Chicago Defender

West and Smiley Latest Attacks Reflect Failed Right Wing Strategy

After President Barack Obama's resounding victory Tuesday night, Nov. 6, ensured a second term and ushered in more serious thought about the significance of the Obama era, professor Cornel West and talk show host Tavis Smiley offered their take on the re-election and their examination of what took place on Election Day. It wasn't a humble admittance of how the political landscape has changed.

It wasn't a recognition of the nexus between the Obama campaign and the formidable power of the vote by communities of color catalogued in the 2010 Census report.

Instead, it was a showman display of arrogance by West and Smiley, still thinking they are the oracles of Black America, and West particularly offering the most scathing dismissal of the Obama era just days after Nov. 6 marked a major seismic shift in history spotlighting the electoral power of people of color and women.

"So it's very sad. I mean, I'm glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies," West told "Democracy Now!" cohost Amy Goodman.

In an election where numbers have shown a clear victory for a multiracial coalition, West cannot engage in metaphorical meandering and hermeneutical flourishing as a substitute for the legitimacy of scientific data that showed the potency of the Obama campaign.

We honor the legacy of struggle and the Black prophetic tradition because it has been the platform that highlighted the indignities suffered by Black people and people of color in general espoused notably by James Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez in their exposition of liberation theology, and Desmond Tutu whose fight for people of color around the globe demonstrated an intercontinental liberation theology trifecta.

However, the Black prophetic tradition cannot be used an excuse or exploited to wage unwarranted opposition and ego-driven postulation against a president whose electoral legitimacy was solidified by a new racial majority.

Calling the 44th Democratic President of the United States a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface" calls into serious question the honesty of West whose book "Democracy Matters" pays homage to the democratic tradition and the democratic process where the ballot box is respected because it is the holy grail of democracy. Therefore, when people speak through the ballot box their voice ought to be respected.

To now dismiss this seismic shift through the ballot box by insulting the president and calling him a fraud is in essence an insult to the intelligence of everyone who voted for Obama.

It is an elitist exercise by West who lamented like a child over not having a ticket to Obama's first inauguration in 2009, and also Smiley who complained that Obama is the first president in his professional life who has not invited him to the White House.

It makes us wonder if the West and Smiley drama that began during the 2008 campaign is really driven by genuine interest and concern for the poor or simply by their own egos since they no longer have access to the White House under Obama.

Both men throughout the years through intellectual marketering and emotional acrobatics have positioned themselves almost as the sacred spokespersons for Black America. And since the dawn of the Obama age, they've been gradually booted off the stage with the rise of new thinkers and many are now looking at them with suspicion.

In the Obama age we are witnessing a growing number and diverse range of Black intellectuals and thought leaders who are not looking for West and Smiley to bless them before they offer their prognostics on issues affecting Black America. West and Smiley do not own the real estate on Black issues and cannot be purportedly speaking on behalf of everyone.

The strategy now employed by West after Obama's re-election threw him into a tantrum like a child not having his way, and is to accuse every level-headed observer of the Obama era, like MSNBC hosts Melissa Harris Perry, Rev. Al Sharpton and political analyst and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson as individuals trading their credibility among the masses of Blacks in exchange for access to Obama.

"I love Brother Mike Dyson, too, but we're living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the Black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves.

But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kinds of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people,"
West said on "Democracy Now!"

In fact, West once called Perry "a fake and a fraud" for chastizing him about his vitriolic rants against Obama.

That really says a lot about the landscape of the Black intelligentsia dominated by egotistical men like West who instead of welcoming a new viewpoint from a rising star like Perry, wants to shut her down. Is West simply jealous or threatened because the Obama dispensation has shown that there are Black thinkers other than West and Smiley?

For an intellectual like West to so comfortably engage in ad hominem attacks against others who do not agree with his viewpoint confines him to the narrowness of a non-intellectual pursuit for truth. His repulsive response to the president's victory shows he and Smiley and others like him are in denial.

