White Male Supremacy Is No Solution to the Problems Facing America

Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog
and MyLeftWing

Today, with an essay entitled "Do We Really Hate Hillary Clinton This Much?," Arthur Gilroy at MyLeftWing says, "I am getting a little tired of having to be a Clinton apologist on these leftiness blogs."

I'm an advocate for liberalism/progressivism in electoral politics (since leftism doesn't seem to have much traction among the voters), and I'm an advocate for national health care, and for ending the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency. I want peace, prosperity, respect and equality.

I believe the most potent way to pursue all of these goals and values is to elect Hillary Clinton president and Barack Obama vice president. This woman is a fighter who's defeated the right wing at every turn in her political life. I don't think she holds a grudge, but there are a lot of Republicans who haven't been held responsible yet for their actions of the past.

I think Hillary Clinton will be the president most able by character and experience to hold these Republicans responsible, as part of the political process of setting the stage for implementation of the frustrated progressive goals of the past and present, like national health care.

Have you noticed that even the CIA-left, represented by Markos Moulitsas, has softened its tone in its anti-Clinton rhetoric? MAMZ is getting on board, because he realizes that Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and he wants a seat at the table instead of eight years of political exile.

Arthur Gilroy says:

Ms. Clinton may be the most accomplished professional politician in America today. On the evidence of her continued...and apparently continuing...success. She means to get elected, by whatever means necessary. You can consider this sheer egotism; you can consider it the efforts of a closet reactionary, or...you can also consider it Lincoln and FDR- influenced practical politics. Arthur

Now that's part of why I support Hillary Clinton. She's determined to win and everything she says and does as a candidate is consistent with and finely targeted toward that goal. And she's going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that it happens.

Can we really say that our past presidential candidates have achieved this level of consistency in their message and single-minded determination to bring home the reigns for the Democrats? Has any candidate of the last ten years been as consistently on-message and undistracted as Hillary Clinton has been?

Let's talk about Barack Obama for a minute: Barack Obama is a genius and everybody knows it. You don't get to be the editor of the Harvard Law Review, US senator from one of the most populous mid-west states, and the only Black senator in the US Congress by being a slacker. Barack Obama has shown a lot of people that he is one tremendous man, destined for greatness. His record from his eight years in the Illinois state senate shows that his priorities and success rate are just what America's progressive need.

Great Discussion of Obama's Illinois Days in the New York Times

However, winning the White House and implementing a progressive agenda is not something that any of us can do alone. When the insurance companies realize that national health care is right around the corner, they're going to fight tooth and nail to assure that health care remains a cash-cow for the rich instead of a public service delivered for the whole nation. We're going to need all hands on deck to win this fight.

Barack Obama has receive campaign contributions from about 33,000 Americans. OpenSecrets.Org Hillary Clinton has received campaign contributions from 21,000 Americans, or 66% of the number of Barack Obama. But, together this white woman and this Black man have received campaign contributions from $54,000 Americans (assuming incorrectly that no one is contributing to both), even before the first vote has been cast. OpenSecrets.Org

(We all want to be fair to John Edwards, but we also have to face political and economic realities. If John Edwards has been trying as hard as Clinton and Obama, then whatever he is doing is not working. John Edwards has received contributions from only 13,000 Americans, so he brings very little to the table financially and numerically in terms of taking back the White House for the Democrats.) OpenSecrets.Org

Although both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have received record contributions from 53,000 Americans, neither of them has raised as much money or voter support alone as both of them could together!

We all need to support Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Because, if Hillary cannot become president simply because she is a woman, then all American women's prospects are dimmed simply because of an immutable group of physical characteristics with which they were born - characteristics that have no negative bearing on their value as leaders, but characteristics and perspectives that we desperately need if we are to regain the equilibrium of this terribly unbalanced nation in which many of us live.

I've said it before and I'll say it ten thousand times over the next 18 months: Whites male Democratic tickets lost five out of the last seven times, and 43 successive white male administrations - presidencies and vice presidencies - got us into the mess that we're in now.

Whatever is wrong in Washington developed at a time when at least 84% of the US Senate was composed of white men, and when ALL of the presidents and vice presidents were white men. Electing another white male president today is like bringing a flame thrower to put out a fire. Steadfastly insisting upon white male leadership, in and of itself, cannot be the solution to our problems. Look how much better a country - more democratic and just - South Africa became when Nelson Mandela took over the reigns from P.W. Botha! South Africa became a much better and stronger nation without white male supremacy, white male minority rule, and apartheid.

White men are the minority in America, with women and Blacks and Latinos forming a super majority. There is no inherently valid reason why white men alone should hold the reigns of power while everyone else looks on in horror at white male leaders' incompetence and malevolence. (And isn't this precisely what has happened over the last six years?)

This isn't an argument against white male leaders per se, because many white male leaders have done yeoman service for their country. Were it not for Bill Clinton, for example, America would not have had a Democratic president since Jimmy Carter left office in 1980, twenty seven years ago.

So, let's not bash white men. But let's recognize, once and for all, that a government led exclusively by white men has not been the solution to the problems facing America.