LaVar Hosting Jeopardy July 26-30 Stan Account 👁

An interesting fact: 24 Senators, all but 1 Democratic, voted against Bill Clinton's welfare reform act. 4 Senators, two R, two D, voted against the Crime Bill.

Also, I call it Bill Clinton's welfare reform act---in reality it was authored and introduced by Republicans (John Kasich!) and signed by Clinton who had campaigned in 92 on ending welfare as a way of appealing to white "Reagan Democrats."

The reality is that white populists are the swing voters that have decided every election probably since Eisenhower. It is possible that in the depths of the financial crisis, these white populists were finally ready to trust the government again to help.

But would they have been ready to accept that help from a government led by a black man? Or a white woman? Given that the first manifestation of white 'populist' anger was the small government "constitutional conservative" tea party, one suspects not.

I just wish folks would have a little more patience for those of us who are always bringing up race because at the end of the day, no matter how the Obama era felt, we are always in greater danger of getting left behind by a democratic government because we're a minority.

I really think that the way that the Obama era felt (to whites?) like a social revolution and an economic retrenchment has blinded a lot of us to the fundamental structure of a democracy, and accordingly how fragile minority political power is.

and like... it's true! A lot changed socially whereas economically Obama's primary contribution was to patch up the existing bad system, add a few guardrails + the CFPB and shovel the people's money into the beast til it could run on its own again.

But ultimately I see that as a quirk of history that was inevitable for the first black president, who would not have been permitted to have been a real revolutionary (such a person might actually work for true racial justice, which is intolerable to most white voters).