During the "Democracy Now!" interview, Goodman asked Smiley to respond to Professor Dyson's remark in a separate interview where he said, "But the reality is, is that Obama is as progressive a figure who has the chance of being elected in America. And if the American left can't be involved in the actual practice of government to offer the critical and salient insights that are available — take 2000, when siding with Nader, then Al Gore, who should have been president, who would have prevented some of the stuff that we see now happening, didn't occur. The left won't take responsibility for the fact that, with the extraordinary intelligence of a Glen Ford and many other leftists notwithstanding, the reality is that he's the most progressive president, as Gary Dorrien, an American leftist who teaches at Union Theological Seminary argues, since FDR."

Smiley responded, "It is so disappointing to hear Michael, Professor Dyson, advance that kind of argument. He comes out of a Black prophetic tradition that is rooted in speaking truth to power — and, I might add, to the powerless. But to somehow try to suggest in any way that this president has been progressive or is the best example of progressivism that we could put forth in this country is just inaccurate."

Smiley's response shows that he doesn't understand what Dyson is explaining in his criticism of the leftist movement, and how the Nader blunder cost Al Gore the election. That at some point you have to face the reality and take responsibility and be engaged to make a difference, and you can't be in the parking lot shouting while the meeting is going on.

West and Smiley are replaying the right wing machine in their vehement attacks against Obama and when West once said he wanted to slap Obama upside the head, it showed his lack of respect for the leader of the free world.

West is no different from Mitt Romney's eldest son who said he wanted to take a swing at the president during one of the debates. It says a lot about how these two men, West and Smiley, view Obama.

The representation of West and Smiley in the past year and their so-called poverty tour as oracles for the poor and the simultaneous positioning of themselves as opposed to President Obama, among other things, ignores the history of the president's work on the South Side of Chicago as a community organizer, catering to those who have been left behind by society.

How Progress is Possible in Obama's Second Term

(CNN) -- When Washington gets back to work, the situation will be difficult. President Obama won a sound re-election victory, doing very well in the Electoral College and winning the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. He trounced Mitt Romney in almost all the battleground states and he will return with a larger and more energized Senate majority.

Yet President Obama likely understands that elections don't remake the political system. The parties remain as polarized as ever, and the political process will be as difficult as it has been since the first day he took office. Republicans retained control of the House, where they can make it hard for the president to move his agenda forward and can place immense pressure on him to curtail spending.

While Democrats control the Senate, with 54 votes, Republicans control the tools of the Senate minority -- namely the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass any major piece of legislation. Exit polls showed that the public is not satisfied with the status quo, many voters opposed the idea of an activist government to solve problems, and President Obama struggled with some key constituencies, including older and suburban voters.

In general, second-term presidents, even those with landslide victories, have trouble with Congress (think of FDR after 1936), and President Obama must spend much of his political capital making sure that existing programs, like the Affordable Health Care Act, are implemented effectively.

Despite these challenges, political incentives for both parties could inspire legislative breakthroughs in several areas. President Obama does not have to remain content with the domestic agenda he has already achieved. He could succeed like Ronald Reagan in 1986, when Congress passed, with bipartisan support, a major tax reform bill that closed many loopholes and lowered rates.

In the short-term, deficit reduction offers the greatest potential for such a breakthrough. The process toward reducing the deficit will begin even if the president and Congress take no action.

The 2011 Deficit Control Act will require $100 billion in spending cuts starting in January. At the same time, the current income tax rates are set to expire on December 31, along with the Social Security payroll tax holiday. By making progress on a "grand bargain" over long-term deficit reduction, one that both parties could live with, President Obama could steal this issue away from the Republicans, positioning himself as the guardian of fiscal discipline just as President Clinton was able to do in the 1990s.

Now that Obama is freed from some of the political pressure from the left, whom he needed to mobilize voters for his re-election, he will have more room to maneuver. While Republicans don't want to hand the president any victories, they, too, would have incentives to agree so that they could show to their voters that they had delivered something big since taking over the House in 2010. On Wednesday, Speaker John Boehner indicated he would bend on raising revenue as part of the deal. The deal could include another tax reform measure, something that both parties have hinted at.

There are also policy issues that grow directly out of the election results. President Obama has been promising Latino voters that he would reform immigration policies. He has pledged to renew his push to pass the DREAM Act, a bill that has been stopped by Republicans, which would help almost 1.7 million young immigrants become citizens.

