Does Edwards want to win Black voters?

[Classical_Liberal]

Why did Edwards say "We don't need northerners coming down here and telling us what to do?" Did anyone ever make that statement supporting civil rights before Edwards apparently did? Sounds like George Wallace to me.

[lcordero]

1. I hate to defend him but

He said "Northerners" not whites or blacks. A few Blacks here on DU do favor him because of his Education platform.

[pruner]

3. he didn't say Northerners…

he said "people like YOU (finger pointing at Dean)".

[Classical_Liberal]

5. George Wallace finger pointed Kennedy when he said that

.

[Cleita]

2. Imagine that.

Southerners getting upset over Yankees telling them what to do. I wonder how those Yankees would react if we Left Coasties told them what to do or if the Southerners told the Yankess what to do? But, I really don't see your connection to George Wallace. I think Edwards knows his black voters as well as any of the candidates.

[Classical_Liberal]

9. You don't see the connection

Read your history. Those were the statements Wallace made about Kennedy and the freedom riders. It is very insulting to blacks to conjure up such an image. Understand I don't think Edwards is racist but that is a very insensitive remark and he should have realized some blacks might be offended.

[Cleita]

15. Those are statements that have been made by southerners

about Yankees since the Civil War. One of my roomates in college, who was from Atlanta,blathered on and on about Yankees butting into their business. You read your history again. I was alive when Wallace was Governor. I heard the things he said the first time he said them and he said many, many offensive racist statements, but this wasn't one of them. He was playing to his constituency who didn't want Yankees butting into their business.

[Classical_Liberal]

16. They didn't want Yankees to overturn Jim Crow.

.

[Cleita]

18. Now you are really not making any sense.

It's a sentiment in the South. They still remember the Yankee carpetbaggers during the reconstruction. That's where it comes from. It has nothing to do with African Americans. African Americans have a whole other barn to burn.

[Classical_Liberal]

19. They didn't like the carpet baggers because the carpet baggers

were elected by blacks. That is why the instituted Jim Crow just as soon as they got their citizenship back.

[Cleita]

20. This has nothing to do with Edward's remark.

Really it doesn't.

[Classical_Liberal]

24. Since those remarks are have been used to defend bigotry

I am not so sure. Least ways Edwards is a politician and he should know better.

[CMT]

4. yes, they all want to do well with African-Americans

and in Edwards's defense he actually represents a state with and has received large vote totals from African-Americans.

[Dagaz]

8. Good call

I'm glad someone is after the Black vote instead of the confederate vote.

[Classical_Liberal]

11. Given the confederate use of that statement to defend slavery

how can you be so sure. I'm not.

[atre]

33. This really is one of the silliest things I've ever read...

Because Edwards used a general statement that was used by someone else in a different era in the context of different subject matter, he must share those sentiments with said "someone else?"

I suppose if you've said, "Mission accomplished," you must support Bush's "war on terra?" Or if you've ever said "Come on down!" you must agree with Bob Barker about spaying and neutering pets?

You may not like the remark because it- in your view- sweeps Northerners with a broad brush and suggests they are incompetent to address Southern issues (this is apparently how you view Edwards' remark). Well, welcome to our world. We're very familiar with that broad brush because we get caught in its crosshairs every day. We're labeled as backwards, idiots, and bumpkins even if we're solidly left of center and intelligent enough to be very near the top of our class in law school. There's a great deal of such condescending remarks here for such an "enlightened" board.

I hate to break it to you but this world isn't all black and white. Please read your history. Northerners were almost as bad as Southerners during the Jim Crowe era; they just weren't as overt about it. There are several Supreme Court decisions in the education context which demonstrate that very point (look up the difference between de jure and de facto discrimination in Equal Protection analysis and you're sure to find a nugget).

[Classical_Liberal]

10. doesn't mean he'll receive them in the future.

. That is generally what whites said when they wanted to marginalize black voters. It goes all they way back to before the civil war. They were saying it to abolitionists.

[Bombtrack]

6. It was an off the cuff remark

unlike Dean who thought about and decided to stereotype southern working class whites in advance.

[Classical_Liberal]

12. Off the cuff remark

It was a bread and butter remark from the neoconfederates themselves.

[Bombtrack]

14. right he's a neoconfederate

aren't you the poster who said hezbollah isn't a terrorist organization?

[Classical_Liberal]

17. He is pandering to neoconfederates

document an attack targeted on a civilians done by Hizbolla. Hizbolla has only attacked military targets, so far as I know thus they aren't terrorists anymore than any other army that fights soldiers are terrorists. If you can show me instances of targeting civilians I will concede them terrorists.

BTW, aren't you one of the posters that supported the war?

[Bombtrack]

23. no, I didn't support it

but I wasn't against it either. I understand that there are good and bad reasons to remove Saddam, and nobody in the antiwar movement has really come foward with a different great way reform the region.

on another note

Three members of Hizballah, ‘Imad Mughniyah, Hasan Izz-al-Din, and Ali Atwa, are on the FBI’s list of 22 Most Wanted Terrorists for the hijacking in 1985 of TWA Flight 847 during which a US Navy diver was murdered. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of US and other Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s. Hizballah also attacked the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and the Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires in 1994. In fall 2000, it captured three Israeli soldiers in the Shab’a Farms and kidnapped an Israeli noncombatant whom it may have lured to Lebanon under false pretenses.

