You might want to check out his links with CAIR and the Nation of Islam before you get too reflect-y there, even aside from his dubious record as a state legislator.
(Me, I don't much care which invisible friends my Congresspeople talk to in their spare time, unless it affects their legislating, but I do like to concern myself with their tangible associations.)
Yes, well, my point is that that's as maybe, but choosing to celebrate this fact when the Congressman in question has spent some considerable time working with the Nation of Islam - that would be Louis Farrakhan's mob, the ones who are basically the polar equivalents of the KKK - and other dubious groups, using that to celebrate as you say above is about as tin-eared as celebrating the election of an ex-Nazi to Congress in 1950 because it shows that we've got over our silly prejudice against Germans.
There's a reason why he lost over 20% of the previous Democratic vote in a previously safe seat, in an election in which the Democrats have generally gained, and it's intrinsically and inescapably tied to the point you're trying to make.
Imagine if your hypothetical ex-Nazi's 1950 campaign had been endorsed and supported by major national and local Jewish groups -- even over a Jewish opponent. *That's* how tangled the story of the 2006 MN-5th campaign was.
I very deliberately stayed the living hell out of that mess. I rather deliberately didn't insert my opinion about what my choices, if I were a primary or general election voter in MN-5, would have been. If you want to argue that Mr. Ellison wouldn't be your first choice to be the first Muslim elected to Congress, you're free to. But your (and for that matter, my) opinion doesn't change the fact that he is. And that by itself is an important milestone, especially in a country where powerful political forces continue to work torwards making the law of the Old Testament the law of America.
Maybe it would have been more, for lack of better words, convenient for me if the first Muslim elected to Congress was someone that didn't make you uncomfortable. But it is as it was.
Me too. Or the first Wiccan, Buddhist, Hindu, and so on.
I -- and the other liberal Christians on our respective LJ reading lists -- have got a hell of a lot more in common with the non-Christians on our side of the political aisle than the fundamentalist so-called Christians on their side.
Wow, I had no idea. I know that if Harold Ford had won in TN, he would have been the first black Senator from the South since Reconstruction, but this was completely below my radar. Very cool.
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(Me, I don't much care which invisible friends my Congresspeople talk to in their spare time, unless it affects their legislating, but I do like to concern myself with their tangible associations.)
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There's a reason why he lost over 20% of the previous Democratic vote in a previously safe seat, in an election in which the Democrats have generally gained, and it's intrinsically and inescapably tied to the point you're trying to make.
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I very deliberately stayed the living hell out of that mess. I rather deliberately didn't insert my opinion about what my choices, if I were a primary or general election voter in MN-5, would have been. If you want to argue that Mr. Ellison wouldn't be your first choice to be the first Muslim elected to Congress, you're free to. But your (and for that matter, my) opinion doesn't change the fact that he is. And that by itself is an important milestone, especially in a country where powerful political forces continue to work torwards making the law of the Old Testament the law of America.
Maybe it would have been more, for lack of better words, convenient for me if the first Muslim elected to Congress was someone that didn't make you uncomfortable. But it is as it was.
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I -- and the other liberal Christians on our respective LJ reading lists -- have got a hell of a lot more in common with the non-Christians on our side of the political aisle than the fundamentalist so-called Christians on their side.
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Very cool.
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