James Webb in my 'hood

Jim Webb appeared at the neighborhood book store tonight and I was impressed.  He drew a large and enthusiastic crowd, which he handled with a low key charm and respect.

I know a lot of people on the left are happy that Webb is not going to be a Veep candidate, and they may well be right.  But there were a couple of things that he said tonight that impressed me.

First, he gave kudos to the blogs -- both for making his campaign possible and for their ability to fact check and respond to the right wing attack machine, noting how well they had fulfilled this role for him in 2006. 

Second, and more importantly, he stressed an issue tonight that I have heard him flog consistently, which is both thankless and necessary.  He attacked the so-called war on drugs as being racist and counterproductive.  And he did so with utter sincerity and total credibility. 

I think this is something that we on the left should appreciate.  There are very few points given for this sort of thing, and here is a freshman Senator who won by a small margin in a pretty conservative state making the case for more lenient treatment for drug offenses.  Can you name a "real liberal" who has shown comparable courage on a less popular issue?      

I think that whatever his flaws, this is a man with intelligence, integrity, and a willingness to stick his neck out purely for the sake of principle.  And I think we should all honor and appreciate that. 

   

Comments

[Corvus9]

"Can you name a "real liberal" who has shown comparable courage on a less popular issue?"

No. Because there is none. In fact, the only other politician I can think of who has been vocally against the war on drugs is Ron Paul.

Even though opposition to the war on drugs is probably a widely held view among liberals, no politician will touch it, because it immediately tars them as bleeding heart weirdos. Only people who have "street cred" that they are not bleeding hearts—military men like Webb, or libertarian self-determinists like Paul—are able to get away with it. So, any base of support big enough to build a political movement on the issue is non-existent. Webb is ultimately an anomaly; really only libertarians have the ability to voice such concerns, and most of them don't really care about that issue as much as they care about things like taxes and regulations, and thus don't really do anything about it. Hey, maybe they aren't to different from liberals; they just don't want to fight what they see as a lost cause. (And to give them their due, most of the talk I have ever heard against the war on drugs has come from libertarians).

By the way, one of the things that I think is a positive outcome of Obama's influence, policies aside, is a kind of renewing interest in a certain form of bipartisanship among the left. That is, the seeking out of allies in other corners of the political spectrum on issues of common agreement to try to influence the country on that particular policy. The seeking out of, ahem, Strange Bedfellows. Hopefully this keeps up, because I think it would be great if we saw some movement on this issue.

[low-tech cyclist]

This is why we need Webb in the Senate, not as Veep. We're going to need Webb to say things that would not play very well from a veep candidate, or even an incumbent veep.

He's a truth-teller, and politics isn't made for truth-tellers. But occasionally you get a guy like Webb whose cred gives him the freedom to say things that other pols wouldn't be able to.

The office of the vice-presidency is especially ill-designed for truth-telling. In the minds of the Broders and Cohens, it would be one thing for Webb as one of 100 Senators to say those words, but a very different thing for Webb as the guy a heartbeat from the Presidency to say them. And Obama would be forced to condone or condemn those words, creating a series of Heathers-induced teapot tempests that would quite possibly tip the calculus against Obama's being able to pass climate change or universal health care legislation.

So it's good that Webb won't be veep. This way, he can continue to speak the truth like this. And occasionally, people might listen.

And what Corvus said.

[Lisa Simeone]

Kurt Schmoke said the same thing when he was mayor of Baltimore and got slammed for it. It may have killed his future political life. I can't prove that it did, but I do know that he had national political ambitions. After being mayor, he left politics altogether. Maybe the D party wouldn't touch him.

[big bad wolf]

paradoxically, while i see the injustice up close each day, i have some hope that we may be nearing a time when the war on drugs is reconsidered. i don't expect that it will be abandoned, but it may be scaled down and maybe better focused.

one reason for this hope is that the war has affected a lot of people, and it has made their friends and families rethink what they thought they thought about law and order. another reason is that people that i talk with about what i do have a pretty uniform view that federal drug sentences are too high. a third is that in response to the supreme court's decisions giving trial courts more sentencing discretion, we are seeing more low-level or first time offenders get lesser sentences, when the court is not locked into a mandatory minimum sentence set by congress and invoked by the prosecutor's charging decision.

put these facts together with the heart-tugging stories of wives or girlfriends (i actually don't know that i think these stories contain any more injustice than do those that could be told about many of the drug sentences imposed on men, but they play to the public better) and the horrifying racial disproportion caused by the crack cocaine laws, and i can see that with senator webb opening the discussion and a president obama (i am hopeful about him in part because of his illinois state bill to require the videotaping of statements, which is also a fairness issue) we may be able to change the statutory mandatory minimum sentences that drive the federal criminal system and create so much injustice. that would be an enormous first step.

but maybe i have to hope these things to keep on.