Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
(Post 499576)
Obama cannot effectively talk to white people from the center on to the right when it comes to anything that has to do race. While what you said may be true (and he's definitely spoken about this stuff before), here's what they hear:
"As the first black President, I only care about issues that relate to black people and I want to free the thugs and drug dealers you fear so much who you believe cause so much violence in neighborhoods you actually never set foot in."
That's how it is. I have no idea why you think this country will rally around the President on these issues when they all just sat by and watched Congress try to shoot down any idea coming from the West Wing. Given the rhetoric from the fucking leading candidate of the Republican Party and his followers, what makes you think any of this stuff is actually achievable no matter what source if comes from?
TM
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I think you discount the existence of a lot of sympathetic, sensible white people. Having seen the system in action, there's never been a moment in my legal career where I didn't think it was corrupt, racist, and cruel and brutally unthinking where it needed to be nimble and open-minded. I think almost all lawyers, even prosecutors, would admit there are three scales of justice. One for the white and moneyed. One for the white and poor. One for the black and latino.
These people have families. They have friends. And when they see things like Ferguson on TV, or the endless specials about poor and minority people being freed from death row after being railroaded by corrupt law enforcement officers and prosecutors, the message resonates all the more.
It used to be, you could not sit among Republicans or even moderate Democrats from flyover land and say something like, "The system is rigged and racist" without being bullied as a soft liberal. In the wake of all these police killings, however, it's now the "tough on crime" person who looks like a clueless fool. Granted, my petri dish is upper middle class to affluent sorts (the average Trump lumpenvoter is still a bigoted moron and wants more prisons and shooting, not less), but it's a start. If I can turn to a blathering jackass running his mouth off about "getting tougher with the thugs" at a dinner party and tell him he's talking out of his ass, and that it's the cops we should be more radically policing, and the non-violent offenders we should be releasing, we're at a good moment... A moment where a lot of people who feel like I do on this issue will feel comfortable saying, "I don't want to elect a guy who's saying we should jail people like Joe Arpaio does. And I don't want a police department outfitted like a fucking SWAT team. This is bullshit used to get stupid Republican trash to vote for candidates. I think I'll vote Democratic until the GOP changes its tune. And if the Democrat is a 'tough on crime' sort, I'll vote for a third party, or stay home."*
Maybe I'm dreaming, but I think there was a moment here where Obama could capitalize on a shift in public perception. And I think there still might be one.
If nothing else, it'll keep Hillary from taking money from private prison lobbyists. That's reward enough.
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* I also don't think white America grasps that a 'prosecute 'em all and throw away the key' police state doesn't stop with minorities. These bloodthirsty degenerates have artillery budgets to justify, and their corporate prison lobbyist sponsors have growth projections to meet. When they've wrung all possible profit out of harassing and warehousing minorities, they'll work their way through the white population.
