Letters to the Editor
kenkapkk
Published Letters: 117 Editor's Choice: 13
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UMMMM?
[Read the article: Why don't those hillbillies like Obama?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The numbers are in. Clinton won Kentucky by 250,000 votes. In exit polls, 21% of those polled admitted openly (how many didn't) that race was a determining factor in their decision. Of that 21%, *80%* voted Clinton. That comes to about 40% of her total margin of victory or about 140,000 votes. You do the math.
Further, on Kos (or TPM) there were maps which showed the concentrations in counties where Clinton got 60% or higher. Except for the lower Texas horn, it was all Appalachia.
To think Obama doesn't care about the poor or rural people is a myth. But as others have pointed out, this group has abondoned the Democratic party in droves for Reagan, et al. What has it gotten them?
If they, or Clinton supporters who are angry they say they will not vote for Obama in the face of the economic gulf between the parties and McCain's vow to overturn Roe vs Wade with Supreme Court Justices, then you will get what you deserve.
This "elitist" label put on Obama by a millionaire many times over, who ran for most of her campaign from a Washington insider out strategy using Republican talking points is exactly what it appears to be-crap.
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Forest for Trees
[Read the article: A new low in Clinton bashing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The heat of this discussion is not Clinton or Obama. It is Walsh's amazingly inability to bring clarity, balance or perspective to the issues.
From two Huff Po comments retorting about an article on why keep supporting Hillary
(Blog excerpt) "And yet I learned something so important about race and black consciousness during this campaign. I learned that it doesn't matter if Bill Clinton (for instance) is a racist or not. The intentions of a person speaking are less relevant in the moment than the impact of the words being spoken. So whatever has been said about African-Americans by white people in this campaign has been heard by many African-Americans as one more layer of seemingly innocent comments built upon a lifetime of insensitivity and slights."
Are you kidding me?
As a mid-30s, white man, I saw this linguistic duality in my teens, and have long understood that communication is not only about intent, but about the "reception of meaning". You are "race conscious", but you're only now learning that the words of President Clinton might be misconstrued to have deeper, more insidious meaning than was actually intended? Seriously, you never considered this before?
You see this campaign as continuing "for the mothers who are taking care of their children and their parents and their home and has no time to take care of herself", but my mother voted for Obama. So did my sister, and my ex. So did 4 of 6 female neighbors.
You're still not sure Hillary's message about gender has been heard? Let me ask you this: Was Senator Clinton ill-prepared for post-Feb5th primaries because of her gender or her name? Which of these reasons motivated her sense of entitlement?
AND
"Hillary lost because she used her Senate career as nothing more than a means of generating a voting record that she thought would make her viable as a general election candidate, and in doing so she based her decisions on polling data and triangulated herself right into Republican territory. She then had the nerve to lash out at the "activist wing" of the Democratic Party for calling her on it (the vote for war, which she attempted to rationalize on the assumption that we're all idiots; the vote against banning cluster bombs; the vote for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment; the flag burning bill; etc.).
The reason that a sensible discussion on gender has not emerged from this is because that most of the Democrats who've opposed Hillary have done so on policy grounds (as opposed to the overtly sexist rhetoric of right wingers, whom she's embraced when it's been convenient). Hillary has not "found her voice," but rather "played the gender card" when it became politically expedient to do so. This is seemingly far more acceptable than "playing the race card," which would have provoked a backlash and has been carefully avoided by the Obama campaign. Through this she's managed to polarize the party and galvanize her base, and it's almost impossible to imagine having an elevated discussion about serious matters like sexism and gender when it's introduced in the context of a losing candidate suddenly resorting to identity politics as an attempt to divide and conquer."
Now one may question whether Obama has "played the race card" subtly or not, but its nothing like what has come out of Clinton's mouth.
I don't even have to scroll past the first page before I get more insight from *readers* than two months of biased nonsense from the editor of what has been voted the best magazine on the web?
What is wrong with this picture?