Medicalizing Candidates - Clinton Nods

The current right-wing anti-Clinton meme is that she secretly has epilepsy (as evidenced by her nodding once and as evidenced by her needing support from aides while walking up icy stairs in heels). From that central meme, others have emerged, finding fertile ground in the segment of our country desperate to disqualify Clinton from the presidency by any means. I'm not linking to any of the main coverage, but it's all over FOX and, I'm told, is dominating the alt-right media (Infowars, etc.). 

Here's a Washington Post piece on Hannity's prime-time "story" on Clinton's health.

Every night this week, Fox News' Sean Hannity has drawn attention to a story that was largely debunked before Monday morning. Again and again, Hannity has summoned a "Fox News Medical A-Team" to probe the claim that Hillary Clinton has serious medical issues, covered up by a press that won't demand her medical records.

Hannity's crusade has given the theories of a looming Clinton health crisis their highest-profile airing. A year ago, when Republicans hoped that one of several younger candidates would win their nomination, jokes about Clinton's age and health were rampant. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the Democratic nomination fight looked like "an episode of 'Golden Girls.'" The Washington Free Beacon ran jokey investigations of a photo that showed Clinton holding the back of a chair, asking whether she was using a walker. (She was not.)

With Trump's recent moves hiring alt-right media leaders to help direct his campaign, we're going to see a lot more of this coming out. It's been permeating Trump's recent speeches ("short-circuit" is, I think, code for epilepsy).  Stay tuned.

Hillary Clinton's Progressivism as seen through Disability Policy

In my second piece for Playboy (safe-for-work but might mention the existence of sex in the click throughs), I wrote about the details of Clinton's disability policy. I wrote:

When Donald Trump took to the stage in South Carolina last November and made fun of a disabled New York Times reporter, he won my vote…for Hillary Clinton.

It wasn’t just that Trump’s behavior was appalling. No, what turned me over to Clinton is that, in the aftermath of Trump’s insult, she began running the most progressive presidential campaign on disability rights issues in U.S. political history. What’s more, once you start looking at her policies across the board, a pattern emerges. Hillary Clinton believes that government can help vulnerable and marginalized individuals. She listens to how such individuals describe their needs and then supports the best policies to meet those needs. It’s a progressive vision worth cheering, but it’s also a truth about her campaign that you might have missed.

So there's two points here. First, Clinton's policies are the most progressive in US presidential political history. In the piece I lay out the details of the policy, compare her to Trump's terrible record (beyond the moment of mocking a disabled reporter last November), and credit the movement for its advances - and, for that matter, the efforts of the Obama administration - as part of the reason Clinton's plans are so well developed.

It's worth celebrating having a presidential candidate who talks about community integration, for example. That's a big deal!

But it's also worth thinking about what this set of policies say about Clinton's progressivism more generally. On foreign policy, I find her pretty hawkish, but when it comes to thinking about how the government can serve vulnerable people, I have to say I've been impressed. She listens (see Ezra Klein's interview and Rebecca Traister's feature on her campaign). She find experts. She develops and supports complex policy solutions to complex problems.

To me, this is what progressivism looks like - a vision of government as helping the most vulnerable achieve equality of opportunity. Not everyone likes progressivism as a governing philosophy, and that's fine, but this is what it looks like when providing the core philosophy for a presidential campaign's domestic policy.

Disability and Politics: Grace

Yesterday, The Atlantic published my essay on "Grace," the new anti-Trump ad put out by Priorities USA, a pro-left Super PAC. On another Sunday, I would have spent a lot of the day publicizing it, but given the massacre in Orlando, it felt inappropriate. Still, I think there are important themes here.

"Grace" uses the moment when Trump made fun of a disabled New York Times reporter last fall to condemn the candidate, but in doing so trades on some disability stereotypes that make me a bit uncomfortable. I reached out to a diverse group of disability activists for their comments:

Disability has a peculiar place in American society. Disabled individuals often evoke sympathy, but they also experience intense discrimination. Disabled children are routinely bullied, especially as they age. Disabled adults have widespread civil-rights protections under the ADA but still encounter enormous obstacles to work, independence, and community integration. Disability is an aspect of the human condition, yet “the disabled” are often isolated and marginalized.

It’s not clear that “Grace” will help with these problems. I spoke to a number of disability-rights activists about the ad. Each condemned Trump’s conduct and are glad to see him held accountable for it. They like the idea of using his insults as a campaign issue. Yet no one was entirely comfortable with the imagery.

Please read the whole thing, especially the remarks from Alice Wong, Dominick Evans, and Vilissa Thompson.

#CripTheVote on Sub-Minimum Wage Policy

A few months ago I wrote about Clinton's policy on helping people with Autism and their families. More recently, I wrote about disability entering the political frame of "interest groups."

