Flagrant Racism: The Democratic Party Crisis

ChickenBones Editorial and Discussion

The Clintons, desperate as hyenas unfed in months, go too far in their stooping low down to fan the flames of racial prejudice, lying dormant within the Democratic Party and maybe even fading out of existence. Such bitterness is over the top and dangerous. Some speak derisively about the ego of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, but there is none like that of the political couple from Arkansas, now living in Harlem, New York. All reasonable Americans know  such fighting is beyond the pale of decency. The major factor of the presidential election will be the economy, not "electability" based on race hatred. The economic situation worsens. There will be no improvement by November.

The severe screw up of the American economy by the Republican Party  is such that there is cavalier talk by economic experts for the exceedingly wealthy about $250 for a barrel of oil, $7 for a gallon of gas. At such rates, what working class person will be able to afford to drive to work? We have at least two sectors of the economy that are almost non-functional—the housing and financial markets—and imports continue to exceed exports and the dollar is falling in value in relation to the Euro. All these disasters in the economy will have an egregious impact on the lives of the poor and working classes, whether white or black. Though clothes coming from Asia probably will continue to be cheap, food prices are likely to skyrocket. And the Clintons have placed race antagonism at the top of their docket!

White working class Americans (so-called Reagan Democrats in places like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania or even in Texas and Florida will not vote Republican because Obama has an African father or because he was associated with Jeremiah Wright or that Clinton did not receive the nomination. All Americans know that the Republicans took us into a trillion-dollar unnecessary war and have emptied the National Treasury to suck up to the super-wealthy, the oil cartels and corporations, and the Pentagon. Reagan Democrats are not as stupid and racist as the Clintons make them out to be. Moreover, these white working class people are not voting for her in the percentages (90-10) that blacks are voting for Obama.

So for the Clintons to awaken racial/class chauvinism at this stage of the primary process is outrageous. The Democratic Party leaders must bring a halt to the Clintons and quickly if they really want to deal with the frightening consequences of the Bush/Republican mismanagement of the economy. The Clintons’ playing upon racial fears is socially insane. Her rhetoric borders on that in Germany and Italy in the 1930s.

Despite the wisdom of party elder George McGovern, switching his allegiance to Obama

The nation is bleeding and the war goes on without a perceivable end. This is truly a Democratic Party crisis. —Rudy

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Dear Rudy,

Yesterday [8 May] Hillary Clinton boasted of her "broad base," saying, "Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again."  She has done everything possible to weaken that support and has driven a wedge between the black and white working classes, instead of trying to point out their common interests.  This is the old racist strategy of Theodore Bilbo, Matthew Butler, Strom Thurmond, and George Wallace.  Like Jeremiah Wright, Hillary misdirects the bitterness of working people towards violence, fanaticism, and ethnocentrism. 

I am not enthusiastic in my support of Obama.   Like many black people, I originally greeted his candidacy with profound skepticism, but warmed up considerably after the Iowa, Wyoming, and Idaho primaries demonstrated that he could appeal to small town white working people.

I have been deeply touched by the idealism of his youthful white supporters, and I feel that I am caught in a dilemma, for if I support Obama, I am an ethnocentrist, and if I fail to support him, I am undermining the color-blind young white people who do.   

Hillary Clinton's willingness to exploit racial antagonisms has won her the support of Rush Limbaugh.  Other conservatives, who find her congenial for other reasons, include Bill Bennett, William Kristol, and Ann Coulter.  I am appalled by her foul play in the Florida and Michigan primaries, and happy to see that working people were not fooled by her insults to their intelligence with her slimy18 cent gas tax cut proposal. 

The three remaining presidential candidates are all centrists.  McCain is better than most Republicans and no less trustworthy than Hillary.  None of these candidates is truly committed to improving education, to delivering health insurance, or providing decent railway transportation, and McCain isn't even trying.  With respect to Middle East Policy, all three will follow the pattern set by Harry Truman and Ralph Bunche in 1947.   There will never be a change in America's Middle East policy, which will be based on Oil and Israel, regardless of who is elected. 

So, in terms of change, it doesn't matter who gets elected, although symbolically it would be very bad to have a person in the White House who has based her campaign on a family connection, a failed record of health care reform, and the exploitation of racial tensions.—Wilson

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Desperate Hillbillies Threaten to Break Up Party

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Clinton and White Voters—Claiming to own the white, blue-collar vote appears to be a last, desperate effort by Clinton to persuade superdelegates to select her, said Andra Gillespie, an assistant professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. The problem is that Clinton trails in the popular vote and the delegate count and has suffered a string of losses in the caucuses and primaries while winning most large states. hroughout the contest, Clinton, who is white, has been favored by white women and white blue-collar voters, especially those who did not attend college. Obama, meanwhile, has received about 90 percent of the black vote. Clinton's gambit might split the party, Gillespie said, but Obama's historic run was bound to expose racial fissures that have long existed among Democrats. "This is the first time you've had a black candidate who has a legitimate shot at the nomination," Gillespie said. "Having this first in an election was going to reveal these cleavages." In another clear sign that the party is dividing along race, a pair of Democratic strategists engaged in an emotional exchange on national television. Donna Brazile, a black Democratic superdelegate who has remained neutral in the race, lashed out at Paul Begala, a white supporter of Clinton, as they commented on the race for CNN as votes were counted Tuesday night. WashingtonPost

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Clintons diminishing of black voters—In her long, sad self-diminution to being merely a white candidate for subsegments of white people, Hillary Clinton claimed to USA Today this week, "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." Clinton exploited an Associated Press poll to say how "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me . . . There's a pattern emerging here."

This was on top of Democratic strategist and Clinton supporter Paul Begala saying this week on CNN, "We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans. OK. That's the Dukakis coalition, which carried 10 states and gave us four years of the first George Bush. President Clinton, you know, reached across and got a whole lot of Republicans and independents to come."

This reaches across the aisle all right, straight to right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, who has been urging people to vote for Clinton to prolong the Democratic primaries, said this week, "Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes that Democrats need to win: blue-collar working people. He can get effete snobs. He can get wealthy academics and he can get the young, he can get the black vote, that's about it."

Obama just got done being tarred and feathered as an elitist by Clinton and the talk shows for belittling "bitter" people in jobless small towns who "cling to guns or religion." Yes, that was dumb. Yet here is Clinton dancing all over stereotypes. . . . Ironically, Obama got to where he is by not being the "black" candidate. It is Clinton who is now the race candidate, diminishing black voters and eggheads, her final hopes resting on the thinnest of eggshells. Boston Globe

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Could Clinton land the VP nomination?—In an interview with USA Today, she cited an Associated Press report that, she said, "found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

It is difficult to overstate the negative effect this remark has had on superdelegates, party leaders and her Democratic colleagues in both houses of Congress. "That's not a way to land the plane," one of her key supporters said. "If you were a superdelegate, you'd say, 'We have to shut this down right away.' "

But others worried that her words were calculated, that by venturing into such risky, rhetorical territory about race, she might put Obama under increased pressure to take her on the ticket before more damage and loss of support from her working-class base is felt.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, an old Clinton friend, said Friday that she had made a major mistake in suggesting "that hardworking Americans are white people."

"This statement has got to be dealt with by Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton alone," he said on MSNBC's "Hardball." "The sooner she does that," he said, "the sooner her ship is going to start sailing in a better direction." CNN

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posted 9 May 2008