Letters to the Editor
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I'm always with you, Glenn
But I'm sad that you've lost your mind here, too. Bill compared Obama's wins with Jesse Jackson's? What the hell's the matter with that? When did Jesse become an evil man? Jesse won in South Carolina, twice. Fact. Bill hopes that Obama can be contained to the one state where he's been leading: Georgia. Does race have anything to do with that? You bet it does. Does gender have anything to do with Hillary's vote? You bet it does. I was too young to vote in 1960, but everybody I knew was very enthusiastic about JFK. He was Irish and Catholic. I believe that had something to do with his support, or part of it, where I lived. And we knew very well, and were cheered by, his address on the separation of church and state, reassuring the Protestants that he wouldn't be taking orders from Rome. Later, I found out he was lying about the "missile gap," which might have changed my leanings.
Point is, did Obama's race have anything to do with the blacks of South Carolina voting for him? Sure it did. Of course, the next sentence is, "but he got 25% of the white vote." Yeah, and the white candidates got 75%. And Hillary got 35% of the black vote, hardly small potatoes.
As for the "black candidate" thing, well, you have one unsourced report by the AP, and a ton of guessing and supposition to get to where that's evil.
And read Somerby to see how "Clintonian" Josh has been.
The truth is, one of Obama's biggest assets is this: big guns in the press in the '90s joined with the right in a group hate session of the Clintons. They continued with the War on Gore. And they've never been taken to account. And their names are hardly ever named, and never by anyone with any power in the press. The result is something like Iraq, if Judy Miller was still writing for the Times. They're going after Hillary just like they went after Gore. That's what you get when you don't clear the bastards out.
Indeed, I would like for race to vanish as a consideration. I'd love it if we just got analyses of policies, and of records. But if you try to understand anything through the mass media, you see as through a glass, darkly.
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This touchiness about race
does not bode well if Obama gets the nomination. If you think the Clintons have been rough on him, just wait until the Repug machine gets all geared up. A less paranoid, more pragmatic attitude would serve all you Obama fans much better than all this endless parsing and whining.
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Demoncratic party whinging and self doubt
YAWN!
Billary know the Dem party is full of losers.
When they win she'll have Obama on her team in some way, say nice things, and it will be on to the general election.
McCain/Romney will be hard to beat.
Hillary/Obama won't win it, but Obama will be given a plum promise.
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Stellaa
I think you're missing the point. Clinton wasn't comparing Obama to Jackson as people, as much as he was comparing their campaigns. Essentially, he was saying that Obama was running a "black" campaign, and would mostly black votes, and therefore couldn't win. THAT's how he was trying to marginalize him.
I have to say, I'm kind of stunned by how many arguments there are here saying this isn't what was being done. Personally, I think that the single biggest reason so much crap gets allowed in America is because these kinds of meaningless fights are hyped all the time. The real struggle isn't against the person down the street who might have a different skin color, it's against the corporations stealing your money. It's against people who think that they can pigeonhole who you are by looking at you. It's against the ones who think that they should have rights, but you should only have the ability to fork over your money. It's against the people who try to throw out smokescreens like this, that just distract you from the fact that your county is stuck in a useless war, is torturing people right now, is spying on everybody they can.
There are real racial problems in America, which only becomes more obvious every time there's an argument about it, but it doesn't get solved while all these other issues are out there. People need to stop getting distracted by the bright, shiny racial button they want everybody focused on.
If people don't start paying attention to the real problems, they'll never get them solved.
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Bill Clinton - The David Duke of South Carolina
I am a lifelong Democrat, and I am absolutely disgusted with the mud-slingling, character assassination, incessant lying, and politics of personal destruction the Clinton campaign and former president continues to display. I will vote for John McCain before I ever vote for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton's win-at-all-costs campaign of lying, rumor, innuendo, tearing your opponent down and trying to scare the public is something they are experts at. I am enthusiastically voting for Barack Obama who is a person who can unite us all to solve the many problems our country faces. He brings inspiration, hope, and change, and we certainly need change and that means no more Bush or Clinton's in the White House. If one compares the spouses of the two main Democratic contenders you have Michelle Obama, a woman of intelligence, grace, class, and dignity and then you have Bill Clinton. Enough said. America deserves better than what the Clintons offer. When the Clinton's come asking for your vote it's time America just says NO.
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I'm beginning to wonder ...
cythera45, there is a huge difference between being a black candidate and being "the black candidate". The first is a reference to a candidate who happens to be black, the latter implies a candidate who is only a candidate of and for blacks. I can't read Bill's mind, or the mind of Hillary's staffers, but from the context it sure as hell sounds like they meant the latter.
(Oh, and I have no clue why any of that sounds like paranoia to you. Is that a weird way of saying that you think I'm "oversensitive" or something?)