But first, I want to address this phase of the primary campaign before it fades into background -- fades but at the same time leaves a hidden, and so indelible, mark on our psyches for or against some candidate or other. By "this phase" I refer to the one wherein Bernie and -- in a fascinatingly timely coincidence that begs a question of where the impetus originated -- some very loud Black Lives Matter-ers have managed to get the media obsessed with the notion that Hillary Clinton is at the root of all mass incarceration of poor minority youth and adults who are in the most imprisoned population of any country in the world.
Hmmm. Last night I walked into the bedroom around 11, and the Ken Burns bio-doc of Jackie Robinson was on PBS. It was the second part, starting near the end of the playing years and then on to his death. I didn't really want to watch it then, but Yona did, so I naturally got all immersed in it; Yona drifted off to sleep. It was very moving when it became the story of Jackie's devotion to the fight for for civil rights. This was all new learning for me, his engagement with MLK and his trips to hot spots like Birmingham during the voter registration battles and the church bombings.
Now here's the thing that connects with the Bernie-Hillary wars: I was smacked inside my head by the eventual repudiation by some of Jackie Robinson's unrele nting, authentically heroic engagement in the fight for freedom and equality. That is, some vocal Black Power radicals in the 60's tarred Robinson as an "Uncle Tom" when Jackie spoke against violence and separatism. They said he'd made himself subservient to the white man as a player and after baseball in his work and political life.
In their righteous anger and frustration, in their new-found radical ideology of power and rejection of the establishment ways, they had abandoned the reflective capacity to see and appreciate, in the context of Robinson's own time, the challenges he faced down, his incredible accomplishments and his contribution to the emerging assertion of and belief in the full equality of black people -- i.e., in black people's self-perceptio n as well as white people's. To me the ultimate measure of his devotion was that he died of a heart attack at the age of 53. He had volunteered for as stressful a life as I can imagine.
So now there is a parallel attempt from the left and some BLM zealots to slur Hillary as an oppressor of black people because she once referred to certain criminals in the black community as "superpredators" and because her husband signed a crime bill that had the result of putting more people in jail for longer times with less services and training. According to the Hill-haters on the left, her years of arduous legal entrepreneurship and compassion-driven activism in the South mean abso-fecking-lutely nothing, less than nothing, because she "betrayed" those bedrock accomplishments by supporting Bill's crime bill.
There is a strong strain among those inspired by the post-Ferguson movement for justice that seeks to rewrite history, to judge yesterday's words and actions by today's standards, by today's ethos. For example, students brought Princeton University to crisis over the legacy of Princeton's past-president Woodrow Wilson. (Just realized why it's never referred to by its acronym, PU.) W.W. undeniably was a racist 100 years ago, and so they said his name must be expunged from the school or else the institution would be guilty of the same racism in 2015. Sanity did prevail, as did the voices of many alumni. To honor Wilson for the great developments he wrought as university president, as well as POTUS thereafter, did not imply condoning that he was a racist in a society that accepted prejudice even in the highest office. At Princeton, more constructive ways have been collaboratively determined to bring the community to a higher level of sensitivity and understanding to move toward a deeper and truer integration and unification.
I've said before that I believe Hillary has changed over time along with the country. The far left's conflation of Bill and Hillary, of Bill's presidency with the one they assume Hillary would create, is rooted in the same kind of anger-borne, frustration-pitched failure of perspective as the Uncle-Tom bomb thrown at Jackie Robinson and the attempts to rewrite history in the present. Bill was compromised at best in his progressivism. He led the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Empathy was there, but not always reflected in governance.
On the other hand, there was still the Reagan ethos in America, the Gingrich Contract [on] America; Bill played ball with the right. There was, however, peace and job growth. The progressive voice pretty much wasn't heard in public.
When Hillary spoke back then of super-predators, she wasn't talking about Willie Horton. She was talking about people who terrorized black neighborhoods in inner cities. Still, though crime victims were/are as disproportionately black as those arrested, the problem was that the politics made it possible to pass the lock-em-up part of the intiative but less so the bring-em-up-right/education/training/jobs/treatment part. The 1994 Crime Bill, trimmed of the latter component by Repubicans, was recognized by many -- e.g., the NAACP -- as a bad bill for poor/black communities because it increased policing and incarcerations and did little to address constructively the socio-economic incubating conditions of crime as a livelihood/subculture. Problem was, as explained in http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/opinion/did-blacks-really-endorse-the-1994-crime-bill.html?_r=0, the Repubicans used all the power they had to strip out funds and programs to scaffold pathways toward productive self-support.