The huge Latino vote for the president, which played a critical role in battleground states like Colorado and Nevada, should bolster his resolve to take on this issue. And many Republicans will understand that the GOP's hard-line anti-immigration elements have become extraordinarily costly to the party. For more than a decade, those in the Republican Party who favor liberalized immigration policies, including George W. Bush and much of the business community, have been stymied by their colleagues.

Now, as Republicans look at the Electoral College math that led to Romney's defeat, there will be intensified pressure for them to change their anti-immigration reputation. "It's clear to me," Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran told Politico, "if Republicans are going to have the opportunity to be in the majority, we clearly have to determine how we deal with minority and Latino voters. In some fashion, the way we have dealt with immigration gives us a black eye."

Finally, there are long-term issues that might be on the radar as a result of crisis. The storms that have devastated sections of the country have given climate change more attention than ever. The impact on wealthier suburban communities has created more political support for addressing an issue that was largely ignored throughout the 2012 campaign. By producing legislation that deals with this grave problem, such as limits on domestic oil and gas drilling and more investments in solar and wind energy, each party could make progress toward solidifying support in key middle-class constituencies that are still struggling to dig out from the storms.

Nothing is inevitable in American politics. The history of Washington is filled with moments when something should have happened but didn't. Politics has a way of sidetracking progress on almost any issue. Talk about compromise that often follows an election is cheap, frequently leading to nothing.

The potential for some important breakthroughs, however, is there. The election's outcome gives both parties reasons to make deals with each other so they can each make gains with voters in 2014 and 2016. Sometimes, when politics and policy converge, progress in Washington is possible.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Zelizer.

Obama Should Thank Jesse Jackson for Winning Formula

President Obama's campaign strategists are receiving a lot of richly deserved praise in the wake of the president's victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Nov. 6. Obama, who lost the majority of the White vote for the second time, won the election by assembling a progressive Democratic coalition pioneered by Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988.

I covered Jackson's 1984 campaign for the Chicago Tribune and witnessed Jackson laying the groundwork for what would become two Obama victories.

"America is not like a blanket – one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size," I heard Jesse Jackson say more times than I care to remember. "America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The White, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt."

The concept was more frequently expressed in terms of a rainbow.

The organization Jackson heads is known as Rainbow PUSH, the result of a merger between Operation PUSH, the organization Jackson created in 1971, and the Rainbow Coalition, an apparatus he developed following his 1984 presidential run.

In his stirring speech at the 1984 National Democratic Convention in San Francisco, Jackson spoke at length about the Rainbow Coalition.

"...We cannot be satisfied by just restoring the old coalition," he said. "Old wine skins must make room for new wine. We must heal and expand. The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Arab Americans...The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Hispanic Americans...The Rainbow is making room for the Native American...The Rainbow Coalition includes Asian Americans...The Rainbow Coalition is making room for the young Americans...The Rainbow includes disabled veterans...The Rainbow is making room for small farmers...The Rainbow includes lesbians and gays."

According to exit polls, Romney won the White vote 59 percent to 39 percent for Obama, which was 3 percent lower than the president's 2008 outing. Like Clinton before him, Obama demonstrated that a candidate for national office does not need a majority of the White vote in order to win.

Blacks, who made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2012, favored Obama over Romney 93 percent to 6 percent. Latinos, who made up 10 percent of the electorate, preferred Obama by a margin of 71 percent to 27 percent. Asians, 3 percent of the electorate, supported Obama over Romney 73 percent to 26 percent. The remaining non-White groups, with 2 percent of the electorate, backed Obama by a margin of 58 percent to 38 percent.

Obama won the 18-24 category – 11 percent of the electorate – 60 percent to 36 percent for Romney. He also won the 25-29 age-group, which is 8 percent of voters, 60 percent to 38 percent.

Those describing themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual – 5 percent of voters – favored Obama over Romney 76 percent to 22 percent, compared with straight voters – 95 percent of the electorate – who were evenly divided, with Obama and Romney each receiving 49 percent.

