Reply #23: Race entered the campaign the second that Obama declared [View All]

[EffieBlack]

And every pundit, every pollster, every reporter, a whole bunch of people on DU and elsewhere started talking about, analyzing, and polling whether a black man could be elected president.

Race has been a part of this campaign from day one. And neither Obama nor Clinton had anything to do with it.

example:

From the May 13, 2007 "This Week with George Stephanopoulos:"

George Stephanopoulos: The 45-year-old who would be America's first African American president addressed the key question of his campaign, is he ready for the job?

{Video Clip:} Obama: I'm confident about my ability to lead this country.
. . .
Stephanopoulos: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings where you're out on the campaign trail, and I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

Obama: That's interesting.

Stephanaopoulos: One of your friends told "The New Yorker" magazine that the mainstream is just not ready for a fire-breathing black man so do you turn down the temperature on purpose?

Obama: You know, I don't think it has to do with race. I think it has to do with when I'm campaigning I'm in a conversation, and what I don't do when I'm campaigning is to try to press a lot of hot buttons and use a lot of cheap applause lines because I want people to get a sense of how I think about this process, I want them to have some ability to walk through with me the difficult choices that we face.

From the roundtable discussion on the same show:

Sam Donaldson: In your first question to me and in your interview with him, you raise something let's just put it on the table. He is an African American. Is the country ready?
. . .
Stephanopoulos: I guess I think that anyone who is not going to vote for Barack Obama because he is black isn't going to vote for a Democrat anyway. And I wonder if there are as many people who will vote for him because -

Donaldson: I mean the place where Barack Obama really helps is in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Right outside Philadelphia.
. . .

George Will: And those who are going to oppose him, have to do it subtly and maybe they won't be able to actually say it, the people who really have to fear in the Democratic coalition, Barack Obama as the nominee, is Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, a whole superannuated collection of so-called civil rights leaders. They see this man who really knows that the principle problem of African Americans in this country is not racism. It's cultural.

FOUR references to Obama's race by a bunch of white journalists and pundits on ONE episode of ONE show. And Obama's only comment on this was that it didn't have anything to do with race.

So, WHO injected race into this campaign.