The Original Sin: Who Really Used The Race Card First in Obama v. Clinton?

[writes3000]

In the word wars over what's fair play in this Democratic primary, I've seen many Clinton supporters claim that Obama's side unfairly accused the Clintons of racism. Their argument is that Obama's attacks were so out-of-line, there is nothing that Clinton can do that tops it.

Did Obama and his team throw down the race gauntlet first?

Perhaps. I know that Jesse Jackson Jr's comments about the Clinton's coded "fairy tale" language caught my attention early on. I don't know if that was the first time race was brought up in the campaign in an accusatory, negative way.

But here's my suspicion. Why did Jesse Jackson Jr. go off like that? I think it's because the Clinton campaign was using coded language to tell Superdelegates that Obama can't win because he's black. I believe there's been an article written about the days after the Iowa primary where Hillary sat with her team, agreeing to do whatever they needed to do to win. Of course, the Obama campaign heard what the Clintons were doing and became furious. What looked like a huge overreaction to the "fairy tale" comment by Jackson Jr. and Michelle Obama probably looks a lot more rational when you take into account the whispers that were steadily streaming from the Clinton campaign. Later, when Bill Clinton made the "Barack Obama's win is just like Jesse Jackson's win" comment, he was caught off guard to the public's reaction. Why did Bill think it was no big thing? Because he had been saying this exact kind of thing behind closed doors for weeks, I suspect.

Could the Clintons complete willingness to dismiss Barack Obama simply on the basis of race explain why Michelle Obama needed to think about whether she'd campaign for Hillary? Could it also explain why so many Superdelegates have not rallied behind Clinton? Could it explain why long time Clinton ally and man of color, Bill Richardson endorsed Obama? I think so.

Yes, one can argue that the Democratic party must be able to discuss every aspect of whether a Presidential candidate is electable. Yes, a candidate's race shouldn't be off limits to that discussion. Of course, a mixed-race candidate presents a new set of challenges. I would agree with all of that. But I think wholly dismissing your opponent's viability primarily on the basis of race is deeply, deeply cynical. And to make that argument behind the scenes, while publicly claiming that you are a true believer in equality for all is just plain hypocritical.

I've never heard that there's been a whisper campaign by Obama's team that Hillary Clinton can't win the election because she's a woman. Never.

That right there is the difference between the two campaigns and the two candidates.

[democrattotheend]

1. Honestly, I think it's the media that has played the race card more than either campaign

They are the ones who constantly talk about race and judge Obama by his ability to attract support from white voters and made a huge deal about Geraldine Ferraro and Reverend Wright and are way more obsessed with race than either of the campaigns.

[writes3000]

3. Of course, you are correct. But since I've seen this argument used to justify everything...

that Clinton has done to Obama, I had to raise the question.

But the media absolutely jumped like a shark smelling blood in the waters. And they've been non-stop ever since.

[ecstatic]

2. Bill Clinton's comments were directly picked up by the black media. Obama had nothing

to do with it. The Clintons did it to themselves. Bill knew better than to skate on that ice...

[papau]

4. Get real - stop the NH win momentum was reason - SC w/60% AA & Clinton goes racist?

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Bill can count. He knew that Hillary had no chance of winning SC.

He was pre-emptively dismissing the loss of SC as unimportant because OF COURSE it would go the the 'black candidate'. Just like it went to Jackson, who subsequently lost.

There really is no other way to interpret it. He was playing to the national audience for the contests that were to follow - particularly SuperDuperTuesday.

That's not racist. But it is playing on other peoples' racism.

ON EDIT:

BTW, where do you find 'momentum' is going from a 20pt advantage to a 3pt win? Wouldn't coming from 20pts down and gaining 17pts be a better description of 'momentum'?

[Mooney]

17. This thread could use you input:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5565626

Thanks in advance.

