Obama, Clinton, the UFT, Shanker, Kahlenberg

Boy, that's a mouthful.

With today's primaries promising to be somewhat important (my belief is that Obama has been damaged to such an extent, he will be hurting badly by tonight) I wanted to comment on a bunch of stuff related to the Democratic party and the splits going back 40 years to 1968.

Remember that year? Assassinations, the crazy Demo convention in Chicago, the UFT 3 month strike in Ocean-Hill Brownsville - all events that have major impact on today's events. Richard Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" spends a lot of time justifying Shanker's actions and blaming the New left, the New Democrats, the limousine liberals, etc for the problems the party has had.

As I read it I kept saying- this book came out at this time as justification for Hillary Clinton to be president. Do many of the attacks on Obama point back to 40 years of splits? Do the wounds of the '68 strike still play a role in the Obama-Clinton split? These are issues worth exploring and we'll take a shot at it at some point this week - if I can force myself to open up Kalhlenberg's book once again.

By the way, a review of Kahlenberg's book (funded by Eli Broad and other foundations that just love the ed reform teacher attack movment) written by Vera Pavone and myself will be published in New Politics summer edition. Interestingly, Michael Hirsh, a writer for the NY Teacher and a member of NP's board, will write a response in the following edition. Hmmm. Will Shanker/Kahlenberg come up smelling like roses? A funny thing, but the NY Teacher edition following our submission of the review had an article by Kahlenberg "explaining" Shanker's real position on charter schools.

Al had a lot of splaining to do that goes way beyond charter schools.