Legal Commentary

Politics At Its Ugliest And Stupidest

By Big Tent Democrat

I am so tuned out from the Establishment Media that I just found out about L'Affaire Sherrod (I first thought it was about Sherrod Brown). Digby writes:

When our new overlord Andrew Breitbart says jump, the White House says, "how high?" Kevin Drum:

[. . .] BigGovernment.com "broke" a story yesterday about a speech given a few months ago by Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, at an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner. In it, Sherrod tells a story from 24 years ago about not helping a white farmer as much as she could have because she was "struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farm land." The point of this story, told in a public venue, was that she quickly realized that she had done wrong. "That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have. It's not so much about white...it is about white and black but it's not, you know...it opened my eyes."

The Secretary of Agriculture explained why he did Breitbart's bidding:

Yesterday, I asked for and accepted Ms. Sherrod’s resignation for two reasons. First, for the past 18 months, we have been working to turn the page on the sordid civil rights record at USDA and this controversy could make it more difficult to move forward on correcting injustices. Second, state rural development directors make many decisions and are often called to use their discretion. The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia.

This is old hat for Dems - the cowering approach to politics. That said, Sherrod took a political appointment and this is what politics is - stupid, ugly and hurtful. The problem is the Dems do not know how to fight.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 20, 2010 (boomark / email).