Natalie Davis, a professor of political science at Birmingham-Southern College and a one-time Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, has harsh words for her party:
"This party has tired leadership and it offers voters nothing that speaks to their daily concerns and needs," Davis said. "Name me a policy proposal that has been passed with Democratic leadership which speaks to the needs of working families. . . . I have a hard time coming up with one."
So did the Democrats' problems, as The Village Voice contends, really begin with Barack Obama?
Without his funky name, I suspect many Americans would forget that Obama is even black. Heck, the guy makes Don "No Soul" Simmons look like James Brown.
But The Village Voice says even a black president "lite," such as Obama, is too much for white America to handle. Here is how Thrasher puts it:
About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.
It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).
But when that streak was broken--and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office--white America rapidly began to lose its grip.
That's darned good writing. And it's accurate--as far as it goes. But Thrasher needs to take a trip on the way-back machine. Why did white America begin to rapidly lose its grip with Obama's inauguration? Because it already had been losing its grip for years.
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