Letters to the Editor
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Only three more weeks people
until June 3rd and all this will be essentially over.
FL and MI will be resolved and she will still be behind in delegates. This is all coming to an end. She's become desperate. She's flailing. She's fighting and God bless her. The history books will record it all, good, bad and ugly but only six more contests and only three more weeks and we can all get on with it.
Countdown clock anyone?
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trash
Until now it was useful for the Clintons to pander to the Black vote and to the educated vote the young vote and the middle class vote. Unfortunately almost everyone has seen through the opportunism by now. Bill was elected as Bubba and now all Hillary has available to pander to is the white trash vote. I agree it is a sad outcome. I think Geraldine Ferraro was prophetic in blurting out how thin the membrane is between political opportunism and racism. There are after all no racists in America. Rush and O'Rielly have many Black friends ... don't get me started on the self righteous Lou Dobbs.
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"Segregation today, segregation tomorrow and segregation --- forever!"
Of course she's trying to channel George Wallace. The Clintons have been using race to try and try a wedge between whites and blacks, since this campaign began. They realized Obama, especially post Bill's stupid South Carolina remarks, was getting much of the black vote which any Democrat needed to win.
So instead of actually appealing for it, they went the lazy, disgusting route and decided to drive race right through the middle of this thing like a mack truck.
And the sad part is her supporters not only know it, but are GLADLY going along with it.
Take this gem from one of her supporters on here not even three days ago:
"I know one thing for sure. How AA's have been voting during this primary and what they've been posting on the forums has definitely made them more suspect in my eyes. Let's just say that civility will remain, but the chances of anything beyond that are greatly diminished. It would be better if we just agreed to keep our personal spaces separate -- and leave it at that."
I mean do Hillary supporters even UNDERSTAND what they're doing? You're adding a new layer and depth of racism this country has never seen and attempting to FORCE-FEED IT ON A YOUNGER, LESS PREDJUDICED GENERATION SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAD THE AUDACITY TO SUPPORT A BLACK CANDIDATE WHO APPEALED TO THEM.
It's really disgusting.
Try, for one minute, to put yourself in the position of someone black in this country, look at the history of African-Americans (which is in fact ALL of our history since we are all Americans), quit being mad your candidate lost and consider how YOU might feel if you finally had a candidate that is able to motivate millions of unprecedented new supporters, give some of the best speeches this country has ever heard, had the sense to oppose this war from the start, opposes stupid gas tax gimmicks and attempts to talk to voters as if they're adults.
This goes along with the whole Clinton "he's not qualified to be dogcatcher" narrative. Too bad.
Change is coming in this country. Slowly, painfully, but it's coming. You can get used to it or find yourself behind the times. The choice is yours.
But we're not going to live in 1956 forever. Some of us are moving forward. Come join the future. We refuse to fear each other, irrationally, anymore.
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@Maddie
I agree that if there's one distinguishing characteristic of politics in the Internet Age, it's the molecular breakdown of minutae and metablowup of every innocent-yet-inartful comment.
However, Hillary's comment was not innocent or insignificant.
As she has proven over the course of this campaign, she doesn't say anything by accident. She has been the definition of the focus-grouped talking point, and it has transformed her public persona in to something utterly inhuman (why else did her numbers spike after she cried?). She knows every public thing she says runs through the endless sieve of the blogosphere and cybertubes and interwebs and the stuff like this is the size of a wrecking ball. And it's not like she said this to a room of private donors ... she said it to USAfreakingToday.
But what adds to the malevolence of this comment is not just that it was intentionally broadcast over McNews, but the timing. She knows damn well that the race is over, and she knows damn well that a fractured Democratic party is the best way to put McCain in office. She also knows damn well that the only way the party doesn't fracture is if Obama is nominated and she uses her influence to convince Joe and Jo Sixpack to not believe Uncle Ignoramus's emails about Obama's secret muslim leanings.
Either she's such a delusional megalomaniac that she can't help herself, or she's the most diabolical power-hungry scamp to ever grace the national stage.
The core commandment of primary politics is "thou shalt not harm the party". She's taking a giant dump on that commandment.
So no, this isn't a trivial matter. She needs to stop this shit, like immediately.
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No ugly subtext here, no sir, move right along
... there was no ugly subtext to her innocuous remark about the different roles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Baines Johnson in the civil rights crusade, although several prominent Obama supporters promoted that smear.
The "ugly subtext" was that it was an ignorant remark that Clinton should have known better than to make in the first place, let alone to dig her heels in and defend.
How is it a smear to point that out?
And how was pointing it out then any different than what Joe Conason is saying now — about another, different, ignorant remark?
The whole point of Clinton's campaign is to demonstrate her hard-as-nails dedication to winning, no matter what kind of commitments she has to make and what kind of stands she has to take. Personal friendliness with black Americans, and her and her husband's past accomplishments in the cause of civil rights, are precisely not the issue.
The issue is that (right or wrong) she went in whole hog with white, rural working-class America, and part of running that kind of campaign is exactly what Conason starts to say it is — an appeal to race anxiety — before he backs off from the inevitable destination of his line of reasoning.
But why back off? Doing what she did is what it took to even have a chance of winning, and because she's the kind of person she is Clinton paid the price.
It's not exactly flattering, but it hardly seems fair to draw the conclusion that, therefore, Clinton is like George Wallace. For one thing, it's not as if most Clintonites are going to vote McCain over Obama. For another, Clinton shows no sign of wanting them to.
So let's not get all kid-gloved about this &mdas; but let's also remember to save the worst judgment for if she decides to run on an independent ticket as an Obama-spoiler.