He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black! (NYT)

[kpete]

All the love built up between the Clintons and black folks
became love and war when a black man stood between them and their castle.

Seeds of Destruction
By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 10, 2008

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

read the rest at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/opinion/10herbert.html?ref=opinion


*****************


Clinton's diminishing of black voters
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Globe Columnist / May 10, 2008

The truth is that Clinton is in denial about one of the key reasons for her slide from inevitability. She choked on the black vote. Conveniently forgotten in her reinvention in Pennsylvania as Rocky Balboa (who conveniently was a white working-class boxer trying to beat down a black champion), is that this white woman led Obama in an October 2007 CNN poll, 68 percent to 25 percent among black women and was nearly dead even with Obama among black men.

................

It was not just that Obama stunned the conventional political world. It was also, as this column has pointed out, because of steady dollops of racial and religious innuendo from surrogates, most notably husband Bill Clinton and former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. All the love built up between the Clintons and black folks became love and war when a black man stood between them and their castle.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/10/clintons_diminishing_of_black_voters/

[livetohike]

1. "But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame. "

Their arrogance knows absolutely no bounds. I'm sad and disappointed in myself that ten years ago, I didn't know any better and defended the Clintons from every scandal that erupted in eight years.

When Bill said, "I didn't inhale". I knew he didn't have the guts to admit to anything. That was one of the most ridiculous statements I ever heard.

[Window]

2. K/R.

:kick:

[w13rd0]

3. And this is why the DLC & Clinton 50+1 strategy is a LOSER...

...going forward. It tries to lump people into demographic groups, assign them stereotypes, weight their value, then tailor the message as marketing to pitch to that group. Problem is that people are feeling free to drift from the stereotypes society has assigned them. Ideaologically, culturally. With the internet, 24 hour media, it is just too damn difficult to apply a strategy that is inherently inconsistent, pandering and pits people in our nation one against the other along arbitrary lines. The Clintons have managed to push one overarching perspective of themselves to the fore, that they will say and do anything to cling to power. That's the reason why her "Trustworthy" is so low. And yes, thru negative attacks, she can drive down her opponents "trustworthy" scores, but don't we deserve more than a choice between the least untrustworthy? It really is an old-world style of politics. And the complaints about the primary system every step of the way. Yes, if we ran our primary like the Republicans, Hillary would already be our nominee. And if we ran our party like the Republicans, Hillary would already be our nominee. But the changes to the rule are there for a reason. The proportional representation was the result of Jesse Jackson in 1988 refusing to withdraw and support the nominee unless proportional representation was introduced, to give himself, or in the future another potential candidate, a chance at the nomination. Yes, there could be improvements, a rotating "first states" system would be acceptable, or a national primary day. But every solution comes with its own problems. A "national primary day" would result in MASSIVE advantages to whatever candidate secured the way big money pot, because they'd be able to push out nationwide media buys required to touch everyone in every state. A "national primary day" could have the potential, even greater potential, for tragedy. So split the states into 5 blocks of 10 states each. The primaries take place over 2.5 months, with 1 block running its primaries every two weeks. The 10 states shall be assigned blocks according to pop and demographics, or maybe alphabetically.

Whatever the case, this was Clintons to lose, and she succeeded in that.

[KaptBunnyPants]

4. I never understood how Republicans could argue that the Southern strategy wasn't racist.

I guess now I do. As long as the candidate doesn't come out and call black people n******, die hard supporters will twist and excuse any kind of blatantly racist messaging. And so now we learn, after all these years, that history had poor Nixon wrong. By the Clinton standard, he did nothing wrong with his "law and order" campaign.

[uponit7771]

5. Many don't know about and the media excuses reThugs clinging to racist as Business as usual

...Hagee and Parsley are the norm for them

[patrice]

6. There's this Infantiliaztion going on toward certain classes Black & White.

It's a re-incarnation of the old principle of "noblese oblige" (sp?).