Barbara Ehrenreich nails the Clinton/MLK debacle.

[Emillereid]

Hillary's Real MLK Problem
Posted January 15, 2008 | 12:58 PM (EST)

BARBARA EHRENREICH


At first I took it as another, yawn, white rip-off of black culture and creativity: the Rolling Stones appropriating the Bo Diddley beat, Bo Derek sporting corn rows, and now Hillary giving Lyndon Baines Johnson credit for the voting rights act of 1965. If you had to give this honor to a white guy, LBJ was an odd choice, since he'd spent the 1964 Democratic convention scheming to prevent the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from taking any Dixiecrat seats. By Clinton's standards, maybe Richard Nixon should be credited with the legalization of abortion in 1972.

But Clinton's LBJ remark reveals something more worrisome than racial tone-deafness - a theory of social change that's as elitist as it is inaccurate. Black civil rights weren't won by suited men (or women) sitting at desks. They were won by a mass movement of millions who marched, sat in at lunch counters, endured jailings, and took bullets and beatings for the right to vote and move freely about. Some were students and pastors; many were dirt-poor farmers and urban workers. No one has ever attempted to list all their names.

<snip>
"Change" is this year's Democratic battle cry, but if you don't know how it happens, you're not likely to make it happen yourself. A case in point is Clinton's 1993 "health reform" plan. She didn't do any "listening tour" for that, no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots testimonies. Instead, she gathered up a cadre of wonks for months of closed-door meetings, some so secretive that the participants themselves were barred from bringing in pencils or pens. According to David Corn of The Nation, when Clinton was told that 70 percent of Americans polled favored a single-payer system at the time, she responded sarcastically with, "Now tell me something interesting."

<snip>

But she did it her way, and ended up with a 1300 page plan that no one, on either side of the aisle, liked or could even comprehend - proving that historical change isn't made by the smartest girl in the room, even if she shares a bed with the president. Similarly, she ignored the anti-war movement of this decade and alienated untold numbers of Democratic voters, feminists included.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich

According to my memory, MLK and the civil rights movement rolled the boulder up to the top of the mountain, and it take much for the likes of LBJ to push it over.

[Mass]

1. EHRENREICH gets it. Whatever the merits of King and Johnson, it is the anonymous people who should

be remembered, and we usually do forget them.

[damntexdem]

8. And HRC simply doesn't get it.

That doesn't mean that she's racist. But it does mean that she should not be prez.

[roguevalley]

14. she was born into privilege. she shouldn't pretend that she understand

what that's like.

[jasmine621]

15. I discount much of HuffingtonPost because of the blatant bias against HC

People who try to smear HC for the MLK remark do dishoner to the MLK memory and the many people of all stripes who marched, fought, and died for civil rights, and the memory of the role that LBJ did play in passage of that legislation.

[Cha]

17. That's right..

Only expected from hillary echoers.

[bluestateguy]

2. Babs Ehrenreich voted for Nader in 2000 in FLORIDA

For me, that it an unforgivable sin.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Ironic...

given Edwards is sounding more and more like Nader.

[cali]

7. yikes. I have a hard time with that too. n/t

[ChiciB1]

10. Many Made Mistakes... I'm For Edwards Myself... But Having Heard

Barbara TALK many times, I think she's still one of the good ones! Nader has done many good things in the past, just SOME NOT SO good WERE WHOOPERS!!!

[damntexdem]

11. But a sin is a choice.

And she had a RIGHT to make that choice.

And she is clearly correct about this topic.

[Cha]

16. Right and John Edwards voted for the IWR

and helped craft it..but I've forgiven him.

Your outrage at Barbara Ehrenreich is noted.

[ChiciB1]

3. Barbara Is A Liberal!! I LOVE Her... Reminds Me Of Molly Ivins At

times! Molly was fantastic ALWAYS, and I'm sure would be OUTRAGED by what she's seen lately! But Barbara is FANTASTIC too!

Thanks for posting!!!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Bingo.

The sudden love affair for LBJ since Clinton's comments have been hilarious.

