The View From the Sinister Side of Life
May 27th, 2008
I never quite got around to posting my ever-so-confident finals predictions, after being nearly perfect in the last two rounds. I was going to say Penguins in five. Oops. Maybe I had the number of games right, anyway…
Categories: NHL, Sports | No Comments
May 27th, 2008
What’s surprising about these revelations?
Only their source: Bush loyalist (until now, apparently) Scott McClellan
Categories: Iraq, Katrina, Politics | 4 Comments
May 27th, 2008
Okay, old news, but Joan Walsh seems to think that any outrage over Clinton’s comments is manufactured:
Thanks to my long weekend, I could probably get away without addressing the controversy over Clinton’s RFK remarks, which is finally dying down. But I think this is an important and disturbing issue for Democrats. Criticize Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war, her pandering on the gas tax holiday, her lame remarks about “hardworking Americans, white Americans,” her response to Obama’s “bitter” remarks, her lackluster campaign strategy coming into 2008. I’ve criticized all of that, and more. But to argue that she was suggesting she’s staying in the race because Obama might be assassinated — even after both Clinton, and the journalists who interviewed her, said her reference was to RFK’s June campaign, not to his heartbreaking murder — requires either a special kind of paranoia or venal political opportunism.
This is very wrong, and it is wrong in a way that highlights some of the blindness of certain Clinton supporters. The Clinton campaign has unabashedly been, at least in part, about the notion that Clinton is more electable than Obama. Her arguments about winning in swing states is one example, but much of the argument has been a more subtle version of “the black guy can’t win”. When Clinton talks about how Obama cannot connect with hardworking, white Americans, when her camp says that when Bill tries to discount Obama’s victory in South Carolina by saying African Americans always win South Carolina, when the campaign is slow to distance from Ferraro after her racist remarks, when Clinton refuses to clearly state that Obama is not a Muslim on 60 minutes the implication is pretty clear: Obama cannot win because he is Black. The argument isn’t really being made very subtly anymore, and it is that argument that needs to be kept in mind when viewing the reaction to her comments about RFK’s assassination.
From Edgar Mevers to Martin Luther King, Black political leaders have been removed by the simple expediency of a bullet. It is a known and frightening part of our history, and it is no secret that racism is a live and well in this country and in this campaign. So when Clinton, after months of sometimes clumsy and offensive variations of the argument “the black guy can’t win”, implies that she needs to stay in the race because a popular candidate was killed late in the primary process, it is a legitimate window into her thinking. Clinton has stubbornly and steadfastly clung to the fiction that Obama is simply unacceptable to white working class males and thus must lose the general election. No one seriously thinks that she believes that Obama is likely to be assassinated, but I think it is reasonable to note that the comment is just an extreme version of an argument that is simply and obviously not correct. That Clinton would, even in an unguarded moment, use the death of a popular leader as a reason she must continue her campaign against an African American candidate it is a disturbing look at just how deeply Clinton and, by extension, her campaign has internalized the notion that “the black guy can’t win”.
And that is a worrying sign. Because if they believe it that deeply, then it is much more likely that they will continue to run a campaign that makes, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, the argument that the Democrats cannot risk running a black man for the Presidency. There is nothing at all good that can come from that and that is absolutely something to be concerned about.
Categories: General, Politics | 9 Comments
May 27th, 2008
Yeah, it’s been a while, sorry. My wife has gone through a mini-medical crisis (stabilized now) and work has been extremely busy. Combined with the drudgery of the never-ending primary, I haven’t had the interest or energy to blog. But lately I have been composing posts in my head, so I suppose that means the interest is back. So I will be around more often from here on out. Thanks for your patience. If you are still here …
Categories: Bloggin, General | 6 Comments
May 27th, 2008
You know Hillary’s oft-repeated claim that it’s “unprecedented” for someone to ask a second-place candidate to quit the Democratic primaries when a clear favorite has emerged, but has not yet clinched the nomination? Turns out, not so much, with her husband’s 1992 campaign having done pretty much exactly the same thing. Wort a read. Via TPM.
