Reply #50: Ferraro counts. That's one and came two months after racegate

[jackson_dem]

1) Clinton stated what was obvious to any student of politics and political history. Only two candidates have won SC via unanimous support among one race and weak support with the other. One is Jesse Jackson. The other is...

John Edwards won both the white and black vote in 2004 in SC, just like Bill Clinton and everyone else who won the Democratic primary in South Carolina except for Jesse Jackson and some other guy who won the black vote 78-19-1 but lost the white vote badly 40-36-24 (he was the 24!).

2) Of course Obama himself isn't going to play the race card. He isn't stupid. That is why he has used surrogates, including his wife, to do it. What do you expect him to do? Even rethugs don't ever directly play the race card. Reagan coded it by saying "I believe in state's rights". He didn't come out and explicitly pander to the racist vote by saying "segregation forever!".

3) What is dirty is swiftboating two fine Democrats, including the last Democratic president, to achieve that 85-90% support. It wasn't the case before the swiftboating. He was actually losing the black vote before he swiftboated the Clintons, which makes it even more disgusting than it inherently is.

You're conflating voting for a Democrat over a rethug with voting for one Democrat over another. Of course Democrats are going to get the black vote over rethugs. Look at the issues. Hillary and Obama both have 100% NAACP ratings and Edwards had a 97% rating. It isn't the issues that is giving Obama 85-90% black support. It is the swiftboating of the Clintons on race that did the trick. Changing what you said, when they are the same on the issues why not vote for the guy you are sure isn't racist against you? This is what the swiftboating did. It is sad to see Obama benefiting from the ugliest kind of politics--the kind of politics he is claiming to be trying to save us from, a central tenet of his candidacy. He is a fraud. His actions reveal he doesn't give a damn about "changing politics" (from the way it has been since Jefferson and Hamilton squared off in the 1790's under President Washington). It is just another campaign gimmick.

No. I am a minority and I would never vote based on race, or anything else like gender, religion, or sexual orientation. As much as folks try to dress it up, when you vote for someone because of their color or gender you are automatically voting against someone because of their color or gender. That is bigoted and wrong. If you would vote for Edwards but for his color or gender your vote was a bigoted one. As an Edwardian it was very annoying and frustrating to see how badly hurt he was by voting based on gender and race. There is a lot of talk about how far we've come as a nation to reach our current point. We have come far but we won't reach the promised land until this kind of identity-based voting ends. You know, as a great man once dreamed, we should judge folks by the content of their character...