Daily Archives: February 7, 2017

President Barack Obama delivers remarks during a BET event on the South Lawn of the White House on Oct. 21 in Washington.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The era of Barack Obama is over. Eight years of liberal governance yielding a surprisingly comprehensive list of achievements. A stimulus program that stanched the bleeding of the Great Recession and set the stage for an extended period of job growth and rapid innovation in key sectors of the economy. A bailout of the automotive industry that rescued millions of jobs and saved an entire region from economic ruin. A health reform law that, despite its flaws and problems, patched critical gaps in the U.S. health care system and extended coverage to millions of Americans. A financial reform law that established strict new requirements for banks and made consumer financial protection a key priority of the federal government. And an ambitious plan to reduce carbon emissions and spare the world from the worst consequences of global climate change. Within each of these, you could find smaller programs that brought outsize impact, seemingly modest initiatives that, if they happened under any other Democratic president, would be praised as major achievements.

Jamelle Bouie isSlates chief political correspondent.

Or at least, thats the argument New York magazines Jonathan Chait makes in his early retrospective on the Obama presidency, Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. And in the wake of recent eventsthe election of Donald Trump, his inauguration, and his rapid move to implement an ethno-nationalist, plutocratic agendaits almost a comforting argument. As Chait writes, Barack Obamas presidency represented one of those great bursts. It was a vision and incarnation of an American future. His enemies rage against and long to restore a past of rigid social hierarchy or a threadbare state that yields to the economically powerful. But he, not they, represents the values of the youngest Americans and the world they will one day inhabit.

There is no doubt that some portion of Obamas presidency will endure. Republicans are just now, for example, beginning to see the massive political challenge involved in repealing the Affordable Care Act and upending the health care system as it presently exists. But Chait, in his optimism, understates the force of backlash, of the fierce reaction that always meets progress and often overtakes it, both as it exists and as it can exist. And his confidence that Obamas legacy will survive gives short shrift to how backlash isnt just a bump on the road to a better future. It is a lived experience, one that can consume entire liveswhole generationsbefore the arc of the universe begins to move back toward progress.

Whats missing from Chaits analysis, put simply, is a sense of tragedy. In that hes not too different from Obama himself, whose soaring invocations of a more perfect union often understated the costs of backlash, even as he acknowledged the possibility. Given his place in the landscape of political journalism, however, its no surprise Chait makes the same omission. Writing from first the New Republic and later New York magazine, Chait has long been a strong defender of the Obama administration and Obama-style liberalism, not just from the right, but from the left as well. Wary of the dogmatism (and increasingly illiberalism) that now defines movement conservatism, Chait also critiques what he sees as the same when it emerges on the left (or more precisely, to his left).

You could see all of thishis affinity for Obama and support of mainstream liberalism, his optimistic view of the present course of American life, and his wariness toward left-wing critiquesin his 2014 exchange with the Atlantic magazines Ta-Nehisi Coates that ranged over topics including welfare reform, the New Republics racial history, the notion of a culture of poverty, and the question of racial optimism. In that debate, which he recapitulates in somewhat veiled form at the beginning of Audacity, he endorses Obamas view of racial progress against Coates more skeptical and circumspect position. It is one thing to notice the persistence of racism, quite another to interpret the history of black America as mainly one of continuity rather than mainly one ofprogress, wrote Chait, a line echoed in the book, as he contends that Obama made substantive progress on advancing racial equality. The growing awareness of racism among liberals during his presidency gave new force and prestige to a belief that racism was endemic not only to [Americas] history but its very character, he observes. When liberals bring up the history of American race relations, they usually emphasize how little has changed, rather than how much.

Audacity is a work of triumphalism, hardly diminished by the outcome of the election.

Chaits self-positioning in the ecosystem of American politics isnt mindless contrarianism. It comes from a sincere belief that liberals (and the left more broadly) are too stubbornly fatalistic to see that Democratic presidents, and Obama in particular, make real headway on their goals and priorities, despite inevitable obstacles, setbacks, and failures. The American state of the present day has a dramatically more progressive cast than it did a half century ago, and it had a more progressive cast a half century ago than it did fifty years before, and on and on. Yet the progressives who produced these victories have lived them as deflating failures. They have made the same errors of perception again and again, writes Chait.

Audacity is his attempt to correct this error. To show progressives that their pessimism and fatalism is unfounded, and to show thatpace their view of the presentObama was a success. A huge one. Obama presented a new vision of America, to the world and to itself. And he had, to a degree hardly anybody recognized at the time, made his vision of a new America real, writes Chait. But heres where the problems begin. Its not that Chait doesnt have a pointalthough, this point may have been stronger had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the presidential contestbut that he overcorrects, understating the real political and policy failures that marked Obamas tenure. He fails to tackle the more sophisticated critiques of the administration, from both the left and the right, typically aiming his counterarguments at Obamas weakest critics instead.

