it s the house republicans that are right. holding this up. who got 3 million less votes in the last election. and remember, as you pointed out, over a majority of republicans actually support an increase in the minimum wage. so there is overwhelming consensus among the american p ub on this issue. there s dual tracks here. there s a kind of inside strategy with the progressive caucus pushing for this and even kind of main street democrats. then you ve got this fight for 15. these are the fast food worker strikes. there was the biggest yet yesterday. they ve been spreading. how do you think those two are interacting with each other? i think there are a couple things going on. social movements and protests in disruption is always great at getting issues on the national political agenda that normal politics doesn t allow. so if anything, we re having a sustained discussion about income inequality it s on every cable news network, it s on cnbc. even fox. it s everywh
political shutdown is tea party. in the latest poll released this week from the pew research center, the tea party is less popular now than they ve ever been before with nearly half the public give them the thumbs down. what if looking like losers is all a part of the tea party strategy to win? the idea of the tea party as a persecuted, embattled minority standing up against the big government goliath was certainly a winning line with the audience at last week s ultraconservative values voters summit. congresswoman michele bachmann milked it for all it was worth. this is the time to fight! this is our moment for poster y posterity! and i thank god that we finally have the will to stand up, take on the progressive president, and stand for what is good and righteous and true! it s a battle of our time! wow. but there s no doubt that being on a losing team has actually
thing i find more racially disstressing is the idea that we would not expect white republican or white democrats to be strong advocates for concerns of people of color. i completely agree with you. but i think especially in the era of president obama that a lot of people just assume that he could do it on his own. the magical presence of president obama made magical by his blackness, perhaps? right, and that s really faulty. i think when people were disappointed, because they had unrealistic expectations what he could do, and they forgot he s a politician like anybody else and he responds to feedback on responds to protest and those are still parts, you know, arrows in the kwimp and they need to be used when groups want things. i think some people thought automatically he was going to be sensitive to them. and, yes, he is sensitive to those issues but no politician acts unless they have an incentive to act and that s where the outside kind of struggle comes in. so if this quest
are seeing right now with the tea party push. so here you have an ideological group in a political party that desilds to challenge its leaders, challenge its leadership, and to me that doesn t look like precisely the model that we would want to be following. in fact, there may be an inside strategy. i wonder if this new group of african-american politicians coming through with a very different set of practices, having been educated in primarily white institutions, not necessarily coming from a civil rights protest struggle, might teach us something new nu about how to do politics. i agree, but the other piece of it, talking about the inside, is we need to build a larger bench of the new black politicians so the notion we need to expand black leadership is not just about running african-americans and historically african-american districts, that cory booker s victory, although he s you know, day one he s running for re-election, is an opportunity to show that there is appeal to be a
and, you know, my argument has been, oh, no, obstructionism is part of this. right? just like we saw the obstructionism against president clinton. but the strategy is racial because that s the thing that is the weakness for this president. they came after president clinton with what he was week on and right in this case race becomes the thing that can galvanize is the critique of the president. apparently joe the plumber didn t get the memo that his 15 minutes of fame were up. beyond that, i think it s important to look at the nature of the criticism and this president has been subjected to a level of disrespect almost unprecedented in modern american history. you ve got a sitting member of the house of representatives crying out, you lied during the midst of a joint presidential speech before the united states congress. you ve got a governor, jan brewer, from arizona, wagging her finger in the president s face on the airport tarmac. you ve got newt gingrich, a former speaker of the