[BenDavid]

5. B.Hussein Obama used the race card first. In late December 06

Obama went to New Hampshire. While there many of the press did not pick up on the statement, “race is a factor.” But some reporters did catch B.Hussein Obama say, “minority candidates have ‘a higher threshold in establishing themselves with voters.’” First person to play the race card in this election. That was a laughable claim but a shrewd use of the race card to position Obama for future manipulation of the electoral process.For him to claim that the barriers are higher, that the bar is higher for him to succeed, is nonsense. It is crass racialism. Don’t get me wrong. Americans are justifiably hungry to consider a qualified African-American candidate for president. Richard Parsons of Time-Warner comes to mind. Heard of him? Probably not. I thought so. Parson’s qualified.

Obama and his surrogates have charged that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has deliberately and cleverly played the race card in order to label Obama the "black" candidate.Obama's "post-racial" campaign finally seems to be all about race and sensational charges about white racism. But the mean-spirited strategy started even before the primaries began, when Obama's operatives began playing the race card - and blamed Hillary Clinton.

In December 07, Bill Shaheen, a Clinton campaign co-chair in New Hampshire, wondered aloud whether Obama's admitted youthful abuse of cocaine might hurt him in the general election. Obama's strategists insisted that Shaheen's mere mention of cocaine was suggestive and inappropriate.The whore press whipped the story into a full racial subtext, charging that the Clintons had, in one columnist words, "ghettoized" Obama "into a cocaine user."

The Obama campaign and its supporters pressed this strategy after Clinton's unexpected win in New Hampshire. Pundits partial to Obama, including Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and John Nichols of the Nation, instantly mused that their candidate lost because of supposedly bigoted New Hampshire whites who had lied to pre-primary pollsters - an easily disproven falsehood that nevertheless gained currency in the media.

Jesse Jackson Jr., cast false and vicious aspersions about Hillary Clinton's famous emotional moment in New Hampshire as a measure of her deep racial insensitivity. "Her appearance brought her to tears," said Jackson, "not Hurricane Katrina."

Obama's backers, including members of his official campaign staff, then played what might be called "the race-baiter card." Hillary Clinton, in crediting both Lyndon Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Civil Rights Act in 1964, had supposedly denigrated King, and by extension Obama. Allegedly, Bill Clinton had dismissed Obama's victory in South Carolina by comparing it to those of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the 1980s. (In fact, their electoral totals were comparable - and in the interview at issue, Clinton complimented Obama on his performance "everywhere" - a line the media usually omitted.)

Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign of deliberately leaking a supposedly racist photograph of Obama in African garb, which actually originated on still another right-wing Web site. Finally, David Axelrod trumpeted Geraldine Ferraro's awkward remarks in an obscure California newspaper as part of the Clinton campaign's "insidious pattern" of divisiveness.

(In his Philadelphia speech on race, Obama pressed the attack by three times likening Ferraro to Rev. Wright)

On March 20, Obama described his Kansas grandmother to a Philadelphia radio interviewer as "a typical white person." The same day, Sen. John Kerry said that Obama would help U.S. relations with Muslim nations "because he's a black man." Another Obama supporter, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, called him the first black leader "to come to the American people not as a victim but as a leader." Her history excluded and conceivably denigrated countless black leaders, from Frederick Douglass to Rep. John Lewis. Obama remained silent, refusing to take Kerry and McCaskill to task for their racially charged remarks.

Obama's bogus "race-baiter" strategy is one of the main reasons he has come this far, and it is affecting the process now. But by deliberately inflaming the most destructive passions in American politics, the strategy has badly divided and confused many Dems, at least for the moment. And having done so, it may well doom us Democrats in the general election.

So, when you say it was the Clintons that played the race card first, then you might wish to do some more research and then you will conclude it is and will be B. Hussein Obama that interjected and still interjects race into the campaign.

[ellacott]

6. Such a bitter person

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. That's why I have whoever that is on Ignore. nt

[donheld]

11. Me too

[Hepburn]

28. Me Three...

...:hi:

GMTA! :evilgrin:

[oviedodem]

7. So unfortunate thet you shorten Obamas first name and use only the middle and last

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. This whole argument relies on the suggestion that black people are stupid.

That they switched their support from Clinton to Obama because they're gullible and Obama tricked them into thinking the Clintons were racist, instead of coming to that conclusion on their own.

[mkultra]

21. yup

[rodeodance]

14. I recall after a few days of O. surr. toxic stew--about the MLK comment. O.

said on the eve of the primary that what Hillary said was not racial.(paraphase).

