{"id":179281,"date":"2018-03-31T18:18:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T23:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/03\/31\/more-of-this-4\/"},"modified":"2018-03-31T18:18:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T23:18:00","slug":"more-of-this-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/03\/31\/more-of-this-4\/","title":{"rendered":"More of This"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Black leaders in Missouri have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/news\/nation-world\/national\/article207197209.html\">refused to sign a letter condemning one of their colleagues criticism of Senator Claire McCaskill<\/a>: <br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">African American leaders in Missouri are frustrated with what they see as Sen. Claire McCaskill\u2019s lackluster engagement with minority voters. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">Frustrated enough that they refused to sign a letter pushing back against comments made last month by Bruce Franks, a prominent black activist and state legislator from St. Louis, who called on McCaskill to \u201cshow up\u201d and earn the support of minority voters in her state. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI\u2019m going to vote for Claire, but Claire is going to have to bring her ass to St. Louis,\u201d Franks said to applause at a town hall he hosted Feb. 17. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">In response to Franks comments, McCaskill had asked African American elected officials in Kansas City and St. Louis to sign the letter. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">Among those who were approached by McCaskill are U.S. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City and Lacy Clay of St. Louis, and state Rep. Gail McCann Beatty, the minority leader in the Missouri House. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">Each declined to sign. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI\u2019m 100 percent certain that nobody signed it,\u201d Cleaver said in an interview Wednesday with The Kansas City Star. \u201cWe talked about it very seriously and strongly and every one of us said, \u2018We\u2019re going to support her, but signing this letter isn\u2019t going to achieve what she wants. It\u2019s just going to make people angry.\u2019 \u201d <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">Cleaver said he\u2019s sympathetic to McCaskill\u2019s plight. She\u2019s a Democrat running for re-election in a state Republican President Donald Trump won by nearly 19 points in 2016. He understands she must win over some right-leaning voters to survive. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">But as McCaskill works to burnish her reputation as a centrist, Cleaver and other African American leaders said they worry she\u2019ll leave minority voters on the left with the impression that she\u2019s taking them for granted \u2014 and it could cost her turnout in the urban centers that are crucial to her base.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think that they are sick of being characterized as &#8220;super-predators&#8221; by people who want their votes.<\/p>\n<p>Running against you base  to appeal to people who will never vote for you is stupid, and it does not get you any votes, and people who do it do not deserved to be elected.<\/p>\n<p>Nice to see this blow up in Claire&#8217;s face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black leaders in Missouri have refused to sign a letter condemning one of their colleagues criticism of Senator Claire McCaskill: African American leaders in Missouri are frustrated with what they see as Sen. Claire McCaskill\u2019s lackluster engagement with minority voters. Frustrated enough that they refused to sign a letter pushing back against comments made last &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[447,375,387,374,536],"class_list":["post-179281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-congress","tag-elections","tag-hypocrisy","tag-politics","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}