Anderson@Large

Left Feels Left Out

President-elect Barack Obama met with the nation's governors today at Independence Hall in the City of Brotherly Love.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden basked in the presence of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:

Since the race is over, no one pays attention to me at all. So maybe you will walk outside with me or something later and say hello to me.

Obama is showing his former rivals lots of love. He named Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state. Earlier, he extended a hand of bipartisanship to Sen. John McCain and pardoned the backstabbing Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

Now, some are wondering when Obama will show Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. some love.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College for Women, wrote:

Meanwhile, Rev. Jesse Jackson made some ugly comments when he was off-mike at Fox News back in July. He was roundly, and justifiably, criticized for his remarks by an array of people, including his son, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.

From all outward appearances, Rev. Jackson seems to be persona non grata to the Obama team. So while Clinton, Lieberman and even McCain have been forgiven for their campaign behavior, there appears to be no forgiveness for Jackson.

Malveaux continued:

While the president-elect is meeting with this group and that, hearing from this or that leader, it is important for him to maintain an open door to the civil rights community.

And it is important for him to be open to meeting with, among others, Rev. Jesse Jackson. Such a meeting would signal respect, magnanimity, and the open spirit that has welcomed Clinton and Lieberman to the Obama team. While the success of the Obama administration does not depend on a meeting with Jackson, it sends an important signal to a sector of our nation that supported this president-elect. Why not reach out to Rev. Jackson and, by extension, to the Black left?

The “Black left” is not alone. Latinos and progressives are also grumbling. Investigative journalist and author Jeremy Scahill told the hosts of “Law and Disorder”:

Yes, it’s good that John McCain and Sarah Palin are not in power in this country but Obama is not a saint. He is a center Democrat, closely tied to the Democratic policy elite.

Obama supporter and campaign surrogate Cornel West, author of “Hope on a Tightrope,” recently observed:

However, I do want to give him time. If he really does aspire to what I believe and hope he aspires to, namely, to be a progressive Lincoln, then we have to be like Frederick Douglass to help push him. If he has his own vision, then he could use these folks to push it through. But he has to be bold enough, strong enough and visionary enough to step into his own Age.

The whispers are getting louder.

White House Personnel Matters

I am tracking black presidential appointees because “personnel is policy.” Besides other constituent groups are keeping score (here and here).

In this supposed post-racial era, race shouldn’t matter. But as long as there are racial disparities and structural racism, race matters.

Indeed, the Los Angeles Times reports:

About a quarter of black Americans live in poverty — nearly three times the rate for whites — at a time when rising budget deficits and expensive corporate bailouts are going to leave little federal money for anti-poverty programs. The federal budget deficit is likely to hit a record $1 trillion next year.

Black adults are less likely than whites to have college degrees and more likely to be in prison. Blacks are less likely than whites to have health insurance and, on average, they don't live as long as whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among black males ages 15 to 34 — and it has been for years.

It’s encouraging that a black woman, Melody Barnes, was named to President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team. As director of the Domestic Policy Council, Barnes will coordinate domestic policymaking in the White House and provide advice to the President on a wide range of issues, including education, subprime mortgage crisis, health care, poverty and criminal justice.

It should be noted that Barnes will not be the first African American to hold this position. Claude Allen served as President Bush’s domestic policy adviser until he resigned to, er, spend more time with his family.

President-elect Obama also appointed Desirée Rogers as White House Social Secretary. While I’m the hoodie and leggings type, I still think it’s a big deal a black woman will follow in the footsteps of Letitia Baldrige.

The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For?

I am a policy wonk so on Saturday, I attended a daylong conference on building bridges between African American and immigrant communities.

As I walked past the Princeton Club, I thought about New York Times columnist David Brooks lauding President-elect Barack Obama for assembling a Cabinet of Washington insiders and members of the club:

If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Truth be told, a lot of black folks already feel screwed. There is growing concern among black women leaders about whether a black woman will have a seat at the table.

It bears repeating that sisters had President-elect Obama's back from the South Carolina primary to Election Day.

Erica Williams, Study Director for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said:African American women in particular played a large role in this election, especially in several key battleground. More African American women voted in this presidential election than in any other.

I shared black women leaders' concerns with Ron Hayduk, a keen political observer and longtime democracy reform activist. Ron teaches at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is about as far from the rarified air of the Ivy League as one can get.

Ron told me:

He’s being very cautious to his detriment and to ours because he needs black women…A working class agenda has to have women of color for that to happen. What’s he going to do? Do it later if he gets around to it? How long do black woman have to wait. It’s nothing new.

What’s new is that we were expecting something different. People are fired up, black women especially are mobilized…It’s their time. It’s the people’s time. It’s going to be an opportunity lost. A chance missed. He’s going to go down if he doesn’t do it, and he’s going to take us with him.

Ron also noticed the Princeton Club on his way to the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, where the conference was held. He observed:

Those appointments don’t reflect the electoral coalition. It doesn’t look like the electoral coalition will be a part of the governing coalition…It’s more of the same. Maybe not the same old but it’s the same monied interests. Some are just retreads from the Clinton administration.

Ron’s observations were echoed by Bill Fletcher Jr. who, BTW, is a Harvard grad:

It’s up to us to realize our job is to shape Obama and not the other way around. He’s constructing a center-right administration. We’ve got to get organized, shape the discussion, and help the man be who he has to be for this moment.

For President-elect Obama’s three million donors and hundreds of thousands of campaign volunteers that would be "change we can believe in."

Clinton-Obama Drama, Act III

February will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Great Emancipator, but Abraham Lincoln is already the rage. From Newsweek to President-elect Barack Obama’s alma mater and transition team, people are talking.

