Jennifer Epstein, at Bloomberg Politics:
Less than a week after a mass shooting at a black church situated in one community with a history of racial tensions, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday visited another black church in another community struggling with racial relations.
Speaking at Christ the King Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri, Clinton welcomed the new push to abandon the Confederate flag but said it must be paired with renewed efforts to confront the deeper issues at the core of racial divisions, from policing to jobs to health care. That, she said, is the way to honor memories of the nine people killed last week at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.
The shooting was “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God,” Clinton said from the pulpit here, in a St. Louis suburb that neighbors Ferguson. “Let us be resolved to make sure they did not die in vain. Do not be overcome by evil but let evil be overcome by good.”
“We have a moment of opportunity right now and shame on us if we don’t seize it,” she later added…
Since Wednesday’s shooting, Clinton has spoken more extensively on race relations and gun violence than any other presidential hopeful (former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has focused his energy solely on arguing for stronger gun control laws, saying that the shooting “pissed” him off). Addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Saturday, Clinton called for “common sense” gun control and added that the election of the first black president had not brought “America’s long struggle with race” to an end. “Our problem is not all kooks and Klansmen,” she said. “It’s also the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It’s the offhand comment about not wanting those people in the neighborhood.”…
Hillary Clinton was raised Methodist — as the Wikipedia has it, “characterized by… emphasis on helping the poor and the average person… ideals put into practice by the establishment of hospitals, universities, orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools to follow Jesus’s command to spread the Good News and serve all people.” They’re not charismatic, but they’re dogged.
Speaking of which…
A scattered number of attendees stood up to applause Hillary Clinton when she called for gun regs pic.twitter.com/pANtCOx91E
— Joy Lin (@JoyLinFN) June 20, 2015
Cacti
My late grandmother was a Methodist too, and a lifelong Roosevelt Democrat.
lamh36
Corner Stone
Somebody tell Mandalay he can lay down that heavy cross now. The burden should not be his alone to bear.
lamh36
I’m going to bed, got to start getting ready for work tomorrow. I’ll be twittering until I go to bed of course…lol.
I’ll leave with this video. Representin’ the 27% (I’m certain that’s the number) of SC who wants to cling to the flag until you take it from their cold dead hands.
https://twitter.com/RevrendDoctor/status/613525508274429953
jl
Bernie Sanders wants Confederate flag down.
Take Down the Confederate Flag
Bernie Sanders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbwS19W-gsI
I think clear distinction between all (declared) Democratic candidates and most from other party. Which I think is good. Need to make differences clear.
sharl
FYI, for anyone interested in the goings on of dormant front-pager DennisG (aka dengre): activity at his twitter account has picked up a bit – just a bit – from its usual quiescent state, in the days following the Charleston terrorist murders.
That is all.
lamh36
James Baldwin — “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
gf120581
@jl: You’ll note that the Dem contenders came out from the start in calling the attack what it was (racist terrorism) and for the flag to come down.
Whereas the GOPers dithered and hid and tried to deny that it had anything to do with racism and only crawled out from under their rocks to support it once Haley did her press conference.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the side with the decisive leaders and the side with the gutless weasels too scared of their own base to show some basic humanity.
Davis X. Machina
She doesn’t mean it, though.
You can tell.
NotMax
@gf120581
Yeah, that whole “war on Christians” shamplanation burned and crashed faster than the Hindenburg.
jl
@gf120581:
Here is Sanders on morning after the race terrorist shooting on Tom Hartmann show. His statement on shooting is in first minute.
Brunch with Bernie: June 18, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmsw-R4J000
So, yes, I think stand of HRC, Sanders, and O’Malley was very clear from outset on shooting. And I think by now its clear that they stand with majority of country, people of all backgrounds (edit: not be too cynical, but I believe the big retail and ecommerce corporations have public opinion right, their business model depends on making sure they do)
As for Webb… not sure he will ever declare, so whatever, he can hunker down if he wants.
Princess
Good for HIllary; good for all the people on our side.
gf120581
@NotMax: Well, it’s kind of hard to maintain that fantasy when the shooter prints an entire manifesto on the website of a notorious white supremicist group, takes endless photos of himself wearing racist symbols and waving the Stars and Bars around like it was a pom pom, and, while shooting folks, basically tells them, “I’m here to kill black people.” The only way he could be more blatantly racist is if he had I HATE N_____S tattooed on his forehead.
