Pandering

This week presents another chance to include much-needed and overdue funding for the Gulf Coast in the Supplemental Appropriations bill.  Please contact your Senator TODAY to demand that Congress include funding for housing for the Gulf Coast homeless and low-income in this war spending bill.  Feeling sort of icky inside at the prospect of tacitly supporting the Iraq War in the process?  You're not alone - a significant portion of federal $$ that has been allocated to the region has been via earmarks to Iraq emergency spending bills, putting anti-war pro-Gulf Coast advocates like myself in the awkward position of appreciating these otherwise bloated, omnibus spending bills. 

Though the nation's Katrina fatigue set in two years ago, the region's recovery remains anemic without strong government leadership and resources.  I've been disappointed in listening to Clinton and Obama use Katrina as evidence of Bush et al.'s incompetence without promising too strenuously to rectify the GOP's willful abdication of the region.  Yesterday, watching this video on ever-more Clinton misogyny (though I detest the slander of Rev. Wright as it's final image), I got pissed off all over again by Obama campaign co-chairman Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s insinuation that Clinton's tears in NH were contrived - backed up by accusations that she never cried over Katrina.  Did he really just let fly the triple-whammy of sexist accusations of racism served up on the silver platter of one of the worst disasters in our nation's history?  Oh yes he did. 

Most of us likely don't remember (I didn't), Sen. Clinton's very vocal criticism of Bush & Co.  after Hurricane Katrina.  Clinton emerged as an unofficial spokeswoman for the Democratic Party after the storm, bolstered by her experience after 9/11 in NYC and her yet-unannounced-but-anticipated Presidential run.  She called for an independent panel to investigate the government's response (defeated along party lines), demanded relief aid for undocumented workers and residents (forgive the right-wing newssource), called for a repeal of the Bush tax cuts to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, accused the oil companies of profiting off of Katrina,  and described the Bush/GOP response as "a deliberate decision by the Bush administration...motivated by a desire to discourage Democratic voters from returning to the devastated region."

Republicans - in charge of the House & Senate at the time - immediately accused her of pandering to the country to further her political ambitions, going so far as to compare her to those pinko radicals Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi:

"It's interesting that at a time when she could have differentiated herself from the ranks of [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and the far left ranks of the Democratic Party, she chose to join those on the front ranks of the blame game," said RNC spokesman Brian Jones. "It would have been interesting if she had shown some level of restraint."

In what would turn out to be a prescient indicator of the primary coverage to come, Sen. Obama made as much effort as Clinton to deliver resources and attention to the region, without being criticized for his activism. Furthermore, Sen. Obama also avoided being called out for a rather unique position as an African-American politician - defending the government's response to Katrina as "colorblind."

From a Salon piece on the racist response of Bush & Co. to Katrina:

With the exception of Secretary of State Condi Rice, nearly every black person I've seen quoted in the press or on television—and most every white liberal—believes that African-Americans suffered disproportionately from government neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Polls showed ($) that a majority of African-Americans believed the federal government's response was racist; a minority of white respondents thought so.  Yet, here is the Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts (my emphases here and throughout):

Which brings me to my final point. There's been much attention in the press about the fact that those who were left behind in New Orleans were disproportionately poor and African American. I've said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind.

That outrageous statement was preceded by this one:

It is not politics to insist that we have an independent commission [as called for by Sen. Clinton] to examine these issues. Indeed, one of the heartening things about this crisis has been the degree to which the outrage has come from across the political spectrum; across races; across incomes.

As I mentioned in my first paragraph, neither pol is doing much now to fight for the needed government resources for the region's recovery.  But as this is a subject near and dear to me, I have to call bullsh*t on Obama's comments.  YES, it is a political act to investigate WTF happened that our government was doing flyovers and going shoe shopping while predominantly low-income African-Americans and the elderly literally drowned in their homes and starved in an overcrowded, filthy convention center.  And I for one, am NOT heartened by "outrage...from across the political spectrum..."  The GOP-led Administration & Congress stymied tried and true disaster relief strategies, such as using HUD vouchers to find people homes (vs. the overreliance on disastrous and toxic FEMA trailers), and enrolling evacuees and victims in Medicaid to address health issues.   

Of course, this was part of a pattern in the Bush Administration, one for which he was "rewarded" at the polls.  Again, Salon:

Though he appointed the first and the second African-American secretaries of state, Bush seldom appears before black audiences. Beyond his interest in education, he has little to say about issues of social and urban policy. Bush has never articulated an approach, other than faith-based platitudes and tax cuts, to bettering the lives of African-Americans. And indeed, has not bettered them. The percentage of blacks living in poverty, which diminished from 33 percent to less than 23 percent during the Clinton years, has been rising again under Bush. In 2000, Bush got 8 percent of the black vote. In 2004, he got 11 percent.

As these primary days wind down, Sen. Clinton now has slightly more black support than Bush in '04.  This result is due to Senator Obama's political positions, political chances, and the racial politics played by both Democratic candidates (and their spouses and surrogates).

Because it turns out that Jackon got the GOP Katrina memo.  Compare this from the 2005 WaPo story above:

Asked on NBC's "Today Show" about criticism from Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, who accused her of seeking political gain at what he said should be a moment of national unity, [Clinton] replied: "Well, you know, that's what they always do. We've been living with that kind of rhetoric for the last 4 1/2 years. . . . Every time anyone raises any kind of legitimate criticism and asks questions, they're attacked."

to

Mr. Jackson in January 2008:

"Those tears also have to be analyzed," Jackson said. "They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45 percent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest, and they see real hope in Barack Obama." Jackson continued: "We saw something very clever in the last week of this campaign ...

That he managed to layer the accusation of racism on top of the implication of Clinton's pandering, now that's just genius, and not a little ironic, given Obama's conviction that the government's response to Katrina was colorblind.

Ah, the South Carolina primary.  Just the first of a racial tit-for-tat this primary season. One of the things that saddens me most about this primary campaign is the tarnished legacy of President Clinton.  Sure, we hate him now for being a racist neoliberal, but I vaguely recall good times as real wages grew and poverty rates fell for the first time in two decades (and not only perversely because of welfare reform), when he

...supported policies, such as narrowly tailored affirmative action programs, that were designed to assist blacks. They credited him for a robust economy that boosted black employment, home ownership, entrepreneurship and opportunities in education.

With little fanfare, Bill Clinton appointed more blacks to Cabinet and other posts than any other president. In fact, 13 percent of his appointments were black.

Most blacks lauded the president's historic trip to Africa, where he apologized for slavery. He introduced a U.S. race initiative and appointed black historian John Hope Franklin as its chairman. Although white conservatives derailed the initiative, blacks gave Bill Clinton credit for trying to do the right thing on their behalf.

That article, written in January 2008, went on to outline corresponding black support for Sen. Clinton.  Now, we see that 59% of African-Americans would like to see her in the VP role, more than any other groups surveyed in a recent ABC/WaPo poll.  How should I reconcile that indicator with the debates in the 'sphere and off-line about where the fault lies for Sen. Clinton's loss of support for President? 

Look, I know I have blinders on for my candidate, and I know how exciting the potential of the first African-American President is (sometimes I too wish Clinton would just get the h*ll out of his way.) I also know that African-Americans are interrogating Obama's overtures to them. But ENOUGH with Katrina as a political football.  The post-hurricane struggles for resources and survival continue today in the Gulf Coast. Let's hope that if either Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton becomes the next POTUS, they will deliver resources to communities where they are long, long overdue.    Cynthia McKinney would have it no other way.

- Redstar