Hundreds turn out to see Kwame at Detroit church

[Ravine]

Not so fast.
I live, and work, in Detroit. The group of people who still have the goddam Warm Fuzzies for Kilpatrick is not so small. I hear them all of the time. It's not just a squad of damn fool Baptist ministers and their idiot flock. There are plenty of folks who still believe that Kwame Kilpatrick was great for this city, that the only thing he's really guilty of is "getting some pussy on the side," and that the main cause of his getting run out of office is that, despite so many affluent white folks having long ago high-tailed it out of the city, there yet exists a roomful of them who were single-mindedly devoted, to the point of obsession, with deep-sixing his career because there's something threatening and entirely intolerable about a young black man being successful & powerful.
After all, if a goddam genius such as P. Diddy [[or whatever the fuck he wants us to call him, now) believes shit like that, there must be something to it, right?
So, I wouldn't be so quick to write off Kilpatrick's chances at a career re-boot. While that last margin of victory may be small, I'm willing to bet that, with the cooperation of the aggressively ignorant and self-destructively reactionary Detroit voters, he could successfully exploit the image of Kwame As Martyr into a campaign that would rope in [[y'know, as with cattle) a considerably larger bloc of citizens who are much more their own enemies than is any real or imaginary convocation of white folks who have nothing better to do than to chase off a "strong young black man" whose most indelible accomplishment was that of reinforcing every negative racial stereotype he could get his big, groping paws on.

[SWMAP]

I think his problem would be in raising money. That last election was financed by suburban business interests at the end that enabled him to pull the rabbit out of the hat. There wouldn't be any such money next time. In fact the money would go to any other candidate that might beat him.

[Woodward's Cousin]

While I can imagine a set of circumstances in which former Mayor kilpaytrick could be elected to some public office in the City of Detroit, if somehow he were not legally barred from doing so under the state statute approved by Michigan voters in November 2010,[[ e.g. after winning a Democratic primary for Wayne County Commission) I can not foresee any circumstances in which he would ever be elected mayor again.
erikd has it right. Detroit voters have demonstrated the ability to correct mistakes, and to not repeat them when one time office holders have shown egregious faults [[ e.g. Bates, Reeves, M. Conyers )

[softailrider]

That will never happen. Kwame has lost popular support in the city, and he never will regain it. To be sure, he still has a small group of die-hard supporters, but so does Adolph Hitler.

Some people will never turn away from leaders that they have committed themselves to, which is why so many so many people still defend Richard Nixon to this day.

There is no evidence that the voters of Detroit would ever support Kwame, or any other Kilpatrick, for public office ever again. His mother had a lock on her congressional seat for years, and she was re-elected in overwhelming landslide victories. Kwame's mommy was invincible until her son was convicted as a criminal, and then she was voted out of office simply because she was his mother.

Keep in mind that Kwame's mommy has never been implicated, accused, charged, or linked to any of Kwame's illegal conduct, yet she lost most of her Detroit supporters and votes just because of her son.

It is simply ridiculous to assert that Kwame Kilpatrick, who barely won a re-election before his crimes were fully brought to light, would stand any chance of being elected to public office in Detroit, especially when you consider the fact that his mother, who was previously an invincible candidate, was voted out of office regardless of the fact that she has never even been accused of having anything to do with her son's corruption.

Even Kwame Kilpatrick himself, and his small group of remaining supporters, recognize the fact that he will never have a chance of being elected for anything, and they only seek to validate themselves by making excuses and feeble attempts rationalize their support of his criminal conduct.

The only people who actually think that Kwame still has popular support in the city are racist white suburbanites who think that Detroit voters are just a bunch of dumb ni&&#$, who will blindly support any black person, regardless of their conduct in office.

As far as I'm concerned, your argument makes sense until you get to the final paragraph, then you go off on a tangent and your reasoning falls apart. Coleman Young was elected and re elected several times. Granted, he was a notch above KK. However, I personaly witnessed the city be decimated during his tenure, he was also a crook - just not as blatant and brazen as KK was.

[313WX]

As far as I'm concerned, your argument makes sense until you get to the final paragraph, then you go off on a tangent and your reasoning falls apart. Coleman Young was elected and re elected several times. Granted, he was a notch above KK. However, I personaly witnessed the city be decimated during his tenure, he was also a crook - just not as blatant and brazen as KK was.

