Obama Was First to Use Race Card

[emilyg]

Obama was the first to play the race card

Sean Wilentz
is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus professor of history at Princeton University


Quietly, the storm over the hateful views expressed by Sen. Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has blown away the most insidious myth of the Democratic primary campaign. Obama and his surrogates have charged that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has deliberately and cleverly played the race card in order to label Obama the "black" candidate.

Having injected racial posturing into the contest, Obama's "post-racial" campaign finally seems to be all about race and sensational charges about white racism. But the mean-spirited strategy started even before the primaries began, when Obama's operatives began playing the race card - and blamed Hillary Clinton.

Had she truly conspired to inflame racial animosities in January and February, her campaign would have brought up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary sermons. But the Clinton campaign did not. And when the Wright stories and videos finally did break through in the mass media, they came not from Clinton's supporters but from Fox News Network.

Although Wright had until recently been obscure to the American public, political insiders and reporters have long known about him. On March 6, 2007, the New York Times reported that Obama had disinvited Wright from speaking at his announcement because, as Wright said

more...http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080330_Obama_was_the_first_to_play_the_race_card.html

[babylonsister]

1. Yawn. Two fellow TNR writers denounce Sean Wilentz's "Race Card" smear

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=5314720

[Skwmom]

48. You mean race card lie.

Nothing like trying to mislead the public. I would be embarrassed to write such an article and have my name attached to it.

[FrenchieCat]

2. Yawn!

:boring:

[surfermaw]

43. His wife first in S.C. something about Black voters will wake up them put it on Bill Clinton

what lies they are, then the same day his wife make the statement, Obama came in with another remark, to get the black vote

[Colobo]

3. Not true emily. He didn't.

[grantcart]

12. not only that the author doesn't support the premise

please see reply down thread

[Johnny__Motown]

4. LET IT SINK.... just more sniper fire at Obama

[americanstranger]

5. Dupe.

We had this discussion last night.

- as

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. Meanwhile people are losing their homes and their jobs and people are still talking about Wright?

Fast Forward please

[emilyg]

17. Sniper fire?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

22. ?

[emilyg]

27. Wright, sniper fire - hot topics on DU.

[Zhade]

7. More lies? You do clinton proud.

NT!

[anonymous171]

8. Because Obama would really benefit from being known as the "black candidate" wouldn't he?

Worked so well for Jesse Jackson after all.

[NanceGreggs]

9. Valiant effort, emilyg ...

... but this has been posted, re-posted, and posted again - and guess what? Obama supporters are still behind him, and he's still ahead in delegates.

Did you honestly think posting this yet again was going to change anyone's mind?

And to be perfectly blunt, Sidney and Ruth Lapidus's opinion means no more to me than the opinion of any other two people. They're free not to vote for Obama - just as I am free to vote for him.

Why their assessment of either candidate should make a difference to me is, quite frankly, a total mystery.

[emilyg]

13. Dear Nancy

I don't sit at DU all day. Did not realize it was posted.

[NanceGreggs]

21. On that note, I apologize ...

... because it has been posted several times now - and I assumed (wrongly so) that you were aware of that.

But the fact remains that this is not going to change anyone's mind about anything -- Hill supporters and Obama supporters included.

As for the editorial opinion of two people being anything more than just that, mere opinion -- well, 'nuff said.

[NashVegas]

47. You Have Nothing to Apologize For

Pick any negative HC story and Obama supporters will start a minimum of 15 threads on that topic. By chastising you for starting yours, they're just trying to shut down criticism. Don't fall for it.

[EFerrari]

10. Ciao, emily. n/t

[grantcart]

11. Please read the article

his argument is based on very and I mean very tangetial arguments that have nothing to do with the Obama campaign for example

Quote
1)The Obama campaign and its supporters pressed this strategy after Clinton's unexpected win in New Hampshire. Pundits partial to Obama, including Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and John Nichols of the Nation, instantly mused that their candidate lost because of supposedly bigoted New Hampshire whites who had lied to pre-primary pollsters - an easily disproven falsehood that nevertheless gained currency in the media.

Comment
Pundits partial to Obama - Eugene Robinson - come on now. First pundits are not part of the campaign and the campaigns have no direction to them. Secondly Robinson likes Obama but he also likes Clinton he is not a partisan pundit. Thirdly I find it very hard to believe that Robinson was saying that bigotry was a key to the NH primary.

Quote
2)Next morning, Obama's national co-chair, Jesse Jackson Jr., cast false and vicious aspersions about Hillary Clinton's famous emotional moment in New Hampshire as a measure of her deep racial insensitivity. "Her appearance brought her to tears," said Jackson, "not Hurricane Katrina."

Comment: Has nothing to do with 'playing the race card'


Quote
3)Obama's backers, including members of his official campaign staff, then played what might be called "the race-baiter card." Hillary Clinton, in crediting both Lyndon Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Civil Rights Act in 1964, had supposedly denigrated King, and by extension Obama. Allegedly, Bill Clinton had dismissed Obama's victory in South Carolina by comparing it to those of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the 1980s. (In fact, their electoral totals were comparable - and in the interview at issue, Clinton complimented Obama on his performance "everywhere" - a line the media usually omitted.)

Comment
The quote undermines the author's point - that Obama reacted first.

[Me.]

14. Pish

Tosh

[Johnny__Motown]

15. Look into the source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Wilentz




*Wilentz appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998 to argue against the Clinton impeachment. His testimony — he told the House members that, if they voted for impeachment but were not convinced Clinton's offenses were impeachable, "history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness" *

[ecstatic]

16. ...

[Jim Sagle]

18. Of COURSE he was, and everybody goddamn well knows it!

[OzarkDem]

19. Yes he did, and probably won't be the last time

It appears its the only tactic he has to distract voters from his lack of experience.

