Midterm elections

Rhode Island Senate: Whitehouse (D) 50%; Chafee (R) 42%

Pennsylvania Senate: Casey (D) 54%; Santorum (R) 41%

And just because the headline reads, Senate balance of power -- Montana now a "toss-up" :

George W. Bush says he uses "The Google" :

BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

Well, I use "The Google" I lot too. Let's say I have a love and hate relationship with the Google. Speaking of which, the program Shrub was referring to is Google Earth. As you can see by the screenshot, Google Earth will be tracking all the midterm elections on their map.

If you want to play along, you have to download their software. Go check it out.

There are so many ways I could hit this photograph with my final thoughts on this photograph. Yet, I keep coming back to two quotes that resonated with me during the whole Lunch with Clinton mess.

The first quote comes from FireDogLake's Hardin-Smith:

liberal bloggers were invited to meet with the former President of the United States to talk about policy initiatives and the Democratic party and politics going into the November elections.

These words resonated because it made no sense to me for any of the bloggers in that meeting to rationalize the omission of the top bloggers of color in the left; especially if these discussions were meant to hammer on what Democrats could do to win the midterms and, down the road, the presidency. Why would these bloggers be silent accomplices to this big tactical mistake? Why in the world would they want to keep the influencers of thousands of connectors within the colored grassroots?

Then I read this quote from Jeralynn Merrit: I enjoyed being with Liza one night in Amsterdam, but FDL is family.

I was so blown by how not just simple, but simplistic and pedestrian the explanation was. The photograh is about "family". Not just in the physical sense of the word, mind you.

Look again at the photograph?

Have you read at least 5 of these bloggers? Take any --MyDD, FireDogLake, DailyKos, Americablog, Mahablog, TalkLeft, Eschaton, The blogging of the President. Tell me, how really different are these bloggers' styles of writing, topics of discussion and brand of ranting?

Armstrong Williams (of all people!) wrote the following in an article called, Diversity, which is about the absence of people of color in the technology fields :

For example, when hiring, bosses may look for those personal traits they associate with their own success. Consequently, they may end up hiring people who look, think and act in a manner similar to themselves. If confronted with a minority applicant who looks, sounds or communicates differently, they may turn these differences into perceived soft skill deficits.

[...]

Unfortunately, this sort of latent discrimination is virtually impossible to prove. Partly because there exists a strong tendency among judges (and sometimes even juries) to favor an employer's interpretation of events. But more to the point, because people in management simply tend to mentor people who look and act and sound like their sons.

What that means is that young, white Americans have traditionally benefited from the availability of mentors to help hone their talents, while minorities, even to this day, suffer from a lack of mentors to identify with and learn from. There is a logical progression: a lack of mentors equals a lack of learning opportunities, equals a lack of advancement, and equals a lack of certain high level positions being filled by minorities. With time, this sort of arbitrary sorting of high and low level employees comes to be regarded by many as the natural way of things

Most of the people, and I would argue for the exception of Jessica Valenti, have had through the last 2 years what amounts to the kind of working relationships Armstrong describes in his essay. They refer to each other's work regularly, refer each other to grants, workshops, conferences and mainstream media opportunities. And they all as a block make decisions on which candidates they are going to be fundraising. As a block, they all work together as one seamless narrative called "the blogs".

That's the problem I see with that photograph.

We have here a picture of suppression. There are experiences taken out of the picture. There are political interpretations and strategizing taken out of the picture. There are whole swaths of voters and electoral percentage points taken out of the picture. There is a whole history and present of political activism within the Democratic Party that has been taken out of that picture.

It is not lost on me that the top black and latino bloggers of the "liberal blogosphere" are not too keen on Hillary Clinton running for president. It is not lost on me either that we describe ourselves as progressives and not as liberals. As you can see, not one of us is in that photo.

Which is why, when I asked the fateful 3 questions,

What does it mean though that there are 20 bloggers invited to this lunch and not one is black or latino? What does it mean for this group of bloggers to be patting themselves on the backs for being with Clinton when they are all in Harlem and not one of them is a person of color? What does it mean for these people to be there and have not one of them raise this issue in their blogs?

I was not just referring to race.

When I asked those questions I was thinking : Why is diversity such a dirty word when it should be considered an integral part of any political practice?