WP: WINNING UGLY - Play the Race Card At Your Own Peril

[godai]

It's conventional wisdom that American racism is an inexhaustible well that cynical politicians can always dip into if they want to sink their opponents in a campaign. That's what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Hispanic pollster, Sergio Bendixen, seemed to be doing when he told a reporter last month that Latino voters haven't generally "shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

But modern racism isn't like the water in a well. It's more like the scum in a pond: It might settle to the bottom if left alone, but it can also be whipped up into a froth. And that's what Bendixen was really doing.

Clinton went on to win a resounding 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in California on Super Tuesday. But her victory didn't prove her pollster's drastically overstated point (many black candidates -- Charles Rangel, David Dinkins and others -- have enjoyed significant Hispanic support) so much as illustrate how today's race-baiting tactics do more than just tap into preexisting racial animosity: They actually create and inflame it. And this in turn creates a problem that can last long after the election is over.

This is something for Clinton to ponder as the race moves into Texas and Ohio, where she is counting on support from large blocs of Hispanic voters. Already, the kinds of tensions and unexpected dilemmas that this subtle race baiting raises are affecting the campaign itself, with Hispanic leaders angered at the replacement of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a Mexican American, in favor of African American Maggie Williams.

...

So far, the Clinton campaign's attempt to scare Hispanic voters away from Obama has met with significant success, and we'll probably see more in the future. Perhaps Clinton believes that the ends justify the means because she'll be more effective in advancing racial justice if she's elected. But whoever wins this election, it will take a lot of extra work come next January to reverse the damage caused by playing the race card now.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502895.html

[berni_mccoy]

1. Nice peice by the WP. I'm sick and tired of Clinton DUers who refuse to see what she's doing

It's downright disgusting and it should be stopped now.

[ShortnFiery]

2. WP: WINNING UGLY - The Clintons Continue Race Baiting NOW with the Latino Electorate.

:thumbsdown:

[FrenchieCat]

3. I called out the Clinton campaign when I first saw that quote from her pollster......

and I warned then that this would end up backfiring on her.....and I do believe that it will.

It always does, sometimes, sooner than later.

[billbuckhead]

11. Hispanics will vote McCain if the smiling empty suit is our candidate

We will lose California, mark my words. BTW, :+bama played the race card first in South Carolina.

[FrenchieCat]

12. "Hope" is not on your side, my friend!

:rofl:

[THUNDER HANDS]

4. do you honestly believe she cares whether or not the party is destroyed?

it's all about her, it's always ALWAYS been about her.

Her husband won two terms and the party rotted away to nothing, losing House and Senate seats and governorships to the point at which the 2000 and George W. Bush looked like a viable alternative to a lot of people.

If she has to rile up a race war that will split the party, in order to win, she'll do it.

She already said she'll fight on the floor of the convention for the superdelegates and for Michigan and Florida, even though it looks really likely that she'll go to the convention having won only 15 out of 48 contested states.

[NashVegas]

5. Sounds Like Richard Thompson Ford Got The Memo, Too

Q: When is not playing a race card like playing a race card?

A: When an Obama supporter hears in it some piece of reality they don't like.


FYI, this is the author of the book, The Race Card, who just the other night said on the Colbert report that Kanye West was wrong to say what he did. I wonder where his piece on Bill Clinton's "Fairy tale," remark and the Obama camp's reaction to it is?

[Name removed]

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[babylonsister]

7. If Clinton had a shred of integrity, she would have called Bendixen

off and chastized him. Doesn't appear she did so. Another strike against her in my book. She's in it to win it, for her, at all costs. The more I read stuff like this, the more I wonder how anyone could support her.

[FrenchieCat]

8. She agreed with her pollster and stated to the press that

he was only stating an "Historical Fact"!

But it wasn't an "Historical Fact"!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4448142

[babylonsister]

9. Thanks for that link. All we have to do is look back to the primaries

last Tuesday. IIRC, Obama won the majority of the Hispanic vote. So her whole reasoning is bogus; what's historical? That's what I meant about her lack of integrity; your link to Pew just confirms it.

[Scurrilous]

13. K & R

:kick:

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. I'm still looking for the basis used to say that the Clinton campaign

...is trying to scare hispanics away from Obama. An observation by a pollster that latinos have not in general been inclined to support BLack candidates hardly qualifies as "scare tactic". Where is the fear card? Why would reading that, which few vorers will anyway, scare any latino away from voting for Obama? That observation is either true, false, or somewhere in between (I pick the latter), but it is an insult to any voter Latino on non Latino, to assert that they would feel bullied into opposing Obama because of that comment.

[Luminous Animal]

15. Presented by WAPO. Freinds of Dems (snark)

Funny how the corporate media's narrative was viewed with suspicion by DU for the last 8 years but now considered wisdom when it supports either candidate.

FACT: Hispanic voters have been, historically, loath to vote for black candidates. Only now, in this bizarro primary is this FACT considered taboo to bring up.

RE: your point. It is akin to an article that I read today in the San Francisco Chronicle that pretty much stated that black voters were reticent to vote for Obama until they saw that white America (Iowa) was was willing to do so.

Thus the narrative. Black voters will only vote for a black man when white folks are comfortable voting for that black man. Hispanic voters will only vote for a black man when white political operatives state that they will do otherwise.


As usual, white folks rule.