This is a bit different from what it's title causes you to think.
Miriam
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Doesn't Want You to Know About the
Convention
________________________________________
What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Doesn't Want You to Know About the
Convention
By Jim Sleeper [1] / AlterNet [2]
August 2, 2016
A report [3] of how Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign gave wealthy
donors privileged seating and other special access at the Democratic
National Convention can't be dismissed by retorting that men have always
done such things, too.
Of course, they have. When President Obama campaigned to become the nation's
first black president in 2008, many of us silently excused his decision to
forgo public campaign financing and rely on wealthy donors. After all, white
male presidential candidates had always done that, too.
Sure enough, upon being elected, Obama chose financial and economic
advisers, such as Laurence Summers and Timothy Geithner, who helped him to
rescue the wealthy more than to change the financial and economic system
that favors them beyond all reason or justice.
We should esteem Obama for many reasons, among them his cool-headed grace
under enormous pressure and the profound dignity with which he's endured
racism and pointed us beyond it. But he hasn't been a corrector of the
corrupted capitalism that would have appalled Adam Smith and John Locke, and
we're living with its mounting costs, not least among them the demagogy of
Donald Trump, who promises to "fix" crises whose causes we seldom name.
How ironic for progressive champions of sexual and racial identity politics,
then, that it was a 74-year old, white male who showed this year that a
surprisingly effective campaign for economic change could be funded by
millions of small donations averaging $27.00 each - even when the candidate
seemed a bit clueless about diversity. What can we learn from that surprise?
First, that while racial and sexual diversity are absolutely necessary to
justice, they're also absolutely insufficient. A liberal or progressive
diversity that touts breaking glass ceilings over reconfiguring walls and
foundations, and that waves banners of diversity atop the whole faulty
edifice, ends up speechless before glass-ceiling breakers such as Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, Governor Sarah Palin, CEO Carly Fiorina, and gay
Silicon Valley venture capitalist (and Trump enthusiast) Peter Thiel.
Second, liberals and progressives have used racism and sexism as crutches
quite as often as racist and sexist conservatives have done: to excuse or
deflect confrontations with economic injustices that both sides fear or
refuse to face. Throughout American history, the hideous consequences of
race hatred and misogyny have been internalized deeply by too many of their
victims and perpetrators, preventing (or excusing) many of us from naming
the casino-like financing, predatory lending, and increasingly intrusive,
degrading marketing that dissolve civic trust. "Ill fares the land, to
hastening ills a prey, when wealth accumulates and men decay," wrote Oliver
Goldsmith in 1770.
Until Bernie Sanders insisted on saying all this openly, many liberals and
notional leftists touted their own condemnations of racism and sexism, not
only as the absolutely necessary preconditions of democracy that those
confrontations certainly are, but, too often, as substitutes for confronting
still-more daunting economic injustices that accelerate racism and sexism.
Hillary Clinton deserves our respect and support for "fighting for children
and families" and other good causes, but not for speaking as often as she
does of "fighting" without quite naming the enemy she's fighting.
Third, some wealthy donors to Clinton's and Obama's campaigns are themselves
liberals or self-avowed progressives who've prospered a bit too well within
our rigged system to want to reconfigure it enough to cost them their
privileged seating. So they grasp at highly symbolic, moralistic gestures
toward diversity that, absent real economic change, end up creating new
divisions between some women and most women, and some people of color and
most.
Such evasions shadow "lean-in" feminism and other rationalizations of
Clinton's big-donor campaign, even the more serious rationalizations of
Clinton's big-donor campaign such as one offered by the historian Ellen
Fitzpatrick [4] on the New York Times op ed page on the same day that the
news story reported the problem.
Oliver Goldsmith was right: When wealth accumulates, people decay. The
too-often unnamed, too-easily excused distortions of free markets by greed
and corruption and regimes that rationalize them are accelerating societies'
and the planet's drift toward crisis and, in consequence, the false promises
of tyrants. But also problematic are "glass ceiling" liberalism and racial
and sexual identity politics that fight for better access to front-row seats
in a leaky theater. We should vote for Clinton's liberalism to check Trump's
nihilism, but not to rescue the wealthy donors to whom she gave the
theater's box seats.
Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is the author of
"Liberal Racism" (1997) and "The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the
Politics of Race in New York" (1990).