Yesterday (Monday, 3/28), I was alerted by Ari Ne'eman of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network that Clinton was asked by an autistic adult about subminimum wages for disabled workers. Clinton's reply was excellent (transcript from Ne'eman):

"When it comes to jobs, we've got to figure out how we get the minimum wage up and include people with disabilities in the minimum wage. There should not be a tiered wage, and right now there is a tiered wage when it comes to facilities that do provide opportunities but not at a self-sufficient wage that enables people to gain a degree of independence as far as they can go. So I want us to take a hard look at raising the minimum wage and ending the tiered minimum wages, whether it's for people with disabilities or the tipped wage....When people talk about raising the minimum wage, they don't always talk about the legal loopholes that we have in it and I want to get rid of those and I want to get rid of that for people with disabilities too."

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcPtKZo7yE&feature=youtu.be&t=47m30s

Here's what comes next:

If you are not a Clinton supporter, you need to push your favorite presidential candidate to take a public position, not on their website, but in their speeches, on this issue. It's not enough to just "know they would be good on this," because for generations politicians generally good on social issues have failed disabled Americans. 

If you are a Clinton supporter, you need to push your favorite gubernatorial, Congressional, or more local candidates to take a public position on this.

A few years ago, Senator Reid appointed a friend of his who promoted sub-minimum wage and sheltered workshops to the National Council on Disability. That can't happen again. Let's shift the window.

#CripTheVote: Where Disability Could Have Fit in the Democratic Debate

Until last week, neither Sanders nor Clinton used the word "disability" at most rarely. Then, in her close to the final debate in New Hampshire, Clinton concluded her remarks as follows:

You know, we didn’t get to talk about the continuing struggles that Americans face with racism, with sexism, with discrimination against the LGBT community, with new Americans, with people with disabilities. Yes, we have income inequality, we have other forms of inequality that we need to stand up against and absolutely diminish from our society.

In this passage, her call outs to specific forms of discrimination faced by specific groups serves as a critique of Sanders' focus on income inequality more generally. She kept it up throughout the weekend before the New Hampshire primary, although has not (to my knowledge - she may have in stump speeches) discussed disability since.

Sanders almost never mentions disability either, but then in his victory speech in New Hampshire, Sanders said:

We must pursue the fight for women's rights, for gay rights, for disability rights. We must against stronger and stronger opposition protect the right of a woman to control her own body.

The Sanders campaign, I think, recognizes that they need to expand their outreach and, for one moment, disability was in that calculus.

Last week's debate in Wisconsin had spaces where disability would have fit perfectly, but neither candidate brought it up. That's fine. They don't have to reach out to our community (and we don't have to vote for them!). What's interesting to me, though, is to see where disability fits within their existing rhetoric.

Here's the section where a sentence fit for Clinton. It came near the end of her closing statement as she said, reminiscent of her close on the previous debate, "I am not a single- issue candidate, and I do not believe we live in a single-issue country." She continued:

"Yes, does Wall Street and big financial interests, along with drug companies, insurance companies, big oil, all of it, have too much influence? You’re right.

But if we were to stop that tomorrow, we would still have the indifference, the negligence that we saw in Flint. We would still have racism holding people back. We would still have sexism preventing women from getting equal pay. We would still have LGBT people who get married on Saturday and get fired on Monday. And we would still have governors like Scott Walker and others trying to rip out the heart of the middle class by making it impossible to organize and stand up for better wages and working conditions. So I’m going to keep talking about tearing down all the barriers that stand in the way of Americans fulfilling their potential, because I don’t think our country can live up to its potential unless we give a chance to every single American to live up to theirs."

Notice how she's expanded from the previous set of shout-outs to more content. Disability would fit nicely here. After "Monday," she could add something on inclusion, on discrimination, and disability.  She could name "ableism" as she has sexism and racism. I think my ideal, again within the rhetoric of this paragraph would be, "We would still have sexism preventing women from getting equal pay. We would still have ableism keeping disabled Americans locked up in institutions rather than included in our communities."

For Sanders, I always have the feeling that his shout outs to specific groups fit a little less well with his political philosophy. He wants to talk about poverty, not the differences between black poverty and white poverty. He wants to talk about jobs, not abled jobs and disabled jobs. He's a macro-vision candidate. He's less interested in the diverse identities that make up the Democratic coalition. Instead, his campaign invites a new coalition focused collectively on class-related issues. Still, he's learned in the last few weeks, to name-check key identity groups, such as here:

SANDERS: Look, we are fighting for every vote that we can get from women, from men, straight, gay, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans. We are trying to bring America together around an agenda that works for working families and the middle class.

Disability does fit here, as in his NH talk, just as a name-check: "...Latinos, Asian-Americans, Americans with disabilities." [let's face it, his campaign would tell him people-first, as it's safer]

Moreover, his signature issues - jobs and wealth - play directly to major disability issues.

