Yup, it says a lot about the party and its members that they're unwilling or afraid to speak out on such an obvious human and civil rights issue.
I think the following might shed some light into the "peculiarities" of such a manner....
Dems are fighting against possibly losing both Houses after this election cycle. How the President is viewed this November (and it ain't exactly rosy at the moment) plays a lot in to that.
There are nuances you're skating over but it's not like I disagree with your fundamental point. All this to say I'm doubtful Obama will take authoritative interest in this situation unless something cataclysmic happens. It's national news but it's a local "situation" at current. The problems surrounding this issue and why it occurs in the first place are far beyond something Obama can correct in five terms, never mind today or the remainder of his two years.
To which I say..."So what?"
That is more or less just obfuscatory political hogwash that will always exist in some capacity, one way or another, so it's frivolous to use it as a justification for "playing meek" on addressing these issues more directly. There will ALWAYS be future political races to bring up as reasons of concern for meek responses in this or any other similar situation, no matter what year.
No one expected Obama to fix Washington when they voted for him in 2008 nor did they expect him to do the same in the 2012 election; the reason they voted for him was because
they saw that he could possibly set the seeds in place to start some changes. Certain things have progressed faster than others of course, but the fact being most reasonable people would look at any significant gains as a bonus.
The main issue here is that no one is expecting Obama to suddenly cure racism, police brutality or proliferation of guns and gun culture anytime soon. However, some of us are....were expecting he'd at least lay the seeds to start fixing them that could be built upon into the future. Lay the foundation, if you will. He has arguably already done so for other social issues like gay rights, climate change, and immigration reform. Yet for reasons that mainly boil down to semantics and trivial optics, he cannot seem to do that here.
If this is the extent the leader of the Democratic party can respond to this incident of racial profiling, police brutality and trigger-happy gun culture,....which aren't terribly different from responses leaders of the Republican party have made in the past...why in the
hell should I bother in believing or supporting them in the future?
I won't.
