You haven’t read a single word of the last three pages, have you?
Are you seriously saying that people should resort to violence if the Democratic Party, legally and in accordance with its own rules, chooses a candidate, by a majority vote of its delegates chosen in accordance with party rules, just because they don’t like the outcome?
Are you fucking crazy?
Dude, it’s Clothahump. His endorsement is even more of a negative than Geraldine Ferraro’s. So he’s only reinforced the points made by the other side by making that statement.
** Poll: Black support helps Clinton extend lead**
Wed October 17, 2007
"WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. Hillary Clinton’s lead over Sen. Barack Obama, her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, is growing among African-American voters who are registered Democrats, and particularly among black women, a poll said Wednesday.
"**Sen. Hillary Clinton is the top choice of African-American Democrats, a new poll suggests.
"Among black registered Democrats overall, Clinton had a 57 percent to 33 percent lead over Obama.**
"That’s up from 53 percent for Clinton and 36 percent for Obama in a poll carried out in April.
. . .
"**The former first lady’s strongest support among blacks came from black women, 68 percent of whom identified her as their likely choice, versus 25 percent who cited Obama, the senator from Illinois who is African-American. **
"Black men who are registered Democrats were nearly evenly split, with 42 percent favoring Clinton and 46 percent favoring Obama. The sampling error of that question was plus-or-minus 8 percentage points.
"Black registered Democrats also appeared more sure of themselves than did whites, with two-thirds (67 percent) of blacks saying they would definitely support whichever candidate they had said they favored, versus one-third (33 percent) who said they might change their minds.
. . .
““The ‘sistah’ vote is paying off handsomely for Hillary Clinton,” said Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile. “It’s not only getting her the women’s vote. It’s also getting her the black vote.””
. . .
Please explain. Why were black voters overwhelmingly supporting Hillary Clinton last October, 57% to 33% over Barack Obama? Has his skin color changed in that time? If not, what has? Take your time, I’ll wait.
It’s Clothahump, Shayna. Fergeddaboudit.
Here’s Emmanuel Cleaver talking about it.
I don’t understand the umbrage about Bill Clinton’s remark about Jesse Jackson. I took it to mean that another candidate did extremely well with a huge chunk of the African-American vote, but he ultimately didn’t win the nomination. I suppose you could frame it as some racist jibe, but I don’t see it, and I think I see these things fairly easily. You’d have to think very little of Bill Clinton on race matters to make that leap. While I don’t know him personally, I have colleagues and friends who worked in his administration that reinforce the “vibe” I get from him that he’s not a race baiter.
The Drudge picture, to this date, has never been verified as coming from anyone in the Clinton campaign. Just Matt Drudge’s word. The response from the Clinton campaign was too cute by half, and didn’t address the real issue - that no one in any official capacity sent the e-mail. People conveniently ignored the fact that that a) the pictures had already been published in some Enquirer-type rag and b) the pictures were scanned and posted on FreeRepublic.com the weekend before, replete with posters suggesting that it be sent to Drudge. Obama initially said he took Clinton’s word that it didn’t come from her campaign, but a few days ago came out and accused the Clinton campaign of floating the picture.
Ferraro… well, that was some country-fried crazy, as far as I can tell.
The Latino leader? I don’t see how that reflects on Clinton one way or the other. She said she didn’t agree, and the person in question didn’t have an official position with the campaign as far as I know. I hear equally crazy stuff from the talking heads who support either candidate every day. If a candidate has a supporter making a statement and they’re asked about it, their only obligation in my mind is to disavow and reject it. The threshold for paid staffers and advisers is much higher (New Hampshire Clinton dude, Samantha Power, Ferraro).
Last time I looked, Clinton’s folks are pretty keen on pointing out that they won New York, California, New Jersey, Ohio… states with a whole lot of Black people. Not only that, what about the Clinton record on Black people in toto? The support of Maggie Williams, Maxine Waters, and Stephanie Tubbs Jones has been pretty pronounced and I think that’s significant. Let’s not forget Clinton’s appearance at Tavis Smiley’s summit. She could have easily been too busy to make it.
face, you can’t be serious. The candidate’s dog-whistle comment about Clinton “periodically” “feeling down?” Craig Robinson’s comment about the shame of Hillary “crying?” JJ Jr. stating that Clinton didn’t cry for the Katrina victims? Tony McPeak going on about how Obama doesn’t go on TV and have crying fits?
Honestly, the monster comment was less offensive than any of the above. Both campaigns have their fair share of -isms (race, sex, etc.) at work here. Thing is, I think people are equating the words of Clinton’s surrogates to the candidate herself, but not doing the same with Obama. I just think people need to be consistent. Either you can draw a connection to surrogates’ frothing at the mouth with stupid and the candidate, or you can’t. Both candidates have had this problem.
I already stated that code switching I get. That phraseology made famous by Denzel’s depiction of Malcolm has a very specific meaning - it’s about White folks trying to fool Black people. Obama’s a clever guy and I doubt he uses this phrase without at least a wink and a nod to what it refers to. I don’t see it analogous to quoting Kennedy at all.
Iowa.
