Boston Globe: Clinton's diminishing of black voters

[marmar]

Clinton's diminishing of black voters
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Globe Columnist / May 10, 2008



IN HER long, sad self-diminution to being merely a white candidate for subsegments of white people, Hillary Clinton claimed to USA Today this week, "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." Clinton exploited an Associated Press poll to say how "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me . . . There's a pattern emerging here."

more stories like thisThis was on top of Democratic strategist and Clinton supporter Paul Begala saying this week on CNN, "We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans. OK. That's the Dukakis coalition, which carried 10 states and gave us four years of the first George Bush. President Clinton, you know, reached across and got a whole lot of Republicans and independents to come."

This reaches across the aisle all right, straight to right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, who has been urging people to vote for Clinton to prolong the Democratic primaries, said this week, "Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes that Democrats need to win: blue-collar working people. He can get effete snobs. He can get wealthy academics and he can get the young, he can get the black vote, that's about it."

Obama just got done being tarred and feathered as an elitist by Clinton and the talk shows for belittling "bitter" people in jobless small towns who "cling to guns or religion." Yes, that was dumb.

Yet here is Clinton dancing all over stereotypes. There is no way you can say in the same sentence, "hard-working Americans, white Americans," without diminishing black Americans as lazy.

Can you imagine the Jeremiah Wright-level furor if Obama turned Begala's words upside down and said: "We cannot win with the working class and white people. OK. That's the Reagan coalition?"

The truth is that Clinton is in denial about one of the key reasons for her slide from inevitability. She choked on the black vote. Conveniently forgotten in her reinvention in Pennsylvania as Rocky Balboa (who conveniently was a white working-class boxer trying to beat down a black champion), is that this white woman led Obama in an October 2007 CNN poll, 68 percent to 25 percent among black women and was nearly dead even with Obama among black men. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/10/clintons_diminishing_of_black_voters/

[nomorewhopper]

1. kicking

[BlooInBloo]

2. Ouch baby, very ouch.

[Blue_Roses]

3. Ouch!

:spank:

[DevonRex]

4. K&R and AMEN. nt

[glowing]

5. Just out of curiosity, why are smart people still considered such a threat

in this country. Public education is free because we believe that education is necessary development and is a right in a democracy.. So, why is it that people are scared of education? Its such an idiotic statement. No matter how old you are, there is always an opportunity to learn.. Even if its going to the local library or learning to knit or to cook or whatever... Why is it bad to be educated? Why do these asshats have to keep dividing the people? I'm tired of living in the Divided States of America. I'm not saying everything should be one long unitary thought.. but this continuous labeling and dividing has gone on long enough. What is sad is that its coming from the Democratic party. WE should know better (and believe me, its been going on in both camps.. one more than the other, but it has happened on both sides).

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Because they are harder to fool.

Simple as that.

[dana_b]

8. Should be a OP.

I thought the exact same thing. It's offensive to be called an effete snob because you're educated. It's offensive to hear the inference that you're somehow not as bright because you're uneducated. Most people in this country are more alike than different.

[K Gardner]

9. K&R

[Catherina]

7. Dumbest temerity ever. Here's a warning post most people ignored

The Clinton Campaign : Trouble in the horizon with the African-American Community
Posted by FrenchieCat in General Discussion: Primaries

Wed Jan 09th 2008, 02:56 PM

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4014875

The warning that the "Clinton campaign is playing with fire" in post 22 went totally unheeded. Wiser people around the Clintons begged them not to do this. It's a shame they didn't listen. All of America isn't past racism but the young generations mostly are. Of course we fought back. I'm very proud because America needs a new path.

I wish America would remember what it felt like when you placed your hopes in JFK and changed history. Give us our chance because we're going to be the ones paying the debt for the old time politics and want to leave something better to our kids.

When I remind my mother of this song she taught us, she smiles. She knows she taught her children well even if we're backing different candidates.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pphVs8bF0

You, who are on the road,
Must have a code that you can live by.
And so, become yourself,
Because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by.
And feed them on your dreams,
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by.
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by.
And feed them on your dreams,
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.......

[roguevalley]

10. paul begala is an asshole. and a bigot. stick that up your ass, Paul.