Tag: liberals
Ann Coulter

'We're Getting Slaughtered': Coulter Blames Lost Elections On Religious  'Zealots'

Over the years, conservative firebrand author Ann Coulter hasn't been shy about attacking "godless" liberals. And she has defended the Religious Right on many occasions.

But since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the anti-abortion Coulter has argued that red states are going much too far with their restrictions on abortion.

Coulter, during a mid-February appearance on Bill Maher's HBO show Real Time, argued that religious "zealots" are causing Republicans to lose elections they should be winning. The subject came up during a discussion of Republicans losing ground among young female voters.

When Maher predicted that abortion would be "the Achilles heel for the Republican Party in the next election," Coulter agreed — saying, "Abortion is really hurting Republicans. I don't think you can blame all Republicans for this…. I'm glad (Roe v. Wade) was overturned by the Supreme Court…. I think it was disgusting to call that a constitutional right. But it has been sent back to the states. That's all we ever wanted. And guess what, fellow pro-lifers, we're getting slaughtered."

Coulter added, "There have been seven direct-to-the-people votes. And the tiniest restriction on abortion loses overwhelmingly — in Montana, in Kentucky, states that Trump won, Kansas…. And it isn't Republicans per se pushing this. It is these pro-life zealots who just, they don't care — I'm going to be pure, and did you see my writeup in the Catholic Insights Magazine? And you guys are like the corporate Republicans who will not give up on your cheap labor. We have to tell them: We can give you some things, but we can't give you everything — or we're just going to lose."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

What’s Wrong With Joe Biden’s ‘Identity Politics’?

What’s Wrong With Joe Biden’s ‘Identity Politics’?


In 1980, a presidential candidate pledged to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court. "It is time for a woman to sit among our highest jurists," said Ronald Reagan, and in 1981, he kept his promise by nominating Sandra Day O'Connor.

In 2008, John McCain made history by choosing the party's first female vice presidential candidate. Announcing his choice of Sarah Palin, he said he was "especially proud to say in the week we celebrate the anniversary of women's suffrage" that she was "a devoted wife and a mother of five."

From the criticisms of Joe Biden's choices for his Cabinet and other senior positions, you might think that Democrats had a monopoly on what is condemned as "identity politics" — selecting people because they represent specific groups (racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientation) rather than because of their qualifications. But both parties have made a point of highlighting their efforts to expand representation beyond white men.

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Donald Trump promised to appoint a woman to fill the vacancy, and nobody objected. At her confirmation hearing Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, welcomed Amy Coney Barrett as "a fellow woman, a fellow mom, a fellow Midwesterner."

But when Biden named Kamala Harris as his running mate, he was accused of elevating someone underqualified for the job. It was alleged that he chose her only because she checked so many boxes, being Black, Asian American and female. One critic lamented that Biden had not "searched the entire adult population and determined she was the best person for the job." Like that's unusual.

Never mind that Harris had 16 years of experience in elective office at the local, state and federal level, or that she had enough political skills and substantive heft to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. Never mind that among the credentials cited for the pathetically unprepared Palin was — I'm not making this up — that she knew "how to properly field-dress a moose."

How many vice presidential candidates have been chosen strictly for their brains and experience? Age, religion and state of origin have all been regarded as reasonable criteria. Mike Pence's chief asset was that he could appeal to an important constituency: white evangelical Christians. Palin was not the first who didn't qualify purely on merit. Anyone remember Dan Quayle? Or Spiro Agnew?

As for the Cabinet, Biden would have to make a strenuous effort to find appointees less qualified than many of Trump's. Rex Tillerson, picked for secretary of state, had no diplomatic background. Ditto for U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

Barack Obama's first energy secretary, Steven Chu, had a Nobel Prize in physics. Trump's, Rick Perry, had a bachelor's degree in animal science. Ben Carson, an African American neurosurgeon, was tapped to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development even though he had no expertise in housing, aside from living in it.

Doubts have been raised about Susan Rice, a Black woman chosen to head Biden's Domestic Policy Council despite a background almost entirely in foreign and security affairs. But Biden pointed out, accurately, that she "knows government inside and out" and "is among our nation's most senior and experienced government leaders." Not to mention that she worked with him in the White House and earned his confidence.

