Jack & Jill Politics

Partly because I’m just so tired of writing about The Clintons and partly because I have a lot of studying up to do on McCain, I’m going to try posting on the Republican nominee a bit more.

Yesterday, I posted on his curious refusal to co-sponsor or publicly support the new GI Bill. He said he hasn’t had time to read it. I say that’s bullshit for a man who’s been touring the country on a biography tour based entirely on the fact that he’s a veteran. He has time to sell his veteran tale but not ensure that today’s veterans are cared for?

Today, it’s McCain and civil rights.

Huffington Post has the headline: McCain Won’t Apologize For Vote Against Civil Rights Act

This past week, Sen. John McCain repented for his decision in 1983 to oppose a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King.

Speaking on the anniversary of King’s death, and from the site of his assassination, the Arizona Republican declared that he was “wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona… We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans.”

But while McCain is seeking amends for his King Day vote, he has refused to back down on another controversial decision he made that put him at sharp odds with the civil rights movement.

In 1990, McCain was one of the deciding votes in helping then-President George H.W. Bush sustain a veto against the relatively benign Civil Rights Act of 1990.

In doing so, the senator found himself at odds with majorities in both chambers of Congress, most senior African Americans within the Bush administration, and the Republican-led U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He also helped Bush became the first president ever to successfully veto a civil rights measure — Andrew Jackson in 1866 and Ronald Reagan in 1988 both had vetoes overridden.

It’s also worth reading this Politico story Arizona blacks: Where’s McCain?

“I don’t recall him ever attending any function with the NAACP,” Tillman added. “Each year we send them an invitation [to an annual banquet], and each year they say no.”

Interviews with black civic and business leaders in Arizona found no one who suggested that McCain holds racial animus. And McCain can point to some warm personal and political associations with blacks, some of whom cited his responsiveness to their concerns when they approached him on official business.

But the widespread perception of activists in the state’s traditional civil rights organizations and the African-American press is that McCain has consistently treated them with indifference.

I serioulsy doubt McCain straight up hates black folk. The Politico findings above seem more accurate: he’s just indifferent. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t actively care.