And so, on the recession and housing crash, Chait spends his time dueling with tendentious and partisan opponents like Amity Shlaes and Charles Krauthammerwho slammed any stimulus as unnecessary and harmfulrather than critics like journalist David Dayen, who argues that the administration dropped the ball on housing relief in a way that prolonged economic pain, undermined the recovery, and contributed to the discontent that nearly derailed Obamas presidency at several points, and may yet derail his legacy.

You could lodge a similar complaint about Chaits own treatment of heath care reform in this book. For as much as the Affordable Care Act has been a successand Chait details all the ways that is truehe gives short shift to glaring problems like inadequate subsidies (premiums and deductibles are still too high for many millions of Americans) and the absence of actual universal coverage. Chait is correct to argue that all major social programs are inadequate at the start (Social Security was threadbare and designed to appease Southern segregationists in the Roosevelt coalition), but that doesnt erase the impact of what that means in the moment for actual people.

This gets to the general problem with triumphalist narratives, and Chaits brand of triumphalism in particular. A teleological framing of history tends to discount what it actually means to live through and experience setbacks. The eight-year administration of Ulysses S. Grant saw genuine progress for black Americans. They secured voting rights and won federal protection from racist vigilantes; they elected leaders to the House and Senate, and built thriving communities for themselves. This was dismantled in fairly swift fashion by a backlash of conservative politics and while vigilantism. One way to look at this is to say that, in the long run, Grants legacyand that of those black Americanssurvived. The story since that period has been one of slow progress built on those gains and experiences. But the other way to describe it is as a long twilight, where black Americans struggled under the weight of oppression until circumstances and events allowed them to recover and reassert earlier gains. Yes, there was progress, but at the cost of generations of pain and suffering.

Chaits triumphalism, his teleological view of American history, discounts what it means to experience that twilight. Put in more concrete terms, the fact that Obamas accomplishments will likely endurethe fact that Donald Trump cannot blot them from the recordwill not console the Americans who see family deported, who see children killed by unaccountable police officers, who see the richest Americans siphoning the nations wealth for themselves. Even if we recover from the policies of the Trump administrationeven if a new liberal era emerges in responseit wont change what ordinary people suffered through; it wont restore the loss.

Audacity is a work of triumphalism, hardly diminished by the outcome of the presidential election. And in its confident defense of the mainstream liberal consensus, it fits comfortably into Chaits oeuvre as a writer and a thinker. Which is to say it suffers from the same overconfidence that led those same liberalsObama includedto discount the threat of Donald Trump. Committed to a teleology of progress, albeit open to the reality of historical irony, this liberalism lacks a visceral sense of the tragic. That sense of tragedythat sense that those inevitable reversals engender real pain for real peopleis vital. It puts confidence in its proper context, revealing thateven if we are right about the direction of the worldwe cannot forget the suffering that comes in those zigs and zags of history. Perhaps, if liberals like Chaitor even myselfwere more attuned to that possibility of profound loss, then maybe we would have better anticipated the present moment and all the pain it promises.

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The Cost of Progress - Slate Magazine

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump salutes as he arrives at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, on Monday. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus first summit with US President Donald Trump probably wont revolutionize the Middle East. But with America reeling from its disruptive new leader, and Israel recovering from the nightmare of extremists clashing with police officers at Amona, there may be an opportunity for a reset.

After eleven years as prime minister, Netanyahu should start taking some risks, to push Israelis and Palestinians beyond the status quo. The despicable violence at Amona demonstrates the dangers of kowtowing to a shrill, aggressive minority. There is no excuse for attacking Israeli security officers these hoodlums should be punished severely. Netanyahu should reduce the absurd million- shekel-per-family bribe he paid Amonas residents to leave, which didnt even buy him peace. Some of these funds should be redirected to compensate every security officer who participated in the eviction doubling the share for the 46 wounded officers. Every Knesset member who respects democracy should endorse a law demanding such adjustments; the settler movement must learn that their violent extremists hurt their cause.

By (finally) confronting the fanatic settlers, Netanyahu could strengthen his credibility for a second step: reviving the two-state solution by reimagining it. He should help Israelis accept four realities. First, right-wing Israelis must realize that the Palestinians exist; their national aspirations must be met somehow. Second, a Palestinian state already exists in many ways the Palestinian Authority controls territories which even the most ideological settlers never enter because Israeli law prevents them.

