What's Wrong With This Picture?
I have so little time for personal blogging I wonder if I'll even have time to properly finish this post, but since this is where I write about my personal political thinking (and occasionally more personal or random stuff), this belongs here, as opposed to Personal Democracy Forum, where I try to stay non-partisan.
But ever since controversy erupted over last week's meeting between former President Clinton and a group of "A-list" political bloggers, I've been mulling the matter. I wrote something for PDF that noted that several African-American bloggers were upset because this photo of the meeting showed an all-white group, and none of the progressive bloggers invited to the meeting saw fit to mention in their own posts that, whatever the purposes of the event, it wasn't a diverse gathering, and maybe that suggests that the progressive "net-roots" needs to take more pro-active steps to become more racially diverse.
For me, here's what's wrong with this picture: The bloggers look a bit too happy, standing proudly and in some cases grinning broadly, like they just won a million dollars or got invited to the Oval Office. (More pics, from my friend Matt Stoller, here.) And these are many of the leaders of the progressive blogosphere.
Personally, I think I'd be extremely uncomfortable to be in the same room with President Clinton. To me, he represents all that went bad about the Democratic party in the 1990s. Remember this, if what matters to you is a fighting Democratic party:
-Under Clinton, the Democrats went from having a majority in Congress and in the statehouses to a minority.
-He raised hundreds of millions for his own campaigns, but did nothing to build any kind of meaningful party infrastructure; indeed, under his handpicked DNC chair, Terry McAuliffe, the Dems small-donor fundraising base completely dried up, to the point that the only group where Dems beat Republicans in fundraising was among million-dollar donors.
-Even after leaving the White House, he spent more time raising tens of millions for his Presidential Library, one more monument to his ego, than to rebuilding the Democrats.
And remember this, if what you care about is progressive values:
-The Whitewater land deal was, at its heart, about ripping off working class retirees who didn't understand that if they stopped making payments on their mortgages, they would not only lose their land but also all the equity built up in the process.
-Clinton's decision to allow the execution of convicted murderer Rickey Ray Rector, even though he was so brain-damaged he had no understanding of his crime or punishment.
-His refusal to fight for single-payer health care reform, while he spent most of his political capital on NAFTA, shafting working Americans in two blows.
-His turning the Lincoln Bedroom into a symbol of corruption.
-His decision to blow up a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory on the flimsiest of evidence, resulting in the death of innocents.
-His failure to save hundreds of thousands in Rwanda from genocide.
Yeah, maybe Clinton has made a couple of good speeches since leaving office, and he's doing admirable work on AIDS worldwide. At the same time, he's completely sucked up to former President Bush, and gives the current President cover for his continuing failure to address the Katrina crisis with his "Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund."
Did any of the progressive bloggers at the Harlem meeting bring any of this up? I haven't read every word they've written on the event, but so far I have yet to see anything but adoration for the "Big Dog" and his brilliant grasp of policy and politics. Ugh.
Posted by msifry at September 19, 2006 10:13 PM