This is as good an epitaph as any:
The Clintons sought to marginalize Obama as a candidate for African Americans. It backfired.
African American voters and millions of other Americans aren’t buying what Hillary Clinton is selling. They didn’t regard her presidency as inevitable. Nor did they consider her years as first lady, or her time spent with Little Rock’s Rose Law Firm or her service on Wal-Mart’s board of directors as qualifying her to become the nation’s commander in chief.
They recognized the yeast in Hillary Clinton’s résumé.
And Obama’s message of hope and transformation, as National Urban League President Marc Morial observed, is resonating across race and class lines.
Clinton and her advisers also misread where African Americans are in 2008.
The Clintons have destroyed their reputation in the black community.
Yes, he does evoke a sense of pride in many African Americans. But it’s because of what he represents in the campaign: an inspirational African American who has strong personal qualities, excellent credentials, a vision for America and a family that will make the nation proud.
As they used to say in my old neighborhood, the Clintons “low-rated” Obama. Beneath their smiles, the Clintons are constitutionally unable to accept the possibility that he could be viewed more favorably or thought to be more capable of uniting and leading the country than Hillary.
Many African Americans have come to hold that view.
They aren’t alone.
I long ago lost any respect for the Clintons…especially Bill. But it comes as no shock to me to see Democrats off all races, genders, and classes coming around to the same low opinion. Just because you are unfairly attacked doesn’t make you virtuous. And it doesn’t mean you are above legitimate criticism…even contempt.
The Clintons presided over the near total destruction of the Democratic Party and then had the gall to think they’re entitled to inherit the party when it is on the rebound. No. They cannot be allowed to get near, let alone take over, this newly successful emerging progressive majority. All they’d do is fuck it up.
I just finished reading Colbert I. King’s article to Demetrius. This part is worth pointing out to those who wish to marginalize the support Obama gets from “the black vote”.
if they can’t have it, they’ll destroy it before they let go.
Forget the “I’m honored to be here with Barack Obama.” The reality has set in and today she has changed her tone:
“Shame on you,” Clinton tells Obama accusing him of using Rove’s playbook.
I’ve never heard this phrase before:
The yeast?
I hope Obama wins Texas and/or Ohio. So that Hillary can be pressured into officially dropping out and we can all move on.
Because your Hillary hatred is starting to bother me.
If someone presented as a job resume to me what she has presented to the public, I’d say it was padded or pumped up with air (yeast-> CO2). For some reason, Hillary didn’t go with actual accomplishments but needed or was coached to pump them up. She claimed in the debate to have represented the country for 15 years. i have no idea what this means or what it refers to. First Lady traveling to funerals in foreign lands? She positioned herself as experienced vis a vis the callow candidate. This led inevitably to resume padding.
For many reasons, people didn’t buy it. Last night we had dinner with a relative who is a life-long Republican (and announced to our amazement he will vote for Obama) who said he thought experience was a liability for Hillary. He associated it with lobbyists, secret deals, etc. He wanted someone without baggage who also had good judgment. And McCain disgusts him as do all the other Republican contenders.
If she’s counting the eight years as First Lady as part of her fifteen years representing the U.S. she must have been making a grand tour of funerals overseas when Bill pushed through NAFTA. She’s denying her connection to it now.
I wondered why Obama waited so long to bring up NAFTA, but I guess it’ll be the coup de grace in Ohio, at least if the “lunch-bucket” voters don’t spend too much time worrying about lattes and Priuses. I mean, I’m all for class struggle, but let’s at least target BMWs.
If you look around, any hope that H. Clinton would take the high road at the end of the debate Thursday night is gone. And nicely timed with the Pentagon kinda sorting trying to undermine Obama’s story about the captain, the “hubbub” about Obama not wearing a flag pin and the exclusive in the GLOBE that some guy was Obama’s gay lover.
This crossfire of stupidity is just that, but the way propaganda works, it functions together to undermine him. We’ve seen it before.
nice.
Booman, I said you were a better writer than Hunter, as the above and this thought, sums up the problem with the Clintons.