Twenty-six of the 38 black House members voted for that 1994 bill, judging that, with its cruel imbalances, this was the best deal they'd be likely to get. (One of those 26 members, Rep. Rush of Chicago, said today on a TV interview that he is "ashamed of that vote". I understand his saying that, but I believe he's burdening himself with the same revision of historical context. Yes, dammit, we now know that that whole approach was insane and inhumane -- not to mention racist, venal and cruel -- but in hindsight we know for sure that it is not only an ineffective and extremely counterproductive attempt to address the problems of inner city society, not only has it failed and crippled many lives and families, but it's also created this huge sick problem of mass incarceration. So the pendulum has finally swung, and this only after seven years of having a black man in the White House, recently the first POTUS to sit and talk with inmates in a federal penitientiary. So let's not trivialize or wipe away the meaningful differences between 22 years ago and now.)
Looking back to the end of Bill's administration, how ready was the country then to reject trickle-down Reaganite Calvinist ideology powered by the Southern (racist) strategy? Not so much; we elected friggin W, TWICE. It was in those eight long years of slow mudslide ending in massive collapse that the tide started to rise for change, social, political and economic. Pot, marriage equality, Lily Ledbetter, troop withdrawals, Rachel Maddow...
And now, now we're talking about prison reform, about all kinds of alternatives to locking people up, and it is jarring to me now to hear mainstream media commentary talking about the amazing revelation that our correctional systems have been designed to punish and not to rehabilitate and re-integrate! No effin' duh! I was visiting prisons for work in the '90's, and these truths were then self-evident to the naked eye. Today in Philly was just announced a $3.5M grant to reduce the prison population*. (*see Inqy article at the end)
SO. Bernie's weaponizing of the term "super-predator" against Hillary in attempting to impair her standing with African-Americans in New York is disingenuous, since he voted for the friggin 1994 bill. But so are Hillary's lame attempts to attach Bernie's pro-gun votes to New York's gun crimes, so maybe we call it politics. However, Bernie's attacks on Hillary's character by his incessantly implying that she does the bidding of Wall Street because some Wall Street people donate to her campaign and to pro-Hill PAC's are getting very frayed and off-putting. Yeah, Bern, we also heard about the Iraq War vote, two dozen times... He dropped the same old dimes tonight at his yuge Washington Square rally around the corner from Eli's old place on 8th St. Show us examples, Bernie, of Hillary's having acted as a senator or as Secretary of State to bend to the will of corpoorate donors against the best interests of the people. Then I'll listen.
And the smears from the left that she betrayed her own good works as First Lady, that she is not a caring and progressive person at heart, and that the 90's are determinative of a 2017 Hillary presidency, all of that thinking reflects a choice to see what one wishes to see and to blind oneself to the profound changes that open us to new possibilities.
Now the pivot to the positive! The New York Daily News endorses Secretary Clinton for POTUS. It's a good read at http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/vote-hillary-clinton-article-1.2598171. The editorial fleshes out a strong, unambivalent pro-Hillary case, including Hillary's practicable and clearly conceived plans for rebuilding the middle class, closing the inequality gap for all income levels, investing in infrastructure, taking a series of grounded, doable steps toward progress. It also points out her seasoning in international relationships and her strategic problem-solving experience in a crazy and dangerous world. Bernie's assessment in the piece: he's a "fantasist" whose blueprints for his utopian visions all come down to 1) creating a "revolution" and 2) "trust me".
The concluding lines go like this:
"Clinton’s proposals are shaped for the world in which we live, not the world in which we might wish to live. By any stretch of the imagination — except that of Sanders — they stand as the highflying progressive wish list of a results-driven candidate.
"Head to head exclusively on those terms — which are the fundamental terms of their debate — the former First Lady, senator and secretary of state promises to be a true Democratic champion."
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