Letters to the Editor
AlecsMom
Published Letters: 637 Editor's Choice: 18
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Marginalizing Voters
[Read the article: How Hillary Clinton botched the black vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Marginalizing voters has been the great Clinton strategy. This is the reason why the Clinton campaign has lost, perhaps irretrievably, the votes of black Americans. Many wanted to vote for Hillary based on their memories of her husband. This is certainly not a new or original perspective. It's shared by a large swath of Democratic voters. However, once Obama began to dominate the media, this particular group was swayed to jump ship, so to speak. That also is not a unique phenomenom. Many voters across the spectrum have done so. However, the Cinton camp has gone out of its way to cast this strength on Obama's part as a fundamental weakness, an aberration only to be attributed to blacks who, of course, must be voting for Obama because of his ethnicity.
This logic is offensive to blacks. It should be. It racially divisive and it's playing racial politics. This effort was repeated in PA by none other than Ed Rendell, a guy who won predominantly black Philly 2 times.
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@skylark
[Read the article: How Hillary Clinton botched the black vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How to break it to you? You're just wrong. Black voters went for Obama because they like him and his message. If racial pride were the key, they would have followed him from the beginning. He won them.
But the real story is not that Hillary is losing the black vote now, it's that many blacks won't vote for her in the GE. They are mad at her and her husband. I know I am and many of my family and friends as well. This is not what happens when you simply decide to vote for someone else. It's what happens when you throw one group under the bus to appeal to another group. You think that blacks don't see how the message has changed since SC?
As a side note, I also see this happening with Hillary's "elitism" charge. She keeps repeating that charge. So, how do you think all of the educated progressives and environmental activists will view this allegation? I foresee a battle to win these groups back in the fall if Clinton is able to take the Democratic nomination.
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@jebldmm
[Read the article: How Hillary Clinton botched the black vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Have you conveniently forgotten that Obama was not well known until fall of 2007?
Obama's popularity with blacks coincided with wide publicity and success of message. If color of skin was all that was needed, Obama would have been killing Clinton in the earliest polls among African Americans. Instead, it took time and publicity about his views, family, and experience.
You've got the process backwards. You can't win over someone that's already in your camp. You are simply making a very false assumption that blacks would have voted for Obama anyway. I know I wasn't going to, Clinton had my vote and then lost it. Or rather, Obama won it. Then, Cinton really lost my vote.
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@jeb
[Read the article: How Hillary Clinton botched the black vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Since you've delved into the subject of what politicians, even Obama, will do to win, what do you think of Clinton glomming onto McCain's gas tax holiday?
Is it a principled stand or sheer fraud and hackdom?
Please also address Clinton and Magnequench since this is also a current stump issue she's mining for votes. I'd love to hear what you have to say about Easley and Cinton's staggering lies about the genesis of this national security debacle.
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@jeb
[Read the article: How Hillary Clinton botched the black vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The convention speech in 2004. Yeah, that really pulled in millions of voters. Not. That propelled him in Illinois, period. Obama was a blip on the radar nationally.
I barely heard of Obama for years, except for a stint on Oprah. I follow politics closely and he barely registered for me as a national politician. OTOH, Clinton was in the public eye for several years, appearing on Meet The Press and other programs with regularity.
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@factoidus
[Read the article: How Hillary Clinton botched the black vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is much that the Clinton camp has to apologize for, to blacks, to urban voters, caucus voters, to young voters,to honest people and to Philadelphia. I don't posit all of this on Hillary, she's had help from Bill and Mark Penn and surrogates. Lots of help. However, this is what has turned this former Clinton supporter far away from her campaign.
Her camapaign has done the following with no doubt at all:
1) Insulted small states and caucuses as undemocratic or not representative of American voters.
2) labelled young voters as being foolish for choosing, in big numbers, Barack Obama.
3) lied to America about Bosnia-gate
4) Lied to Indiana & NC about the Cinton White House role in Magnequench. Please read about this, if you don't know about it. Very disturbing from anational security standpoint.
5) Lied about Hillary's role in promoting NAFTA
6) Promoted a conservative stance on guns right before Mayor Nutter of Phila., her staunch ally, signed a gun bill restricting sales in Philadelphia. That bill was quickly overturned.
BTW- The 4th Philly police officer in a year was murdered over the weekend with an assault rifle. Good work pandering to the gun lobby in PA Hillary! How many police in Philly have to die before we admit the problem is with easy purchasing of lethal weapons?
7) Labelled intelligent people "elitist" and dismissed sound economic theory in favor of her "leadership." Outright lied to NC and IN voters about the gas tax holiday. Undermined her own energy policy for a few votes.
8) Equated Barack Obama's winning campaign in SC to Jesse Jackson, a guy who never came close to Obama's electoral success.
Now that I look at it, I have to admit that Clinton's dismissive stance to black voters is probably the least of the reasons why I now will not vote for her, even if she is the nominee. Not that I would vote for McCain, but I won't reward this type of pandering. From guns, to gas tax nonsense, to lies about her record, I can't hang with her. Probably the guns and gas tax issue are what make me most angry at her.