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• Monday, March 31, 2008 11:13 PM

  @Aycharaych

  You say: "Why should I bother to read the rest of the article when the very first thing I see is total garbage?"

  Perhaps if you had read further, you would have noted that the writer also cites Sheila Jackson Lee, Harold Ford, and Nelson Mandela.

  You would also have read this:

  'Obama’s racial politics are not the overt racism of George Wallace standing at a school door and proclaiming “segregation now, segregation forever.” It is the more odious kind; it’s the accusation of racism when none existed, the implication, the dog-whistle, and the double entendre. It is perhaps more divisive and hateful because it’s nearly impossible to defend yourself from the accusation. Bill Clinton really was saying that Obama’s position on the Iraq War was a “fairly tale.” It really did take Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson to pass Civil Rights legislation.

  'As Sean Wilentz writes in The New Republic regarding Obama’s use of race: “A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the `race card’ were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students.”

  'The absurdity of the accusation regarding the Clintons’ alleged use of race brings into relief Obama’s repugnant racial strategy. In Democratic primaries and in the General Election, Clinton clearly would want to have as many black supporters as possible.

  'To paraphrase Senator Ted Kennedy speaking of George Wallace, Obama’s racial politics not only need to be repudiated, they need to be defeated. As Democrats, if we are to be congruent with who we say we are, we must wash the stain of racial politics from our party forever.

  'I could no more vote for Obama than I could vote for George Wallace, and the reasons are much the same.'

  All I can add is, amen.

  —KateTex Read KateTex's other letters
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