Whites for Clinton

Your memory's failing you. Clinton didn't refer to Obama's position on Iraq as the "biggest dream," he called it the "biggest fairy tale." And nobody made any connection to MLK or any other race based thing of it. I do agree that some surrogates (Doug Wilder at least but there may have been more) made the mistake of saying he'd said Obama's candidacy was a fairy tale when Bill had clearly been talking about his opposition to the Iraq war. And I didn't like that Wilder said that because I think he knew better and I said so. But there was no racial element to that.

What you're thinking of is Hillary's statement that MLK was inspirational but it "took a president" in LBJ to get things done. I've been over this with Deckard, but neither Obama nor his campaign made unusual hay of this except to say, when asked, that it was unfortunate that HRC's choice of analogy upset some people by seeming to slight MLK which they were sure she didn't mean to do. They basically brushed it off. She started it, they deferred. And then the Clintons said Obama was playing the race card.

Same with the Jesse Jackson comments. Bill made the comment in order to downgrade what Obama had accomplished in SC, Obama said he was sure Bill didn't mean anything by it. And again, the Clintons accused Obama of playing the race card.

Most recently, Bill went on radio and accused the Obama campaign of playing the race card. The next day he was asked about it and said he never said it. The reporter said he had the quote. He said where did I say that? What's the quote? The reporter responded that it was on WHYY and read the quote and Bill said again that he didn't say it.

Here's a bit of a story on Obama's response to that particular situation:

Faced with questions about the former president’s remarks, Obama said he simply didn’t understand Clinton’s point.

“So hold on a second,” Obama told reporters with a chuckle. “So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it? OK, well, you better ask him what he meant by that.”

His campaign spokesman dismissed it with more glee.

“The secret memo? Where we put the idea in his head to say what he said so he can blame us for having said it?” spokesman Robert Gibbs said with a wink. “That would be pretty good if we could do that.”

This is how it has gone the whole campaign. The Clinton camp says something that seems maybe a little suspect on race, Obama gives them the benefit of the doubt and then the Clintons accuse him of playing the race card. And, for whatever reason, people buy it.

Which is why I said bull.

 

The distinction with this comment, rocketsjudoka, is that they have tossed out the "dog whistle." The previous comments -- dismissing Obama as just an inpsirational speaker, dismissing him as just another black candidate that won in a state with a lot of blacks in it -- you could choose to take another way. You could argue, I guess, that it was just a coincidence that whenever the Clintons compared Obama to someone else in order to dismiss him they always picked a black guy. And I certainly never accused them of making racist statements and neither did Obama.

But this is blatant. And the audio's even worse. Her intonation reads like she's using "white voters" as another term for "hard working voters."

She has also, tellingly, had nothing to say about it since the story broke. No "I misspoke," no "I ought to have used other language." And it comes on the heels of Begala saying that Obama only appeals to blacks and eggheads. This was orchestrated. And the implication is clear. And damn sad.

It also makes me think twice about all the previous benefits of the doubt I gave them on this stuff.

The Washington Post's Dan Balz, on Olbermann an hour ago, said (I'm paraphrasing) that maybe by WV or KY she'd be calling for segregation. She is willing to split the party in two now, and for good. There is no line she's unwilling to cross to convince supers to annoint her.

A lot of you guys have been saying we should vote Democrat no matter what, that nothing she's done has been that divisive. If you couldn't see it before, I hope you can see it now. And I hope you can see how incredibly discouraging it is to the vast majority of loyal black D's as well as all the new voters Obama's brought into the process. I hope you can see now, especially at this late date when it's basically all over but the counting, the damage this is doing to our party.

I recognize that both camps are pissed at the other. The difference is that Obama supporters are pissed because her attacks have been over the line, often dishonest and now clearly race baiting. The Clinton side is pissed for the exact same reasons -- that they've been buying into her attacks. That's why you see so many more Clinton supporters that say they'll vote McCain or stay home than Obama ones (your previous thread not withstanding). They believe he's unelectable, they believe he can't be trusted to take 3am phone calls, they believe he played the race card, they believe McCain would be a better C-in-C, they believe he wants to disenfranchise voters in FL and MI, they believe he wants to selectively leave people out of universal health care, they believe he's not committed to a woman's right to choose and they believe that white people will not vote for him in the general. None of those things is true but they believe them all because Hillary told them to.

She has divided the party all on her own. His only foul here is winning.

 

You have never heard "racist" from me during this entire campaign and I am both the loudest Obama supporter and Clinton opposer on this board.

Yes, it helps Obama that he gets a majority of blacks. It also helps Clinton that she gets a majority of women. But she made a very important distinction today. She didn't say Obama's having trouble with blue collar voters today because he isn't; he's only doing less well with blue collar white voters. And he's only doing less well with those in certain areas -- he certainly didn't struggle with them in VA or WI or any Western states since he won the white vote in each of those areas. Further, his support among blue collar whites went up on Tuesday not down as HRC said. She was using as her reference a poll from May 3. She had to go back to the past to make her point since it was no longer true.

And the truth of the matter is that he's not doing so badly with white voters if you look at the entire race. Her advantage is with low income whites with less than a college education and with voters over 65. Conversely he has an advantage with college educated voters (which Begala dismisses as "eggheads" in a far more blatant dis than any of Obama's camp toward any HRC demo) and voters under 45 of all races.

Picking out whites (and hard workers) and then saying that Obama has a problem getting white votes was meant to send an explicit message. He took a dip with white voters during all the Wright stuff, he addressed it and recovered and she's trying to bring it back.

 

First of all I don't necessarily agree that only racists do that. I think opportunistic cynics do too, especially desperate ones, and I think Hillary is that but is not a racist. But when I said I hadn't used the word racist during this campaign I meant before today. Even today I wouldn't use "racist." And I wouldn't even call it an appeal to racists as I believe there are few actual racists among the Democratic Party super delegates. But it was an appeal to fear racist sentiment in the general. And it was a "blatantly racial appeal" by definition. She blatantly said Obama has trouble appealing to whites. That is blatantly racial no matter how you slice it.

By the way, Obama's led among male voters throughout the campaign -- handily. If he hadn't, he'd have a heck of a hard time beating a candidate that wins women in elections in which women are always (or at least nearly always) in the majority.

How do you think it would go over if Obama said that Hillary can't win in November because she has a problem getting male votes?