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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary's Hypocrisy: Clinging to Obama After Her Racist Dog Whistles in 2008
Hillary's Hypocrisy: Clinging to Obama After Her Racist Dog Whistles in 2008http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/hillarys-hypocrisy-clinging-to-obama-after-her-racist-dog-whistles-in-2008_b_9011244.html
2016-01-18-1453149011-286806-hillaryguiltylies.jpg
New York City, NY -- In the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary [won narrowly by Hillary Clinton] -- a race in which Clinton had a 20-point lead only a few months ago -- the racism and hypocrisy of the Clinton campaign were laid bare for all a nation to scorn.
Desperate and willing to do anything to win, the Clintons resorted to a naked form of racism aimed directly at white working-class voters in the rural portions of the state. Their message: Barack Obama cannot win because he's black.
In the early stages of the campaign, it was Clinton's cadre who kept playing the race card. In New Hampshire, Clinton's co-chair, Billy Shaheen, accused Obama of being a drug dealer; then there was the photograph of Sen. Barack Obama in Somali garb leaked to the press by Clinton's staff.
In the aftermath of the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton compared Obama's victory to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. His message was clear: Obama was a marginal, black candidate.
Then came the disgraceful remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, who could not, and would not, shut her mouth. "If Obama was a white man," she charged, "he would not be in this position." And she was adamant and unapologetic amid the resulting outcry. "Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call it racist," she proclaimed. "I will not be discriminated against because I'm white."
Say what?
The Clintons refused to publicly call for Ferraro's resignation. Ferraro remained unrepentant when she finally did resign. "The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you," she bitterly wrote Hillary. And she never apologized for her remarks.
To anyone who has followed the Clinton campaign closely, it is all too apparent that her top political strategists -- reeling from losses from coast to coast and badly miscalculating the grassroots power of the Obama movement -- made a tactical decision to go negative, as that would be the only way for Clinton to stop Obama and somehow allow her to steal the nomination.
And go negative they did -- with a subtle yet consistent racism underscoring every turn.
The now notorious red-phone-at-3:00-a.m. television ad used by Clinton during the Texas primary, as Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson noted in the New York Times, was reminiscent of D. W. Griffith's racist film Birth of a Nation, which helped revive the Ku Klux Klan.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell, who headed up Clinton's campaign, was publicly saying that white voters in the Keystone State would not vote for Obama because he was black. Rendell's remarks were racist from the get-go, but no one in the white media called him on it. Indeed, the media began playing the game.
ABC's George Stephanopoulos -- who worked as Bill Clinton's press secretary and lied through his teeth on Clinton's behalf (where's the journalistic "objectivity" here?) -- brought up Obama's relationship to former '60s radical Bill Ayers. And the rest of the media went bonkers over Obama's all-too-honest remarks about conservative white voters hanging on to God and guns.
New York City, NY -- In the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary [won narrowly by Hillary Clinton] -- a race in which Clinton had a 20-point lead only a few months ago -- the racism and hypocrisy of the Clinton campaign were laid bare for all a nation to scorn.
Desperate and willing to do anything to win, the Clintons resorted to a naked form of racism aimed directly at white working-class voters in the rural portions of the state. Their message: Barack Obama cannot win because he's black.
In the early stages of the campaign, it was Clinton's cadre who kept playing the race card. In New Hampshire, Clinton's co-chair, Billy Shaheen, accused Obama of being a drug dealer; then there was the photograph of Sen. Barack Obama in Somali garb leaked to the press by Clinton's staff.
In the aftermath of the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton compared Obama's victory to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. His message was clear: Obama was a marginal, black candidate.
Then came the disgraceful remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, who could not, and would not, shut her mouth. "If Obama was a white man," she charged, "he would not be in this position." And she was adamant and unapologetic amid the resulting outcry. "Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call it racist," she proclaimed. "I will not be discriminated against because I'm white."
Say what?
The Clintons refused to publicly call for Ferraro's resignation. Ferraro remained unrepentant when she finally did resign. "The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you," she bitterly wrote Hillary. And she never apologized for her remarks.
To anyone who has followed the Clinton campaign closely, it is all too apparent that her top political strategists -- reeling from losses from coast to coast and badly miscalculating the grassroots power of the Obama movement -- made a tactical decision to go negative, as that would be the only way for Clinton to stop Obama and somehow allow her to steal the nomination.
And go negative they did -- with a subtle yet consistent racism underscoring every turn.
The now notorious red-phone-at-3:00-a.m. television ad used by Clinton during the Texas primary, as Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson noted in the New York Times, was reminiscent of D. W. Griffith's racist film Birth of a Nation, which helped revive the Ku Klux Klan.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell, who headed up Clinton's campaign, was publicly saying that white voters in the Keystone State would not vote for Obama because he was black. Rendell's remarks were racist from the get-go, but no one in the white media called him on it. Indeed, the media began playing the game.
ABC's George Stephanopoulos -- who worked as Bill Clinton's press secretary and lied through his teeth on Clinton's behalf (where's the journalistic "objectivity" here?) -- brought up Obama's relationship to former '60s radical Bill Ayers. And the rest of the media went bonkers over Obama's all-too-honest remarks about conservative white voters hanging on to God and guns.
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Hillary's Hypocrisy: Clinging to Obama After Her Racist Dog Whistles in 2008 (Original Post)
amborin
Feb 2016
OP
Truth may be slow to come out but it is inevitable. Hillary is an awful human
thereismore
Feb 2016
#4
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,631 posts)1. Some things never change...n/t
shawn703
(2,702 posts)2. It's amazing how her and her campaign staff get a pass
From the M$M over their blatant racism. Who am I kidding? It's not amazing, it's expected.
Carolina
(6,960 posts)3. Though I disliked
HRC before the 2008 campaign because of her IWR vote, her nastiness during that 2008 primary campaign turned my dislike to loathing.
The very first campaign I ever worked on was Bobby Kennedy's and in 2008, when she said that she was going to stay in the race through the CA primary because 'you never know... remember Boobby Kennedy...' I was done with her. Her insinuation (rather, veiled wish) that Obama might be assassinated like RFK was beyond classless and tasteless. It was evil
thereismore
(13,326 posts)4. Truth may be slow to come out but it is inevitable. Hillary is an awful human
being.
polly7
(20,582 posts)5. K&R. nt.