Lost Horizons' Adam Nagourney's Profile on Ken Mehlman

comments by RJ Garfunkel

9-24-06

This column by Adam Nagourney is way too long. I remember him when he was covering local politics in Westchester County. I know a bit about rece-relations growing up in Mount Vernon, NY. I am a life-long Democrat and contribute to and work for Democrats. They are not perfect, for sure. But since the New Deal and the emergence of the “new” Democratic Party under the enlightened leadership, of that great liberal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the door of opportunity started to gradually open. Remember it was FDR who took his lumps in the 1938 Congressional election when he opposed the troglydites in the southern Democratic Party. “Jim Crow” was a southern Democratic creation, no doubt. It would be a waste of time to reiterate the sad history of race in America. But it was the northern Democrats who made the breakthrough for other minorities, supported the labor movement and finally came to grips with race in America. I have heard Ken Mehlman more time than I could shake a stick and could care less about his sad and meaningless vision. For my money, any African-American, Jew, woman or working man or women who votes Republican is a either a self-hating fool, stupid or greedy. It was the Democrats that supported wages and hours, it was the Democrats that supported the Wagner Act, and fought Taft-Hartley. It was the Democrats who broke the back of Jim Crow and the KKK, and started to mainstream all Americans of color. It was the Northern Democrats that were willing to change and stand up to the southern Democrats. I ask, who are the heirs to southern bigotry? Where did the south go after LBJ's support for Civil Rights? Who controls the heart of Dixie today? Don't forget the states that Barry Goldwater carried in 1964. Just remember that hypocrite, Strom Thurmond, started as a Democrat, ran as a racist Dixiecrat against Truman, when Hubert Humphrey put a civil rights plank in the Democractic Party Platform of 1948, and than became a Republican. Who has opposed all the efforts of “affirmative action?” I ask you?
The answer is the GOP, plain and simple. So Ken Mehlman wants to support a divided America, an America of rich and poor, white and non-white and eventually a divided America with White Evangelical Christians against everyone else. The Democratic Party has been the party of opportunity, the party of inclusion, and the party of progressive forward -looking and thinking Americans. Let us not forget that history and reality.

Richard J. Garfunkel
Tarrytown, NY