Every time I think either one of that pair has hit rock bottom, they get out jackhammers and start digging.
Did you watch the context the comment came out of? Bill was questioned about the Clinton’s tag-team strategy and out comes a smugly stated non sequiter about the sucess of a completely different candidate and a completely different campaign that occured more than 20 years ago. The only similarity between Obama and Jackson is their race, so without explicitly saying it, Bill was basically portraying Obama as someone who only has appeal to racially biased black folks. Bill Clinton had a lot black support, too, but funny that he didn’t think to mention that, right? You would think he would since he’s supposed to be the “first black president” and all.
This move of Bill’s smacked of an attempt to use the black community’s stigma to the Clintons’ advantage, but it was also a try at diminishing Obama’s widespread support in general. I’m wondering why you can’t see that. If Obama was a white man running against Hillary, do you think Bill would have thought to start talking about Mike Dukakis or some other random dude? Would it make sense for Obama to start using Geraldine Ferraro’s success (or lack thereof) in certain states as a gauge for Hillary? Of course not. Hillary is not interchangable with Geraldine, and Barack is not Jesse 2.0.
It doesn’t really matter in terms of public perception. The people who support Clinton, either by serving on her campaign or endorsing her from a position of voting clout (like that Latino lady, wish I could remember her name), keep saying things that reinforce the appearance that Clinton is profiting from race games. She may not being able to control the words that come out of people’s mouths and maybe she can’t be blamed for the actions of everyone, but it still makes her campaign look bad.
I think the media blowing up Clinton’s “crying” was quite over the top, and it was definitely gender-motivated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama surrogates were jumping on that bandwagon as well. So I’ll grant you that. But other than the crying NH thing, I can honestly say that Obama’s campaign hasn’t really touched on Hillary’s gender much if at all, not even in a positive way. He seems to have made a concerted effort not to highlight the “historic” nature of their candidancies, which I think is smart because it’s not like people need to be reminded of the obvious. In contrast, Hillary seems to harp on America’s first black or woman president thing, even when she’s saying gender and race don’t matter.
Trust me, as a black woman, I’m not exactly insensitive to racism or sexism in this campaign. It seems to me that while Obama’s supporters in the Joe Schmoe sphere are often over the top in their rhetoric and say sexist things, Obama’s people are playing the game in a different way than the people aligned with Hillary. Maybe if Obama wasn’t winning, we’d see folks in his campaign acting like crabs in a barrel like Ferraro just did. But he’s winning and so that’s all we have to go off on.
Oh, I saw it. But my take is almost exactly like Jesse Jackson’s on the entire matter. It should be noted that Jackson, who is often accused of finding racism where many claim it doesn’t exist, has endorsed Obama - had no problem with Clinton’s comment:
None of these analogies work. Specifically, Obama won South Carolina with a massive landslide of support from the African-American community. He also beat her in almost every other demographic, but not handily. If there was a huge Greek American voting bloc that Dukakis had won, and Obama was Greek and had a huge amount of support from Greeks, that’s the analogous situation. Ferraro was a VP candidate and never ran for president. Now if Jackson had never run for president, the comparison would not make sense and therefore could be construed as racist.
Well, the public has a problem, then. As I said earlier, there have been plenty of sexist comments, and at least one borderline racist jibe from Obama surrogates but they don’t stick to him. Is it because the press goes nuts when a Clinton surrogate makes a comment, but not as much when an Obama supporter does? Hell, if there was any semblance of balance in press coverage, comments made by Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, make the comment by the Clinton supporter look positively insignificant. And he has a role in the Obama campaign - not paid, but an advisory one.
I don’t necessarily think that supporters who are not on the payroll should be disassociated from the campaign. People say crazy shit, and if you aren’t paying them, and your response when asked is “I disagree,” that works for me. But there’s a double standard at play here. Clinton’s Latina supporter reflects badly on her? Well, by that reasoning, Rev. Wright’s comments about the Clintons “doing Black America like Bill did Monica” should reflect badly on Obama. I’m only asking for consistency, and this is a prime example of the different treatment the two candidates get from the media.
Well, as I said before, Jesse Jackson Jr.'s comment about Clinton not crying about Katrina victims was sexist and borderline racist. His brother-in-law said that her crying was an embarrassment to women. Michelle Obama said that if Hillary couldn’t run her own house, she had no business in the White House. These examples, as well as the examples I mentioned earlier, probably wouldn’t be directed at a man. And it’s not as if the comments came right after the NH “crying” moment. McPeak made his comment about a month ago. Craig Robinson made his comment a few days ago.
As far as making decisions to discuss the historic nature of either candidates’ campaign, that seems to have no resonance other than personal preference. I think you simultaneously draw people in and push them away by doing it. It’s not as if looking at the candidate’s pictures doesn’t remind you of it, anyway. I’m not going to say Clinton is bad for doing this and Obama is good, or vice-versa. But again, his surrogates have no problem making this point - Michelle Obama’s made mention of this fact. I would argue that for the most part, Obama has navigated the issue of race quite well in this campaign, in a way that Sharpton and Jackson could not. He’s been very shrewd in that respect, and unsurprisingly resembles how Deval Patrick went about his campaign in Massachusetts (which I observed firsthand as one of his supporters).