President-elect Obama reportedly is considering appointing a “team of rivals” that would include Hillary Clinton. The reports have reprised the drama of their epic nomination battle.

Gerard Baker, Washington-based editor of the Times of London, writes:

But with his election as president, Mr. Obama surely demonstrated that the victory was his and his alone, and that the country would be spared the prospect of yet another chapter in the Clinton saga that has dominated American politics for the best part of two decades.

And yet, here we are, a couple of weeks after that historic election, and once again all we are talking about is - the Clintons.

It would be an understatement to say that the sudden and unexpected emergence of Senator Clinton's name as the President-elect's apparent choice to be his secretary of state has caused consternation among some of Mr. Obama's most loyal followers.

They are aghast that, as they see it, having wisely steered clear of giving her the vice-presidency, their man has supposedly offered her what is, in all but the constitutional succession stakes, a much bigger job. The State Department is a vast bureaucracy that supports a Cabinet member who is the most frequently seen face of America in the world. One can only guess, by the way, what Joe Biden, the man who got the vice-presidential slot over Senator Clinton, in large part because of his foreign policy credentials, now thinks about the idea of sitting quietly in his vice-presidential office suite watching Mrs. Clinton strut her global stuff on television.

While Obama loyalists may be “aghast,” a new Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans want Clinton to hold court at Foggy Bottom. Nearly 80 percent of Democrats think it would be a good play.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same).

Obama Taps Eric Holder as AG

President-elect Barack Obama reportedly has picked Eric H. Holder Jr. to be the next U.S. Attorney General. If he is nominated and confirmed, Holder would be the first African American to lead the Justice Department.

Holder served as deputy AG during the Clinton administration. More recently, he co-chaired Obama’s vice presidential search committee.

Republicans are not waiting for the official announcement to attack Holder. Fox News’ Sean Hannity has dredged up Elián Gonzalez and the Marc Rich pardon.

With Senate Democrats increasing their majority, Republicans will not be able to block Holder (or any other nominee). Sure, some embittered sore losers will bring up chewed over controversies, but at the end of the day, Obama will get his man.

Holder would be positioned to put some teeth into civil rights enforcement. The voting section has turned voting rights on its head. For the first time, it brought a case alleging white voters had been disenfranchised.

Bush political appointees have looked for "voter fraud" in every polling place. They're still looking.

As the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Holder would be in a position to address the disproportionate incarceration of black men, the "cycle of incarceration," and a criminal justice system that targets just us.

A Cabinet that Looks Like America?

This weekend, President-elect Barack Obama announced a number of White House appointments. Mona Sutphen will be deputy chief of staff and Valerie Jarrett will serve as a senior adviser and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.

Jarrett will be Obama’s eyes and ears to constituent groups, which is the role that Alexis Herman played during Bill Clinton’s first term.

Yesterday on ABC News’ “This Week,” Sam Donaldson said Obama’s personnel picks lacked diversity. With the exception of Jarrett and Sutphen, the new bosses look a lot like the old bosses. 

Donaldson wondered whether Obama will assemble a Cabinet that “looks like America.”

Cokie Roberts said she expected Obama’s appointments will be as diverse as Clinton’s.

During his two terms, Clinton appointed seven black Cabinet members. BTW, President Bush, who garnered less than 10 percent black support, appointed four blacks to his Cabinet.

According to a preliminary analysis by Dr. David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, blacks represent nearly 24 percent of Obama’s vote total. And black women account for 60 percent of the black vote.

Let’s be clear: Diversity is not about mindless bean counting. It’s about influencing public policy and having presidential appointees in departments and agencies who get what's happening to African American families, homeowners, small businesses and communities.

But while black folks are glorying in the President-Elect, women and Latinos are making demands. NOW President Kim Gandy told Politico:

The transition team is going to take the time to look at and vet the people they don’t know. Because frankly, the people who are already well-known in Washington tend to be men and tend to be white.

And 2000 community organizers will gather in DC to press Obama to deliver on his promise to meet with them during the transition to help “shape the agenda.”

Obama Administration Job Search

I’m in Florida so I missed the annual meeting of the Trotter Group. I especially wanted to be there when Valerie Jarrettt, co-chair of the Presidential Transition Team, met with my colleagues.

If I had been present, I would have asked whether President-elect Barack Obama’s commitment to diversity extended beyond the Oval Office.

Fortunately, George Curry said what’s on black folks’ minds:

Now that Barack Obama has won the White House, will he be so eager to govern from the center that he will forget about his obligations to Blacks?

George writes:

On the question of Obama’s commitment to diversity, Jarrett was unequivocal.

“President-elect Obama, as should be no surprise to anyone in this room, would like his cabinet to be diverse – both in terms of race, in terms of perspectives, in terms of party, in terms of geography,” she said. “So he is looking to have a cross-section of America. Spending the amount of time with him as I do, I can assure you this is something front and center of his mind. Not because it’s the politically expedient thing to do, but because he would make better decisions by having diversity. He really believes in that.”

That's good news.

The bad news is that tens of thousands of Obama supporters will be competing for roughly 7,000 presidential appointments. To throw your name in the mix, go here.

Truth be told, getting a job offer may be easier than completing the seven-page background questionnaire. By contrast, the application for a federal bailout is two pages.

As the New York Times reports:

The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”

The Times adds:

For those who clear all the hurdles, the reward could be the job they wanted. But first there will be more forms, for security and ethics clearances from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Government Ethics.

For more info, you may want to attend a discussion about the presidential appointment process organized by the National Bar Association and the National Congress of Black Women. The event will be held on Monday, Nov. 17, in the DC office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

You can download the flyer here.