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [5]
[6]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/what-hillary-clintons-campaign-doesnt-
want-you-know-about-convention
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-sleeper
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donors.html?_r
=0
[4]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/opinion/hillary-clinton-victim-of-her-own-
success.html
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on What Hillary
Clinton's Campaign Doesn't Want You to Know About the Convention
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Doesn't Want You to Know About the
Convention
What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Doesn't Want You to Know About the
Convention
By Jim Sleeper [1] / AlterNet [2]
August 2, 2016
AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+More
AddThis Share optionsShare to Email
A report [3] of how Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign gave wealthy
donors privileged seating and other special access at the Democratic
National Convention can't be dismissed by retorting that men have always
done such things, too.
Of course, they have. When President Obama campaigned to become the nation's
first black president in 2008, many of us silently excused his decision to
forgo public campaign financing and rely on wealthy donors. After all, white
male presidential candidates had always done that, too.
Sure enough, upon being elected, Obama chose financial and economic
advisers, such as Laurence Summers and Timothy Geithner, who helped him to
rescue the wealthy more than to change the financial and economic system
that favors them beyond all reason or justice.
We should esteem Obama for many reasons, among them his cool-headed grace
under enormous pressure and the profound dignity with which he's endured
racism and pointed us beyond it. But he hasn't been a corrector of the
corrupted capitalism that would have appalled Adam Smith and John Locke, and
we're living with its mounting costs, not least among them the demagogy of
Donald Trump, who promises to "fix" crises whose causes we seldom name.
How ironic for progressive champions of sexual and racial identity politics,
then, that it was a 74-year old, white male who showed this year that a
surprisingly effective campaign for economic change could be funded by
millions of small donations averaging $27.00 each - even when the candidate
seemed a bit clueless about diversity. What can we learn from that surprise?
First, that while racial and sexual diversity are absolutely necessary to
justice, they're also absolutely insufficient. A liberal or progressive
diversity that touts breaking glass ceilings over reconfiguring walls and
foundations, and that waves banners of diversity atop the whole faulty
edifice, ends up speechless before glass-ceiling breakers such as Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, Governor Sarah Palin, CEO Carly Fiorina, and gay
Silicon Valley venture capitalist (and Trump enthusiast) Peter Thiel.
Second, liberals and progressives have used racism and sexism as crutches
quite as often as racist and sexist conservatives have done: to excuse or
deflect confrontations with economic injustices that both sides fear or
refuse to face. Throughout American history, the hideous consequences of
race hatred and misogyny have been internalized deeply by too many of their
victims and perpetrators, preventing (or excusing) many of us from naming
the casino-like financing, predatory lending, and increasingly intrusive,
degrading marketing that dissolve civic trust. "Ill fares the land, to
hastening ills a prey, when wealth accumulates and men decay," wrote Oliver
Goldsmith in 1770.
Until Bernie Sanders insisted on saying all this openly, many liberals and
notional leftists touted their own condemnations of racism and sexism, not
only as the absolutely necessary preconditions of democracy that those
confrontations certainly are, but, too often, as substitutes for confronting
still-more daunting economic injustices that accelerate racism and sexism.
Hillary Clinton deserves our respect and support for "fighting for children
and families" and other good causes, but not for speaking as often as she
does of "fighting" without quite naming the enemy she's fighting.
Third, some wealthy donors to Clinton's and Obama's campaigns are themselves
liberals or self-avowed progressives who've prospered a bit too well within
our rigged system to want to reconfigure it enough to cost them their
privileged seating. So they grasp at highly symbolic, moralistic gestures
toward diversity that, absent real economic change, end up creating new
divisions between some women and most women, and some people of color and
most.
Such evasions shadow "lean-in" feminism and other rationalizations of
Clinton's big-donor campaign, even the more serious rationalizations of
Clinton's big-donor campaign such as one offered by the historian Ellen
Fitzpatrick [4] on the New York Times op ed page on the same day that the
news story reported the problem.
Oliver Goldsmith was right: When wealth accumulates, people decay. The
too-often unnamed, too-easily excused distortions of free markets by greed
and corruption and regimes that rationalize them are accelerating societies'
and the planet's drift toward crisis and, in consequence, the false promises
of tyrants. But also problematic are "glass ceiling" liberalism and racial
and sexual identity politics that fight for better access to front-row seats
in a leaky theater. We should vote for Clinton's liberalism to check Trump's
nihilism, but not to rescue the wealthy donors to whom she gave the
theater's box seats.
Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is the author of
"Liberal Racism" (1997) and "The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the
Politics of Race in New York" (1990).
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [5]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[6]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/what-hillary-clintons-campaign-doesnt-
want-you-know-about-convention
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-sleeper
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donors.html?_r
=0
[4]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/opinion/hillary-clinton-victim-of-her-own-
success.html
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on What Hillary
Clinton's Campaign Doesn't Want You to Know About the Convention
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B