Again, I disagree. I’ve pointed to people in Obama’s inner circle that have made ridiculous comments, but they don’t get the same traction that Clinton surrogates do. I think there is an existing meme out there that Clinton is sneaky and, as the Obama campaign likes to say, “will do anything to win.” So it’s easy to ascribe terrible motives to what happens from her campaign. Obama’s meme is that he’s new, he’s fresh, he’s honest, so he gets the benefit of the doubt. Samantha Power demonstrated how patently ridiculous one has to be to even catch the attention of the media. But as I said before, McPeak, Jackson Jr., Robinson, and others make comments with relative impunity. (Though in fairness, McPeak did apologize.)
I’d be curious regarding your take on Obama’s “periodically, when she’s feeling down” statement. I am by no means a knee-jerk feminist but I could not believe that a Harvard-educated lawyer chose those words randomly - nor did Andrea Kramer and Norah O’Donnell when it was reported on MSNBC. He’s also made reference in the past to “the claws coming out” regarding attacks from Clinton - see here.
OMG, I’ll have to amend my previous answer.
It was January 13th, 2008. ! Bad luck day.
It turns out that Barack’s decades old friend, pastor, spiritual advisor , the pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ, preaching and campaigning for Obama (who was there) told his congregation and other African Americans through the sale of videos that
"Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."
The Christmas before, A Christmas service for fuck sakes, Wright primed his congregation and the video audience with this gem
"Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people," Wright said. "Hillary would never know that
"Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person."
Yeah, and Barack has never been called a fucking bitch. And Hillary’s people were slaves and oppressed too, by the very society that crucified your Jesus.
So what does Obama say last week about his spiritual advisor’s message
"Jeremiah Wright … has said some things that are considered controversial because he’s considered that part of his social gospel,"
Enough said.
Hillary was persecuted by the Romans?
[spittake]
I sure as hell haven’t … can you tell me if anyone pointed out that Ferraro, in the same interview, stated that she wouldn’t have been the VP nominee if she weren’t a woman?
By gum, you’re right! We need to hold politicians responsible for every word uttered by every person they know - otherwise we might have to listen to what they think about issues and boring stuff like that.
The only problem I have with your sarcastic post is that you didn’t make it several pages ago.
I posted in the GD thread about how much I dislike it when people play the denouncing game. I think that’s good enough.
Bill’s comments came before the SC primary, so why does this matter? I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill’s attitude partially pushed more blacks towards Obama. Which leads me to think that was actually his strategy: blackify Obama by giving blacks an excuse to vote for him, in exchange for getting white votes.
But Dukakis’ Greek heritage wasn’t put on blast like Obama’s race has been. And Greek-Americans weren’t and aren’t treated like a unnuanced, irrational voting block like blacks routinely are. Let’s be real here, Hippy. Early on when black support for Clinton was high, that was spun as blacks not thinking Obama was black enough. But when blacks came around to supporting him, people like Bill started treating that like a unsurprising given because “duh, they voted for Jesse!” Both assumptions reduce the decisions of black voters to simple-mindedness and betray a certain attitude that black folks like myself do not find endearing.
And what if she had run for president? Would it be appropriate for Obama to point to Ferraro as a way of predicting Hillary’s performance? Of course it wouldn’t! No one would ever think to do that. Hillary has more qualifications and gravitas than Ferraro did, so it’s an insult to point to Ferraro as a way of lowering expectations for Hillary.
I interpret that to mean when she’s not doing well at the polls, she decides to go on the offensive. The full sentence reads “I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.” Her kitchen sink approach does follow a cycle: a cycle that coincides with the eves of major primaries. So even though he probably could have worded this better, he’s not exactly making anything up and I have no problems with this as it reads.
Actually hearing how he said this would help, because often times it’s the way things are said that makes them questionable. Bill evoking Jesse’s name was said in a way that suggested he wasn’t making an innocent statement of fact, and that only comes through when you listen to him. If I hadn’t watched the clip, I probably would have dismissed it as hype just as I dismissed the “fairy tale” bruhaha.
I’d be interested in listening to the full context of this statement also, but I think you could make a case here. I don’t think that phrase would be easily used to describe a man who is going into attack mode like Hillary is. That said, I think if Hillary was a man, doing the same thing that she’s been doing with the kitchen sink approach, Obama would still be remarking on it. He’d probably just call it something more male-oriented. If I got the sense that he was treating her in a certain manner because she’s a woman, I would have a problem. But I haven’t gotten that sense from him at all.
That’s the confusing thing about this contest. It’s often not easy to delineate when gender/race simply colors a critique, or when it drives the critique. I think the latter is a lot more problematic.
I hate this kind of cross-talk (does everything about this campaign have to be in GD and the Pit?), but I’ll ask this again, since Dutch posted those Wright quotes in both places:
What’s racist about those comments? It’s fair to point out that women have also been oppressed throughout history - although I think his point was “the Clintons didn’t do anything for the black community in spite of their reputation” - but I see no racism.
You’re not looking hard enough.
Regards,
Shodan