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Hilary Clinton Endorses George Latimer in Challenge to Unseat Jamaal Bowman
(www.politico.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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Jamaal Bowman is known as one of the more firebrand politicians out there. Running against that is fair game, and pretending fair criticism of him is racism seems dishonest as fuck to me.
If that was the first questionable race-related comment he made I'd be inclined to believe it's no big deal, but it's not.
Here's one of the controversies, a donor made an explicitly racist statement on camera, and the candidate never disavowed it (at least by two weeks later when the second article was written).
https://x.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1791533603433648188
And there are certainly stereotypes you just need to be careful about implying when pursuing a Democratic nomination. If your opponent is greedy and happens to be Jewish, spend some extra time thinking about how it's going to be heard by people who have been working under that stereotype their whole life. That line of attack could have been framed as uninterested in reaching across the aisle or smooth talking other representatives, but he chose "argues too much" and "scream at", then said he should talk "like normal people". He's not lighting up crosses, but he probably would have "voted for Obama a third time".
Like this isn't just a random off-hand comment where he didn't have time to think and said something inartfully, this was a core line of attack on the first black representative of the district, something he must have realized would resonate with bigoted voters. And Bowman isn't a particularly angry representative. Like "more firebrand" is true, but not in a sense where you'd think he's really out of line. Making statements of principles on the steps of the capitol is something politicians do, especially when they're in the minority.
Why is he responsible for the statements of some random donor? I don't know why he would need to address those comments, it seems like some activists ambushed some random person on the street and she said something which wasn't focus grouped and sounded bad. If she runs for office I guess she should address them.
This is a common argument against progressives from moderates, of whatever race or gender or religion. You can not like that argument, but the fact that it's used commonly against the populist left kinda detracts from the "oh, this is a dog whistle"
The same reason Republicans should be disavowing the Nazis that support them. Because they've been publicly identified as being associated with his campaign. That wasn't "not focused grouped", that was racist. "The black congressman is only interested in his people."
I literally just explained why this was a problem, and it's not a matter of whether you can ever attack a black politician for not doing low key deal making. Take a half second to consider the larger cultural context for how you're framing the attack and you wouldn't have a problem.
But I am once again shocked at how empty the social justice ethics of moderates are.
This woman doesn't seem like a Nazi lol
And I disagree. You haven't actually shown me any evidence that he's a racist. The best you've done is show me a statement by some random donor (???) who made a statement when ambushed by combative activists that was awkward. Whoop de fucking doo
Oh, I'm sorry she's just racist rather than actually ready for pogroms, guess it's no big deal then. And to double down in describing very blatant racism as an "awkward statement" is... wow.
Dude she's a random civilian
Why do you care
I don't care that a random racist woman exists, I care about the people, like you, who are doing everything in their power to ignore and minimize her racism. It would be so easy for you, and him, to simply say her comment was racist, completely inappropriate, and is not welcome in your political movement, but you apparently think "Black politicians only care about black people" is just an awkwardly expressed, but completely valid, viewpoint.
That's a lot of words which don't go to answer the question as to why the candidate has to answer for the supposed racism of one of his donors. I'm sure if we looked long enough we could find some donor of Bowman who has posted something calling for some nasty activities. But nobody does, because everyone understands that a politician isn't responsible for the views of individuals who happen to vote for him unless he has solicited their endorsement specifically and celebrated that endorsement publicly.