High Road
Taken by Obama, who is awarded points for saintliness in this ABC report:
ABC News’ David Wright, Andy Fies, and Sunlen Miller Report: Sen. Barack Obama told ABC News Monday there is nothing in Sen. Hillary Clinton’s record that would give him any cause for concern about her in terms of racial politics.
Well, it’s her and her husband’s willingness to lie and use the American people in general for their own political ends that is the real concern.
Some say she seemed to suggest that it took a white politician to fulfill a black man’s dream.
It did. It took a bunch of them. That’s history and politics. Not necessarily political useful an observation at this point. Or is it?
“I don’t think it was in any way a racial comment,” Obama told ABC News. “That’s something that has played out in the press. That’s not my view.”
But, he said, the comment was revealing about her political character. “I do think it was indicative of the perspective that she brings, which is that what happens in Washington is more important than what happens outside of Washington,” he said.
Racially charged code words! Ha ha, just kidding.
He said he believes the quote betrays a belief on her part, “that the intricacies of the legislative process were somehow more significant than when ordinary people rise up and march and go to jail and fight for justice.”
He called that a “fundamental difference” between them.
Disturbing anti-old white man overtones!
Former President Bill Clinton also offended some African Americans when, addressing Dartmouth College students, he referred to Obama’s campaign as “the biggest fairy tale” he’d ever seen.
Did Obama feel dissed? He laughed and shook his head.
Dissed? Any particular reason for that choice of casual black American slang in that particular sentence, ABC? I’m going to have to think about this for a minute and see if there’s a racial offence in there.
But, again, Obama looked past the racial controversy.
Instead, Obama directed his response to the dispute over whether opposition to the Iraq War was consistent. (Clinton has since reiterated that is what he meant when he invoked the “fairy tale” line.)
Good thing. Otherwise he’d look (more) delusional. Uh, scratch that.
“Both he and Sen. Clinton have been spending a lot of time over the past month trying to run down my record,” Obama said. “What particularly distresses me is this notion that I wasn’t against the war from the start.
“This is coming from a former president who suggests that he was and nobody can find any record of it,” he said.
Good point, Obama. Too bad Bill’s equally good point got buried in this, but what really matters now is, are you for abandonment or against it? Can we start discussing crtiical issues again, like whether you intend to let victory slip from American hands and abandon the millions of people throughout the region who are relying on us?
Sorry, I know, this is about the politics of political correctness. Excuse the tangent. So who won this bizarre exercise? There’s the theory that the Clintons were trying to play the race card, cut into Obama’s support, just in case no one had noticed he’s black. Looking at what was actually said amd how it was said, I doubt it, especially given the likelihood it’s warmed blacks up to Obama, after the black political establishment’s embarrassing failure to embrace him.
Martin Luther King Day is coming up, and Hillary’s already being booed. Who knows, maybe Hill and Bill have a really clever, cynical plan to make her the victim in this. Sort of a double-reverse race card.
Michigan’s today, though not considered much of a Democratic contest. South Carolina’s coming up this weekend, maybe we’ll find out then whether it worked or not.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 6:56 am Comments (6) on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
6 Responses to “High Road”
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January 15th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Clinton, Obama Inch Towards Truce On Race Issue
They’re not quite singing “Kumbaya,” but they may be stepping back from a polarizing abyss that threatened to heighten Democratic Party tensions heading into the 2008 Presidential elections. New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Senat…
January 15th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Clinton, Obama Inch Towards Truce On Race Issue
They’re not quite singing “Kumbaya,” but they may be stepping back from a polarizing abyss that threatened to heighten Democratic Party tensions heading into the 2008 Presidential elections. New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Senat…
January 15th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
There’s a high road in all of this? Pfft.
It’s a hard thing to try to keep every little special victim group in view. There are so many laws that make sure one group loses in order to give some new “right” to another group. It reminds me of the Denny Moore skit from Monty Python. Denny Moore robbed from the rich and gave to the poor until the rich had nothing and the poor had everything. In the end, the anti-hero stood in confused inertia as he tried to exchange the few valuables left among “the rich,” who were now the undesignated poor, and stated, “This redistribution of wealth is tricker than I thought.”
The gender card and the race card now stand face to face in a smack down. Is that the right word? Please forgive me the wrestling allusion. I don’t watch it, but this whole thing reminds me of the commercials I cannot help but see.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
“The Identity Trap” by David Brooks in the NYTimes on January 15, 2008:
… Clinton’s real problem is that she is caught in a trap, which you might call The Identity Trap. Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton victory wouldn’t just be a victory for one woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream alive, and so on.
Fair enough. The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other.
All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde. …
Clinton’s fallback position is that neither she nor Obama should be judged as representatives of their out-groups. They should be judged as individuals. But the entire theory of identity politics was that we are not mere individuals. We carry the perspectives of our group consciousness. Our social roles and loyalties are defined by race and gender. It’s a black or female thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Even in this moment of stress, Clinton wants to have it both ways. … As she told Tim Russert on Sunday: “You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don’t think either of us wants to inject race or gender in this campaign. We’re running as individuals.” Huh? …
This is the logical extreme of the identity politics that as been floating around this country for decades. Every revolution devours its offspring, and it seems the multicultural one does, too. …
January 15th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Well of course I should have ended the link after the second line.
January 16th, 2008 at 12:19 am
That’s okay, Robert. The author makes some very salient points. ;^)