Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 219 Editor's Choice: 4
-
Should we be Surprised?
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Clintons do what they've always done: break out the brass knuckles whenever their political fortunes have been threatened. There is a reason why most high profile Democratic establishment figures are breaking Obama's way. There is a reason why Dems lost Congress doing the Clinton dynasty and all that tacking with the wind [on welfare, etc]. The Clintons have primarily promoted themselves, over the last 15 to 17 years.
I've written and said this before: the Clintons are not racists but, like so many in the grand game of American politics, they are political pragmatists and they knew that Obama had to be brought to heel lest, they felt, he be the Party's nominee and the Democrats brought to ruin when 3/4's of the electorate had, courtesy of the Republicans, their focus readjusted on Obama's "blackness." Hence, the nonsensical Martin Luther King/LBJ analogy applied by Hillary Clinton to a candidate who was anything but "black" and a candidacy that was anything but explicitly about civil rights [again, as I've also mentioned before, how could Hillary Clinton "fix her mouth" to mention anything about the relative effectiveness of Martin Luther King in the mid sixties when she, the teen-age daughter of a conservative Republican family, was actively campaigning, as a "Goldwater Girl," for a guy who'd eventually carry, as part of his six state electoral total, five states from the old Confederacy comprising the heart of the South's "massive resistance" to Federal desegregation and the Movement for Civil Rights?]. As for Bill, my feeling is that he's attempting to atone for his [typically] ruinously selfish boorish behaviour in the White House. Why else would he, famously proclaimed-in the wake of his impeachment-as America's first "Black President," trot out the tactics he employed to marginalise Jesse Jackson, in '92 [the Sister Souljah hoohah] and assuage white voters that his wouldn't be a party kowtowing to minorities [the famous "chain gang" photo of '92, with Clinton at the front of a prison-striped horde of black convicts].
What price is political office? That's what I've thought all along doing this dust-up over the past two weeks or so and it was never more highlighted for me than when, during one of the more acrimonious exchanges between Hillary Clinton and Obama during one of the last debates in S.C., the camera panned to Chelsea Clinton and the pained, almost despairing, expression on her face. Was that from seeing, for the first time, her parents in full battle mode against an opponent who, because of his alleged disavowal of partisan politics, almost mystically appeals to the demographic to which she belongs?
Again, should she get the nomination, I'll vote for Hillary Clinton but one has to wonder how badly she may have, in a bid to derail the Obama Magical Mystery tour, damaged her candidacy in a general election, should she get there.
-
To Anonymous
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...Yes, Blacks are voting for Obama overwhelmingly because he is Black. If he were white they would be sticking with Hillary. Does anyone doubt that?..."
Nonsense: she had the black vote, in S.C. and elsewhere, even well after Obama had announced he was in the race [she had and continues to have more black establishment political (and business) figures toting her water for her than you could shake a stick at and the polls reflected that]. Blame her, her husband and her campaign for wrongheadly attempting to marginalise Obama as a fringe--and, yes--"black" candidate. South Carolinians of what ever colour will yes and smile you to death especially when they don't think much of your house manners and black South Carolinians, like most African-american voters, I've found, aren't idiots [who else, in two elections, consistently nailed the presidential efficacy of the current resident of the White House?] and they may have "yessed" and grinned Bill and Hillary on tour even in the last days of the campaign but they saw the Clinton tactics for what they were--and reacted accordingly where it counted.
Don't blame them, or Obama, for initially playing the race card, however artfully. Lay that particular sin where it belongs.
-
Glenn,...
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...called it as he saw it, which is really all you can ask of a pundit.
And, he nailed it...pure and simple.
Those who object, whether they be trolls of whatever political stripe or genuine posters, have to stop knocking political observers simply because they've simply said their favorite emperor's buck naked.
-
to Anonymous re Anonymous Troll
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bait: "You go see what the Republicans do for blacks, sugar: predatory lending, job offshoring, free passes to employers who displace blacks with rampant illegal immigration hiring...."
Response: "Your ignorance is astounding. Thanks for calling me sugar, though. Shows you're both a racist AND sexist jerk."
Don't worry about him/her. "Anonymous" smells like a GOP troll attempting to create an opening for an otherwise problematical Republican presidential candidacy, in November. Others have noted the same thing, here.
The blogosphere and the rest of the political internet is rife with similar tactics. There are issues and strong feelings but nothing like what the troll jobs would wish to foment. Come November, whoever wins the nomination, will have the support of the party and the party should have one aim--rebuke a GOP mainly responsible for ensconcing the ideologically stunted, incompetent venal in the White House for the past eight years.