2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb ran to Fox "news" this Sunday to trash liberals and conflate the push to remove the Confederate flag from government property with Trump's racist remarks about Mexicans. If Webb wants to assure he never gets above that two percent mark where he's polling right now, keep this up.
Jim Webb Stands Up For 'Southern White Cultures':
Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb on Sunday suggested that recent efforts to remove Confederate symbols from public places were as "divisive" as Donald Trump's disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants.
Without prompting from "Fox News Sunday" host Bret Baier, who had been asking questions about national security, Webb asked if he could please talk about Trump, the billionaire GOP candidate who has called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. Webb criticized Trump before pivoting.
"This kind of divisive, inflammatory rhetoric by people who want to be commander-in-chief is not helpful, and we have seen from the liberal side as well this kind of rhetoric as it goes to Southern white cultures," the former Virginia senator said, apparently referring to recent debates over the Confederate flag.
"We need to be inclusive and recognize that we have problems and that we can come together to solve them," Webb said. "But don't be throwing these bombs to our cultural groups." [...]
Webb has seemed eager to distinguish himself as the only Democratic candidate with a really nuanced take on the flag, in an apparent effort to win over white working-class voters who increasingly vote Republican. On Sunday, Baier asked Webb whether he thought efforts to remove Confederate symbols from public places were racial healing or political grandstanding. In response, Webb again compared the Confederate debate to Trump trashing Mexican immigrants.
"Unfortunately, I think you're seeing it from both sides, which is why I mention the situation with Donald Trump with respect to Mexican-Americans," Webb said. "We're seeing an issue which should have been resolved and now is resolved, flying the Confederate battle flag in public places, morphing into something different."
Webb then said he had talked about the issue with a close friend of his who happens to be African-American.
"He said, 'I was just at the barbershop and I asked the brothers what they thought about this, and they said, 'Here we go again. When are we going to talk about jobs? When are we going to talk about education? When are we going to talk about harmony and bringing people together?' And that's what inclusive leadership needs to be."
Here's more from a former Webb supporter at KOS:
The hell? In what universe is there any equivalence between Donald Trump's ugly, racist, xenophobic, demagoguery-laden, clownish comments on Latino/Hispanic immigrants and liberal "rhetoric" on "southern white culture" (e.g., liberals' desire to see symbols of racism - and racism itself - disappear into the dustbin of history)?!? As for Webb's comment that the Democratic Party has moved "way far to the left," and how "that's not my Democratic Party," those comments are both bizarre and interally contradictory, coming from someone who is a social libertarian (pro-choice, pro-LGBT equality) and a self-proclaimed "Jacksonian populist" who has talked for years about the threat posed by rising income inequality ("the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the middle class getting squeezed").
Other than those issues, where Webb IS on the "left" broadly speaking, what on earth is he referring to? If he's talking about a Democratic Party that focuses more on working class people, which is clearly what he wants, then you'd think Webb would WANT the Democratic Party to become less beholden to corporate interests and more "left" leaning. It's just a fundamental, internal contradiction in Webb's rhetoric that cannot be reconciled. Finally, Webb really needs to stop with this "both sides" crap, as it's intellectually dishonest and lazy, among other problems.
