These Are Extraordinary Events
1. We have had more than 10 days of civil rights protests across the country
2. A ton of white Americans not only joined black Americans in the protests, but at times did the protesting all on their own (because they live in areas where they aren’t many black people)
3. People across the world held their own protests criticizing racial inequality, both in America and in their own nations
4. The police department in the 16th largest metropolitan area in the country (Minneapolis) seems to be on its way to being radically reformed
5. Defunding the police is becoming a much more mainstream idea
6. Many Democrats were wary of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” five years ago. Mitt Romney tweeted it on Sunday.
7. More centrist Democrats were wary of supporting kneeling NFL players until my guess is May 25, 2020. (That is the day George Floyd died.) Here’s Nancy Pelosi kneeling.
8. Confederate monuments are coming down in Alabama, Virginia and here in Louisville. People in Britain tore down the statute of a slave trader there.
9. Two of America’s most powerful and influential institutions, the New York Times and the NFL, made major changes that seemed to be outgrowths of the protest movement.
10. The governor of Kentucky made a very racially-specific promise on Monday---he would do everything possible to make sure that all black Kentuckians have health insurance.
You might disagree with some (or all) of what has happened in the last two weeks. But we are witnessing an extraordinary, fast, aggressive, far-reaching civil rights movement. This is unprecedented. Truly. I could have listed 90 more things that happened and seemed fairly unlikely to occur on May 24, 2020.
It’s worth noting two other events that are/were also almost unbelievable and are likely contributing to this civil rights movement.
1. More than 110,00 Americans have died of the coronavirus. Nearly 300,000 have died in other nations around the world. Black Americans have died of the virus at much higher rates than their numbers in the U.S. population and experts say a better response from American governments (local, state, federal) could have saved thousands of black and non-black American lives.
2. The President of the United States authorized/allowed/consented to the use of some kind of chemical agents (there is some debate about whether it was tear gas or not) on protesters outside of the White House.
Booker v. Broihier v. McGrath
Here’s what’s happening in the June 23 primary to select a Kentucky Democrat to take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Booker is airing $400,000 worth of tv commercials in the state. Booker’s campaign announced on Tuesday what I believe is its first television ad buy of the campaign.
“Kentucky needs a real Democrat to take on Mitch McConnell,” the Kentucky state representative says in the commercial. The ad notes Booker’s support for “Health Care for All.”
It then shifts to footage of a McGrath interview last year, at the start of her Senate run. “That’s going to be my message---that the things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done,” McGrath is shown saying. A Courier-Journal headline, “Amy McGrath challenges Mitch McConnell as a pro-Trump Democrat” is on the screen as she is speaking.
“Democrats only win by mobilizing young and old, black, brown and white,” Booker says at the conclusion of the commercial, as those words (young, old, black, brown and white) are shown on screen, as are pictures of Barack Obama, Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman, Kentucky’s lieutenant governor.
You can watch for yourself here.
Booker’s campaign didn’t say where these ads are running. And that’s an interesting question. 25-30 percent of Kentucky Democrats live in Louisville. But most don’t, so he needs to run ads in a variety of places.) If you see the ads, e-mail me (perrylbacon@gmail.com) and tell me what program was airing when you saw them and where you live.
Booker has raised nearly $700,000 since June 1. That helps explain how he can afford these commercials of course.
Booker is doing a lot of national cable news. Booker has made recent appearances on CNN, on MSNBC with host Joy Reid and last night on Chris Hayes’s MSNBC program. This is important because the kind of people who vote in Democratic primaries watch cable news. And cable news disproportionately hits two key demographics in particular---black voters (Booker probably needs to do really well with fellow African-Americans) and older voters (more left-leaning candidates like Booker often struggle with older voters, who generally turn out to vote at higher rates than younger people.)
At one point in the interview, Hayes laid out Kentucky’s conservatism and Booker’s more liberal stands and bluntly asked him about his “viability” as a candidate.
“My message is very populist. …. A lot of folks that supported Trump are supporting me because they know I’m going to fight for Kentucky for a change,” Booker replied. (I am fairly skeptical of the existence of a lot of Booker-Trump voters, at least right now. If you are one or know of any, please email me at perrylbacon@gmail.com. Would LOVE to hear from you.)
“Someone like Mitch McConnell [who] has profited from our pain and sold us out in every way imaginable could care less if we die. And my biggest opponent, Amy McGrath, who calls herself a pro-Trump Democrat, doesn’t have a clue about the challenges we face,” he added.
McGrath is not actually a pro-Trump Democrat---she supported his removal from office earlier this year and has endorsed Joe Biden for president. But McGrath has emphasized the importance of appealing to people who voted for Trump, which Booker and Broihier are saying as well.
The cable news appearances and the television ads are part of the same story--a big step for Booker getting people to vote for him is for them to know who he is in the first place. McGrath has been running tv ads for months, has been covered by the press as basically the only Democrat running against McConnell until recently and ran a very well-funded U.S. House campaign two years ago. I would assume that her name ID was way higher than Booker’s two weeks ago and is still significantly above his.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Booker on Tuesday afternoon. I am not sure if these endorsements are good or bad for Booker---he probably needs some establishment and moderate Democrats behind him to win this primary and those kinds of Democrats are wary of AOC and Sanders.
“As Louisville has become an epicenter of national tragedy and protests due to the police murders of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee, Charles has shown leadership by showing up on the frontlines,” Sanders said in a Medium post announcing his backing of Booker and several other candidates across the country.
“He was an endorser of our campaign for president and supports progressive policies such as criminal justice reform, Medicare for All, and getting big money out of politics,” Sanders added.
“Charles Booker is running for Senate & building the kind of principled, inclusive, and winning coalition in Kentucky that can inspire positive change. The US Senate will be a better place with him in it. I’m proud to endorse him,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
Broihier casts McConnell as a symbol of “white supremacy.” Broihier is an older (58) white man. But he is running a fairly-liberal campaign overall--and is doing that on racial issues too.
“This is a good start, but Kentucky's worst monument to White Supremacy is still in the US Senate. We're going to beat him on November 3rd,” Broihier said in a Twitter message on Monday, linking to a story about the removal of a monument to a Confederate soldier in Louisville.
Here’s Broihier’s criminal justice reform plan. It calls for among other things 1. taking away from local police departments military-style equipment that they have been given by the federal government, 2. a national commission to study granting reparations to black Americans, 3. a federal law requiring all officers to wear body cameras and 4. the automatic dismissal of officers if their cameras are not turned on and they are part of a violent incident.
He is also calling for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer to resign in the wake of his handling of the killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville officers. Neither Booker nor McGrath has taken that stand.
McGrath recently (on Saturday) announced her support for removing the statute of Jefferson Davis from the Kentucky state capitol in Frankfort. (I have not checked this but I assume Booker and Broihier have taken this position too---it is now the consensus view of Kentucky Democrats.) She also announced her support for a federal law that would encourage local officials to launch an investigation whenever a civilian is killed by an officer. She is also calling for the federal government to take steps to increase the number of officers who have both de-escalation and racial bias training and to get more officers wearing body cameras.
On Monday, McGrath attended events about policing and racial inequality in Louisville and Lexington.