[marmar]

23. Maybe next time he can claim to have been dodging bombs on some runway in E. Europe....

:eyes:

[anamandujano]

33. ......or maybe he can claim credit for someone else's work.

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," state Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the 1-yard line and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."

During his seventh and final year in the Illinois Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law-including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced. It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics, and he couldn't have done it without Jones.

http://dallasobserver.com/2008-02-28/news/obama-and-me/2

[OzarkDem]

39. Or getting conceived in Selma

Obama has the Pinnochio syndrome.

[JeffR]

25. Right, he's always busy distracting people, that guy

while his fund-raising advantage, primary victory advantage and delegate advantage continue to climb. Right you are.
:spray:

[babylonsister]

26. Forsooth! Don't forget get his popularity!

:thumbsup:

[JeffR]

28. That too!

:thumbsup:

[OzarkDem]

40. Wall Street, MSM and Corporate America backing

has always been an advantage, at first.

Why do you think he wants to cut the primary short? He knows he can't last, that eventually the bullshit starts to surface and he has to answer questions.

[SoonerPride]

20. plonk

I don't have time for this.

[grantcart]

24. anyone want to see this article shred in detail go here

wilentz is a long time Clinton intimate who is probably desperately hoping to get an administrative position. During the Clinton Impeachement he gave a hysterical speech that was rebuked by the NYT


Here the article is taken apart in detail - one selection is shown below

http://www.correntewire.com/sean_wilentz_and_white_resentment

You see, in Wilentz’s world, Obama is responsible for every remark uttered by black people:

Appearing on CNN, one of its pundits, Donna Brazile, hurled the wild charge that Clinton had likened Obama to a child. “And I will tell you,” she concluded, “as an African American I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.” With those kinds of remarks—“as an African American”—the race card and the race-baiter card both came back into play. Although Brazile is formally not part of Obama’s campaign, her comments made their way to the South Carolina memo, offered as evidence that Clinton’s comment was racially insensitive.

She’s not “formally” a part of Obama’s campaign, but her skin color gives her away. That’s why we know that Jewish pundits and reporters are part of Likud as well. Good God. The most interesting question here is what makes raving like this acceptable.

[johnnydrama]

29. breaking news

big Clinton supporter says something bad about Obama.

Alert the media.

[emilyg]

30. Pray tell

Only Obama supporters can say bad things about Clinton?

[nsd]

31. Wilentz is a good friend of the Clintons and has endorsed HRC.

Princeton affiliation or not, he has about as much credibility on this issue as Taylor Marsh -- meaning, none at all.

[madrchsod]

46. i see why he is--he loves bill

[bhikkhu]

32. Because the most important thing, really, is who did it first?

[McCamy Taylor]

34. Wait until it is in the New York Times, I told you this was coming and to back

off but no one listens. The same press that played along was just waiting to turn on Obama and start pointing fingers at him. I also told you that the press never favored either Dem candidate, they hate them both and they are taking turns attacking them. It is in my journals. Obama was a fool to give them anything to use against him.

[Warren Stupidity]

37. Well that is the simple truth.

They are just taking turns knocking our candidates down while pumping up the senile ex pow McCain, 'hero' of our last Really Bad War. And we are just feeding the fire.

[BlooInBloo]

35. Breaking news: white people say black person was first to "play the race card"....

... In other news, dog bites man.

It's GOOD to be the fox guarding the henhouse - then you can make up all the shit you want.

[intaglio]

36. See Emily play n/t

[Tom Rinaldo]

38. His observation about the timing of the Wright controversy is significant

He is right that Rev. Wright was known to be potentially controversial by the media and one has to assume the Clinton campaign also. Had the Clinton camaign wanted to use race to take down Obama they would have made sure Wright videos surfaced prior to Super Tuesday (the church sold them openly) or certainly prior to Ohio and Texas, when Clinton was fighting for her her political life - but the story broke after those primaries.

[Life Long Dem]

41. Hypothetically speaking.

What if he did? Where is that going to get you? As if your holding onto something depending on this answer. And if he did short of a miracle it's over. And forgotten about.

[flor de jasmim]

42. Leaving aside whether this view is credible, there is a LARGER ISSUE

It's easy to point out overt signs of racism, sexism or gender bias, etc. etc. However, there are so many subtleties that covert bias can be very difficult to pinpoint.

It would be much healthier for all if we stopped with the "well, THEY STARTED IT" arguments (on either side). I'm not saying that we should speak up when we find instances, only that the question of who started it is a false issue.

My mother used to give me the Cheney response when I said my sister started something: "SO....???"

[stray cat]

44. How dare he be black

[madrchsod]

45. this is from someone who wrote a book that claims

reagan was the best president in the last 35 years

"Even Bill Clinton, he shows, tacitly admitted the ascendance of many Reaganesque core values in the American mind by styling himself as a centrist "New Democrat" and moving himself and his party to the right. Wilentz postulates Reagan as the perfect man at the ideal moment, not just ruling his eight years in the White House, but also casting a long shadow on all that followed (a shadow, one might add, still being felt in the Republican presidential campaign today). While examining in detail the low points of Reagan's presidency, from Iran-Contra to his initial belligerence toward the Soviet Union, Wilentz concludes in his superb account that Reagan must be considered one of the great presidents: he reshaped the geopolitical map of the world as well as the American judiciary and bureaucracy, and uplifted an American public disheartened by Vietnam and the grim Carter years. While much has been written by Reagan admirers, Wilentz says, "his achievement looks much more substantial than anything the Reagan mythmakers have said in his honor." 16 pages of b&w photos."

http://www.amazon.com/Age-Reagan-History-1974-2008/dp/0060744804
Amazon.com: The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008: Sean Wilentz: Books