Letters to the Editor
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MasturKate, ProudConfederateTrash
How sad that a seminal election has drawn such bottom feeders, when the stakes are so astronomically high. A disjointed, extended, close contest has many positive aspects, including the number of new, formerly apathetic voters. Your response is to demonize a black man who is the most telling, penetrating voice to come to American politics in forty years. Mock his name. Tie him to a cross constructed of black fundamentalist preachers and washed out sixties radicals, as if they somehow define him. It won't work. You jerks have had your three decades of closet white supremacy, a supremacy undercut by every monosyllable, every racist epithet, every capitalized grade school rant. You day is done. Tomorrow, again, billary will have bitched her way to a close second. She'll lose more in NC than she might gain in Indiana (former home of the KKK HQ, but you klan kuties know that, dontcha?) So, by tomorrow at this time, the shrew will be about ten delegates further behind than she is now (over 130), and she's done run out of track. Will you close ranks with real Democrats and vote for whomever is the nominee? I didn't think so. Go visit Stone Mountain, Georgia, your ideological homeland. Polish your lawn jockey.
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@ sesanders
"... I do not believe that Bill Clinton had racist intentions at all but the Obama campaign was sure to jump on any slightest opportunity to make him appear so...."
Please. Bill Clinton, like many Southeastern politicians, is a master at cozying up to black voters just enough to not piss off poor/working class whites and, to top it all off, showing the latter that they shouldn't worry about his view of the ultimate scheme of things [ie., whites still calling the shots, albeit on an enlightened political playing field].
Clinton's genius was transferring that approach to the national stage, in '92, with his conspicuous "law n order" photo ops in front of hordes of prison-stripped black convicts; his use of Sister Souljah as a device to ensure middle of the road/conservative whites that his would be a presidency they wouldn't have to fear and his take-down of Jesse Jackson [maybe, as an explanation for Jesse's shrugging off Bill's recent South Carolina slur, the former's become inured to contemptuous backhands] during that year's primary campaign and at the NY convention.
Once he got the Presidency, he had no problem caving to the GOP on welfare reform and throwing the black Justice Dept nominee, Lani Guinier [she's technically mixed race but, really, let's face it, this is America and any one of Salon's correspondents who try-disingenuously, in my eyes--to take a different tack on this is blowing smoke, as Obama has found out, to his dismay] under the bus when that same GOP slimed her as a "Quota Queen."
While he should be given credit for a more diverse cabinet than his Republican predecessors, Clinton's main attribute, in the racial understanding dept, is that he talks a good game. Regaling in lockerroom banter with the likes of a Vernon Jordan doesn't exactly qualify Bill Clinton as a paragon of racial understanding and unity. He's a politician. And, no matter how modern, a Southern one.
(neither the Obama campaign, or the African-American electorate had fallen off the turnip truck, the night before the Clintons subtly started playing the race card. The fact that they obliquely referred to narcotics skullduggery on Obama's part or that they used black surrogates like Bob Johnson and Charley Rangel, as well as Bill, to try to "blacken up" Obama doesn't blunt that reality. I suspect that AA's, having survived in a hostile environment for as long as they have, were as keen enough to have recognised the Penn/Clinton tactics for what they were as they have in being one of the few demographics to have seen George Bush for what he was, in both 2000 and 2004)
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Nonsense
"...It does not, would not ever matter what Hillary does or does not do, one way or the other. Black Americans will vote for Barack."
Nonsense, as Schaller's point is that they would not be voting for Obama in such overwhelming numbers had Clinton been more adroit in handling her campaign and, specifically, the way she regarded and handled the AA electorate.
Had this campaign not taken the low road, as it started to do in New Hampshire, in the wake of the panic inducing results of Iowa, she may well have had, at a minimum, that 20 to 30 pct of the black vote she needed to be in a stronger position vis a vis the Super Delegates.
She blew it and the reason why is she really didn't understand--or respect--the constituency she so long had taken for granted.
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Hillary takes the low road
Cos it's the only road she knows road.
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The Black Vote
Hillary did not botch anything.
Black people are racists and with a choice of a black man and a white person they will not think twice about who to vote for.
Remember all the clapping and cheering that went on at the Pastor Wright's God Damn America service??
White people are voting for Obama to show they are not racists and black people don't care what anyone thinks. they will vote for Obama because he is black. Most of us already know this.
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Utter BS!
While, to be fair, I'm sure there are some blacks voting for Obama b/c he's black (just as there are some whites refusing to vote for him for the same reason,) it is utter bs to even suspect that 90% of black are following this same rationale.
This has been a very convuluted and complex primary election cycle and to ascribe one simple reductive rationale for why several million people have voted the way they have is either stupid, racist, or both.
Many people (Schaller and the black and non-black members of this forum) have offered a slew of convincing and appropriate reasons to explain why Black voters have chosen not to vote for Clinton. But many Clinton apologists here have refused to accept any reason which might indicate that their candidate either botched her attraction of, took for granted,or otherwise insulted this group in any serious way.
They have instead counterclaimed that (a) Obama and his operatives have nefariously play his own race card, effectively branding the Clintons as racists despite their previous closeness withe the AA community; or (b) they have decided to attack the AA community itself claiming that we are either too stupid, too racist, or too gullible to appreciate our own interests and have been lead towards the darkness that is Obama's candidacy.
Although I do think he is a more honorable politician than most, I don't doubt that Obama has in some way played "dirty politics" to attract voters. But even granting this these tricks, I maintain, cannot, nay, do not explain the virtual unanimity (90%) of the AA disdain for Clinton's candidacy. No one doubts our former loyalty to Bill Clinton, even in his most trying hour. Why do some now doubt our at least initial open-mindedness to listen to HRC's pitch in the beginning.
Rather it seems more human and reasonable to expect that we listened to HRC and came to disagree with (I would say loathe if my opinion and those of my friends are any indication) her message.
From our perspective, she has insulted us and our cherished leaders; she has insulted BO in ways we find both bizzare and unfair, and by doing so again insulted us as he is one of our own; she has implimented a political strategy designed to marginalize and demonize us in order to gain the goodwill of groups historically hostile and antithetical to our interests; and she and her apologists have dismissed us and now try to blame us for her failure to appeal to us and our interests.
Clinton apologists, how can you blame US for not being swayed by what we see as a poorly designed and executed campaign that seemed either to take us for granted or used us as bogeymen to scare our historic adversaries to vote for her? How can you do this and remain decent and honest people NOT blame your candidate for losing her husband's most loyal followers and defenders? Shame! Shame on her and you for such insensitivity!
And if Obama could lose tens of thousands of poor white votes by arrogantly claiming that they "bitterly clung" to guns and religion, why then is anyone surprised that HRC has lost millions of blacks by speaking and acting in a way that we deem as racially insensitive over a period of months?
Search your hearts, if you can. You will see that this way makes the most sense.
Peace--