Fifty-eight percent of union households – 18 percent of the electorate – supported Obama this year, down just one percentage point from four years ago. They supported Obama at even higher rates in the swing states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada.

Despite Jackson's early coalition-building efforts, it's no secret that relations between Obama and Jackson are as chilly as the temperature was on the day Obama was first inaugurated as president.

The friction was exacerbated in July 2008 after Jackson had been interviewed on Fox News. When the television interview was over, Jackson, apparently unaware that his microphone was still live, told a fellow guest: "See, Barack's been talking down to Black people...I want to cut his nuts off."

Not surprisingly, the relationship between the two immediately went south, so to speak. An understandably miffed Barack Obama has since kept his distance from Jackson.

But as Obama reaches out to Republicans whose stated goal was to make sure he didn't get re-elected, perhaps it's time for Obama to have détente with Jackson. The legendary civil rights leader has done his penitence. Because of what Jackson later described as his "crude and hurtful" comment – made at a time African-Americans were hoping to elect their first Black president – many Blacks mentally shipped Jackson off to a political Siberia, a never-never land where they didn't care if he was never heard from again.

As Obama extends the olive branch to his ardent political foes, he should invite Jackson to visit him in the White House. If nothing else, President Obama can thank Jesse Jackson for paving the way for his two memorable victories.

Cornel West: Obama Is A ‘Rockefeller Republican In ‘Blackface;’ Sharpton, Harris-Perry, Dyson Are Up For Sale

In an interview with Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now," our dear brother, Dr. Cornel West, said that while he's happy that Mitt Romney didn't win the presidential election, our foreign policy is still imperialistic, politicians should be ashamed of spending billions on campaigns while people are living in poverty, and that President Barack Obama is nothing but a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface."

I think that it's morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it's very sad. I mean, I'm glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.

But that's not all.

He had some choice words for Rev. Al Sharpton, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, as well. While the aforementioned scholars have been extremely vocal in their support of the Obama Administration, Tavis Smiley, who was interviewed along with Dr. West, said their support comes at the expense of critical thinking and a legitimate push for a Black agenda:

"...Lincoln isn't Lincoln if Frederick Douglass isn't pushing him. FDR isn't FDR if A. Philip Randolph and Eleanor Roosevelt aren't pushing him. LBJ isn't LBJ if MLK isn't pushing him.

"We don't believe in making excuses. We believe that if [Obama] is not pushed, he's going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president. And we believe that the time is now for action and no longer accommodation. But that doesn't happen unless you're pushed."

Dr. West said that Smiley was just being "very kind," and gave his opinion to Goodman, straight no chaser:

I love Brother Mike Dyson... but we're living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people.

Responding to Dyson's statement that President Obama was "progressive," Both Smiley and West said that President Obama is not, because to be progressive means taking risks, something that the president has not done.

"In the president's forward motion in the second term to establish a legacy—and I don't think that being president ought to be about a legacy; it ought to be about advancing the best for the American people. But in this conversation about his legacy, I want to see what risk he's going to take. Is he going to put himself on the line for poor people? Is he going have an honest conversation about drones? As Doc said earlier, you know, is he ever going to say the word prison—the phrase, "prison-industrial complex"? Reagan wouldn't say "AIDS." Bush wouldn't say "climate change." Will Obama say "prison-industrial complex"? I mean, I want to know where the risk is that equates to being the most progressive president ever. That's the—I don't get that."

These are legitimate critiques that all deserve to be addressed. What remains to be seen is will President Obama do so, and will Black voters turn out in 2014 to take back the House of Representatives so that he won't be faced with the intense obstructionism of the last 4 years.

More importantly, will Smiley and West continue to face obstructionism from factions of the Black community that believe any criticism of the president amounts to treason. And will they ever realize that Black America is not a monolith and just because Dyson, Sharpton and Harris-Perry do not agree with them, it does not make them "sell-outs"?

While Dr. West speaks nothing but truth as it pertains to poverty and the need for this administration to transparently and pro-actively address it, one also has to wonder if our dear brother would be so upset at his colleagues with access to the White House if he had been given that ticket to the inauguration.