Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 213 Editor's Choice: 4
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Needless Brouhaha
[Read the article: More about race and the Democrats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here is what I posted in an accompanying article, on this page:
"Here's Hilary's problem, in a nutshell: how can you raise the issue of who was more effective [if only by implication]- Martin Luther King or Lyndon Johnson-when, while King was risking his life, limb and freedom in racist southern precincts and was two years removed from getting a brick bounced off his head in an area closer to [hillary's] balliwick, she was campaigning actively as a Goldwater Girl for 'Mr. State's Rights,' himself [why else would Goldwater have carried five deep south states that hadn't voted Republican in a hundred years?]
I mean, how would she, with that and coming from a conservative family, be in a position to know? When you place the incidence of the use of that accent and some of her campaign's dicey forays into arguably racially charged territory against the backdrop of her political activities as a highly intelligent 16 year old four or five years removed from a commencement speech which landed her on the cover of a national news magazine, you have to wonder if she's made a misstep.
Let's face it: how would she have responded if Russert had hit her with that tidbit, yesterday, while questioning her on the King and 'fairy tale' matters?"
The question can be fairly asked whether Hillary's campaign apparatus wants to insinuate the question--through its seemingly warrantless use of certain issues vis a vis obama--of Obama's electibility as an African American and thus the concommitant matter of Dem's blowing a critical chance at the White House. Why else would her campaign lob shots, however obliquely, regarding his drug use, "laziness," "all sizzle, no steak" "shucking and jiving?" Why would she heedlessly compare Martin Luther King and Lyndon Baines Johnson to the former's detriment, however arguable? That was one issue that was sure to be misinterpreted and blow up in the campaign's face.
You can hammer the differences in style and issues between her and Barack and do it in a way that minimizes the racial factor...the question is whether, when faced with electoral armageddon, again, her campaign can do it.
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Ahhhh, it's all the media's fault?!?...
[Read the article: Sound and fury on the campaign trail]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't blame this on the media: the Clintons' abiding feature is the will and ambition to win. They'll bring out the brass knuckles if they have to.
In that light, let's examine what I believe really happened. Hillary was stunned by the Iowa results and the campaign realized they had to bloody Obama, particularly in regard to one salient point: his electability in an American general election. In short, how could it highlight the question, without actually coming out and saying so, of whether a black man--no matter how charismatic--with an ethnic first and surname and when faced with an historically ruthless opponent even after eight disastrous years of Republican conservative rule, could win the highest office in a still overwhelmingly majority white nation, in the Fall? Hence the subtle digs regarding long admitted youthful drug use, the remarks about flashiness, "shucking and jiving," the seemingly heedless Martin Luther King/Lyndon Johnson comparision and the condescension surrounding the hoseannas toward his speechifying--all designed to make sure the enthusiastically pro-Obama Democratic primary and caucus electorate was aware that it wasn't Jesus Christ it was pinning its hopes on, in November.
The Clintons are not racist but that doesn't mean they won't attempt to artfully use whatever is at hand to bring down an opponent or dismantle an obstace to power [the obscure Sister Souljah put down to mitigate Jesse Jackon's remaining influence on the party, in '92; Bill Clinton managing to get himself photographed for the front page of the New York Times and the wires at the head of a massive column of black convicts in striped prison wear at a time when Democrats were being portrayed by conservatives and others as a less than law and order party of minorities]. Again, the Clintons are ruthlessly ambitious and when their backs are up against the wall it shouldn't be hard to imagine they'll come out of the clinch snarling and clawing.
That's what happened after Iowa and the Obama campaign perceived it to be working--which is why they understandably overreacted and stumbled a bit. The challenge for Obama is to somehow blunt the "silent dog whistles," as Chris Matthews memorably put it, last night, of a surreptitious Clinton attack while not appearing to be willingly pulled into the mire of Politics as Usual. The Clinton campaign knows it has served up this dilemma to the Obama people and I'm willing to believe they'll justify this with the rationale that it isn't anything the Republicans won't try in November, so the sooner, the better.