Month: December 2007

by G’Kar

Will the next president get the U.S. out of Iraq? The signs aren’t encouraging.

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by publius

I’ve been torn on whether – and how – to respond to Bruce Bartlett’s op-ed, which previews his book on racism and the Democratic Party. Some of his sentences are so blatantly disingenuous that it’s clear he’s fishing for outrage. (See, e.g., “[I]f a single mention of states’ rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards . . .”). What’s maddening is that he – Coulter-esquely – wants me to be outraged so that he can sell more books.

Maybe I’m playing the fool, but his argument requires a response because it’s outrageous and deeply, callously offensive. Smiling at those words, eh Brucey? It’s actually offensive on two levels – one obvious way and one way that is less obvious but more insidious.

First, to the extent that Bartlett is attempting to make a logical argument (personally, I don’t think logic is the goal) Yglesias pretty much rips the argument to shreds here and here. As Bartlett surely knows, the American political parties – while keeping the same labels – have shifted dramatically over the past 200 years. As every seventh-grade American history student knows, the white supremacist coalition (largely but by no means exclusively Southern) voted Democratic until the civil rights era when it moved to the GOP with helpful nudges from Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan.

It would be great of course if Bartlett were sincerely concerned about America’s historical racial legacy. But he’s not. That’s not the point of his book. The point is to win modern political points for the GOP and smear the Democrats. If he can get the question aired, he largely wins. (Chris Matthews: Tonight’s panel will discuss if the Democrats are racist. Joining us are …”

The first level of outrage here is that he’s smearing the modern Democratic Party for the actions of the same racist white supremacists that the party institutionally repudiated in the civil rights era (at great political cost). During this same time period, Bartlett’s own party – whose rank-and-file are largely non-racist – institutionally adopted this grotesque bloc of Bull Connor voters. Since then, at the institutional level, the GOP has intentionally fanned racial flames through opposition and/or indifference to civil rights legislation, through inflammatory code words, and through turning a blind eye to institutional actions by the GOP in southern states (e.g., Georgia Confederate flag controversy).

Admittedly, the Democratic Party is guilty of taking the black vote for granted. And they are also guilty of not pushing as hard as they could for fear of white backlash. But that said, they’ve been the only ones who have even been trying for the past 40 years. The Democrats are the ones fighting for the programs and laws that disproportionately help poor and urban African-Americans. The Democrats are the ones fighting against race-based voter disenfranchisement efforts (e.g., “voter ID”). The Democrats the ones fighting against judges who are hostile to civil rights achievements.

The parties’ record on race over the past 40 years illustrates all too clearly just how dishonest Bartlett is being. That’s bad, but it’s not the worst part. The more outrageous part of Bartlett’s argument is not the dishonesty, but the callous indifference to historical discrimination. He treats the whole thing like a chess pawn in a silly DC talk show game.

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