A wee political rant

A wee bit Political
Category: News and Politics

I have to break down and post this. I've been having a great conversation with my friends online about this post and it's validity. Also about the relevance (or lack thereof) of these posturing scholars and "leaders" as Obama has ascended to the national scene. Read and Enjoy:

Obama and the Suicidal Left
Why the black intelligentsia needs to stop hating on
the Democratic nominee.

TheRoot.com
Updated: 2:59 PM ET Sep 2, 2008

Sept. 2, 2008--During the Democratic National
Convention in Denver, I sat on a panel about hip-hop
and politics with a number of well-read and highly
regarded thinkers in the black community. At one point
a fellow panelist commented that it was impossible to
criticize Barack without being considered a sellout.
That statement inspired a thread of commentary echoing
the sentiment.

Let me say this much: I'm a believer in firm critique
and the virtues of skepticism toward anyone who holds
a position of authority. I publicly disagreed with
Obama's FISA vote and his decision to campaign in
Indiana as opposed to traveling to Memphis on the
anniversary of Dr. King's assassination. But my
response to that line was simply to ask: Why it is
that a group of progressives would spend about 40
minutes discussing how to critique Barack and
virtually no time discussing how to elect him?

Unless John McCain has suddenly become a more
attractive option, perhaps those priorities should be
shifted.

The GOP has won 7 of the last 10 presidential
elections largely because of the success in creating a
big tent. They manage, however improbably, to get an
unemployed factory worker to vote for the same
candidate as the millionaire CEO who just fired him.
Progressives, however, have the opposite of a big
tent—we have a funnel. We take the broadest
possibilities and narrow them down to just a handful
of ideologically correct, if absolutely unelectable
also, to mitigate the pain of defeat with the balm of
our untainted ideals.

I thought about that conversation again, after I heard
Cornel West and Julianne Malveaux savage Barack
Obama's acceptance speech. Malveaux went hypertensive
because Barack never mentioned Dr. King by name
(despite the fact that he had two of MLK's children
and Rep. John Lewis speak about the March on
Washington and that only the absolute dimmest of bulbs
could not know who that "young preacher from Georgia"
was.) West fulminated that Obama had left out a
critique of white supremacy and missed the symbolism
of the moment. And worst of all, he noted, "no one was
crying."

Between acting in The Matrix and launching his rap
career, Cornel West has gone soft around the middle. (camille note: is that soft around the middle of the brain, cause the man left his sense somewhere in Ethiopia during that ill-fated marriage a few years back)
The kind of symbolism-laden speech he wanted is what
candidates give during their inaugurals, not their
acceptance speeches—unless they're 15 points up in the
polls. Obama is running neck-and-neck with a GOP
cadaver, and he was virtually required to give the
kind of nuts-and-bolts speech he delivered on
Thursday.

In truth, we've been seeing this strand of thought for
months among black intellectuals. My friend and
brother-in-arms, Mark Anthony Neal, accused Obama of
"cheapening his religion" when he resigned from
Trinity, but made virtually no mention of the fact
that Obama had put his neck on the line by defending
Jeremiah Wright in March, only to see Wright and
Trinity ignore that gesture, dismiss Barack as a
"politician" and repeatedly inject themselves into the
campaign. Jesse Jackson threatened to manually
castrate Obama for giving a speech that was far more
even-handed than the few lines quoted from it suggest
and completely in line with a series of "personal
responsibility" speeches Jackson himself gave during
his 1988 presidential campaign.

Obama has been giving inspirational speeches. He's
built an amazing grassroots machine and brought people
into active political engagement who had sworn off
politics long ago.

But conventions are about winning elections, plain and
simple. (That was something that Hillary's most
die-hard supporters missed also—their hopes of a
nomination fight harked back to an era when
conventions actually had something to do with policy.
At this point they are closer to Broadway productions,
with everyone memorizing their lines and dancing on
cue.) There are still heated arguments in smoke-filled
rooms—they just take place in May and June, long
before the first delegates have even begun packing.

I was hoping that Obama would avoid the kind of
emotive speech we all know he can give and deliver
exactly what he did: a basic outline of his policy
positions. The measure of Obama's connection to those
movements West was talking about is not whether he
mentions them in his acceptance speech, but whether he
prioritizes the progressive civil rights and
anti-poverty platform he's outlined in his platform.
(Does the fact that he's the only candidate in eons
with a program to employ ex-offenders and reduce
recidivism or one where poor pregnant women can
receive home visits from nurses to reduce infant
mortality mean anything to us?)

Perhaps the most biting irony is a kind of reverse
affirmative action, where Obama seems to face a higher
bar for support than the white candidates who preceded
him. The Congressional Black Caucus and black
progressives asked virtually nothing from Kerry (at
least not publicly) and not much more from Gore, yet a
former civil rights attorney who has litigated
employment and voting discrimination cases has to pass
a "good faith" test.

On some level, you understand the logic of expecting
more from your own people, but not the logic that says
you should road-block the path to election.

William Jelani Cobb is associate professor of history
at Spelman College and author of "The Devil & Dave
Chappelle and Other Essays." His blog, "The Delegate,"
appeared on The Root last week.