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It’s a factor, yes, but Hillary supporters tend to overstate its importance to make their candidate look like more deserving, and that’s what ticks people off. If Hillary was winning, few on her side would welcome insinuations that she is only as successful as she is because she’s a woman riding on the coattails of her husband, even though we probably all agree that this has been a factor in her success. Harping on this only makes the harpers look bad, really.
This makes little sense. This does make Obama more qualified, because offending too many people with one’s campaign strategies, as Hillary has done, inherently makes one less qualified to lead people. Part of being an effective politician is knowing how to appeal to some people without offending others, and Hillary doesn’t do this very well. She came into the race with a lot of political currency: name-brand recognizability, a strong “get r done” image, her husband’s popularity, the support of some big name people, the standing of potentially being the first female president . And steadily her currency has lost its value, as she has shown herself unable to compete against someone who is better at selling himself to the public.
I disagree. Many see Hillary’s blunders as a sign of a calculating mind that is so hungry for political points that she makes mistakes she should have seen a mile coming. Outside of the campaign, I think her voting for Iraq is pathomnemonic of this. Within the campaign, we’ve seen her make the same kind of mistakes with her “denounce and reject” ploy, and her insistence on trying to scandalize very trite issues that Obama defused so adeptly that he ended up looking like the winner (the plagiarism thing, Rezko, the so-called Iraq doublespeak thing). Her miscalculations with respect to downplaying MLK’s role in the Civil Rights Movement and letting her husband go attack dog on Obama speak negatively to her judgement. So I disagree that these none of these actions and their consequences make Obama a better president than her. Interpersonal skills are very relevant in this race, especially since their stance on the issues don’t drastically differ.
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Yes, we do indeed disagree. I don’t think playing the race card makes him more qualified. That, of course, is my reading of what went down at SC with MLK.
Someone else pointed out that Ferraro dismissing his candidacy as based on only race was divisive. See, to me, accusing her of doing so is what’s divisive. She was simply making a factual observation after being asked to explain his appeal. We can agree to disagree there as well, I presume.
As for the plagiarism thing, I agree that’s trite and makes him look like a winner on the issue. As for Rezko, NAFTA, and Iraq doublespeak (and now Wright), I don’t think he’s handled those as well and I do think that will hurt him and I believe on NAFTA, it already has hurt him in losing Ohio. Just my opinion.
As for Wright (the latest), I think his speech was really good. I don’t think it will go away, however, for many reasons including the following excerpts from an article from Fineman on MSNBC:
"He and his top aides have started to give excuses and split hairs with the enthusiasm (if not quite the surgical skill) of a Bill or Hillary Clinton. And for Obama it is not a good thing to start to sound like either.
The fact is Wright is the man who brought Obama to Christ. He is the one who married him and Michelle Robinson. He is the one who baptized their children. He is the one who helped supply a sense of community rootedness and black identity that Obama, by his own account, says he so yearned for as the credentialed but confused son of a racially mixed marriage.
So what do Obama and his surrogates say?
* David Axelrod, Obama’s media adviser and close friend, said with what I assume was a straight face (it was a conference call) that a main reason why Wright did not give the invocation in Springfield was that the temperature outside was too cold.
* Obama very carefully says that he never heard any of Wright’s incendiary preachments while he, Obama, was “in the pews” in the church.
* Obama says he never heard them “directly” from Wright in “private conversations.”
* Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, one of Obama’s closest political allies, said many of Wright’s most inflammatory remarks were made BEFORE Obama joined the church.
* The new pastor of the church (the Obamas still belong to it) in essence is threatening to brand as racist anyone who questions the statements and record of the Rev. Wright.
* Obama has said that he repudiates all of the nasty Wright statements that are circulating as audio and video files on the net (including the “God Damn America” and “U.S. of KKK A” ones) and that he “probably” would have walked out of the church and had words with Wright if he had heard them in the pews.
* At other times, Obama has dropped the “probably.”
By the way, the new pastor adding to the list of racists those that question Rev. Wright is another example of crying wolf on racism.
To me, it looks this way: Obama supporters imply that Hillary, Bill, and Geraldine are all racists or playing the race card. Someone on the board already pointed out in detail how Bill had an impressively diverse group of folks in his government. Yet he’s a racist or playing the race card. Geraldine spent 40 years fighting for civil rights. Yet, she can be smeared in an instant as playing the race card too. And so on. Ironically, Obama’s campaign has made this nomination process much more racially divisive than it would have been if he hadn’t run. Not saying that’s necessarily his fault (though I do think there’s been wolf-crying racism and some race-baiting going on by his campaign) but it’s just ironic given his ‘uniter’ mantra.
Meanwhile, on the other side Obama has the endorsement of Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and Rev. Wright. And the CLINTONS are the race-card playing folks?
There’s enough to go around on both sides but at the end of the day I think Obama handled it as well as could be expected, I think he had preferred not to have to address it at all or he would have given this speech a long time ago, and the fact that he’s given it now ‘under the gun’ so to speak is going to solidify his base, inspire people, and probably scare off some fencesitters as noted above by someone else insofar as there are many that don’t want to touch the issue with a 10-foot pole and can imagine we’ll be having this discussion for the next 4-8 years with him as POTUS. Is that fair? Probably not, but that’s how it may play out.
Once again, we’ll see.