The Deplorable Basket (Scary Mexican Mix)

“For what it’s worth, I have no idea why that’s supposed to sound scary.”

―Steve Benen

It is, of course, easy enough to wonder why more taco trucks would be a bad thing; it is also easy enough to remember that Marco Gutierrez of Latinos for Trump supports a Republican, and heaven knows the one thing Republicans can’t tolerate is the prospect of safe taco trucks. Perhaps Mr. Gutierrez thinks Mexicans are really into deregulation, or something.

JOY REID: Marco, you know, I’ve heard this Trump moment described as a “Barry Goldwater moment”, which is of course the tipping point when African-Americans became so identified with the Democratic Party that it essentially became almost impossible for Republicans to win more than ten percent of them. I’ve heard it described as a “Prop 187 moment”, when the California law that went after undocumented migrants there really harmed the Republican Party―it’s never recovered. Are you not at all concerned that Donald Trump is so alienating people with his tone last night, that yelling into the prompter speech, and just the tone toward undocumented migrants, toward immigrants in this c‎ountry, that you are now facing a Barry Goldwater moment for your Party?

MARCO GUTIERREZ: Yes, but, you know, Donald Trump’s a genius of delivering the message, and yes, it was a tough message to deliver, but he did it in a way that has shown us that we have a problem, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; and different times, different problems. Yes, indeed, there’s a lot of people―my colleague, here, he would not be here―but we need to understand that this is a different time and we’re having problems here.

REID: What problems? What problems are you talking about?

GUTIERREZ: My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks every corner.​

(msnbc)

There is always at least one. There is an Alan Keyes or, more recently, Ben Carson. There is a Wendy McElroy or Janet Bloomfield. That is to say, there will always be someone who will serve the marketplace by advertising why we should be afraid of them. Or, if not them, others like them. See, we’re not supposed to be afraid of Marco Gutierrez, because he’s telling white people the truth about Mexicans, which in turn is that Mexicans are terrible people, or at the very least, “a dominant culture” that is “imposing” and “causing problems”, or something approximately like that. Marco Gutierrez found a job telling white supremacists what they want to hear about hispanics. Just like Janet Bloomfield will tell rapists what they want to hear about women. I know a guy like Mr. Gutierrez, a registered and participating Republican, a man of Mexican descent who worked hard and bootstrapped and scrimped and saved and got himself a career as an optometrist in the midwest and became a respectable person, not like that army of invading Mexicans he tells me I should be afraid of. Then again, it’s not just hispanics he hates; he also has a thing against blacks. He’s the Republican who once explained to me that Obamanoia was really just a policy discussion, and if the president wasn’t so terrible, all these wonderful, unracist, good, decent American people wouldn’t be forced to say racist-sounding things.

No, seriously, something about deplorable goes here.

Suggestive of a Problem (Righteous Rebel Remix)

Sometimes I think it really is just about action-hero fantasies imagining some good reason to kill people.

Glenn Beck’s radio program has been suspended from its SiriusXM simulcast after Beck described the election of Donald Trump as a “possible extinction-level event for capitalism” during an interview with a guest who suggested that a “patriot” will then need to “step up” and “remove him from office.”

During Wednesday’s “Glenn Beck Radio Program,” guest and conservative fiction author Brad Thor said he “guarantees” that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would temporarily suspend the Constitution if elected president, calling the controversial candidate a “danger to America.”

“This could bring down incredible heat on me because I’m about to suggest something very bad―it is a hypothetical I’m going to ask as a thriller writer,” Thor said. “With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that? If―if―he overstates his constitutionally-granted authority I should say as president, if he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office, because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.”

Instead of following up on Thor’s remark about Trump’s “removal” from office, Beck simply said he agreed before going on to say that he believed the economy would “reset” and decline “even if Jesus were in office.”

(Tesfaye)

A Note on Legacy

“Watching him now is a useful reminder that there is no such thing as the ‘twilight’ of a presidency. Until the day his successor takes office, Obama will be the leading actor on the biggest and most important stage in the world.”

―Eugene Robinson

When we perceive a presidency as dismal, it is easy enough to wonder what could have gone better. Still, though, it is easy enough to wonder if perhaps the historical discussion, and probably not so far off in the future, will pause amid its reflections on one of the more affecting and effective presidencies in American history to wonder what more President Obama could have achieved.

That answer might as well be wishing on stars. But as Eugene Robinson reminds, these premature death notices of a lame duck twilight zombie administration really do remind of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Barack Obama is no George W. Bush, and but for a press accustomed to thoughtless milling and recycling, we might have no cause to remind.

____________________

Image note: President Obama speaks at the Greater Boston Labor Council Labor Day Breakfast on Sept. 7. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

Robinson, Eugene. “Obama has plenty of reasons to smile”. The Washington Post. 7 September 2015.

“Post-Racial” America

Sometimes the narrative is simply undeniable:

Seldom in Barack Obama’s presidency has he looked quite so impotent as he did last night, pleading from a podium in the White House for calm while the cable news split screens showed clouds of tear gas enveloping the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. He repeated the same themes as every time he has spoken about this subject — people have legitimate grievances but there’s no excuse for violence, we’ve come a long way but we have a ways to go, and so on. It never rang more hollow.

But what should he have said? Obama never actually promised to bind up the nation’s racial wounds — that was a hope others placed upon him, far too naively. Even before taking office, Obama found that no matter how hard he tried to be unthreatening, to incorporate different perspectives into his rhetoric, and to stress what Americans share, many of his opponents would never see him as anything but an agent of racial vengeance. No matter what he did, whether passing an economic stimulus or reforming health care, some would spin a story of race around it, one in which whites were under threat.

If anyone ever thought that with little more than the power of his example Obama could mitigate racial resentments, let alone fray the institutional ligaments of racism, they were quickly disabused of those ideas. His presidency has seen an extraordinary backlash against racial progress, from the Supreme Court to the statehouse, where affirmative action is dismantled, the Voting Rights Act is gutted, one Republican legislature after another passes laws to make it harder for people (mostly minorities) to vote, and conservatives are told again and again that they are the racial victims whose problems are the fault of the black president coming after them because of the color of their skin.

(Waldman)

And this is where we’re at. In America. In the twenty-first century.

____________________

Waldman, Paul. “Barack Obama, Ferguson, and racial wounds unhealed”. The Washington Post. 25 November 2014.

Holst, Lindsay. “President Obama Delivers a Statement on the Ferguson Grand Jury’s Decision”. The White House. 24 November 2014.

A Fairly Impressive (Republican) Wreck

“But never have I met any candidate quite as frightening or fact-averse as Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney, 55, who visited my office last Wednesday. It’s tough to decide which party’s worst nightmare she would be.”

―David Wasserman

It is not, by the logic of conventional wisdom, a good thing when the candidate actually frightens the Cook Political Report editor, but down Lou’siana way perhaps the Palin of the South and voters in Terrebonne Parish see it differently.

And let us be clear—”Palin of the South” is not an insult, regardless of however hilarious or horrifying or redundant others might find the phrase.

Sigh.

David Wasserman explains, for the Washington Post:

As a House analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, I’ve personally interviewed over 300 congressional candidates over the course of seven years, both to get to know them and evaluate their chances of winning. I’ve been impressed by just as many Republicans as Democrats, and underwhelmed by equal numbers, too. Most are accustomed to tough questions.

But never have I met any candidate quite as frightening or fact-averse as Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney, 55, who visited my office last Wednesday. It’s tough to decide which party’s worst nightmare she would be.

Then again, as bad reviews go, that one is pretty impressive.