Yesterday, Alana noted the latest fallout from Cory Booker’s critique of the Obama administration on “Meet the Press” and the subsequent, utterly ridiculous “hostage” video he recorded after the Obama campaign reminded him that independent thinking is strongly discouraged in the Democratic Party. Booker’s communications director, Anne Torres, resigned, citing “different views on how communications should be run.”
It wasn’t clear whether Torres objected more to Booker’s defense of capitalism or the cringeworthy apology video–which would have been embarrassing for any communications shop to have on its record–or whether this was merely the last straw in a simmering dispute (possibly about the mayor’s famous obsession with Twitter). But considering that Obama’s Bain attacks made several high-profile Democrats uncomfortable, the fact that Booker was the only one to consent to a walkback video seemed to indicate that the campaign wanted no daylight between Obama and Booker on the issue, even if others strayed from the message. Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray took a look at how race may have affected the campaign’s damage control strategy:
As Senator Barack Obama rose toward power in 2007 and 2008, he was sometimes taken as the avatar of a new generation of African-American leaders.
They were, PBS’s Gwen Ifill wrote, a “Joshua Generation” led by figures from Alabama Rep. Artur Davis to Newark Mayor Cory Booker. They were, like Obama, born too late to participate in the Civil Rights movement, and late enough to benefit from it with blue chip educations and direct paths to power. They were free of the urban machines that had defined black politics in America, and ready for a different and more hopeful sort of politics of race.
But as President Barack Obama struggles to keep his party united around him, few figures have proven more troublesome than that cadre of black leaders, each of whom was seen at some point as a candidate for the post which only Obama will ever hold: First Black President.
But Davis was already uncomfortable with the leftward tilt of the Democratic Party, which had been driving out its moderates for years. After Davis left office, he began writing regularly for National Review, after being a go-to guy for leftish dissent for Politico’s “Arena.” Then rumors swirled that Davis was considering a party registration switch to possibly run for office as a Republican in Northern Virginia. Davis has now confirmed those rumors, and posted on his website a statement of explanation in which he airs his disagreement with the Obama administration (and mainstream Democratic Party) about taxes and healthcare policy as well as the “racial spoils system” the Democrats attempt to exploit each election cycle:
On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again. I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country. You have also seen me write that faith institutions should not be compelled to violate their teachings because faith is a freedom, too. You’ve read that in my view, the law can’t continue to favor one race over another in offering hard-earned slots in colleges: America has changed, and we are now diverse enough that we don’t need to accommodate a racial spoils system. And you know from these pages that I still think the way we have gone about mending the flaws in our healthcare system is the wrong way—it goes further than we need and costs more than we can bear.
Davis isn’t a Tea Partier–and certainly neither is Booker. But they also have been uneasy about the extent to which the Democratic Party uses identity politics as an end in itself. Obviously, both were hoping Obama would change that. Booker has shown support for school choice and defended Bain because he, like Davis, wants inner-city youth to get a better shot at an education and to have job opportunities thereafter. Obama may not be in danger of losing black voters’ support in November, but the party he leads is going to have to grapple with a new generation of centrist black politicians who are clearly bothered by a status quo–and the Democratic Party’s strict adherence to it–that remains woefully inadequate to their constituents.
Can't wait for the David Frum column lamenting how the leftward tilt of the Democratic Party that has led to Lieberman's retirement and Davis's apostasy. nAs I recall he had started as a judge who challenged and beat incumbent Earl Hilliard. nThough I'd wish he'd move north and run in Maryland …
It's about time that the conservatives confront the angry, smug and self righteous attitude of the left ever chance we get because it's a mental illness.
Why is the son of an Kenyan and a Caucasian American called a Black President? He shares no roots with the American Blacks, no Jim Crow, no slavery. Why would anyone expect him to participate in the Civil Rights movement of American Blacks when he is not one? Oh, because he looks like them. Sounds pretty racist to me.
You have not heard of the "one drop rule" if a person with 1/8 of African blood is label a negro, black or color that goes back to the era of slavery. The white planters did not want to take care of their off-spring that they had by the maids or give them any of their estate, so they came up with this idea. It has been around for so long but white people mostly don't know about it because they have been lied to for ever.
"because they have been lied to for ever" n nat least obama is keeping that tradition alive…
As far as the Black community goes, Obama could come out for giving Alaska back to the Russians, ceding the Southwest to Mexico, while using tax payer,s money to build a Mosque in Arlington Cemetery, and a video of him tossing living late term abortion babies on the pile screaming in pain as they die slowly and still comfortably capture 95% of that voting block.. n nBut Blacks are not Racist!
Maybe Davis should have stayed in Alabama and worked with the GOP there.
After he acknowledged the existence of wide-spread voter fraud in Alabama, it probably was not safe.
"But Davis was already uncomfortable with the leftward tilt of the Democratic Party" n nHUH? Both the Democrats and Republicans have shifted far to the right in the last twenty years. If you disagree, name one issue besides LBGT that Democrats have moved to the left on, and defend it with facts. n nIf anything, the serial tax-cutter Obama, who has precided over the biggest drop in US government employees ever and who like all modern Democratic presidents has reduced the deficit as per GDP since he took office, is probably to the right of the tax-raising, amnesty-granting, compromising, stimulus-loving, deficit-tripling armed Keynesian named Ronald Reagan.
What world are you living in, you must be high on something. for instance, consider stimulus effect in just one state: nNorth Carolina public sector UP 500 jobs, private sector DOWN 300,000. Governor Perdue vetoed their budget Sunday, saying it would cause "generational damage…", (privately, I thought that was what progressive rule did). How is it the stimulus kept public sector (union) jobs flush While obviously doing nothing for the economy and the people whom she professes to serve? Further, what you bet the weasels in charge, from Obama down, have done this across the board (stimulation of government) in all fifty states. Obama and company talk tough , gun to a knife fight, I say this coming election they get cut. The progressive movement and tactics seems foreshadowed in Gustave LeBon's "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind".
The drop in government jobs is at the LOCAL and STATE level….not the federal level. n nbut nice try. i admire the way you lie to try to make obama look like a centrist. lol.
I left the Democrats and registered as a Republican in 1980 so I could vote for Reagan in the Primary. I had slowly, but surely become a Republican starting ini 1966 when I voted for Reagan as California Governor. I still voted Democrat but was chased to the right by the Democrats. I don't think the Repubs have gone as far Right as much as the Dems have turned to the Left to the point they now refer to themselves as Progressives. The Religious Right was beginning to be a problem, but seems to have had their importance diminished somewhat. The Tea Party? I don't believe an organization who wants the government run by the rule book–The Constitution–is Right Wing at all. If the Progressives want new rules, change the Constitution.
Davis and Booker are on the front line of the disintegrating "Blue State" model. They know what they're talking about, and don't live in cloud-coo-coo land. n nAnother Democrat to watch in this vein is Rhode Island's Gina Raimondo. She has been bravely taking on the public employee unions by trying to save their pensions and not bankrupting Rhode Island or its municipalities in the process. She was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal and on Bloomberg. She's an articulate defender of the welfare state, using the original arguments made for it, decades ago. Because she wants it for present and future generations, she had to take on the reactionary interests that threaten to destroy it. And I don't mean Republicans
n nIf the Democrats ever put themselves back on that kind of track, we would have once again a formidable debate about the scope and nature of government in our society. Right now, we can't. All sensible and honest people know that it has to be pruned, whatever their ideological leanings. This should give the Republicans a natural advantage, if they have to wit to grab the opportunity. Even if Tea Partiers didn't manage to abolish the welfare state on their own, it could just abolish itself through bankruptcy.
If you take the premise that we all basically want our children to have a good education and opportunity for a better life, then you take our differences out of it. So why then should a poor kid from Mississippi get a scholarship based on their academic works when a kid with the same academic credentials from Appalachia is denied a scholarship? If you want a color blind society, then take ethnicity and gender and religion out of the mix and base everything from college admissions to job hires on the best person for the position. Do you really think the nations whose students surpass us blink an eye over the touchy feely social stuff that drives admissions? In Japan, in China, in Russia, in Sweden, in Korea, in Australia, they pick the person who has the best skills. Until we return to a nation that values excellent work over self-esteem, nothing will change. And that goes from the playground where everyone gets a prize right up to the White House.
If we truly want our children to really get a color blind education and be COMPLETELY prepared to attend college, then get the federal government out of education. The states can continue to collect the taxes and redistribute back to all parents who have children in school as a voucher so they can send their child(ren) to any school they want, including religious. The cost of education is over $12K per student, in one state anyway, and the children and parents should be the ones to decide where to spend it. Most public school teachers are mediocre because they have tenure, work in a bureaucratic government organization with no consequences for their marginal efforts. There will be enough kids to keep half the public schools open, the closed ones can be bought and run by education companies, religions, etc. Teachers who lose their job can apply at the many private schools and compete to keep their job. A solid 1 thru 12 education makes for a two to three year college degree program.
Artur (Parents: spell check your kids names for crying out loud) Davis was on Neil Cavuto's show tonight where he said he voted for Obama because Davis saw him as a Centrist. Obama was voted THE most Liberal senator yet, Davis would dare try that in-our-faces lie to run as a RINO in Virginia!? (The video clip of this outrageous liar is already up on FOX's website) n nHe really must believe we're stupid AND that we completely forget anything which happens past six months! n n
Remember this statement: nAfter Obama gets landslide'd and they lose seats in the House and they lose the Senate, the progressives will be run out of town. n nThe "Blue Dog Resurrection" will be all over the LA & NY times as they try to salvage the party that Obama, Pelosi and "Do Nothing" Harry Reid destroyed. n nAnd good riddance!
Look at the U-6 rate. That is what the unemployment rate really is and it is double digits!
What saddens me is that people like you are allowed to vote. n n0bama had HUGE majorities in the House and the Senate FOR THE FIRST 2 years! Your ignorance is borderline criminal. 0bama got EVERYTHING he asked for the first 2 years. n nHis stimulus of 847 BILLION was supposed to fix the economy and it was EXACTLY what he wanted voted through by ALL Democrats. n nAnd if you think the Dems will win seats in the House, you are more delusional than most kool-aid drinkers. Also, the Dems are defending 25 seats in the Senate and the R's only 10. Odds are that the Republicans take all 3. n n0bama is toast because America is sick of his excuses AFTER he spent 1 TRILLION TAX PAYER DOLLARS to fix the economy and then giving us 40 STRAIGHT MONTHS of unemployment ABOVE 8%.