January 28, 2008--Latino Week
The Clintons devoted the past two weeks to making sure everyone realized that Barack Obama was black.
And in case you might have been thinking he was one of these new type of non-racial blacks, Bill Clinton on the day of the South Carolina primary slyly compared Jessie Jackson with Obama. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s analogy of the previous week where she conflated herself with Lyndon Johnson, asserting that it takes a president (someone like herself) and not just an inspirational speaker (like Obama) to actually get the job done, unlike Senator Clinton’s version of playing the race card in this subtle way, her husband continued to be more blatant when he linked Obama directly to that scary-black-guy, Jessie Jackson. The very same Reverend Jackson who he called upon to heal his spirit during the Lewinsky affair. No shame.
From the post-SC primary exit poling, the conventional wisdom says that the Clintons’ race-baiting backfired. Whereas a couple of months ago Hillary was set to get 80 percent of the black vote, Obama reversed that number, receiving slightly more than 80 percent. And that coupled with a decent slice of the white vote (nearly 25 percent—as opposed to the predicted 10 percent) led to an Obama rout.
From an Obama perspective this bodes well for Super Tuesday doesn’t it? Perhaps.
Bill Clinton may have seemed so inappropriate and even out of control that both Ted and Carolyn Kennedy have endorsed Obama, reportedly in part because of how the Clintons attempted to marginalize Obama as just another in a string of token black candidates.
These important endorsements aside, the Clintons may very well have accomplished just what the Kennedys and many others feel—they may have successfully marginalized him, turning him into a Jessie Jackson kind of frightening black specter. Someone frightening to insecure whites and, considerably more significant as the campaign moves across the country, to Hispanics who have a history of not supporting black candidates.
The Clintons may be gambling that the black folks in South Carolina, a state with about the country’s worst racial history, voted for one of their own as a gesture of pride and a rejection of the Clintons’ tactics; but other blacks around the country will return to their senses and vote for Hillary a week from Tuesday. Couple that with all the Latinos they expect to rally and it’s off to Denver this summer with the nomination locked up.
It is not insignificant after getting so few African-American votes in South Carolina that both Bill and Hillary Clinton slinked out of state before the votes were tallied (with Bill Clinton giving the ten-word concession speech) and immediately appeared before rallies of largely-black voters. To remind them that we’re still friends.
Hillary went to a black church on Sunday to let the parishioners and media know that her two biggest heroes in life are Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass. She even managed in the process to get her picture printed on the top left-hand corner of the front page of today’s New York Times, as if seated on a throne, with her arm benevolently around the shoulders of a handsome, immaculately dressed black boy.
That done, I predict that it will be off to California and Arizona where Latino voters will be courted and pandered to at every stop. Now that the wedge has been effectively inserted between whites and blacks it will be time to reinforced the division between Hispanics and blacks.
Question--at a Latino church next Sunday, which heroes can we expect to be trotted out?
And in case you might have been thinking he was one of these new type of non-racial blacks, Bill Clinton on the day of the South Carolina primary slyly compared Jessie Jackson with Obama. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s analogy of the previous week where she conflated herself with Lyndon Johnson, asserting that it takes a president (someone like herself) and not just an inspirational speaker (like Obama) to actually get the job done, unlike Senator Clinton’s version of playing the race card in this subtle way, her husband continued to be more blatant when he linked Obama directly to that scary-black-guy, Jessie Jackson. The very same Reverend Jackson who he called upon to heal his spirit during the Lewinsky affair. No shame.
From the post-SC primary exit poling, the conventional wisdom says that the Clintons’ race-baiting backfired. Whereas a couple of months ago Hillary was set to get 80 percent of the black vote, Obama reversed that number, receiving slightly more than 80 percent. And that coupled with a decent slice of the white vote (nearly 25 percent—as opposed to the predicted 10 percent) led to an Obama rout.
From an Obama perspective this bodes well for Super Tuesday doesn’t it? Perhaps.
Bill Clinton may have seemed so inappropriate and even out of control that both Ted and Carolyn Kennedy have endorsed Obama, reportedly in part because of how the Clintons attempted to marginalize Obama as just another in a string of token black candidates.
These important endorsements aside, the Clintons may very well have accomplished just what the Kennedys and many others feel—they may have successfully marginalized him, turning him into a Jessie Jackson kind of frightening black specter. Someone frightening to insecure whites and, considerably more significant as the campaign moves across the country, to Hispanics who have a history of not supporting black candidates.
The Clintons may be gambling that the black folks in South Carolina, a state with about the country’s worst racial history, voted for one of their own as a gesture of pride and a rejection of the Clintons’ tactics; but other blacks around the country will return to their senses and vote for Hillary a week from Tuesday. Couple that with all the Latinos they expect to rally and it’s off to Denver this summer with the nomination locked up.
It is not insignificant after getting so few African-American votes in South Carolina that both Bill and Hillary Clinton slinked out of state before the votes were tallied (with Bill Clinton giving the ten-word concession speech) and immediately appeared before rallies of largely-black voters. To remind them that we’re still friends.
Hillary went to a black church on Sunday to let the parishioners and media know that her two biggest heroes in life are Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass. She even managed in the process to get her picture printed on the top left-hand corner of the front page of today’s New York Times, as if seated on a throne, with her arm benevolently around the shoulders of a handsome, immaculately dressed black boy.
That done, I predict that it will be off to California and Arizona where Latino voters will be courted and pandered to at every stop. Now that the wedge has been effectively inserted between whites and blacks it will be time to reinforced the division between Hispanics and blacks.
Question--at a Latino church next Sunday, which heroes can we expect to be trotted out?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:11 AM
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