Today's Democratic Party reminds me of an old Candid Camera show.
These fellows pulled the engine out of a car, hauled it to the top of
a hill and then coasted down to the service station at the bottom of
the road. "She just quit running", the one fellow told the service
station mechanic.
"Well, let's have a look at her", the mechanic replied. So they
popped the hood and the camera zoomed in on the bug eyed face of the
mechanic as he peered into the vacant place where the engine should
have been.
Well, that was then and now is now. But instead of an old car, we're
all standing around the old Democratic Party, scratching our chins and
peering into the hollow place where the Party's motor should have
been. As the song goes, "The Party's Over". Too bad the Party
Leadership doesn't know it.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Reuters)
Democrats Have No Moral Compass: A Case Study
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
29 June 17
This motherf----r, his whole job is to get people, convince Republicans to
f---ing kick people off f-ing health care. I hate this motherf----r.. I'm
glad he got shot, I wish he was f-ing dead.
- Covert recording of Phil Montag, Democratic Party volunteer in Nebraska
The Nebraska Democratic Party removed a party official from his post
Thursday after he was recorded saying he was glad U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise
got shot and that he wished the Louisiana Republican had died.
- Associated Press report, N.Y. Times, June 22, 2017
Seems like a pretty straightforward story when it's framed like that. Turns
out there was a lot more going on, not all of it clear yet, and the
Democratic Party leadership missed an excellent opportunity to exercise
nuanced leadership instead of what appears to be mindless, kneejerk
political correctness running scared.
This story apparently began to develop June 16, in the aftermath of the
shooting of Scalise and others, including the killing of shooter James T.
Hodgkinson. That's when Chelsey Gentry-Tipton, chairwoman of the Nebraska
Democratic Party's Black Caucus, took to Facebook to comment on video of
the
shooting scene:
Watching the congressman crying on live tv abt the trauma they experienced.
Y is this so funny tho?...
The very people that push pro NRA legislation in efforts to pad their
pockets with complete disregard for human life. Yeah, having a hard time
feeling bad for them.
Within hours of the posting, Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman Jane
Kleeb, who is white, asked Gentry-Tipton to resign. Kleeb objected to media
attention to what she called an internal party dispute. She said it
distracted from the more important issue of gun violence, commenting
simplistically:
Anyone who commits violence against anyone is wrong. Anyone who makes
insensitive comments about gun violence is wrong. For me that's the end of
the story.
Gentry-Tipton posted again to Facebook, refusing to resign and writing a
long response to a voice message from Kleeb, complaining that Kleeb called
for her resignation without speaking to her first. Gentry-Tipton wrote: "As
a victim of gun violence, I understand that today's events are deeply
troubling. I don't condone or find the humor in what happened." She
criticized Kleeb for acting in haste without learning Gentry-Tipton's point
of view or the context for her remarks:
This is troubling.
It's also troubling that gun violence affects the Black community in a way
that you clearly don't understand and you are slow to react. It's also
troubling that police violence affects the Black community in a way you
clearly don't comprehend and you are slow to react..
These are the issues. YOU DON'T REACT. What you choose to react to is some
gossipy snippet of what I said and then call for my resignation. Where was
your expediency and compassion when those tragedies befell our community?
A day or two later, apparently, Phil Montag met privately with
Gentry-Tipton
and her friend Destin Madison, who is apparently an "administrative lead"
at
Conagra Foods in Omaha. Madison secretly recorded the conversation for
reasons that are unexplained (he did not respond to emailed inquiries).
When
Montag makes his expletive-laden comments about Scalise, Gentry-Tipton asks
him to go public. "I'm not going to f-king say that in public," Montag
says.
Gentry-Tipton asks him just to say something publicly. Madison asks him,
"Why are you telling us, but not telling anyone else?" Montag stammers,
trying to figure it out. At that point Madison reveals that he's "been
recording this conversation since you've come in, so I will publicly
release
it myself." That's the end of the recording. The conversation lasted
perhaps
half an hour, Madison's YouTube post comprised only the last 42 seconds.
But
that was enough for Democratic chairwoman Jane Kleeb to fire Montag
peremptorily from his volunteer position as co-chairman of the party's
technology committee.
Whoa, what just happened? First, it was a technological lynching. Montag's
remarks, however over-the-top, were spoken in private, presumably in
confidence, secretly recorded, and then, without Montag's permission,
broadcast on the internet to create a minor media frenzy that, as it turned
out, took the heat off of both Kleeb and Gentry-Tipton, at least for the
moment.