Mike in NC
Jim Webb: Profile in Courage
NotMax
@gf120581
For FOX, life is a Super Bowl of cherry picking.
Corner Stone
@NotMax:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
TNC’s feed is a good place to check in with these days
That last point is a big one. So much of Republican politics these days, from our racial history to the last forty years of fiscal and economic policy to the last decade and half of foreign policy seems to be about standing athwart history and shrugging, “pfft, long time ago.
gbear
@gf120581:
Jim Webb, potential D candidate, is still on the fence.
(I post this not to criticize the D party, but to criticize d-bag Jim Webb)
Eric Nny
I’m not buying Hillary’s remarks. Her Methodist upbringing says soup kitchen but her eyes say where’s my latte?
jl
@jl: Well, maybe I did get too cynical in my edit. Important thing is that HRC, Sanders and O’Malley weren’t afraid to speak the truth as they saw it, without worrying too much about what public opinion was. They lead.
Hope they keep it up on this issue. Dealing with fake ‘pre-hijacked’ (confederate battle flag), and genuine historical symbols monuments is important. But dealing with underlying causes is more important. So all three need to keep it up. The other side will find pretexts to encourage people, especially whites to move along many times before the election.
As for the other side, we see where too much triangulation, wedge issuing double dealing and dog whistling leads. Read what gibberish Graham is reduced to, several comments above.
SiubhanDuinne
@sharl:
Thanks. I don’t Twitter but I emailed Dengre a few days ago, expressing the wish that he’d stop by occasionally and do a Balloon Juice post. Haven’t heard back from him, but I hope he does.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Willing to accept that transcription.
Hearing him speak and insert pauses, however, it came across as very, very different.
NotMax
Interesting – the eight current CSA personage statues in the U.S. Capitol.
gf120581
@jl: It’s hard to pick the most pitiful of the 2016 GOP wannabes on the flag, but Lindsey’s got to be tops in my book. From “It’s part of who we are!” to “TAKE THIS FLAG DOWN!” in the span of days.
srv
We’ll see what primary voters think of the RINOs use of Taliban curation techniques.
jl
@NotMax: thanks. I didn’t watch the video at first, but your comment prompted me to. But, still, assuming Graham is being honest in his stated conflicted feelings, he has been loyal to a fake manufactured twentieth century symbol of racism, segregation, violence and oppression in opposition to the cause of civil rights, and that fake symbol has been adopted to honor the history he cherishes.
He has been a loyal member of GOP that has pushed Southern Strategy, used bigotry and prejudice as a wedge issue, and that was cause of all the prior wrangling and painful compromises over that flag.
He and his political allies own the problem, and he should have a difficult time explaining it. I don’t think he can.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jl: Graham’s first response to the shooting was to say it was an attack on Xians. I think Rick Santorum is stupid, and crackpot, enough to believe that. From Graham, it was pure cynicism, the same man who started running campaign commercials on Benghazi two years before his most recent primary. I saw him on TV and I think he may well have been moved by the memorial he attended, but his first instinct was pure scumbag.
Repatriated
@NotMax: That was a remarkable miscalculation on their part. It was clearly an attempt to reframe it from “racially motivated terrorism” to being “an attack on Christians”. This was, however, an overreach — they not only failed to achieve collateral victim status for themselves when the details emerged, but also managed to humanize the victims when they probably would have preferred not to. Those in that subset of the media bubble first heard of the victims as “Christian” rather than “African American”, and when the shooter’s motives became clear, the framing became “racist vs. Christian” instead of “random nutcase vs. random African Americans”, and it was all over.
Repatriated
@Repatriated: and if they’d just settled for calling it a random tragedy rather than trying to up the ante through trying to incorporate it into their larger “Christian Persecution” theme, most of the setbacks they’re facing wouldn’t be in play.
Mary G
I think the incredible grace of the family members who spoke at Roof’s hearing, telling him that they forgave him, shamed some of these assholes into finally doing the right thing. I know I could not do that, especially so soon after the shootings. Probably not ever, if I’m honest.
fuckwit
@Eric Nny: Meh, she’s nowhere near as good a communicator as Reagan. Or her husband. But, in a perfect world, that shouldn’t matter! Maybe, just maybe, we can get closer to that perfect world now.