This was after the media had hyped it and Obama was silent (a few days of letting the media whip the toxic stew).

[cliffordu]

18. Meds, Benny, Meds!!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Mooney]

19. "B. Hussein Obama"

You should leave the Democratic party like you promised to.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5524880&mesg_id=5524880

[kwassa]

10. Who the fuck cares? The non-issue of non-issues, beaten to death 1000 times.

[rodeodance]

12. I care--Hillary and Bill have been falsely accused of being racist!

[cliffordu]

20. Aw, whining about the truth and your "candidate" again??

:cry:

[rodeodance]

24. you obviously are not interested in having a discussion

[cliffordu]

27. Do you think you'll hang around here after she steps down??

Will you wait till after the General to go back??

[kwassa]

26. but the general public neither cares nor pays attention anymore

It's news cycle is long gone. LONG GONE.

[AtomicKitten]

15. The Clintons aren't racists, they just use race-baiting as a political tool.

Obama has run a campaign that transcends race and the suggestion he "used race" is patently absurd and just another means to try to mitigate the ugly campaign the Clintons have run.

[Auntie Bush]

16. Will someone please tell me why using the word "fairy tail" is racist

or some coded word? I don't see it!

Also, why is it racist or a terrible thing for Bill Clinton to say... "Barack Obama's win is just like Jesse Jackson's win"? I don't get it!
Why would that comment turn off 90% of the blacks from Clinton...especially since they were probably pro Clinton before that? The whole thing is bazaar if you ask me. :shrug:

[mkultra]

22. well, for it to be racism

much like sexism, it must reinforce a negative stereotype.


Ask yourself, does saying that "an Obama win is just like a Jesse Jackson win" reinforce a stereotype and what does that statement mean?

[rodeodance]

25. stop distracting. poster asked about fairy tale

[bridgit]

23. I disagree that 'the Clinton's' "dismiss(ed) Barack Obama simply on the basis of race"

That was the racist angle played out by the Obama camp and even here at DU, and for that matter anywhere BHO's surrogates were seen walking & talking.

Bill Clinton's remark regarding "this whole thing is the biggest fairy tale (he's) ever seen" is more fundamental than that. And has nothing to do with race imo. It deals with those fairy tale scenarios, say Cinderella; wherein/whereby she were conveyed to the ball by way of a fairy dusted pumpkin pulled by likewise dusted mice; but the point being that once she got there no one asked her any questions containing any pith, any import, any gravitas as to how she got there, what her intentions were for being there, was she a princess from some far away realm, was her father's castle as cool as the one she pretended to, etc, stuff like that...but instead nothing, no such treatment as is normally the case within vetting candidates for President of the U.S. = stuff more likely to occur in a fairy tale.

Far less if anything to do with Barack being black. "fairy tale" is not a code word for being black. Fairy Tales, the kind to which you refer, were written by Europeans to lend moral compass in otherwise dark, dirty, sooty, muddy, death riddled hamlets, villages, and cities such as they were. And to warn children to stay off certain pathways in dark-dark forests. Is "dark-dark forest" a racist thing to say? Then perhaps Germany should be made to change The Black Forest, to something more palatable to Jesse Jackson, Jr.

An interesting enough event sequence in the debate the other night. Question is asked if Obama engaged in disparaging, off-colored attacks on his opponent; he said he did not. The follow up question is posed quickly as to his campaign staff, at which point he is forced to acknowledge, "Well yes, my staff does cause we're asked about it all the time."

There has been a long & lively run here at DU of BHO supporters accusing HRC supporters of being racist. Insinuating as such. Race baiting. They rather seem to enjoy and segregate by doing so, the DU rules that forbid posts responding to such baiting as verboten. Knowing that DUer's will not be able to respond so as to say. When it is the baiting as such that should have been suspect all along. And so...

Barack Obama has had no need to play any race cards. His campaign and supporters are very well prepared to do so on his behalf. Many here at DU have already done so for months now.

And Barack Obama is by those as-such means only able to claim a limited relationship to the plausible deni-ability he seeks, because he does know what is being said. But will only acknowledge it when pressed upon to do so.