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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Corker Says It’s “Imperative” that Trump Agree to Accept Election Results

JB

Sen. Bob Corker

Tennessee’s U.S. Senator Bob Corker, who has been rumored to be Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of State and was on his short list for vice president, issued what sounded like a veiled ultimatum to Trump after Tuesday night’s third Trump-Clinton debate in Las Vegas.

Trump made headlines in the nationally televised debate by refusing, when asked by moderator Chris Wallace, to say that he would abide by the results of the November 8 election. The New York billionaire, who has made frequent charges that the election is “rigged,” said he would make that decision “at the t
ime.”

Pressed by Wallace to be more definite, Trump said, “I’ll just keep you in suspense.”

Trump’s refusal to pledge acceptance in advance to the voters’ verdict, whatever it might be, caused a negative reaction among TV commentators and focus groups, and brought a host of complaints in press statements by representatives from both parties and in tweets and other online entries from voters at large.

Enter Corker, who responded with equal asperity when news of Trump’s lewd remarks in a 2005 video went public. This time Corker, taking to Twitter, said, bluntly and simply, “It is imperative that Donald Trump clearly state that he will accept the results of the election when complete.”

Corker did not signal whether he would follow up with renunciation of his support of Trump or with some other demonstrative action if Trump failed to respond.

In the judgment of many commentators, Trump’s refusal to embrace the results of the presidential election in advance not only threatened to undermine confidence in the American democratic process itself but, in an immediate sense, had spoiled what many had thought was his best performance so far in a debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

With Clinton far ahead in most polls, prohibitively so in several, Trump was considered to be in dire need of an unblemished success in the debate, and his evasiveness on accepting the election results, coupled with one or two lesser gaffes, may well have buried that hope.

The candidate’s position on the matter was further dramatized by explicit statements from his running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, his daughter Ivanka, his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway that the election results should be heeded, come what may.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Janis Fullilove: Shot at and Downed by a Memphis Policeman in 1968?

As described JB

Councilwoman Fullilove addressing local Democrats on Sunday night

 in a companion article, “Shelby Democrats Make Do on GOTV,” the efforts of local supporters of the Democratic presidential nominee included a Sunday night event — styled as an “African-American Rally for Hillary Clinton” — at Christ Missionary Church on South Parkway.

As noted in the article, the major theme of the event was to establish a meaningful connection between the civil rights struggle of half a century ago and the fight to elect Clinton, thereby to maintain and defend the gains from that era.

Virtually every speaker expressed some version of that theme, but no one did it so vividly and even shockingly as City Councilwoman Janis Fullilove, who told a story that most, if not all, the members of her audience had not heard before, and which had apparently never before been related publicly in any form.

The kernel of that tale was Fullilove’s contention that, while a school girl marching in memory of the recently assassinated Martin Luther King in 1968, she was shot at by a Memphis police officer and left to lie helpless in fear on a downtown Memphis pavement.

Here is the story as she told it Sunday night:

[audio-1]

“…I don’t want to be long, but I think about 1968, and I was a young thing, 18 years old, attending the Booker t. Washington High School of leadership excellence. And when Dr. King came to Memphis, members of the NAACP — Jesse Turner, Maxine and Vasco Smith — they came and they embraced us and said, ‘We want you to be part of this movement because we’re doing this for your tomorrow. And I remember sanding on the stage of Mason Temple on the night that Dr. King had given his Mountaintop speech. And I remember how moved I was at 18 years old to hear that speech from this man, who thought enough of our sanitation workers to come to the city to mobilize us, to get what was done that was right to be done, and showed us how to do it.

“The next day, my grandmother and I had gone to Corondolet. That was like Target, and it was in the North Memphis area, and we were shopping, very quickly, because, she said, ‘Look, Dr. King is going to speak at 6 o’clock. We’ve got to hurry up in order to go home and go hear what he has to say. When it was around 3 o’clock that afternoon, we were shopping, and I went down another aisle, and I heard a white man say, ‘They just shot that nigger, Dr. King!’ It hurt me so bad, I ran to my grandmother, and she saw the look in my eyes and said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And said, ‘They’ve shot Dr. King!’ And she threw everything down that she had in her hands, and we went home, and everything was chaotic.