Washington Examiner columnist Michael Barone insists that "among the public, if not in the press, most people care more about policy than ethnicity, more about competence than ticket-balancing." Easy for a peevish white guy to say. But he shouldn't fret. Biden's appointees will be appreciably more competent than the people they replace.

It's true that Biden has taken care to stock his administration with women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, a Native American and an openly gay man. But what's wrong with including groups that have always been underrepresented?

"Identity politics is often a euphemism for 'shrill minority voices I don't like,'" says Jonathan Blanks, a Black scholar at the centrist Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. "People experience America differently. Including them is valuable for understanding what is wrong and how it needs to be changed."

Conservatives say they long for a time when such differences as race, sexual orientation and gender will be irrelevant. They fail to understand that it will happen only after diversity in leadership is so commonplace that it is barely noticed. When that happy day arrives, some people will owe Biden an apology.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Black Lives Matter, voting

It Should’ve Been Easy To Knock Off Trump

As I write this, we don't know the winner of the 2020 presidential race. By the time you read it, we still may not know. There are votes to be counted.

What seems very apparent, though, is that Democrats did not enjoy the romp that they and some political prognosticators had expected. They were running against the much-disliked President Donald Trump during a public health crisis and spreading economic despair.

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Liberals Find Community — And That Could Be Big

Liberals Find Community — And That Could Be Big

During the presidential campaign, many Hillary Clinton voters in Atlanta’s suburbs thought they were alone. That was an easy conclusion to draw because few felt comfortable putting Clinton signs on their front lawns or expressing their political preference at parties. Their neighbors seemed overwhelmingly Republican.

It took the presidency of Donald Trump to shock them out of their quietude. They emerged from the bunkers, blinking and surprised to find they had so much company. Many are now harnessing their distress to their newly discovered numbers and going activist. They are thus giving a 30-year-old novice named Jon Ossoff a fighting chance to win the congressional seat recently vacated by Republican Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of health.

This wouldn’t be happening without Trump. Today’s scenes of environmental degradation and Russian infiltration — under the tweeting fingers of a possibly mad emperor — would wake the political dead. They have electrified a left prone to battling itself over deviations in liberal scripture but also a center wanting nothing more than a day of normal news.

In other times, #resistance might come off as a bit melodramatic. Trump world has made it feel downright mainstream.

Trump has thus transformed the liberal ranks from stray cats to packs of dogs. Dogs act bolder when traveling in numbers. Dogs want community.

Participants in the women’s marches in January recall the events not so much for stoking anger but for providing comfort. The throngs of peaceful marchers overwhelmed the few radicals ready to rumble. Their sense of well-being came from communing with so many ordinary women — and men — who felt as they did.

Like the Tea Party right, liberals are flocking to their own media campfires for warmth, talking points, and calls to action. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is now edging out the troubled king of right-wing palaver, Bill O’Reilly, in total audience. (She has long dominated him in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.)

On CBS, Stephen Colbert has become the go-to guy for smart and witty late-night commentary from a liberal perspective. As such, he is bringing younger audiences back to network TV.

And in a shoutout to “CBS Evening News,” let us praise anchor Scott Pelley. His willingness to tell what’s really happening with minimal dramatics and apparently little concern about being attacked by the right is refreshing.

The surprise hit podcast of 2017 — “Pod Save America” — stars three luminaries from the Obama administration. It offers lively and interesting political chat — but nothing that would have seemed earth-shattering before Nov. 8. Now it’s vacuuming up audiences and advertising.

Speaking of which, it was interesting to see how quickly major advertisers deserted O’Reilly’s show after reports of the host’s penchant for serial sexual harassment. In doing so, they must have considered the perils of displeasing his avid fan base. On the other hand, how many millions of women were marching?

The Tea Party’s membership was never huge in numbers, but the movement knew how to turn communal passions into political clout. Members jeered politicians and joined enthusiastic protests. But their real power came from marching as a group to party primaries and other elections that less engaged voters ignored.

Democrats hope to use that strategy in the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. Ossoff is currently running against several Republicans. Should he get more than 50 percent of the vote, he’d take a storied seat once inhabited by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Political revolutions don’t happen on Twitter. They happen when like-minded citizens join to vote.

As jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron famously vocalized, “The revolution will not be televised…The revolution will be live.”