions of trees is releasing massive amounts of carbon, in turn depleting the Amazon’s capacity to be one of the world’s largest carbon sinks – the natural systems that suck up and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Recently, 25 children brought a lawsuit to end the deforestation and its devastating impacts on the environment and their own wellbeing. The case made its way to Colombia’s supreme court, which issued its decision last month. While deforestation is hardly a new issue in this region, the court’s response to the lawsuit certainly was. Commenting that environmental degradation – not only in the Amazon but worldwide – is so significant that it threatens “human existence”, the court declared the Colombian Amazon a “subject of rights”. [...]
Bryce Covert at The New York Times writes—The Not-So-Subtle Racism of Trump-Era ‘Welfare Reform’:
When President Trump signed an executive order this year directing federal agencies to review adding work requirements to federal assistance programs, he said such requirements would “increase self-sufficiency, well-being and economic mobility.” Paul Ryan reportedly castrequirements as an attempt at “getting people the skills and opportunity to get into the work force.” Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said they would improve “health and well-being through incentivizing work and community engagement.”
Ignore the platitudes. Work requirements have never been about helping the poor or unemployed. They’ve always been about punishing black people.
This has become abundantly clear over the last few weeks as states drafting policies requiring Medicaid recipients get a job or engage in other employment activity have added exemptions. These carve-outs would, in effect, spare white, rural residents from work requirements but not black ones in urban areas. These proposals have turned the subtext that was there all along into legible text.
Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia are seeking waivers from the Department of Health and Human Services that would allow them to impose work requirements on some Medicaid recipients, but not all of them. They all included exemptions for counties with the highest unemployment levels, which are rural, mostly white areas. Urban centers where lots of black people are unemployed, but whose county-level unemployment rates are lower, would be subject to the work requirement.