[PATRICK]

5. Even the Kennedys,

hell even LINCOLN, poltically were reticent about civil rights full blown. The pols were never at the forefront of any social progress. Eventually they took up the banner of millions and the pasions of the just. The REAL leaders of reform rarely made it near public office.

Very astutely, the problem is when you get them to speak about these things you get the poltician's point of view EXACTLY. All them, all the time, because they ahve their cautious fingers on the means of enacting law. One finger to the wind, one counting votes and money, one middle finger raised against the unappreiative complainers, one pointed to the future or past and one up their... The other hand is always waving.

[goldcanyonaz]

9. Oh, goody another white person chimes in.

*yawn*

[killbotfactory]

12. "a theory of social change that's as elitist as it is inaccurate."

That was my problem with her comments as well.

[Cha]

13. This sounds like hillary..

"Change" is this year's Democratic battle cry, but if you don't know how it happens, you're not likely to make it happen yourself. A case in point is Clinton's 1993 "health reform" plan. She didn't do any "listening tour" for that, no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots testimonies. Instead, she gathered up a cadre of wonks for months of closed-door meetings, some so secretive that the participants themselves were barred from bringing in pencils or pens. According to David Corn of The Nation, when Clinton was told that 70 percent of Americans polled favored a single-payer system at the time, she responded sarcastically with, "Now tell me something interesting."

"But she did it her way, and ended up with a 1300 page plan that no one, on either side of the aisle, liked or could even comprehend - proving that historical change isn't made by the smartest girl in the room, even if she shares a bed with the president. Similarly, she ignored the anti-war movement of this decade and alienated untold numbers of Democratic voters, feminists included."

This is where Barbara Ehrenreich hits it for me..this last underlined sentence.

[oasis]

18. Ehrenreich helped Bush get elected in 2000. Her agenda is to counter

to the goals of the Democratic Party.

[Armstead]

23. Horse puckey

Her agenda is to advance the ideals the Democratic Party is supposed to stand for

[alteredstate]

19. Thanks for posting this great piece. n/t

[anamandujano]

20. "She didn't do any "listening tour" for that,

no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots testimonies."

I watched hours upon hours of meetings with normal people and health care providers and specialists on CSPAN.

What was that all about?

So they went in an office after to put it together. So, it had to be argued about and worked on, BUT it was roundly ridiculed and summarily dismissed thanks to the powers that be.

It could have been used as a starting point if anyone else had been interested in health care. Everyone is interested now, whatever.

[Emillereid]

24. One of things that Clinton was correctly criticized for re: the health care

package was her ultra and unnecessary secrecy. I think putting Hillary in charge of over-hauling the health care system was a tragic mistake and one that set real health care reform back for years. And largely because of the way it played out Democrats lost the House in the '94 election.

[OHdem10]

21. Too many Serious Black People Including Rep Clyburn

have said there was no racism involved. Clyburn said we have got
to get over the political correctness.


If you believe there is a racist behind every tree, then you can
take any utterance and parce it to have a racial undertone.

[Mass]

25. Apparently, you did not read the post. It does not talk about racism, but elitism.

[Armstead]

22. Kickit Good -- She knows whereof she speaks

Dammit I wish the perspective of people like Ehrenreich had wider circulation.

[Skidmore]

26. Yes, yes, yes, and yes!! This is absolutely one of the reasons Hillary has never had my support.

The way she operates is so much like the way * operates. Top down and with an inner circle. She pays lip service to the foot soldiers.

[suston96]

27. Uh, the Clintons and civil rights .....

From two of their prominent biographers...

Carl Bernstein...


“If there is a single defining thread of Hillary’s political, religious and social development, it is her belief and determination, from her teenage years onward, that the tragedy of race in America must be made right.”


And David Maraniss, who chronicled Bill Clinton’s life before becoming president in “First in His Class,”


“Clinton was the house liberal on civil rights — ‘a Martin Luther King man, through and through,’ Jim Moore called him. He had memorized King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and when the mood struck he might recite whole stanzas right there during dessert.”