"If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." -- LBJ in late 1963 or early 1964, quoted by Bill Moyers.
Over a half-century has passed since Johnson laid it out like that, and it wasn't the latest headline back then either, and, as the Trump campaign and the 2016 Republican convention made repugnantly clear, we haven't conquered that despicable practice yet. Not yet. However, we can deal it a great blow in November, IF we keep our eye on the ball and unite against the Republicans.
Similarly, of course, to what LBJ said about keeping poor whites fighting with blacks, if you can keep the people in an opposing political party fighting amongst themselves, it'll be that much easier for you to get the better of them. Bernie, for example, says over and over again that his most important goal is defeating Trump, while putting a lot more actual time and effort into the conflicting goal of destroying Debbie Wassermann-Schultz. This sort of chickenshit squabbling between Democrats and Democrats-since-last-year is great news for Trump and the Republicans. Bernie is still grinding away about how he wuz robbed instead of telling his followers how important it is to vote for Hillary and the Democratic ticket.
Who knows: now that it looks like Bernie "politics gets a little rough sometimes" Sanders has actually succeeded in slaying the Great Dragon Debbie, maybe he'll be in a good enough mood to actually give Hillary a real endorsement, one that's actually more about her than about himself. Am I optimistic about that? Take a guess!
I wish the Democratic leadership had just brushed off this "scandal" about Debbie and emails. I urge all of us to do so. So some Democrats actually privately expressed a preference for one candidate over another. Bernie himself may actually never in his life get over it, but it's high time the rest of us did. Everything Debbie did, plus everything else Bernie imagines that she did, doesn't add up to chickenshit compared to the importance of -- of what? Of that thing Bernie keeps claiming is the most important thing to him: defeating Donald Trump. Bernie, news flash: your war against Debbie has not been helping to defeat Trump. Not even a little bit.
Now for God's sake let's forget about that "scandal" and move on. Let's please have an organized, methodical, productive Convention -- whether Bernie likes it or not! Hillary 2016 and the straight Democratic ticket! Let's not just defeat Trump, let's crush him and the hate and ignorance he stands for!
No comments:
Post a Comment