Memphis and Shelby County comprise Tennessee's 9th Congressional District. It's a heavily democratic district. Our current representative is Steve Cohen. He's the dummy who compared Obama to Christ because Christ was a "community organizer" (I wasn't aware of that) and he compared Palin to Pilate because they were both governors. Oh that Steve Cohen is so funny.
But his opponent in the district's democratic primary this month was loooooooong time Memphis mayor Willie Herenton. His nickname is King Willie because he was the mayor for so long. Willie is black man and Cohen is a white man. Those kinds of things are relevant in Memphis because the race card is really popular here. The former mayor Herenton is a scathing racist, he has made ridiculous remarks about whites and despite supporting Steve Cohen's first bid for Congress, he ran against Cohen on the premise that "only a black man can represent Tennessee's 9th district" given the demographics of the area. His campaign theme was "Just One", referring to the need for just one black man from TN in DC.
For the record Steve Cohen walloped Herenton in the primary, winning with nearly 80% of the vote. I was happy about that although I don't really like Steve Cohen at all. In November his Republican opponent will be Charlotte Bergmann, a Memphis native and strong business leader who has been named TN Business Woman of the Year both nationally and by the state of TN. Oh, yes, I should mention Miss Bergmann is black. Enter the race card. Steve Cohen who called out Herenton's use of the race card in the democratic primary has suddenly decided to try to use it to his advantage. Herenton refused to debate Cohen during the primary. A strategy which Cohen decried and no doubt led to his landslide victory. But suddenly Cohen has decided that HIS opponent is not worthy of a debate. Why would Cohen suddenly not want a debate? Remember, this is Memphis. The answer is race of course.
Here is Cohen's reason for not wanting to debate Bergmann:
"Neither she nor Sidney Chism understand the African-American voter. If she understood (them), she wouldn’t be running on an extreme platform that works totally against the interests of the African-American community.”
This is basically the same tactic of race-based politics that Herenton tried to use against Cohen. Now he's using it against his opponent. Only he's trying to get Memphis to believe that an African-American native Memphian knows less about the district that him - a white guy from New York.
So Cohen hate debate-dodgers and race-baiters when it worked for him and now has BECOME a debate-dodger and a race-baiter. I can't WAIT to vote against this guy.
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SAD! It bothers me every time I hear about racism happening in our world today; especially in America. I mean, all the wars that have been fought over it by America.
ReplyDeleteThe civil war: 620,000 people died due to the war
The Holocaust: Estimated 11-17 million people
Gang violence: Estimated 960,000 a year in America
Why can this issue not die? We have certainly made great strides in the right directions, but what is it going to take to end it for good!
Oh, and using it in politics is absolutely heinous!
We'll never get there completely. We've made great strides, it's true. Using it to try and gain an advantage in a political race is evil but it has worked or they wouldn't continue to do it. I hope for two reasons that Bergmann destroys Cohen in the fall - 1) he's playing race, 2) Bergmann is a strong businesswoman and a conservative.
ReplyDeleteThe Civil War is fascinating history to me. It's interesting but Lincoln's stance on slavery was somewhat equivalent to Mitt's former stance on abortion. Lincoln was opposed to slavery from a moral stance but he understood that the Union would be dissolved if he came across as too strong an abolitionist. He was the president and, as such, was charged with maintaining the integrity of the Union. He wanted to prevent slavery from taking hold in the new states and territories as well as slowly choke it off in the deep south. Initially, he was not going to make a push to end slavery in the south but Southerners knew what was eventually coming, that's why every southern state voted against him and became increasingly violent and defiant of federal authority once he took office. The Civil War actually began based on a states rights vs. federal authority background. The South claimed the right to keep slavery and/or secede while Lincoln declared that the Constitution does not allow for a state to remove itself from the Union. Lincoln promised in his inaugural address that the North would instigate no violence against the South. He kept good on that word. It wasn't until the south began to seize federal offices and forts in the south and eventually fired the first shots against Fort Sumter that Lincoln fought back.
Sorry about the rant but I find the years and months leading up to the start of the Civil War very interesting. The war could have been avoided except that Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, the two men who preceded Lincoln, seemed to almost fan the flames of rebellion that were already beginning to heat up. Those two guys are always ranked towards the bottom of best US presidents.