Third, left-wing Israelis must learn that contiguity is passe. In an age of missiles and instant communication, for a Palestinian people still deeply tribal and even more deeply divided between Hamasistan in Gaza and the PLOs West Bank kleptocracy, it is time to start thinking Hawaii or Singapore. Palestinians can fulfill their national aspirations through an archipelago of non-contiguous territorial centers, building on the Singaporean model of the thriving city-state. And fourth, culture counts; Palestinians must end incitement, delegitimization, terrorism and rule by dictatorship they even torture their own people! while nurturing a democratic culture of mutuality, accountability, non-violence, civil society.

The Israeli Left must first accept the last two propositions.

If extremists with what we could call their faultanalogiphilia, addiction to faulty, inflammatory analogies start yelling Bantustans and rationalizing Palestinian terrorism as justified given the occupation, this challenging plan will die at childbirth. Israelis must reconsider their encrusted positions which sustain an unsustainable status quo. Palapologists (i.e. Palestinian apologists) who claim Israelis would never accept such compromises should remember that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan, because half a loaf their clich was better than none.

After the Israeli debate, the conversation can go global to the Americans and President Trump; to Israels newly-recruited anti-Iranian allies the Saudis and the Egyptians (thank you Barack Obama); then, finally, to the Palestinians.

Abandoning contiguity will correct two mistakes Israelis and the Oslo peace processors keep making. The dynamics since the 1990s keep undermining moderates and boosting extremists. By disengaging from Gaza unilaterally, Ariel Sharon deprived PA President Mahmoud Abbas of any credibility for being less fanatic than Hamas and received no concessions or any sense of responsibility from the PA. Hamas declared victory, claiming that terrorism pushed out the Zionists. Similarly, Netanyahu should state explicitly: the reduced amount of land Israel is offering, compared to Ehud Baraks and Ehud Olmerts more sweeping proposals, is punishment for Palestinian incitement, terrorism and rejectionism.

Peace will only come when the reasonable Palestinian majority silences the murderous Palestinian extremists who usually dominate. Triggering a Palestinian backlash against the Palestinian fanatics for costing them land might reestablish the proper equation. Palestinians must learn: peaceful, reasonable compromises yield positive results; hateful and vicious attacks, verbal or physical, cost them land.

Beyond this, Israels security needs need addressing. The John Kerry-era conversation about the military presence Israel requires in the Jordan Valley should be revisited.

Beyond that, every passenger on every plane taking off and landing in Israel must be confident that no Palestinian with an RPG is waiting on some withdrawn-from Israeli high point overlooking Ben-Gurion Airport to shoot down the jet. Israel must also guarantee that the Palestinians dont use a renewed peace process and more autonomy to return to the rule-by-gangs that emerged in Yasser Arafats terrorist state. Back then, these criminals terrorized their fellow Palestinians indiscriminately while attacking their Jewish neighbors brazenly. Their crimes spilled over into a wave of car thefts in Jerusalem, Kfar Saba and other towns abutting the open, non-security- barriered borders. Palestinian thieves knew they only needed a few minutes to reach their territory and a virtual free pass.

In short, Israelis and Palestinians must reexamine assumptions, learn some Oslo lessons, and start adjusting to new realities. Trumps unnerving leadership-by-chaos might be useful here. The Palestinians perpetuating their reputation as the worlds brattiest nationalist movement are whining that the Trump people dont even bother to respond to us. Good. Obamas indulgent responsiveness toward them only escalated their demands. Its time to give the Palestinians terrorist dictatorship-in-formation tough love and the Israelis democratic state some love love. The Saudis and Egyptians are also fed up with Palestinian tantrums and want a recalibrated Middle East.

We know in the Middle East how to hunker down in our usual trenches; its time for new leadership, new thinking and new openness, among Israelis and Palestinians, the leaders and the led.

The writer, professor of history at McGill University and a visiting professor at the Ruderman Program at Haifa University, is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, published by St. Martins Press. His next book will update Arthur Hertzbergs The Zionist Idea. Follow on Twitter @GilTroy.

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Approaching a week until Virginias first baseball game, Brian OConnor is closer to answers for the 16th-ranked Cavaliers biggest questions.

When will UVa decide on its weekend rotation? Soon.

What day will Adam Haseley move from center field to the mound? Sunday.

Who are the other starting options? Daniel Lynch, Evan Sperling, Derek Casey and Noah Murdock.

And, as a bonus, whats the confidence level in this mostly unproven staff? High.

OConnor will officially begin his 14th season as Virginias coach on Feb. 17 against Liberty in Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike past years, theres no certain ace to throw on that afternoon. Such a role will have to develop over the next few months, as is the case with many of the pitching jobs in 2017.