Sounds nice… But get back to me in 4 or 5 years and we’ll discuss whether there is really a “newly successful emerging progressive majority.” If politics has shifted any by then, and you will know if it really has by then, I’ll be one of the indies that’ll be celebrating.
Even if the Dems take a commanding majority in Congress, it could very well end up being “the left” against “the DLC types and republicans” screwing us over and stalling any real shifts.
Obama is a very interesting presence in the national dialogue and, I think, easy to have underestimated 6 or 9 months ago.
Right now I know that walking around the Twin Cities with my Obama and Keith Ellison* caucus stickers on my jacket, I get a lot of good vibes from black folks.
I think what this is, is an opportunity for a lot of black people to acknowledge the non-black people in their communities who stand up for their empowerment. This is a powerful moment in United States History.
Honestly, for the Clintons, I think this will be an interesting footnote. HRC can maybe have the Senate Majotiy Leader seat and then go on to re-establish her’s and Bill’s reputations. I hope so.
Until then, though, I am going to enjoy the campaign and brace myself for the RNC here in St. Paul…
*Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to national office in the U.S., is not my Congressman. I live in Betty McCollum’s district. But a friend is on Keith’s campaign, and I love representing for him.
Can you explain to me why a person whose chief qualification is that she is the wife of, as Booman puts it, the guy that practically destroyed the Democratic Party, should be Senate Majority Leader? That is rather an important position, you know, and Dodd, Leahy, Feingold, are infinitely more qualified to fill it.
Should? That’s a bit much. I think it’s a realpolitik solution to the problem of how much how many feel they owe her.
Dodd would be better, and would be awesomeand does have better qualifications. Feingold would be cramped–many people would lean heavily on him to tone down his rhetoric in that job. Leahy… I dunno.
But my guess is that they give it to Hillary because there is a sentiment that she deserves something. Whether she does or not can be figured out later.
One last thought. It, unfortunately, is not below their standards. Their standards range all over the place. Some stories are as good as they get, then a real klunker comes out, like the one about Hillary and Bill’s marriage or Obama and drugs. The really serious problems are Judith Miller and the FISA story. Those are both inexcusable failures to do their job.
I meant this for the NYT diary.
I agree completely, they don’t deserve to fuck up and stop the progressive majority that is rapidly emerging from the ashes of NAFTA, Reagan-Bushes, and collapsing imperialism.
And we have a huge onus on us not to fuck it up too, because the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are out there to trip us up and stop the movement.
Right. But she’d make a great Senate majority leader (a comfy little sinecure that should keep her out of trouble).
She’d make a great wife for a philandering redneck who’s into chunky brunettes, nothing more.
Me no likey Billary…
It must be something like that, why we’re hearing this talk. But seriously, I think she’d be a disaster as Majority Leader. Couldn’t they give her something a little less sensitive, like ambassador to Slovakia or something? Not that I have anything against Slovakia.
It’s just that I have never before heard of the supremely important post of SML being devalued into a consolation prize for an extremely divisive, failed presidential candidate.
Worse than that, it backfired among the progressive whites as well. I think I can comfortably speak for more than myself for once when I say that my reaction to their dog whistle racist tactics was, “Not in my party!”
I spent too long being embarrassed by Bill Clinton’s sexual shenanigans during the 90s to be willing to bear more as it was. But add to that the whiff of burning crosses? Fuck no. I don’t know how that played in other parts of the country, but I am a Southerner, a proud Southerner, and the South I am proud of is the South that has striven to atone for the sins of the past and heal the rift between black and white, to build a South we can all be proud of, one where we are all brothers. And if you work against our hard-won gains, you become the enemy regardless of any other ideological affiliation you might have. That is a bright line that you just do not cross.
And frankly, I’d rather deal with open, honest racism than have some developmentally stunted asshole like Bill Clinton cynically sneaking back and forth across that line and sticking his tongue out at us. And the same goes for Hillary, who was apparently content to let her cohorts do all the dirty work.
Fuck no.
I’m not a southerner, but your comment perfectly expresses why I went from vigorously opposing a Clinton restoration (as I opposed a Gore third-term vigorously in the primaries) to actually forswearing voting for Hillary at all in the general. Not in my party is exactly right.
Boo you’re not a southerner??????
I would have never known.