“When you talk about ‘the winds were ranging,’ well, the winds were ranging in the city of Memphis, they were raging, the storm was brewing, and it didn’t seem to get any better; we began to march, and we marched and marched, and I was shot at by a Memphis police officer, and I had a ponytail on the top of my head. And the bullet hole went through it. And as I was laying on the corner of Vance St., it was Vance and 4th, because no one would open their doors and let me in, and I didn’t know whether I was shot, I was just frightened out of my head, I just lay there and said, ‘Lord, have mercy! Things have got to change…..”

From there, Fullilove segued into a description of the Memphis she sees a half century later, in which “racism abounds…and people are brewing hatred by talking, ‘Let’s make American great again….”
Go here for more details from her story and the Sunday night pro-Clinton rally.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A Reason To Run

Hillary Clinton has gone to Togo.

Joe Biden is going to Iowa.

Let us now explicate.

The vice president (that’s Biden) is scheduled in September to attend Senator Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry, which is what you do for a presidential race even if you have no taste for steak. Biden knows that merely by attending he is suggesting that he might enter the Iowa Democratic caucuses, which, as usual, will be the lead-off contest for the 2016 presidential election. If he does so, Clinton will be his likely opponent. Will she say she’s been to Togo?

Will she say she’s been to where no secretary of state had ever been before — the Cook Islands, for instance? Will she echo the constant refrain from her State Department tenure — that she traveled more than any secretary of state in history, an astounding 956,733 miles, which is 38.42 times around the world and which, you have to concede, is a lot? Iowans may be impressed, but being First Frequent Flier is not enough to get them out on the forbiddingly cold night when the caucuses will be held. Clinton, as my Washington Post colleague Dan Balz points out, needs a message.

At the moment, her only one is that she is a woman. Becoming the first female president is a worthy goal, but it kind of falls into the category of miles traveled and countries visited. It is an achievement, even a stunning one, but it is not a stirring trumpet call. Even now, her statistics-laden tenure has been somewhat eclipsed by her successor at state. John F. Kerry has already managed to bring Israelis and Palestinians together to resume peace talks. If these talks produce an agreement (not likely, but still…), then all this talk about miles traveled is going to sound awfully silly.

Clinton is undoubtedly the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016, but then she is always the front-runner until something trips her up. The last time out — 2008 — it was her own dismal campaign and, of course, the emergence of one Barack Hussein Obama, a junior senator promising “hope.” To counter that, Clinton had no real message of her own. Instead, there was a fustiness about her, a familiarity that was both good and bad. She was — remains — Bill Clinton’s wife, and that, as we all know, is both good and bad.

Now, just as Kerry is strutting his stuff as secretary of state, comes the revolting Anthony Weiner, whose association with Clinton through his wife, Huma Abedin — a Hillary Clinton intimate — has the Clintons running so fast the other way she may well revisit Togo by the time this is over. Once again, the Clinton past proves to be toxic. What she needs is a present — an emphatic now.

There are few people in public life as smart as Hillary Clinton. A conversation with her is always instructive. She’s also a good person and — almost as important — she knows how to laugh. But if she is to run for president at the age of 68, she must rediscover her youth. She has to revert to the brave and inspiring woman who was the first student to deliver the commencement address at Wellesley College (a seven-minute ovation) and made her a national figure overnight. In other words, she has to lead.

If Biden runs — he will be 73 in 2016 — he will do so as a vice president. As did George H.W. Bush, he will seek office as a continuation of the previous presidency. At the moment, Gallup gives Obama a healthy approval rating of 80 percent among Democrats. He does less well among the public at large — 44 percent in the most recent poll — but it is Democrats who vote in the Democratic caucuses and primaries. It can’t hurt to be Obama’s vice president.

The 2016 presidential nomination is Hillary Clinton’s to lose. Already, a group called “Ready for Hillary” has raised money on her behalf. Emily’s List, the formidable organization dedicated to the election of women, has virtually endorsed her — and she has, to mangle a word, the vastest network of friends and supporters of any American politician. She can probably raise $1 billion with the snap of a finger. All she lacks is what she has always lacked — an overriding, stirring message. Lots of people are ready to march, but they need to know in what direction.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.