Now, faced with a mathematical mountain climb that even Stephen Hawking could not ascend, the Clintons -- and it is indeed both of them -- are just about to paste a bumper sticker on the rear of the collapsing vehicle that carries her campaign. It reads: VOTE WHITE.
NOTE FROM JOHN: I'm not sure I'd have compared her language to the Klan - but then again, I'm not black, so I don't presume to be as sensitive to the nuances of racism as I am to homophobia, for example. But, I do hear a lot of David Duke. I mean, "white Americans"? The more I think about the phrase, the more I really can't come up with a situation in which I would ever use it. White people, sure. But white Americans? That sounds like David Duke's phrase "European Americans." It's just not a phrase the non-racists use. Then again, every time Hillary moves into a new state, she picks the one right-wing issue to embrace that she thinks will help with that state. In North Carolina it was homophobia (pansy, etc.). In Pennsylvania she became Annie Oakley. And now with West Virginia, she embracing racism. It's like Hillary's own perverted rainbow coalition of homophobes, NRA members, and racists. I think this speaks volumes to what Hillary sees when she sees rural America, southern America,and the midwest. To her we're all rednecks.
_____________ Blogger Oliver Willis, who is African-American, weighs in with a post titled "Hillary White Power Clinton":
Indeed, a pattern has emerged some time ago. Boy, did we dodge a bullet.
“[W]orking, hard-working Americans, white Americans.” She really said that. Wow.
Congratulations, Hillary Clinton, you win the prize for the first Democratic Bigot Eruption since I’ve been keeping track of this. Even professional haters like Pat Buchanan and his ilk aren’t so balls-out about racism. You’ve been getting your ass handed to you and especially among black voters. This shows me once again that we - who are apparently lazy and shiftless non-Americans based on your definition - have yet again been a leading indicator.
There was maybe a slight chance Barack Obama might have been pushed to pick you as his running mate, but we can’t have someone spouting Klan-style talking points on the ticket. Heck, there’s a good shot with language like that you won’t win back your senate seat in 2012. I mean, a lot of those apparently lazy and shiftless non-American blacks helped you to win and they’d just as soon vote for someone else in the primary or the Republican in the election rather than someone echoing Bull Connor’s language.
“Working, hard working Americans, white Americans,” indeed.
Do you freaking SuperDelegates need any more information about this woman? She's now using you as human shields. But hey, you just keep sitting on your collective asses, like the DNC, watching Hillary destroy our party. Because, you know, it would be mean to tell her to take a hike now that she's lost. I mean, she might even cry. And sure, she's a Democrat using racism as a political weapon, possibly pushing millions of blacks out of the Democratic party for good, but that's nothing compared to hurting Hillary's feelings. So, yes, let's all just sit back and watch Hillary destroy our nominee and our party over the next month, and then when we lose to McCain in November we can all act really surprised. Never saw that coming.
Another month of this? Why not just hang up our hoods and hand John McCain the nomination now, for all that our party leaders seem to care. From Jack and Jill Politics, a leading blog on African-American issues:
Apparently not satisfied with her plummeting approval ratings among black voters, Hillary Clinton decided to remind us again that our votes don't actually count:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Hard-working Americans = white Americans. Right. The rest of us sit on our porches eating watermelon and plucking banjos....
This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it's meant to give white voters the impression that they would be "disenfranchised" by an Obama win. It's a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama's success....
Clinton is deliberately hurting his chances... by saying, essentially, "Obama doesn't care about white people."
That's what the "elitist" charge has always been about, appealing to the sentiment that "this black guy thinks he's better than you." It will be the same against the Republicans. The difference is that they now have Democrat saying the same things to further legitimize this line of "argument"....
Clinton has hopelessly alienated the most loyal base of the Democratic Party: black folks....
How bad, blatant and obvious is the continued race-baiting of the Clinton Campaign?
As a hard-working black man, let me not mince words, fuck her!
Enough is enough, even if she did somehow manage to steal the nomination from Obama, she's will get beaten, badly, in November. Given how racially tinged this race has been and the fact that the country is 65% or so white, she should have been blowing the doors off of Obama, but she hasn't and that says volumes. So she can take her Jim Crow, "fear of a black man" tactics and go find the nearest KKK meeting to solicit votes from, she's through with this campaign.
She's had every advantage a candidate could want and she's still getting her butt handed to her by the "inexperienced" and apparently "lazy" Senator Obama. I think her lack of winning is as much an indication of her inability to win as it is Obama's ability to defy the expectations set by many a year ago.
The pundits have been politely asking her to step down or at least play nice for the last couple of months, maybe it's time to no longer be so polite.
