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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Clinton's Race Games
Wow.....just wow. I am not saying a word on this and instead will just let the article speak for itself.
The Clintons sordid race game: No one will say it, but the Clintons rise was premised on repudiating black voters
Here's what Bill and Hillary mean to me: Sister Souljah, welfare reform, Ricky Ray Rector and the crime bill
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/31/the_clintons_sordid_race_game_no_one_will_say_it_but_the_clintons_rise_was_premised_on_repudiating_black_voters/
It may be a generational thingI was born in 1967but this is what Hillary and Bill Clinton will always mean to me: Sister Souljah, Ricky Ray Rector, welfare reform, and the crime bill. And beyondreally, behindall that, the desperate desire to win over white voters by declaring to the American electorate: We are not the Party of Jesse Jackson, we are not the Rainbow Coalition.
Many of the liberal journalists who are supporting Hillary Clintons candidacy are too young to remember what the Clintons did to American politics and the Democratic Party in the 1990s. But even journalists who are old enough seem to have forgotten just how much the Clintons national ascendancy was premised on the repudiation of black voters and black interests. This was a move that was both inspired and applauded by a small but influential group of Beltway journalists and party strategists, who believed making the Democrats a white middle-class party was the only path back to the White House after wandering for 12 years in the Republican wilderness.
But for me, its as vivid as yesterday. I still remember Clinton pollster Stanley Greenbergs American Prospect article (reposted in 2005), which claimed that the Democrats were too identified with minorities and special interests to speak for average Americans. Black people not being average Americans, you see. This article, American Prospect co-editor Paul Starr proudly proclaimed last year, is widely recognized for its influence on Bill Clintons presidential campaign in 1992. Starr, incidentally, just penned a [link:http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-2016-213560|defense in Politico of Hillary Clinton as the only serious Democratic candidate.
]
Maybe I remember this all because it happened at a formative period of my life, during my first years in graduate school. My roommate and closest friend throughout those years was Paul Frymer, whos now a political science professor at Princeton. Pauls dissertationwhich he began to write in the apartment we shared on Canner Street in New Haven, and which formed the basis for his now classic book Uneasy Alliances, which shows how the combination of racism and the two-party system encourages African-American voters to be captured (taken for granted) by one of the partieswas born out of the tremendous frustration and anger many of us felt about the wrenching transformation the Clintons imposed upon the Democratic Party.
Here's what Bill and Hillary mean to me: Sister Souljah, welfare reform, Ricky Ray Rector and the crime bill
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/31/the_clintons_sordid_race_game_no_one_will_say_it_but_the_clintons_rise_was_premised_on_repudiating_black_voters/
It may be a generational thingI was born in 1967but this is what Hillary and Bill Clinton will always mean to me: Sister Souljah, Ricky Ray Rector, welfare reform, and the crime bill. And beyondreally, behindall that, the desperate desire to win over white voters by declaring to the American electorate: We are not the Party of Jesse Jackson, we are not the Rainbow Coalition.
Many of the liberal journalists who are supporting Hillary Clintons candidacy are too young to remember what the Clintons did to American politics and the Democratic Party in the 1990s. But even journalists who are old enough seem to have forgotten just how much the Clintons national ascendancy was premised on the repudiation of black voters and black interests. This was a move that was both inspired and applauded by a small but influential group of Beltway journalists and party strategists, who believed making the Democrats a white middle-class party was the only path back to the White House after wandering for 12 years in the Republican wilderness.
But for me, its as vivid as yesterday. I still remember Clinton pollster Stanley Greenbergs American Prospect article (reposted in 2005), which claimed that the Democrats were too identified with minorities and special interests to speak for average Americans. Black people not being average Americans, you see. This article, American Prospect co-editor Paul Starr proudly proclaimed last year, is widely recognized for its influence on Bill Clintons presidential campaign in 1992. Starr, incidentally, just penned a [link:http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-2016-213560|defense in Politico of Hillary Clinton as the only serious Democratic candidate.
]
Maybe I remember this all because it happened at a formative period of my life, during my first years in graduate school. My roommate and closest friend throughout those years was Paul Frymer, whos now a political science professor at Princeton. Pauls dissertationwhich he began to write in the apartment we shared on Canner Street in New Haven, and which formed the basis for his now classic book Uneasy Alliances, which shows how the combination of racism and the two-party system encourages African-American voters to be captured (taken for granted) by one of the partieswas born out of the tremendous frustration and anger many of us felt about the wrenching transformation the Clintons imposed upon the Democratic Party.
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The Clinton's Race Games (Original Post)
pinebox
Jan 2016
OP
Thank you for the post. It is a good article and will make some Third Way types uneasy indeed.
PatrickforO
Jan 2016
#1
PatrickforO
(14,516 posts)1. Thank you for the post. It is a good article and will make some Third Way types uneasy indeed.
I can also remember the racism in 2008. Of course Obama's been subjected to systematic racist hatemongering from the right wing his whole time in office and it makes me want to puke.
But you wouldn't expect it of a Democrat. That's why I'm for Bernie.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)2. it's how Rahm won Chicago: he told the North Side "I'll keep the South Siders away from you"
and the South Side "do you KNOW what they're saying about you on the North Side": since they didn't compare notes he won both as constituencies
boil people down to pushable buttons, demobilize, demoralize
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)3. Seems that a kick is in order. n/t