Where are we now?

[msgadget]

I post this not to bash but to highlight a 'platform' that is still NOT being addressed head on by Democrats but which is being exploited fully by the right, especially in churches and as noted in the CORE thread. The author says action only came as a result of pushing hard 'from below'. How does one do that these days? Could a movement gain momentum with such a diverse black populace now? Just some rhetorical questions...it remains frustrating...



...

The truth is that for a generation, while Edwin Meese and William Rehnquist, the godfathers of the legal right, built the Federalist Society into a potent patronage network, Democratic politicians squabbled among themselves about whether an overly assertive commitment to civil rights would cost too many votes--effectively leaving civil rights lawyers to fight a fading rearguard action in increasingly hostile courts.

Senator John Kerry's attempt at an Alito filibuster and Kennedy's observation on the Senate floor that the Constitution's framers failed when it came to slavery, represent the Democratic Party's most honorable tradition. But it can only honor the memory of Coretta King to point out that Democratic Party power brokers have always shown ambivalence to civil rights--except when pushed hard from below. As late as 1964 the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was locked out of the Democratic National Convention; and ever since Richard Nixon's 1968 victory, the pollsters and campaign consultants have found ever-new ways of telling Democrats that they can't win on civil rights, that they can't win by offending too many white males. (No one listened more to that advice than Bill Clinton, which is why despite many eloquent words he never took a single real risk on a civil rights issue. So let it be noted for the record that among leading presidential aspirants it was Kerry, not Hillary Clinton, who initiated the filibuster.)

It is time to face reality: If Democratic senators lacked an effective strategy to hold back Alito, and if Democrats have not developed their own scheme to win back the courts, it is because so many Democratic senators did not want to. Brown and Roe remain on the books, but what remains of their egalitarian promise will be hollowed out by the hard-right bloc of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. When it comes to the challenges of civil rights, Democrats have sown apathy and avoidance. Now we reap the whirlwind.

[Karenina]

1. How many of those

who Choicepoint scrubbed 5 YEARS AGO, have had their right to vote restored?

[Pithy Cherub]

2. My sense is that

many Democrats want to say what has been done and hold those high as the ongoing Civil Rights credentials without obligating themselves for going further. Going further, seems to have an embedded political calculus that Black folks have no other party to invest their votes in, especially after Katrina.

The question, really, is maintenance of an existing plateau where we should be? Defending a plateau is in some ways easier than reaching for higher ground. Where should it rank in terms of an American domestic situation that is eviscerating rights by economically dismantling safety nets and the social fabric. Especially, when many Democratic senators receive their campaign contributions from corporations that want less regulation, or big donors who believe that they have a special access that would supersede a "special interest group". The political system has considerably weakened the democracy foundation the Civil Rights plateau rests upon.

Dramatic change only comes when people feel there is no alternative. Protecting the status quo is the safe bet (yes, Clinton took it to a new art form). The question is whether the language needs to change and be uplifted by taking Civil Rights and placing it on par with the essence of Democracy. The democratic belief in one vote for each person, the belief in equal opportunities for Justice, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, the belief in the rule of law equitably for every one. Then Civil Rights becomes part of the dialogue for each and every American (on edit)again. Right now certain people believe they can pigeonhole what Civil Rights means.

:hi: msgadget, thoughtful question!