Amen. And may I ask, where are the black leaders in Congress and outside? [Crickets]
Well that didn't take long. It was less than 24 hours ago that Hillary spoke with congressional leaders about her insistence on continuing her fairy tale campaign for the presidency. As we reported last night, our congressional leaders (that would be Reid and Pelosi) said it was fine for Hillary to continue wasting our time, our money, and our focus for yet another month. But, they said that she wouldn't be going negative.
Oops.
Hillary is race-baiting again. Gee, no one could have predicted that one. I wrote yesterday how it was rather odd that, within one 24 hour period, Hillary and two top allies kept saying that Obama's voters weren't very good because they're black, and that her voters were better because they're white. The language was stark - starker than politicians normally use when talking about race - and even the journalists covering the comments noted as much. It smelled to me like more than a coincidence. For some reason, Hillary wanted to drop the word "white" and "black," and that somehow mentioning the races, reminding voters that she is white and Obama is black, would help her win. Considering the Clintons recent history of race-baiting Obama, the reappearance of racial talking points is disturbing.
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
There sure is a pattern emerging here. The Clintons are using racism to try to win the nomination against a black man. And our party leaders are okay with it. (Well, in all fairness, our congressional leaders said that Hillary had better not adopt a "negative tone." They never said she couldn't adopt a racist one.) Is it any wonder blacks aren't voting for Hillary? They shouldn't vote for Hillary, ever again. If our party continues to give a thumbs-up to race-baiting in American politics in the year 2008, race-baiting in our own party, I'd be very surprised if blacks came out for us in November. Nor should they.
UPDATE: The source for the video says it was not doctored at all, other than having enhanced the volume of Kantor's voice. I'm asking some other audio experts to do their own enhancing - anyone out there a super-duper audio expert? If so, please email me.
We reported earlier today that there was a video on YouTube, and flying around the Net, that clearly showed Hillary adviser Mickey Kantor, during the 1992 Clinton campaign, apparently using some nasty words for Indiana voters. It now appears that the video may have been doctored - i.e., it's not the original video. Huff Post has more, but I've listened to the original, which is linked to via HuffPost, and it's clear that Kantor's voice is of a different volume in the "new" version as compared to the original, so that's fishy right there. You can read the rest on HuffPost, but as the video's authenticity is now in question, I pulled the original post.
Okay, this is disturbing on any number of levels. The Secret Service protects the President, Presidential candidates and has officers all over D.C. protecting embassies. If this is real, we have got some serious problems at the Secret Service:
The U.S. Secret Service has placed a white agent on leave after an African American employee reported finding a noose hanging at the service’s main training facility outside the nation’s capital.
The service has acknowledged “an allegation of misconduct” at its J.J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., and that an employee last week was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. The employee is a veteran agent with the service, according to fellow agents.
The noose was found by an African American officer in the uniform division of the service during the week of April 14, according to those familiar with the alleged incident. That division protects the White House and surrounding grounds. He reported the incident to his supervisor and it was sent up the chain of command. He declined to comment for this story.
This doesn't exactly inspire confidence:
The alleged incident happened as U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is expected to decide next month whether to sanction the service for failing to turn over evidence in a long-running lawsuit alleging that the service created a racially hostile atmosphere that tolerated discrimination.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Atlanta native Reginald G. Moore, alleges that the Secret Service routinely discriminates against black agents seeking promotion in favor of white agents who scored lower on promotional exams.
Nearly 60 black agents have submitted sworn statements to the court in support of the lawsuit’s allegations.
Robinson has already sanctioned the service three times since the discovery process of the lawsuit began 3 1/2 years ago.
We're supposed to believe the Secret Service is the best of the best when it comes to law enforcement. Instead, it sounds like it's rampant with racism. Oh, but racism doesn't exist in America or we'd surely see it in the exit polls.
Per the RNC, the national leadership of the Republican Party has been in contact this morning with the North Carolina GOP, urging them to refrain from running the "Extreme" ad. The party says that the content of the anti-Obama ad, which references the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is "not appropriate" and "unhelpful."
As a Southerner, the attacks on Obama being elitist by the elites of this country, it made me uncomfortable. Not just because the attacks are generally unfair and a distortion of what he actually said, but because it smacks of the sort of dirty, snide, racial attacks of the old South - the "uppity" black man attack. That somehow he just doesn't seem to "know his place", that his "reach has exceeded his grasp". Sort of like the attacks that he wasn't "black" enough. Being made by white people. ("high yellow", anyone?) I could continue with the sort of vile, negative, stereotypical attacks that have been made by rich, white Southerners against black men that they view as a threat, but I wouldn't want to give Hillary any ideas. This is a disgusting, racial attack against Obama being portrayed as an attack on Pennsylvania voters, and I will have none of it.
