Letters to the Editor
abe_jrdn
Published Letters: 62 Editor's Choice: 3
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Why do Clinton Supporters Hate Obama So Much?
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Obama was white he would not have been given the huge opportunity to speak at the convention in 2004 after which his career skyrocketed.
And this is because? Because his speech was nothing special? Or maybe because they never let a white person speak at the Democratic National Convention you know!
It is becoming increasingly clear from these comments what is going on with the Obama-haters like Kate-Tex and her ilk. Like others have said- they despise Senator Obama simply because he is doing well.
People are angry because he took the black vote from Senator Clinton in South Carolina - as if she was entitled to it because "the Clintons have done so much for those black people". Remember that Bill Clinton won 82% of the black vote in SC when he ran for prez against other Democrats- to what do we attribute that? Presumably they voted him because he was Southern. Of course white Clinton supporters do not have a problem with that form of prejudice - in fact they welcome it sometimes. I doubt John Edwards would have gotten so far without it. He had 3 more years in the Senate than Obama when he ran for president -nobody said anything about his whiteness one way or the other because for most whites your race can only be a problem in the U.S. when you are not white. Then it becomes something to pay attention to, something that it is right or wrong to benefit from - depending on who you ask.
Part of the anger was that yes, Barack Obama has very little experience on the national political arena: He has many accomplishments but so does Hillary Clinton. My theory is if Hillary Clinton thought she could get away with running for President in 2004 she would have done so, but she or her advisers calculated that with her high negatives, it would be perceived as too ambitious, too opportunistic after her rapid conversion to being a New Yorker. So she made the sacrifice and went for another run at the Senate to prove that her commitment to the people of New York was genuine. When Senator Obama actually started to look like he could get away with what she had thought impossible for herself, both she and her supporters became consumed with envy and indignation.
Of course, Barack Obama has been serving the people of Illinois in one capacity or another for a few years longer than Hillary Clinton has served New York. You could say he paid (some of) his dues before he ran for the U.S. Senate - her only political experience before aspiring to that lofty post was second-hand.
The utter ridiculousness of Kate-Tex's indignation to me lies in the suggestion that Senator Obama is at fault for injecting race into the race. With her response to Geraldine Ferraro's comments Senator Clinton clearly was trying to play the Southern Strategy or a variant of it - to use race to divide and marginalize Senator Obama. As others have pointed out this has been part of the Clinton strategy from the start - in ever less subtle variants. It was: Oh he only wins caucuses, only wins small states, only wins with blacks and latte-liberals, I am just so much more experienced he only makes speeches, he is just a dreamer like (black) MLK while I am a doer like (white) LBJ. FInally it became: He is only winning because he is black.
I hate that this race has come down to this identity politics junk - but it is largely Senator Clinton's doing that it has. I have seen absolutely no compelling evidence that Team Obama somehow, with expert cunning, managed to make Senator Clinton look racist without her very willing cooperation. I agree with ljwalker that this race is far from over. I think Senator Clinton will do absolutely everything in her power to win, including plenty that is unethical. But (some of) her supporters have become so emotionally attached to this race that they are becoming delusional - just as some of Senator Obama's supporters were and are delusional, seeing Barack Obama as some kind of saviour and Clinton conspiracies around every corner.
As for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright - he absolutely looks like the clearest target for the GOP to get to Senator Obama. I think Obama's response yesterday helped him a little - it made some kind of sense to me at least, but now he needs to have a way to avoid being defined by the reverend and by the GOP and Senator Clinton. Isn't he lucky?