For now, though, the competition has been great, OConnor said Tuesday at Davenport Field. This last weekend in the scrimmages I thought we started to turn the corner a little bit. Theres a lot of guys that are throwing the ball really well, throwing strikes.

Haseley, a junior left-hander with 11 career wins and an ERA of 1.86, is the most polished of the bunch. But hes also an everyday outfielder with a career .275 batting average, seven home runs and 56 RBI.

The plan is for Haseley to play his position twice a weekend and then begin the third game of every series as a pitcher.

As for Haseleys rotation mates, OConnor will likely make that announcement early next week.

The candidate pool is intriguing.

Lynch, a sophomore lefty, is coming off a trying freshman season that included six weekend starts, but also bouts with sickness and injury. He went 1-3 with a 5.49 ERA.

Coming out of the gate last year, he pitched a great ballgame opening week for us, OConnor said, nodding to Lynchs five shutout innings and nine strikeouts against Appalachian State on Feb. 19. And he had a tough time sustaining it for a lot of different reasons. Strength level is one, and then he got sick and things like that. He had some back issues and some different things that made it tough for him.

But I still think he gained some valuable experience. He is way more improved now. Hes stronger, hes more confident. Hes throwing the ball more aggressively. I really like what I see.

Sperling has been with the program for two years, but is still seeking his first pitch in a Cavalier uniform. The 6-foot-6, 215-pounder had Tommy John surgery before touching Grounds and then went through two knee surgeries while redshirting last spring.

He joins Casey, now 21 months removed from Tommy John, as talented options with limited college rsums. Casey, a redshirt sophomore with a career 4-1 record and 3.06 ERA, hasnt pitched in a game since April 2015.

Theyve been around here for a year or two, and theyve learned, OConnor said. So they are a year wiser and things like that.

Derek Casey did pitch half a season for us. So they know whats going on, they know whats expected. Even though they havent been in a whole lot of situations, they have been there and have witnessed it.

But I use the word uncertainty. I think the talent is there, I think the skill level is there. They just havent had to do it yet.

Sperling told reporters last week he feels stronger than before.

It feels great, feels like youre part of the team again, Sperling said. You kind of feel isolated when youre hurt and you cant do much, but I feel good and I can contribute a lot.

Murdock, a 6-8 freshman righty from the Richmond area, was selected by the Washington Nationals in the 38th round of last Junes MLB Draft. Initially, OConnor said, Murdock could be a mid-week starter or come out of the bullpen, can be a swing guy for us.

Inexperience at starter is going to expected to be blended by veterans out of the bullpen. OConnor mentioned senior Alec Bettinger, juniors Jack Roberts, Bennett Sousa and Tommy Doyle (closer) as key pieces to potential mound success in the seasons early months.

I think theres real value in the first part of the season where you have guys coming out of your bullpen who have experience, OConnor said. It gives you a good feeling. Early in the season, these guys [starters] arent going to go out and throw seven or eight innings. So whos going to come in?

OK, youve played five innings, youre tied, youre up a run or youre down a run, whos going to come in to throw the next two or three innings? Thats critical.

Andrew Ramspacher covers UVa football, men's basketball and baseball for The Daily Progress and Cavalier Insider. Contact him at (434) 978-7250, aramspacher@dailyprogress.com or on Twitter @ARamspacher.

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Cavaliers' pitching rotation a work in progress - The Daily Progress

By William Haupt III | Haupts Take

If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen. (Ronald Reagan)

In the dog days of summer during the 60s, many northern Americans crossed the Mason-Dixon Line to help put an end to inequality for Americans of all races, cultures, and religions. Many did not know why they went. Maybe it was to listen to Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and others or just for the camaraderie. But reflecting back 50 years we know it was right.

For over 40 years, America was the benefactor of the Civil Rights Movement. We witnessed the battle of James Meredith entering the University of Mississippi. Our black and white brothers and sisters were killed and beaten as the chaos spread throughout the South. But we put an end to segregation and maltreatment for all minorities and all underclasses. This was not a black thing, a white thing, it was the right thing to do.

Itll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. For the times they are a-changin. (Bob Dylan)

The history of civil rights in the twentieth-century in the US is inseparable from the history of the Great Migration from the end of World War I through the 1970s. Ethnic groups such as African Americans, religious minorities and others chose to relocate to the North and West to escape the pervasive system of legalized racism and social indignation.