OK, this is a familiar pattern of sleazy politics, except that ALL the
people involved here are self-identified Democrats. This nasty little
episode is an excellent paradigm of a Democratic Party that has no focus,
no
principles, no common sense. Whatever one thinks of Montag's comments, he
made them in private and knew better than to say them in public. That's on
the tape. Madison's ambush of Montag is a betrayal that borders on the
criminal (taping in Nebraska requires the consent of only one person, in
this case Madison). Gentry-Tipton, whose initial response to Kleeb shows
some character and decency, squanders her good will by taking part in the
drive-by smearing of Montag. And Jane Kleeb and the rest of the party
leadership manage to behave without dignity or discernible principle at
every stage of the squalid show.
These people act as if they'd rather screw each other than take on the real
enemies of the people in the Republican Party. It's hard to imagine that
Montag's hatred of Steve Scalise was unique in the Democratic Party of
Nebraska, never mind nationally. But those who had those feelings,
including
Montag, knew enough to keep them private, while publicly saying all the
fake
things they were expected to say, the sort of fake things Republicans
rarely
manage to say about the killings of unarmed black men, gay nightclub-goers,
LGBT victims, or even the vulnerable people Republican healthcare is
designed to kill. When someone shoots at a Congressman, the hypocrisy is
seamless and Speaker Ryan can say without blushing, "An attack on one of us
is an attack on all of us," which he would never say about any mere
citizen,
most of whom he has been more than happy to attack, continuously, for
decades.
What should the Democratic leaders have done? How about acted with
deliberation, care, thoughtfulness, and a focus on what the real horrors
are
when words are compared to deeds? For starters, all the words at issue here
are constitutionally-protected free speech. Jane Kleeb might have started
with that thought and then explored context and meaning, instead of
betraying her anti-constitutionalism with mindless political correctness in
support of speech policing:
Violent comments about anyone whether they are an elected official or a kid
on the street are unacceptable.. The political rhetoric is so off the cliff
of reality I fear where our body politic is headed.
This is the language of panic and fear, the language of someone who doesn't
have a clear understanding of what she's dealing with. She doesn't even
manage to be clear that she heard an audio tape of Montag:
He made disgusting comments about a member of Congress, and we relieved him
of his volunteer position of the party on Thursday morning as soon as we
saw
the video.. It's a disturbing time in politics. I've worked in politics for
over 10 years, and I've never seen such hateful rhetoric from both the
right
and left.
The party might well have wanted to disown Montag's remarks, as well as
Gentry-Tipton's, but it could have done so in a mature and nuanced way. The
public exposure in both cases involved Gentry-Tipton. Montag had exercised
personal discretion in his choice of venues, if not in his choice of people
to trust. The party could have made distinctions about what was said, and
how it was said, and what was meant. Perhaps the party could have elicited
apologies and explanations from Montag and Gentry-Tipton, both of whom
could
have added depth to the public debate. The party ran scared instead, as the
Democratic Party has been running scared for decades now, afraid to take
positions of principle even when they poll well.
And here was an opportunity to push back against a Republican Party that
isn't challenged on war, war crimes, torture, white phosphorous and cluster
bombs, police murdering citizens, impoverishing the poor, destroying the
middle class, and actually offering to kill people by the thousands with a
healthcare bill that is actually a boondoggle for the rich.
That's what Steve Scalise represents. And that is not a wish to see him
dead. That's a pointless desire, there would just be another inhumane Tea
Party ideologue to fill his Young Gun shoes. A Democrat with displine and a
willingness to fight back against the Steve Scalises of the world might
have
responded to this Nebraska hooha with arguments that show courage and a
humane belief system. Such a Democrat might say that the party wishes
Scalise no personal harm, but hopes that his period of recuperation might
also include his recovery from his belief that life begins at
fertilization,
that God belongs in the public sphere (Constitution not withstanding), that
marijuana is a gateway drug, or that women don't need the protection of the
Violence Against Women Act.
As Scalise has time to reflect on life lying in his hospital bed, he might
wonder why he voted in support of mortgage foreclosures, voted against
enforcing anti-gay hate crime laws, voted against green public schools,
voted for more ocean oil drilling, voted against regulating greenhouse
gases, voted for more nuclear power development, voted against supporting
democratic institutions in Pakistan, voted for easier interstate gun sales,
voted against regulating tobacco as a drug, voted against expanding
children's health insurance program, voted against removing troops from
Afghanistan, or why he voted against investigating President Bush for lying
the country into Iraq. Almost all of these votes have clear lethal
consequences for someone, whether women, children, gays, Pakistanis, gun
victims, Iraqis, climate change victims, Afghans, smokers, or victims of
radiation.
There's no point wishing him dead. Morally he's been dead a long time
already.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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