The other day Bill Clinton noted that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988, and many people saw this as race-baiting and undermining Obama's candidacy. I even questioned, momentarily, why Pres. Clinton thought to mention the Jackson candidacy, but I guess Jesse Jackson wasn't offended and doesn't care. Money quote from the Times:
In his conversation with Mr. Obama on Saturday, Mr. Jackson said, “He told me what Bill had said. And I said to Barack, as a tactical matter, resist any temptation to come down to that level. There may be temptations, especially when the media keeps saying ‘Barack is black,’ and they never said ‘Dukakis is white’ or ‘Hillary is white,’’ he said, referring to Michael Dukakis, who won the Democratic nomination in 1988.Case closed, basically. Until very recently, the media were doing a laudable job avoiding the bogus "racial narrative" of the campaign. 2008 is the post-racial, post-gender election, and Democrats should be proud of this. We don't have enough time, period, to focus on the barriers we're breaking through. There is a gigantic intra-party ideological conflict to attend to.
3 Comments:
It wasn't necessarily race baiting. But it certainly wasn't an innocent comment. Comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson was not meant to be a compliment. What Bill Clinton was essentially doing was lowering expectations for SC by suggesting that it was natural for unqualified black candidates to appeal to the voters there. The subtext was very clearly: "Black guy winning South Carolina? What else is new?"
The problem of course being that Clinton was winning SC in the polls, by a LOT, until a month or 2 before the primary and she was carrying most of the black vote. Obama clearly changed a lot of minds. Also, he wasn't nationally well known like Jesse Jackson was when he ran, so he had a much higher hurdle to climb. Plus the amount he won by is nothing to balk at, that's a landslide.
Anyone who thinks that the Clintons havent been propagating a racial narrative hasnt been paying attention to the campaign since December.
-Billy Shaheen commenting on drug use; asking if Obama ever sold Cocaine
-Mark Penn repeatedly saying cocaine on Chris Matthews
-Hillary saying that the Obama campaign was passing around memos regarding her MLK-LBJ comment, when in reality he didnt
-Bob Johnson talking about "doing something in the neighborhood"
-Bill Clinton comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson, as if his race is the only reason to vote for him.
You could see Obama bringing up Whitewater, Monica, poll tested vacations, Dick Morris, etc... but you dont. You could see hiscampaign giving light to the Hillary-Huma Abedin lesbian rumours... but you dont.
The Clintons have purposely injected race into this. They have tried to paint him as the "black candidate". Don't deny the facts and blind yourself as a Hillary supporter. Step back a minute and see what has occurred.
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