Any city would be decimated if 500,000 people [[unless it was Chicago, LA or NYC) just up and left for whatever reason.

[English]

As far as I'm concerned, your argument makes sense until you get to the final paragraph, then you go off on a tangent and your reasoning falls apart. Coleman Young was elected and re elected several times. Granted, he was a notch above KK. However, I personaly witnessed the city be decimated during his tenure, he was also a crook - just not as blatant and brazen as KK was.

His final paragraph was just fine. There were always detractors to both Kwame and CAY.

[Scottathew]

Not so fast.
I live, and work, in Detroit. The group of people who still have the goddam Warm Fuzzies for Kilpatrick is not so small. I hear them all of the time. It's not just a squad of damn fool Baptist ministers and their idiot flock. There are plenty of folks who still believe that Kwame Kilpatrick was great for this city, that the only thing he's really guilty of is "getting some pussy on the side," and that the main cause of his getting run out of office is that, despite so many affluent white folks having long ago high-tailed it out of the city, there yet exists a roomful of them who were single-mindedly devoted, to the point of obsession, with deep-sixing his career because there's something threatening and entirely intolerable about a young black man being successful & powerful.
After all, if a goddam genius such as P. Diddy [[or whatever the fuck he wants us to call him, now) believes shit like that, there must be something to it, right?
So, I wouldn't be so quick to write off Kilpatrick's chances at a career re-boot. While that last margin of victory may be small, I'm willing to bet that, with the cooperation of the aggressively ignorant and self-destructively reactionary Detroit voters, he could successfully exploit the image of Kwame As Martyr into a campaign that would rope in [[y'know, as with cattle) a considerably larger bloc of citizens who are much more their own enemies than is any real or imaginary convocation of white folks who have nothing better to do than to chase off a "strong young black man" whose most indelible accomplishment was that of reinforcing every negative racial stereotype he could get his big, groping paws on.

^^This

I worry that Kwame being a man in trouble with the law will only add to the hip-hop thug image that voters seem to have liked.

People won't vote for him because he's black, EVERY candidate is black. They'll vote for him because he's a charismatic, good looking, young man with some rough edges. Some folks may see a bit of themselves or someone they know in him and wish that second chances were given in life. And some will vote for him.

I just hope to goodness I'm not quoting this post in 4 or 8 years from now saying "I told you so". Hopefully Kwame gets locked up in the fed pen for a looooong time.

[Ravine]

I see some good arguments, here, representing a take differing from my own.
And Woodward's Cousin has a point: sometimes, the voters get it right.
A difference, though, is that folks such as Conyers & Bates have no charisma, and neither is perceived [[in the way KK is perceived) as "having done a lot of good things for the city."
But, you won't hear a lot of argument from me, because this is a case where I want to be wrong.

[Crumbled_pavement]

I think his problem would be in raising money. That last election was financed by suburban business interests at the end that enabled him to pull the rabbit out of the hat. There wouldn't be any such money next time. In fact the money would go to any other candidate that might beat him.

Bingo! No one likes to talk about this. It doesn't further their agenda to do so.

[MSUguy]

As far as I'm concerned, your argument makes sense until you get to the final paragraph, then you go off on a tangent and your reasoning falls apart. Coleman Young was elected and re elected several times. Granted, he was a notch above KK. However, I personaly witnessed the city be decimated during his tenure, he was also a crook - just not as blatant and brazen as KK was.

It was a different time. CAY as the city's first black mayor was much more able tap into fresh grievances about past mistreatment by the white power structure. The he's crook but he's our crook mentality was much more prevalent. KK he tried race baiting the community into rallying around him, no better example was the end of the 2008 state of the city and it was unsuccessful.

[erikd]

As far as I'm concerned, your argument makes sense until you get to the final paragraph, then you go off on a tangent and your reasoning falls apart. Coleman Young was elected and re elected several times. Granted, he was a notch above KK. However, I personaly witnessed the city be decimated during his tenure, he was also a crook - just not as blatant and brazen as KK was.

