November 20, 2014
By Lee A. Daniels
NNPA Columnist
One source of the widespread losses the Democratic Party suffered this month in the midterm elections can be traced to the Ebola crisis that began claiming numerous victims across the U.S. last month—a crisis many attributed to the managerial incompetence of President Obama for not preventing the disease’s appearance in the country.
You ask: What victims? What Ebola crisis?
Exactly.
On November 11, seven days after Election Day, the last Ebola patient in the U.S., Dr. Craig Spencer, who had caught the disease while treating victims in West Africa, left the special Ebola treatment facility at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital – completely Ebola free – to be greeted with hugs and praise for his altruism by Mayor Bill De Blasio and a host of city officials. Eight of the nine people who came down with the Ebola virus on American soil have recovered. The only fatality was Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national, struck down by the disease only after he entered the country.
The latest proof that the lethal Ebola virus is not a threat to the American public was greeted with deafening silence from Republican officialdom, the conservative echo chamber and their mainstream media allies, who had ginned up the Ebola “crisis” with the-sky-is-falling exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies.
Nonetheless, it had well served its purpose as a scare tactic to bash the president and the Democrats. Of course, there were several other reasons the Democrats were so deserted by White voters in the congressional midterms, most especially, the wage stagnation that has hammered the financial well-being of middle- and lower-wage workers alike. Then, too, numerous Democratic candidates’ decision to run away from the president and fudge exactly what they stood for didn’t help them, either.
But the Ebola-crisis-that-wasn’t provides a dramatic example of what has been the GOP’s central response these last six years to the Obama presidency: lying.
Remember the “death panels” that conservatives back in 2009 said were a central feature of the proposed Affordable Care Act? Remember the widespread conservative claims in August and September 2009 that the speech President Obama was going to make to the nation’s school children via a national in-school broadcast was actually a nefarious plan to “indoctrinate” them in “socialist” precepts? Remember that more than a third of Republicans still believe President Obama was born outside the U.S., and another 20 percent believe he’s the agent of a global socialist-Muslim conspiracy to destroy the U.S.?
Black Americans – who throughout most of American history have struggled against the lies the White majority told against them and accepted about them – should be well aware that the panoply of lies the GOP has been depending on has had and will continue to have enormous consequences for America’s present and future.
There’s another phrase one can use as a synonym for the GOP’s anti-Obama stratagem: “maximum ideological polarization.” Those words come from a former Republican representative who used them to describe the obstructionist stance of the GOP during the Clinton presidency. Its elements then were a rigid refusal to compromise, extreme partisanship in the Congress, and the use of brazen lies, and conservative money and interest groups to keep the GOP base in a state of rage. Sound familiar?
Consider the lies the U.S. Supreme Court used to further narrow affirmative action for people of color; and in a separate case, to destroy the crucial provision of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 in order to help the GOP diminish the strength of Democratic-leaning voting blocs; and, in the “Hobby Lobby” case, to give GOP-supporting Christian conservatives a means of discriminating against gays and lesbians, “uppity” women and any others they deem unworthy.
As those decisions indicate, the court’s conservative majority has increasingly functioned as the GOP’s allies – providing increasingly ratty legal “fictions” as they rubber-stamp GOP wishes. Thus, it’s no surprise that three days after the elections, the court suddenly declared it would review the latest legal challenge to Obamacare that had been rejected by a lower federal court. That brazen act drew an extraordinary opinion column from Linda Greenhouse, the leading Supreme Court journalist of our era.
Writing on the Nov. 12 New York Times op-ed page, Greenhouse characterized the court’s taking up King v Burwell as a “decision to enlist in the latest effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act.” She went to say, “This is a naked power grab by conservative justices who two years ago just missed killing [Obamacare] in its cradle, before it took effect.”
She closed with chilling – but properly justified – words: “In decades of court-watching, I have struggled … to maintain the belief that the Supreme Court really is a court and not just a collection of politicians in robes. [Now], I’ve found myself struggling against the impulse to say two words: I surrender.”
Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. His latest book is Last Chance: The Political Threat to Black America.
November 13, 2014
By Wellington E. Webb
NNPA Guest Columnist
Now that the dust has settled after our nation’s 2014 elections across the country, here is my two cents worth on what has happened during the last couple of years, and what it means now.
First and foremost, congratulations to the National Republican Committee. They had a 50-state plan, and they implemented their plan with dogmatic discipline and with little or no deviation by candidates, or state strategists’ preferences.
During the election, I was in four different states and heard the same theme uttered from Republican candidate to Republican candidate in all four of them: “This Democratic candidate “X” voted 99 percent of the time with Obama. This Democratic candidate “Y” voted with Obama 92 percent of the time.” This theme resonated in every state that I visited. It was clear that this strategy was initiated at the highest levels of the Republican Party and was expected to be carried out in every race in the country where there was a Republican candidate who had served in an elected position and there was an opportunity to line up on the “Republican side” of issues or on the “Obama side” of issues in the forefront of the American people.
In my home state of Colorado, I was afraid that we Democrats were going to lose the U.S. Senate race, the governor’s race, and the majority hold to both chambers of the Colorado legislature. My having served on the most recent Colorado Reapportionment Commission in 2010, where we crafted the districts based upon access to a fair process for candidates from each predominant party, I thought that the House and the Senate of Colorado were competitive but with a positive edge of advantage to Democrats in that Democrats had been at a disadvantage up to 2010.