You don't call a black man a "boy" when you're from the south, unless you're intending to harken back to the racist language of slavery, and then segregation, when all black men were called "boy" as a prejudiced pejorative. Even worse, the GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell was there when it happened. Here's what Rep. Geoff Davis (that's really his name, talk about irony) R-KY had to say about Obama:
"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said.
Again, in southern speak, everyone knows what "boy" means when it's said about a black man.
UPDATE: Davis apologized. That's nice, but why hasn't Mitch McConnell said anything? He was right there when it happened.
The only thing that Obama and Tiger Woods have in common is that they are both part white. So what's the McCain campaign's point? That Obama isn't racially pure enough? Remember, this this isn't the first time this has happened. McCain keeps being introduced by racists, and the question is why. More from MSNBC, that missed the larger story:
Before McCain spoke, former Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia introduced the Arizona senator, telling those in attendance he wants his sons to view McCain as a role model, versus someone like Tiger Woods. While McCain did not mention either of his Democratic opponents, Bellavia engaged, calling the Arizona senator and former prisoner of war "the real audacity of hope."
Speculation is that it will be about Ferraro's racist eruption against Obama, and the larger issue of the Clintons' race-baiting in this campaign. Find out tonight on MSNBC. More from Huff Post:
"Countdown," Keith Olbermann announced that tonight he'd be delivering another of his "Special Comments" — his impassioned, angry monologues fueled by outrage and usually addressed to President Bush and the Bush administration. Tonight, his special comment will be directed at Hillary Clinton — and, for the first time, his special comment will be directed exclusively at a Democrat....
It's a significant moment, because it marks the first time a full-throated special comment will have been directed exclusively at a Democrat. Not just the Democrats, whom Olbermann accused along with the Republicans last May for failing to do anything to get the country out of Iraq, but one particular Democrat — a Democrat whom, incidentally, he did a special comment defending in July after the Defense Dept. sent her a letter accusing her of facilitating anti-U.S. propaganda by demanding to know whether the administration had conceived of an exit strategy from Iraq. He also defended her husband, Bill Clinton, in Sept. 2006 after his controversial interview with FNC's Chris Wallace. I wouldn't expect either of them to get much defending this time around — though something tells me this one will get a lot more than 100,000 views.
Markos found a Geraldine Ferraro interview from February 27, 2008, on FOX News' John Gibson's radio show, where she said pretty much the exact same thing she said this week about Obama and race. The thing is, it's nearly verbatim the same thing. These are talking points that she rehearsed, and/or was given. The question is by whom?
FERRARO: If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this as a potential real problem for Hillary?
If he were a woman...
GIBSON: You mean if he were John Edwards?
FERRARO: If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he's in, absolutely not.
GIBSON: Geraldine, are you playing the race card?
FERRARO: No, and that's the problem. Every time you say the truth - I'm the first person, John, and you know how honest I am, I am the first person who will say in 1984 if my name were Gerard instead of Geraldine, I would never have been picked as the vice presidential candidate.
"If in 1984 my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for VP."
In politics, those cute little zingers tend to be things you practice in advance. They're intentional, they're talking points. Ferraro planned this entire line of attack over 2 weeks ago. The question is whether Hillary's campaign planned it for her, with her.
"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," [Geraldine] Ferraro said. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
Now remember, this is not the tenth time, or so, that the Clintons have pulled the race card on Obama. It's NOT. So please don't play the race card in trying to stop their racism. It's racist against European Americans.
Geraldine Ferraro—usually a class act—made recent statements that seem to establish a pattern: the Clinton campaign using surrogates to invoke and inject race in this campaign. The Ferraro event...the leaks to Drudge...BET founder Robert L. Johnson...Bill's South Carolina non-sequitur.
But for a classic moment of a Clinton rep (in this case Mark Penn) quietly inserting loaded language, check this out (about 3:50 in).
They play dirty.
While groups such as Factcheck.org have made compelling arguments against the likelihood the Clinton camp intentionally altered Obama's image...it's an odd argument that assumes anything in campaign commercials happens by accident. Check out the debate, judge for yourself.
More classiness, from one of Clinton's top surrogates, Geraldine Ferraro.
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
Ferraro isn't some unknown lower-level or obscure advisor, but one of her top fundraisers, member of Clinton's finance committee, and a former Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Funny. A week ago, McCain was criticizing the Tennessee GOP for putting out its racist press release calling Obama "Hussein" and spreading around that photo of him in traditional African clothing. Yet now, McCain suddenly touting their endorsement. I'm guessing that bragging about their endorsement in a McCain press release does not constitute rejecting or denouncing.
You'll recall that we wrote yesterday about how Hillary had blackened Barack Obama's face in a new campaign attack ad. Well, Markos found that that's not all they did. They also stretched the width of Obama's face, making his nose wider and more stereotypically African-American looking. Oh yeah, and then they lied about it, and got caught. More from Markos:
