John Lewis Uses Civil Rights Legacy to Stump for Obama-Brand 'Progress'

Meredith Jessup | August 06, 2010 3:01 PM

In an email sent out to Obama supporters this afternoon, Rep. John Lewis--an icon of the civil rights movement--discusses a whole new kind of movement: the movement of "progress" led by Barack Obama:

On March 7th, 1965, 600 of us lined up to walk from Selma to Montgomery, to march for voting rights.

When we tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River, we were met by state troopers. They attacked us with tear gas, bullwhips, and nightsticks. ...

The progress we've made since then is remarkable.

But the expansion of voting rights for millions did not happen overnight. It was the product of a continued struggle, by many people, over many years.

And just as change did not come easily then, it does not come easily now. (emphasis his)

Is he seriously equating policies like the overhaul of health care or cap & trade to racial discrimination?

Discrimination still exists in America -- its effects can be as harmful as they were decades ago. And we can always become a better, more just society.

(Yes, yes he is.)

Two years ago, this movement -- led by Barack Obama -- brought millions of people into the political process for the first time.

I'm told that many of you are working hard now to get as many as possible of those folks -- and others from across the country who are with us in these fights -- to the polls this year.

Lewis offers a solution for the apparent degradation of civil rights in America and threatened "progress" of the Obama agenda: donate money to the Democratic Party!

Despite the obvious historic irony of his plea, I have to say that I've just lost a tremendous amount of respect for Mr. Lewis. In his attempts to tie Obama's radical and unpopular agenda to the injustice of discrimination, Lewis exposes himself as nothing more than a partisan shill, standing on politics, not principle.