Still Hung Up on Geraldine

I know I posted about this same topic yesterday, but I'm still hung up on it.

Geraldine Ferraro basically implied that Barack Obama is getting the black votes just because he's black.

Now, certainly I can understand people wanting to vote for their historically denied-a-voice race or sex. I'm a woman who would love to see a woman hold the highest office because certainly women are just as capable as men. So, yes, a strong candidate would have to lose my vote more than win it. (Which Hillary certainly has.) In this sense the black people in this country are lucky because they have a candidate who is honest. Who is for peace over war. Who doesn't change his positions to try to win votes. Who inspires people to get involved in their country.

But the truth is, despite this truism, Hillary started out with a lot of black support. After all her husband had been called "The First Black President." So it was up to her to keep that support alive. But she squandered all their years of work on behalf of African-Americans by acting like racist assholes themselves.

I mean what black person could possibly vote for Hillary (and her co-president former president Bill Clinton) after she said:

"... President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done."

And he said:

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign her and Obama ran a good campaign here. Not their longtime friend and supporter civil rights leader Congressman Johnson Lewis. He switched sides. He couldn't take it anymore.

Who could?

And forgive me for reading too much into this, but I sense some more subtle racism from the Clintons when they said Obama would be a great number two, vice president. Could they have possibly been implying "Yes Obama is ahead (in winning more states, in delegates and in the popular vote) but he's black. Come on everyone. He's black."