While we often associate the Great Migration with the decades around the two World Wars, many more relocated to other regions of the US after 1940 than before. Between 1940 and 1980, five million Americans moved to the urban North and West, double the number with the first wave of migration from 1915 to 1940. By 1980, trans-migratory residents made up 35 percent of their populace.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. (Ronald Reagan)

The relocation of Americans from all classes of society with unique cultures helped blend the America we once knew in the last decade. Drawn by employment opportunities and the desire to escape de jure stereo-typed segregation in their under-cultured cities, towns and counties, they moved for social and economic improvement to escape local brands of inequities and other types of social exclusion.

United we stand, divided we fall.

Neighborhoods, schools and workplaces changed to accommodate this new melting pot of cultural trans-migration. Equal treatment and full participation in civic life, better wages and social integration dismantled many of the old stereo-type mores their ancestors had to endure for decades. People of all ethnic cultures benefited as America grew closer together as a nation rather than a country of isolated sub-cultures.

United we stand, divided we fall. (Aesop)

America took great strides to overcome the rituals of ethnic, cultural and social segregation. We had accomplished what our founders had hoped for when they created a more perfect union of free men. But of course like all good things, something happens and they come to an end. And that end was the beginning of a fast track trend to moving backwards by an up young man who promised to bring complete and total homogeneity to our nation.

Yet he excelled in leading out nation into its past transgressions, culturally, socially, and ethically, to former days before America had learned to dismiss this demeanor. He destroyed the learning experience and societal development that it took 40 years to accomplish.

The Obama years have devastated our American culture. (Joel Page)

Under the current president, we have seen Americans of every social ethnic class pitted against each other: Young against old; black against white; straight against gay; and urbanites against the police. President Obama has presided over a fictional War on Women. He made more Americans despise each other than ever.

This brings back memories of the days of community organizers like Sal Alinsky. This is the game plan he put forth in his book Rules for Radicals. Obama rushed to the microphone to disparage the Cambridge police, whom he said acted stupidly when they were only trying to protect their community. When an incident in Florida took place and a young man was killed he took the opportunity to tell all of America If I had a son he would look like Treyvon Martin.

He exploited every incident that happened on his watch to cleverly remind America there was a great cleavage between minorities and whites. He has used every opportunity to disparage all of the good that we have done in the last five decades to promote similitude in our nation.

The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination, is still part of our DNA. (Barack Obama)

The Obama years embraced eight years of decadence and perversion that brought cultural and ethnic doom to this country. This has proven that the promises of progressive politicians mean nothing. This makes one wonder how we ever survived the Obama years without more strife and trouble than we experienced in our communities and townships.

This has been liberal, social, and cultural micromanagement at its best, or perhaps worst. Ripping a nation apart by racial, ethnic, and gender strife is a key ingredient in the progressive equation to control society and stuff the progressive agenda down the esophagus of every American. This enables them to control free markets, free enterprise and all public and private institutions in our nation and gives them total control over our lives.

To say weve actually made significant progress over the last 50 years isnt as true as it sounds. (Obama)

Welfare is way up under Obama. Jobs with decent salaries are way down. The only thing that prospered under Obama is the largest growth in government since FDR. He nationalized college tuition, our banks, and our healthcare. He has created an unrelenting and ever-growing under-class of cultural dependents on government support.

America, the beautiful.

There is no telling how much worse this would have gotten if Hillary Clinton had been elected. She had promised to double down on every failed program that Obama had set forth. And she too had done her very best to keep the ethnic, cultural, and societal divisions between Americans alive and well to improve her chances of being elected.

America is lucky Donald Trump had a message they wanted to hear. (Raymond Castro)

Ronald Reagan said, We cant help everyone, but everyone can help someone. To reverse this trend, we must support the policies of our new president and bring back opportunities for everyone who wants them. We must take the social abnormalities and traditions that Obama and his regime created and toss them into the junk heap of history.

We must reform liberal schooling and prevent liberal media from promoting the decay of the young and nuclear family. We must stop this cultural atrophy and putridity of our great nation and this adulteration of our social and cultural traditions.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

It will not be an easy task to wean people off of the government udder that they have been nursing on for so many years, but it has run out of milk to feed them. To promote and rebuild racial, ethnic and social congruity we must encourage everyone to reap the harvest and the rewards of our free market capitalism.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. (Ronald Reagan)

We have a president who owes nobody any favors except to return the ones America gave him. Donald Trump said his top 6 issues are: Smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, stop illegal immigration, rebuild our military, and bring back traditional values.

The road to social and cultural equality is not paved with the good intentions of spreading the wealth and misery, but by offering everyone a chance to capture their share of the American dream. (James Moore)

This article was written by a contributor from Franklin Centers independent network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.

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Haupt's Take: It took eight years to destroy 50 years of progress - Watchdog.org