Yet again, the Democrats are following, not leading.

It strikes me that the Jena Six situation, an event that happened on December 04, 2006, is a leadership opportunity the Democratic party should have taken up more PRO-actively. It is part and parcel of the ugly racist legacy nurtured by the hateful and divisive “Southern Strategy” of the GOP. Why are we not hoisting the GOP on their own petard?

For whatever reasons, this is being framed by the media as a ‘black thing’. The Democrats should reframe it as a ‘citizens with equal rights under the law’ thing. What are we waiting for? It is way past time we took ourselves out of the box the GOP has so well crafted for us.

In 1992, the Clinton campaign used the slogan: “Speed Kills”. The campaign attacked within the news cycle. See The War Room. Fifteen years latter, what are James Carville and George Stephanoupolis saying about the Jena 6?

It appears to me that the Democrats are, for what ever reasons, sitting back too long and waiting for the Republicans to take the initiative. This forces our party to then be re-active and look WEAK. Score another one for the GOP. Are the Democrats waiting for “The Magic of the Market” to somehow solve this clearly non market problem?

Where are the deep values of our Democratic party that would have us act with speed, with informed confidence, and with vigor to such events as the case of the Jena 6? Why are we not a street fighting party that forces the GOP to react to our initiatives and to our values? Why are we not putting the Republicans on the defensive for their role in exploiting the worst aspects of the American experience with their divisive and racist Southern Strategy? Why does the Democratic party tolerate the GOP’s politics of inequality and fragmentation - both racial and economic?

Perhaps this better describes my frustration and feelings of shame. Shame that we are failing to grasp sterling opportunities to creatively lead the country back to some semblance of the core values we have struggled to affirm in the past: Back to some reasonable approximation of “Justice as Fairness”, “equality of opportunity”, and united into something greater than the sum of our parts.

For me, it is a very sad day that, in the face of the blatant racism revealed in the Jena 6 case, our party’s leading presidential candidates were not the first to speak out in a timely and pro-active manner on our party’s values.

Bobby would have been there. Martin would have been there. What about Clinton? Obama? Edwards?

National Public Radio covered the story on July 30 of this year. So why did our party’s leaders wait until the mid-September 2007 to make their comments on a case from 2006?

What, for example, has the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee,VT’s Senator Leahy, had to say about the Jena 6?

I strongly suspect voids in our moral vision and intellectual structures are behind our failures to grasp the leadership on the Jena six event. These voids, how else to describe them?, also appear to explain, to a large degree, our inability to curb and discipline the school yard bully who stole the presidency, twice, started an unjust war, wrecked the constitution, destroyed the balance of power, bankrupted the country, corroded our civil liberties, politicized the civil service, and created a “Wealth Friendly” political philosophy resulting in the most inequitable distribution of income in the Industrialized world. Have we too lost our way shopping in the fog at the mall, entertaining ourselves to death with celebrity fetishism?

If we can not respond forcefully to these insults, what can we do? This is no time for make nice and for playing patty cakes. These are desperate times and call for vigorous moral action to get us back on the main road. Do our elected officials not realize this? Are they that out of touch with the citizens?

We need the gumption and moral fortitude to lead, not simply react to scripted GOP strategies. If we can not show this strength, we do not deserve, we have NOT EARNED, the privileged of being the party of the majority and the party in the White House.

Can you tell I am a very frustrated voter? Can anyone out there explain to me just what the Democrats are waiting for while the country we worked so hard to create falls apart before our very eyes?

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