[Classical_Liberal]

27. It sounds like they target military and cia

might one call the civilians killed collateral damage, mostly in responce to the invasion of Lebanon? not much since then. They are enemy combatants no doubt, but terrorist? The link to the instances in Argentina is said to be fairly weak. Kind of like the link between Saddam an Al Qaeda. As is the link the the TWA incident. You also realize during that time the CIA under Casey bombed a Mosque that was lead by a Hizbolla cleric, and killed lot's of civilians. they admit this now. Reagan's people in the cia at the time, who were neocons, displayed gross immoraily in Lebanon, and our soldiers paid a price for it. I haven't made up my mind on the subject, but I know better than to believe the war hawks on anything. What I do know is that Hizbolla unlike hamas doesn't make a habit out of using suicide bombings against civilians. They haven't bothered the US since we got out of Lebanon. They also denounced the attack on the world trade center. They appear to have become more pragmatic over the years even to the extent that some may have committed crimes. Particularly during the Lebanese war.

http://www.columbiapoliticalreview.com/article014.asp

Yet Hezbollah is not the big bad jihadist group that Israel and the press like to portray. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups in the Middle East have orchestrated grander and more frequent attacks, killing 528 noncombatant civilians since the beginning of the al Aqsa intifada in September 2000. In the same period, Hezbollah accounted for no more than seven civilian casualties. In some ways, Hezbollah hardly even fits the definition of a terrorist organization. Its targets—including the Marine barracks in 1983—are almost exclusively military.

Fadlallah, the spiritual leader, was also among the first Shiite clerics to condemn the September 11 attacks. And Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s political leader, told 60 Minutes last month, “We reject those methods and believe they contradict Islam and the teachings of the Koran, which do not permit this barbarity.” Nasrallah, who oversees Hezbollah’s three main branches (political, social, and guerilla), has supported—even encouraged—the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank. But unlike other terrorist leaders, he has never specifically condoned attacks on civilians.

“I think we use terrorism as bludgeon, frankly,” said Augustus Richard Norton, an expert on Hezbollah at Boston University. “I would prefer to preserve the concept of terrorism for horrendous, opprobrious acts that take innocent lives rather than conflating it with resistance struggles against military targets. For example, while the Israeli occupation was going on in Lebanon, even Israeli generals did not accuse the Hezbollah of terrorism; that was a resistance struggle.”

Israeli General Reuven Benkler agreed. Benkler spent 18 years on Israel’s northern front and ended his service there last year as the highest ranking officer. He knows more about Hezbollah’s paramilitary operations than almost anyone else. “Terrorism has no end goal of statehood,” he said, “whereas guerilla warfare has a constituency behind and has a goal at the end of the day.”

[lcordero]

26. one person's "terrorist organization" is another's

"freedom fighters".

[Classical_Liberal]

29. They aren't freedom fighters as such

They were islamic fundies, which aren't my bag of tea and enemy combatants, but they aren't hamas. Israel just views them as a worse threat because israel wants the right to invade other peoples countries.

[tjdee]

7. Who's Edward? And does his *what* want to win black voters?

His friend? His arm?
;)

[QC]

13. LOL! I was wondering the same.

[JI7]

21. edwards DID win because of black voters

edwards already has a lot of support from black voters. check out his senate race in 1998. and remember, this was around impeachment of clinton. when the media whores were at one of their worst in their whoring for the right wing. but edwards was still able to win in the same state that voted for jesse helms. and much of his victory has to do with black voters.

[Classical_Liberal]

22. Yeah that was 1998. He didn't make those comments then

I think alot of them will feel very alienated now. If he wants their votes again, and doesn't take them for granted he shouldn't have come off sounding like Jessie Helms.

[JI7]

25. he didn't

his statement was on the issue of the confederate flag which he was offended by. he didn't respond in that way to a proposal in favor of integration.

[Classical_Liberal]

28. I would say it just made him look like a resounding hypocrite then

. He was going after Dean for using a confederate symbol in a speech which he didn't even endorce the symbol then he turns around and uses a statement that was code for defending the south the civil rights movement.

[candy331]

30. Too bad he couldn't have

stood up in 2000 for the black voters like they stood up for him when he was needed. "A friend when in need is truly a friend indeed".

[mbali]

31. You keep referring to "them"

On what basis do you stake your claim that "they" are aliented by John Edwards?

[Classical_Liberal]

32. He said something that is traditionally used by prosegregation

whites to justify Jim Crow and before that slavery. Why wouldn't that be offensive to blacks?

[Classical_Liberal]

34. kick!

:kick:

[mitchum]

35. you're grasping at straws (in order to build a pretty shoddy straw man)

[mmonk]

36. You're taking him wrong

or he didn't state it right. He didn't like the stereotyping. Edwards has good minority support here in N.C..

[Leftist78]

37. As a Southerner

I tend to agree with Edwards about what Dean said. I know what Dean meant when he made the confederate flag remark(s), but it still feeds into negative stereotypes about poor southern whites.

I took Edwards remark as more of a "you don't know anything about southern people and how dare you paint us all with that racist brush". I think you'll see Edwards do quite well among black voters here in SC.