The truth is that we lucked out with Obama, and won’t get anyone with his skills for another generation or two. We got someone who is a liberal, an extremely competent policy wonk, a practical technocrat, an excellent teacher, a rational and calm decision-maker, and also a deeply gifted orator with the best communication skills of any Democrat since JFK and FDR. How often do you find all those things in one person?
But the important part is the policy and decision-making and technocrat stuff: and so far since her announcement it looks like Hilary has got that. This really is her moment: whomever she faces in the general will be one of the Klown Kar morons, and the R brand and policies are so discredited and evidently horrible that just maybe she can win just on…. policy! America has, I think, at last tired of used car salesmen (um, like Bill, and St. Ronnie). We can handle someone with Obama-level smarts but without his on-point communications skills.
Can you imagine a country, in which candidates are chosen based on policy and intelligence and competence, not based on how inspirational and uplifting and heartfelt their speeches are? Sure the Village isn’t, but they’re middle-schoolers. I think we as a nation– outside of the beltway and the media– have maybe grown up enough to handle that now.
I don’t need to be inspired by Hillary. I don’t need to be wowed by pitch-perfect sound bites. I just need her to competently execute sound policy, and most importantly we need to take back the Congress so we can pass those policies!
So. I’m a Bernie guy, because I think he’s going to push the envelope on policy. But if we end up with Hilary, I’m fine with that. I’m just going to shrug everytime she says something wooden and uninspiring or tone-deaf… as long as it is CORRECT. In this case, it’s correct, so I’m happy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: I don’t know that I could do it either, but, for some, it is what they have to do so that the grief and anger don’t eat them up.
dogwood
@Repatriated:
Exactly. But they were kinda in a spot. They had enough sense to know that their usual plan A approach – slime the victims – might be a tough sell. So they went with plan B. I’m sure it worked on a good share of viewers who will stick to the story. But it didn’t get the spillover into the MSM that they usually get. So they didn’t get to control the narrative this time.
David Koch
vs
Bernie really missed an opportunity. If you can’t talk about gun violence after a horrific massacre then when can you talk about it?
opiejeanne
@Cacti: We are Methodists, too.
RaflW
Dear Fox nooz: You don’t “applause” a person when you like what they say. You applaud. The stoopid. It’s down to basic grammar with these dolts.
opiejeanne
@Eric Nny: So, it’s one or the other but not both, huh?
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: I can’t even.
@opiejeanne: One doesn’t have latte with soup. Were you raised by ocelots?
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: As a matter of fact, Methodist ocelots. My upbringing was woefully neglected when it comes to things like latte.
However, I see no reason that someone ladling out the soup couldn’t have a latte while on break.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne: Thank you for informing me on this. Prior tonight i did not know that ocelots adhered to any religion let alone one of the vaguely liberal Protestant ones. Zoology is really interesting.
ETA: Good god, there are rules. One can break them if one is sufficiently rich or if one just doesn’t give a shit.
JustRuss
I was raised Methodist, and after a long hiatus, have been attending again, primarily because my mother can’t transport herself. It’s been interesting, the church has strong contingents in both the liberal and conservative camps. Our pastors are pretty solid liberals, very pro-gay marriage, and one delivered quite a passionate sermon in support of stricter gun laws. I have a couple friends who are ardent Fox viewers who attend the same church, I’m not sure how they square that circle.
J R in WV
I often wonder why people attend churches with doctrines that they personally disagree with, sometimes strongly. Catholics using birth control is the easiest example to throw out there.
But caring for the poor and downtrodden is something Jesus Christ talked about a whole lot, and not only do many “Christians” hate that concept, many churches pay only lip service to the whole concept in their doctrine. Personally, care for the downtrodden is the only part of Christianity worth saving from the dust-bin of history, and “Christian” groups that abjure that are no more Christian than Pope Benedict the Evil ever was.
nastybrutishntall
I’m liking this Hillary 2.0. She’s giving me the feeling she doesn’t give as much of a shit about convincing everyone she’s as boring and dispassionate as the ideal losing Democrat of Mark Penn’s fever dreams. Maybe The Rock Obama is showing her what flexing a little spine can accomplish.