However, given the lack of passion for the principles for which many Democratic elected officials coupled with victories on other issues over the past six years, two days before the 2014 midterm election, I was fearful that we were going to lose it all in Colorado. Our Democratic base did not vote its winning capacity, and the Republican ground game was also better than ours. Of the political consultants the Democratic Party had hired very few, if any, minority consultants were contracted to fill in their blind spots on data mining for voters. This same unsuccessful strategy model was applied on Amendment 66 in Colorado as well.
Unfortunately, we Democrats had little to no respect for, and therefore almost invisible identification with, the accomplishments of President Obama, who had accumulated a litany of successes. We, as Democrats, should have been proud of and owned up to our record of sterling accomplishments from 2008 to 2014: Gasoline prices are down, unemployment is down, health care accessibility is available to all, and, we even justifiably assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Not once, did we mention one Democratic success. This omission was the most shameful outcome of this 2014 election.
We ran away from our successes – and Republicans fought against them, even though our efforts improved the lives of Americans. We should have been talking about everything from increasing the minimum wage across the nation to fighting to protect Medicare and Social Security and providing a national security plan to protect America. But we didn’t. Shame on us Democrats for not amplifying our improvements to the country.
Elections are cyclical, and if we don’t have a message that resonates at the national level, the state level, and to the legislative level, we Democrats, will be a minority party and our nation’s minorities will be shoved back into the shadows of not mattering once again. The Democratic Party’s national leaders are going to have to broaden their consultant base to include younger pundits and more minorities into their think tanks for successful elections in the future.
Lastly, mail ballots work better for higher income level voters than for middle and lower level income voters. As columnist George Will once asked, “In our democracy, is it too much to ask for voters to go to the polls to vote in person?” I think not.
Wellington Webb served as mayor of Denver from 1991-2003. He is the only mayor in U.S. who has served as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, president of the National Conference of Black Mayors, and president of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors.
November 06, 2014
By Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.
NNPA Columnist
Black Americans are blessed, not cursed. I say that because it is true and verifiable. As a people we are blessed with intellectual genius, creativity, ingenuity and a vast multitalented reservoir of human resources, energy and spirit. Of course all people are blessed with unique as well as universal blessings of humanity. But, I am so thankful for the special and revealed blessings of Black America, I just cannot keep silent when I am exposed to Black American genius and brilliance.
What am I talking about now?
It was the 9th Annual Taste of Soul 2014 Family Festival on the historic Crenshaw Boulevard, located in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. I witnessed firsthand how more than 400,000 sisters and brothers from near and far stood together for nearly 10 hours on October 18, 2014. It was an inspiring day. It was a revival of the soul of America. It was, from my perspective, a glimpse of heaven on earth.
The gathering was inter-generational. People of all ages and all ethnicities came out in massive crowds to enjoy, celebrate and to reaffirm the mutual respect and dignity of all the communities that make up the city of Los Angeles. The “Taste of Soul” tasted good not only for those assembled, but for all the others who had immersed themselves in the very orderly and peaceful family festival.
More than 300 independent, Black-owned and other businesses were lined up and down Crenshaw, participating in one of the largest and most successful annual street festivals in America. As a long-time community organizer, I know from experience that successful events like the Los Angeles “Taste of Soul,” do not just happen through osmosis. It takes a lot of hard and smart work.
It takes the serious commitment of a dedicated group of planners, corporate sponsors, elected officials, civic and community leaders, entrepreneurs and grass roots businesses, together with media and entertainment legends, led in this instance by the single visionary leadership of Danny J. Bakewell, Sr. Brother Danny is the executive publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Sentinel and the L.A. Watts Times. He is also the former chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and an outstanding global business leader of the Bakewell Company, a family-owned group of businesses.
“Taste of Soul” was both a local and a national success story. At a time when there has been a lot of focus of the injustices that continue to be perpetrated on too many of our brothers and sisters in Black America, this was a much needed therapeutic national day of Black American unity, joy, passion and spiritual empowerment. Yet, we also affirmed during the “Taste of Soul” the necessity for further expansion of the economic development and progress of our families, businesses and communities.
Corporate leaders must understand that the sponsorship and partner support of major national events in Black America are in fact important to how the Black American community views their businesses. It was good to see General Motors, and in particular its Buick division, as a key sponsor of “Taste of Soul,” as well as sponsorships from Toyota, Bank of America and others.
For me, the real appraisal happened in real time when Danny Bakewell Sr asked me to join him in walking Crenshaw. It was amazing to see up close how entire family members were navigating through the crowds. Many sisters had baby carriages and were welcomed by courteous brothers who routinely parted the way so that these mothers could pass through the mass of people with a respectful ease. Thousands came up to Bakewell to say, “Thank you for doing this. We needed to come together.” Others affirmed, “Wow, this is great. So much unity….so much love and peace.”
Yes, the food was sumptuous. Queen Latifah was the “Celebrity Chairperson” of the festival and she received tremendous rounds of applause from the audience at each of the festival stages. The “Taste of Soul” was our nation at its best. Let’s have that kind of unity and self-respect on each day of the year. Let’s continue the struggle for freedom, justice and equality. Long live the spirit and legacy of Taste of Soul.”
Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is the president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and can be reached for national advertisement sales and partnership proposals at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; and for lectures and other professional consultations at: http://drbenjaminfchavisjr.wix.com/drbfc