But there's another space in Sanders' rhetoric where disability absolutely belongs, not just as a shout-out for political purposes, but if he really wants to solve the problem. Consider this quote:

We need fundamental police reform, clearly, clearly, when we talk about a criminal justice system. I would hope that we could all agree that we are sick and tired of seeing videos on television of unarmed people, often African-Americans, shot by police officers.

As I tweeted at the time:

RE https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/697972250339909632

The problem, of course, is that by leaving disability of the police violence conversation, we miss a major component of why and how this happens.

Here are two broader two points are these.

1. There's lots of room within the current rhetorical structures of the two candidates to talk about disability without demanding they become someone they are not. Neither is talking about it now, and that matters to me (if they want my vote).

2. Disabled Democrats and their allies fit within both the existing and transformative ideas about what are Democratic identities. The candidate and campaign who pursues them would, I think, find a deep well of support and activism within the disability community due to these natural alliances. It's a winning strategy.

Disability Rights: Not even in the frame

.@JessicaValenti sigh. I hate to say it. But disability rights would be nice to hear. Just once.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 2, 2016

This tweet came in response to Clinton's Iowa speech, in which she said:

I know we can make college affordable and get student debt off the backs of young people. And I know we can protect our rights, women's rights, gay rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, workers rights. I know too we can stand up to the gun lobby and get common sense gun safety measures.

Later, Sanders talked about jobs and climate change, with this passage as the only call out to specific groups (he knows his lead is predicated on two lily white states, Iowa and NH, and that he hasn't made inroads with non-white voters):

We will end the disgrace of having more people in jail than any other country. Disproportionately African-American and Latino. What we are going to do is provide jobs and education for our kids not more jails and incarceration.

Each candidate has ideas on disability, having completed the RespectAbility questionnaire in considerable detail (storify with all relevant links here). The differences between them are important and interesting, and reveal much about the nature of this election. I'll have more to say about that in the leadup to New Hampshire (I'm going on Sunday, thanks to an invitation by RespectAbility to meet with them and disability rights leaders in the state).

For now, though, I just want to go back to those Iowa speeches - I don't blame Clinton and Sanders for not name-checking disability, but disabled individuals are in need of health care, jobs, protection of reproductive rights, and more. In any marginalized group, the disabled members of that group will be multiply marginalized (just as the non-white, non-heterosexual, etc. members of the disability community are multiply marginalized).

Clinton is running an intersectional campaign. Disability isn't in the frame.
Sanders is running an economics only campaign. Disability isn't in the frame.

We have a lot of work to do.

Decouple Gun Violence and Mental Health Conversations (Democratic Debate Edition)

Disability continues to be a largely ignored issue in the presidential primaries except for when it comes to gun violence, when the candidates get things entirely wrong. Here's 100% of what Sanders or Clinton (the only candidates that actually might get nominated) said about disability last night.

SANDERS: Let's begin, Anderson, by understanding that Bernie Sanders has a D-minus voting rating from the NRA. Let's also understand that back in 1988 when I first ran for the United States Congress, way back then, I told the gun owners of the state of Vermont and I told the people of the state of Vermont, a state which has virtually no gun control, that I supported a ban on assault weapons. And over the years, I have strongly avoided instant background checks, doing away with this terrible gun show loophole. And I think we've got to move aggressively at the federal level in dealing with the straw man purchasers.

Also I believe, and I've fought for, to understand that there are thousands of people in this country today who are suicidal, who are homicidal, but can't get the healthcare that they need, the mental healthcare, because they don't have insurance or they're too poor. I believe that everybody in this country who has a mental crisis has got to get mental health counseling immediately. 

COOPER: Do you want to shield gun companies from lawsuits?

SANDERS: Of course not. This was a large and complicated bill. There were provisions in it that I think made sense. For example, do I think that a gun shop in the state of Vermont that sells legally a gun to somebody, and that somebody goes out and does something crazy, that that gun shop owner should be held responsible? I don't.
On the other hand, where you have manufacturers and where you have gun shops knowingly giving guns to criminals or aiding and abetting that, of course we should take action.

Sanders needs to stop stigmatizing mental health. He's learned to speak much better about racial injustice (good job activists. And all my white liberal friends who were complaining that BLM activists were unfairly pressuring him, that's why. So he learns). But this stigmatizing of mental health crisis as causally linked to our gun violence, rather than easy access to firearms, when people with mental health issues are vastly  more likely to be victims, has to stop.

I'm delighted to have a candidate advocating for better mental health care - so long as it doesn't involve forced institutionalization or forced medication. But we have to decouple the conversation about mental health from the conversation about gun violence. 

Whatever Sanders' intention, his comments reinforce the notion that gun violence is due to mental illness. We've got to push back hard against that. And Sanders supporters, if they want my vote for their candidate, will need to lead the way. Teach your candidate.