The difference between CAY and KK is night and day. KK is a crook, flat out. The evidence of his criminal conduct is overwhelming. KK has already done some prison time, and he will like do some more time after his federal trial. On the other hand, Coleman Young was never charged with any corruption, despite the fact that the FBI spent decades probing into his life and even wiretapping his phones.

Considering the fact that the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was notorious for abusing their powers in an attempt to destroy the credibility of left-leaning celebrities, union supporters, and black leaders, it is very likely that Coleman Young was not the corrupt crook that the white establishment made him out to be.

It is a well-documented fact that many high-ranking leaders of the right-wing white American establishment engaged in egregious abuses of power in an attempt to destroy their political adversaries. See McCarthyism, blacklisting, the HUAC, COINTELPRO, etc...

The historical facts have come in, and these facts show that many of the high-level people who were accusing Coleman Young were actually guilty of criminal conduct themselves, but there is no evidence of criminal conduct by Coleman Young.

Given all of this, it seems that the voters of Detroit were right to support Coleman Young, and be suspicious of the unsubstantiated smear campaign against him.

Concerning the assertion that CAY was responsible for the decline of the city under his tenure, that is debatable. The actual reasons for the decline of the city are multifarious. To be sure, CAY was not a perfect mayor, but most of the city's problems are the result of greater socio-economic conditions, not the actions of CAY.

[corktownyuppie]

Concerning the assertion that CAY was responsible for the decline of the city under his tenure, that is debatable. The actual reasons for the decline of the city are multifarious. To be sure, CAY was not a perfect mayor, but most of the city's problems are the result of greater socio-economic conditions, not the actions of CAY.

Agreed. I'm too young to remember much of CAY. And from what I've read about him, I don't think he was making the decline any less severe. But most of the city's problems go far beyond Mayor Young. Or any one other person, for that matter. Consider that 30 years ago, manufacturing jobs allowed workers to live in the upper middle class with only a high school diploma.

Those jobs don't exist anymore. They're not coming back. And, unfortunately, we're pumping out fewer diplomas, not more. That's not all on Coleman.

[Woodward's Cousin]

Valid points made by erikd and corktownyuppie in drawing distinctions between CAY and Kilpatrick. This is an appropriate point to again point to Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit as a useful antidote to the simplistic and wrong " It's all CAY's fault" line of analysis and interpretation of causation.
Personally, I voted for CAY in 1973 but not uniformally therafter because John Nichols was a horrible [[ and hugely racist) alternative in 1973 and the candidates running against CAY thereafter were not exactly consistently impressive . That said, CAY the organizer and labor leader and legislator did not posess the background or skill sets to make him an effective public executive. Arguably his last three terms were increasingly less impressive.
It is too easy to simply brand CAY a crook. There is history we will never know. It is clear that some folks ingratiated themselves to him and pursued corrupt schemes. It is also true --to my knowledge--that no one who might have been expected to benefit from any ill-gotten gains of CAY ever exhibited any particular new-found wealth after his death. Ask around about his siblings, nieces and nephews, former lady friends and Joel Loving. No mysterious windfalls. No extravagant spending. In many cases, quite the contrary. These facts are like the dog that didn't bark, evidence suggesting what did not occur, and what did.
On the other hand, what is already in the public record regarding the "Kilpatrick Enterprise", in court docs including plea deals to date, unequivocably reflects a pervasive venality and illegality that we will still only know the outlines of when either all plea deal have been reached or remaining defendants go to trial [[ and don't forget the reported forthcoming indictments related to the pensioin funds and ancillary alleged illegal acts).
There is much in CAY's career prior to becoming mayor that was courageous and commendable, e.g. Tuskegee Airmen, HUAC appearance. Not many folks who know of CAY's life and career will discern similarities to Mr. Kilpatrick.

[softailrider]

I remember very well what Detroit was like during CAY's first term in office. it was an eminently livable, workable city, filled with great neighborhoods. It was the equal or better then any other cold weather big city I was aware of. By the end of CAY's last term, Detroit looked pretty much as it does now.

Was all of the above Mayor Young's fault? Of course not, I just don't think he helped the situation very much. To me it doesn't matter if he lived like a Monk [[he didn't) I think he was a lousy mayor who kept getting re elected in spite of it all.