*7. Reparations* Sanders has gotten a lot of heat from the left for saying he’s against reparations. It’s a complicated issue, the substance of which I don’t want to comment on here.
Instead I’ll just note that in 2008 another presidential candidate was asked about his position on reparations. Here’s what he had to say <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-opposes-reparations-slavery-article-1.314179> : Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Barack+Obama> opposes offering reparations to the descendants of slaves, putting him at odds with some black groups and leaders. The man with a serious chance to become the nation’s first black president argues that government should instead combat the legacy of slavery by improving schools, health care and the economy for all. “I have said in the past — and I’ll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed,” the Illinois <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Illinois>Democrat said recently. … “Let’s not be naive. Sen. Obama is running for president of the United States <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/United+States>, and so he is in a constant battle to save his political life,” said Kibibi Tyehimba, co-chair of theNational Coalition of Blacks <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/National+Coalition+of+Blacks> for Reparations in America. “In light of the demographics of this country, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect him to do anything other than what he’s done.” But this is not a position Obama adopted just for the presidential campaign. He voiced the same concerns about reparations during his successful run for the Senate in 2004. I pointed this out on Twitter to Killer Mike, the rapper who’s supporting Sanders. He retweeted me, which may be just about the biggest endorsement on Twitter I’ve ever gotten. [image: Killer Mike] <http://coreyrobin.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Killer-Mike.jpg> Except for that time Morgan Fairchild retweeted me. And that time John Cusack retweeted me. But who’s counting? Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] (202) 448-2898 x1 On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 11:46 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > Good stuff. > > > http://crookedtimber.org/2016/01/22/bile-bullshit-and-bernie-16-notes-on-a-dismal-campaign/ > -------------------------snip > > 1. *Clintonite McCarthyism* > > According to *The Guardian > <http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/22/bernie-sanders-communist-sympathiser-hillary-clinton-us-election-2016?CMP=share_btn_tw>* > : > > The dossier, prepared by opponents of Sanders and passed on to the > Guardian by a source who would only agree to be identified as “a Democrat”, > alleges that Sanders “sympathized with the USSR during the Cold War” > because he went on a trip there to visit a twinned city while he was mayor > of Burlington. Similar “associations with communism” in Cuba are catalogued > alongside a list of quotes about countries ranging from China to Nicaragua > in a way that supporters regard as bordering on the McCarthyite rather than > fairly reflecting his views. > > > This is becoming a straight-up rerun of the 1948 campaign against Henry > Wallace. Except that Clinton is running well to the right of Truman and > even, in some respects, Dewey. It seems as if Clinton is campaigning for > the vote of my Grandpa Nat. There’s only one problem with this strategy: > he’s been dead for nearly a quarter-century. As was true of McCarthyism, > it’s not really Sanders’s communism or his socialism that has got today’s > McCarthyites in the Democratic Party worried; it’s actually his liberalism. > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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