by Teh Nutroots | Obama harshed on the tactics used by Nikki Tinker and her supporters in Memphis against Steve Cohen. He's been pretty severe. He said:
“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee. It’s time to turn the page on a politics driven by negativity and division so that we can come together to lift up our communities and our country,” Obama said. (The Politico)
My DD has details about Steve Cohen, who replaced African-American Harold Ford in the House.
In Congress, he's been pretty awesome. He's MUCH more progressive than Ford ever was, scoring a 96.28% progressive rating on Progressive Punch. But it seems certain folks in Memphis do not want them to be represented by anyone other than an African-American. So enter Nikki Tinker ("D"), who's challenging him in the primary. Cohen had already beaten her in a 15-candidate field in the 2006 primary.
The flyer distributed by supporters of Tinker (not Tinker) isn't subtle or anything. Here's what is shown at MyDD.
So that's pretty straightforwardly anti-semitic (as well as racist, of course). But of course that you could argue that Tinker should be given the benefit of the doubt on this one.
But then she herself released an ad (which has now been withdrawn from YouTube). It got her named "The Worst Person in the World" on Olbermann.
Was Tinker race-baiting or religion-baiting? At The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates points out that this just isn't clear.
....Nikki Tinker's ad...claims, "While he's in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet ... he's the only senator who thought our kids shouldn't be allowed to pray in school." Turner's opponent Steve Cohen is Jewish, which leads TPM to claim that Tinkeris Jew-baiting. Maybe. It's clear Tinker is invoking bigotry--but I don't think it's that kind. It seems that the more salient fact is that Cohen is the only white person in Congress representing a majority black district. The "our" in question likely refers to the church--a bastion of voluntary segregation. (Coates; emphasis added)
Whatever. Regardless of which sort of bigotry is being invoked, Obama's own tactics deemphasize identity politics. (See BN-Politics; BN-Politics) And based on The New York Times article discussed here, the young African-American activists who are involved in his campaign would cringe at the following (via My DD)
"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line," said Rev. Robert Poindexter of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church.
The latest Tinker attack is an inflammatory framing of the whole nonsensical prayer issue. (After all, or so I am told, Jesus inveighed against praying in public and public displays of righteousness, cf. Matthew 6:5-1.5).
Tinker's latest ad features a little girl's voice reciting the prayer "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" and claims Cohen opposes the right of children to pray in school based on a 1997 state Senate vote against a piece of legislation that Cohen claims was meaningless. Cohen called a news conference today to denounce the ad as desperate and affirm his stance in support of school prayer....
Cohen's campaign lined up ministers, legislators and other activists to defend him and denounce the ad. (Memphis Online)
Emily's list is shocked---SHOCKED!---by these tactics. I'm more shocked that Emily's list didn't look harder at Cohen's record. At My DD, BruinKid says:
EMILY's List, which had actually endorsed Tinker over Cohen, despite his perfect pro-choice record, back in May, condemned the ad too, as if that's really going to matter less than 24 hours before voting ends. Of course, they could have done what NOW and NARAL did, which was endorse Cohen over a truly despicable person in the first place.
For real. Cohen is progressive and pro-choice. It's sad if Emily's list really is endorsing candidates without really looking at who they are rather than who they appear to be. That's the whole problem with that sort of judgment: you really can't judge a book by its cover.
Memeorandum has blogger commentary here.
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