One-Sided Debate

Children! Stop whining and eat your vegetables!

Clinton ally and circa 2004 Democratic National Committee chairperson Terry McAuliffe has a point- albeit not a very good one- when he maintains “We found that six debates gave candidates the platform they needed to showcase differences with their opponents while giving campaigns the flexibility they need to do other events, including joint-forums and appearances.”

Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, who already had endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, did not have a good point when, Politico reports, he wrote

It’s time for a reality check fellow Democrats. Let’s end this pointless complaining and channel our energies into every facet of what it takes to win: registering people to vote, pushing out our message, raising money, and organizing and coordinating our efforts within this great big tent we call the Democratic Party.

Not feeling the "great big tent," Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an ally of Hillary Clinton, set up a mere six debates, one of which is to take place on that great viewing night of the last Saturday before Christmas.  It seems that some Democrats are not heeding the sentiments of Mrs. Schultz or Mr. Nutter. The Boston Globe explains

Deb Kozikowski, vice chairwoman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, said the chief of the Democratic National Committee, US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, had done a disservice to grass-roots volunteers by allowing Republicans to dominate the airwaves for the last month.

“How do I tell these really dedicated Democrats who work really hard from top to bottom that debates for our presidential candidates are restricted, and they’re there watching all these Republicans get all this air time?” she said. “I think about the folks at the grass roots who work day in day out, no money no glory, because they believe in democracy with a small ‘d’ and the Democratic Party with a large ‘D,’ getting bombarded with all these Republican candidates.”

And they are getting bombarded. When she announced the debate schedule, Wasserman argued the Democratic Party is focused on "strengthening the middle class versus Republicans who want to pursue out of touch and out of date policies.”

But voters are not hearing that.   They're hearing that: Republicans stand for fiscal irresponsibility and Democrats for higher taxes; Iran will drop a nuclear bomb on Iraq unless the USA withdraws its agreement with the nation; nations throughout the world have lost respect for the USA because of Barack Obama; the Second Amendment was practically written by God, who bears a striking resemblance to Ronald Reagan; Planned Parenthood must be defunded; and vaccination is a greater threat to global survival than is climate change. These are the messages because, notwithstanding minor differences, the GOP candidates are in lockstep on most issues.

As the Republican debates proceed, the GOP's perspective on issues, and hence the Party's credibility with the American people, is enhanced.  The right wing is dominating the airwaves with a message than is only barely, and faintly, rebutted.

The major fault lies with Wasserman-Schultz. But politicians like Michael Nutter who want Democrats, those of "the great big tent," to "end this pointless complaining" are enabling the chairperson.  To Michael Nutter, dissident Democrats are whining, immature children. To the Republican Party and conservative ideas, he is a dream come true.







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Perspective, Please


Once Mayor Michael Nutter wrote a letter to the Human Relations Commission in Philadelphia suggesting a "rebuke" for the Philly Magazine article "Being White in Philly," a panel discussion was almost inevitable.  One was held Monday night at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Details of the event are fairly light, which is a pity, given that the piece by the magazine's Robert Huber exposed, or threatened to expose, urban problems which are particularly acute in Philadelphia.

Today we read in the Philadelphia Inquirer of an individual, allegedly robbed by a homeless man named Robert Bangura.   The apparent victim has accused Public Defender Frederick Lowenberg of calling him to urge him not to appear in Court.  Bangura

has been accused of doing that type of thing before. In 2006, he allegedly snatched $40 from a man near Fourth and Christian Street. In 2008, he was charged with taking $40 from a man at gunpoint on South Street.

Those cases, like many cases in Philadelphia, fell apart when witnesses failed to appear. Bangura was represented by public defenders, but not Lowenberg, in those cases.

Victims of crime, and witnesses to crime, have routinely been avoiding the courts in the city for quite a while.  In June 2012, the Inquirer reported

In a four-part series published in December 2009, The Inquirer reported that the Philadelphia criminal justice system was in crisis, plagued by rampant witness intimidation, a massive fugitive problem, some of the nation's lowest conviction rates for violent crimes, and the dismissal of thousands of cases each year without a ruling on the merits.

A special advisory committee convened in response has concluded that the paper's series had "galvanized a vigorous response from the stakeholders in Philadelphia's criminal justice system" in response to the report of "real defects," but "that the system would need to greatly improve its performance in order to regain the public's confidence."

But now that Robert Huber has written of race, crime, and fear in the neighborhoods of the city, Mayor Michael Nutter has asked the Human Relations Commission to investigate whether "Philly Magazine and Bob Huber are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia's racial relations possibly caused by the essay's unsubstantiated assertions."

Nutter's reprehensible response not only signaled an effort to disregard the terror which blocks crime victims and witnesses of all ethnic groups from assisting the city in prosecution of the violent crime more prevalent there than in most comparable cities.  It represents a lost opportunity for the Democratic Mayor.  Yesterday, the Inquirer published an article, based on a 2009-2011 estimate of the U.S. Census American Community Survey, which was deeply disturbing- not only for the adversity it found but also because the Mayor has chosen not to tie its findings to the concerns expressed by Huber's interviewees.  Alfred Lubrano wrote

Philadelphia has the highest rate of deep poverty - people with incomes below half of the poverty line - of any of the nation's 10 most populous cities.

The annual salary for a single person at half the poverty line is around $5,700; for a family of four, it's around $11,700.

Philadelphia's deep-poverty rate is 12.9 percent, or around 200,000 people.

But that "wasn't a complete surprise for antipoverty advocates," Lubrano notes, because "the city already has the highest poverty rate- 28.4 percent- of any of America's biggest cities."

There is a nexus between poverty and crime.  For those too young to know, or perhaps those too old to remember: there was a time in this nation that public officials acknowledged problems and pointed out the causes.

Not so Mayor Nutter.  It is hardly surprising that crime, and fear of it, are greater in the city than in surrounding areas, in which there is only 3.6% living in "deep poverty."  One would have hoped the Mayor, instead of attacking Huber, would have used the latter's article as a chance to explain that Philadelphia has far more serious problems than have suburban areas.

Those include (among others) poverty, substance abuse, homelessness, broken families, and a banking class which seized upon the poor and working class as an opportunity to make gobs of money, ultimately bringing the nation to its financial knees. Those factors were, unfortunately, missing from Nutter's letter to the Commission, in which he took a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach.

But give the Mayor credit: at least he hasn't accused the Survey, the bearer of bad news, of being "prejudiced, fact-challenged" and "ill-informed."



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Quote Of The Week

"I didn't see people running up to Ted Kennedy, saying, 'Are you getting any pressure from supporting Senator Obama, any backlash?' No one is asking the white elected officials if they are getting pressure for supporting the black guy."

-Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, quoted in the 4/7/08 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer, on criticism he, as a black, has received for supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy