James Clyburn Happy to Play His Familiar Part Once More
Once again -- and for the last time -- the Democratic primary campaign has moved into a southern state, North Carolina, with a large African American population as well as a considerable university and college town liberal vote. Once again, the Barack Obama campaign and its supporters, fresh from a stinging defeat, are trying to stir up false accusations that Hillary Clinton and her campaign have cynically injected racial animosities into the campaign.
The latest round of charges about the Clintons have come from a familiar source, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black leader in Congress. In January, after the Obama campaign suffered stunning defeats in New Hampshire and Nevada, Rep. Clyburn, although nominally uncommitted, joined a chorus of concerted complaint about Hillary Clinton's supposed denigration of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his contributions to the 1964 Civil Rights Act because of her observation that President Lyndon Johnson had played a crucial part in guiding its passage. (Clinton's actual remarks, rarely reported, praised King enormously and were historically accurate.)
Clyburn then jumped on flimsy accusations that former President Bill Clinton had supposedly made subtle racial remarks by calling Obama's claim to unwavering opposition to administration policy in Iraq a "fairy tale," and by likening Obama's eventual victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. (The first had nothing whatsoever to do with race: Obama had said in 2004, 2005 and 2006 that he didn't know how he would have voted on Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq because as a state senator he had no access to the intelligence, and Obama voted consistently for war funding as a U.S. senator. On the second matter -- again, rarely reported in full -- Bill Clinton's remark was delivered as part of his praise of Obama's campaign in every state, and Jackson himself publicly deemed it inoffensive.) Clinton had apparently done his wife's campaign a lot of good with his work in New Hampshire and Nevada; but the targeted attack on him had the double effect of marginalizing him while advancing the race-baiter charges.
The Obama campaign had already begun injecting race into the campaign, notably on the morning after the New Hampshire primary, when its national co-chair, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, went on national television to accuse Senator Clinton of false emotion and racial intent in her tearful description of her commitment to public service. "Those tears also have to be analyzed," said Obama's co-chair. "They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for." And then Jackson added, disclosing his underlying political agenda: "Particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45% of African-Americans who participate in the Democratic contest." Clyburn immediately followed up, upping the ante by ripping into Bill Clinton and telling him to "chill." At the same time, an official Obama South Carolina campaign memo surfaced, which specified innocuous statements by Clinton supporters that could be twisted into race-baiting remarks -- including the wild claim, built from distorted quotations that Bill Clinton had said his wife was "stronger" than Nelson Mandela.
The charges leveled at the Clintons by Clyburn and others in South Carolina began what has become a completely predictable pattern among Obama, his campaign, and their supporters. First, Obama loses primary campaigns in key states which he had either expected to win (as in New Hampshire and then Nevada) or had worked desperately hard to win (as in Pennsylvania, where he outspent Hillary Clinton by as much as three-to-one). Then, as the campaign moved southward -- to Louisiana and then the "Potomac" primaries following Super Tuesday, to Mississippi following the March 4 Ohio and Texas primaries, and now to North Carolina -- come the furious but false charges, reported in the press as undeniable truths, that the Clinton campaign has indulged in mean-spirited race baiting, as a prelude to upcoming contests in southern states.
Some of these claims have turned out to be hoaxes, such as the release by the campaign, in the aftermath of Super Tuesday, of a supposedly scurrilous photograph of Obama in native African garb. Posted on the Drudge Report and lifted, as it turned out, from another right-wing website, Free Republic, where it initially surfaced, the appearance of the photograph was nevertheless blamed on the Clinton campaign by Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe who called it "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election." (Obama himself, after dismissing the incident in a public debate with Hillary Clinton, returned to the accusation while on the stump with black voters in Mississippi.)
On other occasions, Obama suggested to mostly black audiences, in coded racial terms, that the Clintons were attempting to confuse them with their criticisms of him. Before the South Carolina, "Potomac" and Mississippi primaries, Obama cheerfully lifted the "hoodwinked, bamboozled" rant from the Spike Lee film Malcolm X, in order to convey to black voters that, whatever he might say about a "post-racial" campaign, racial solidarity against white traducers was crucial to his effort. Denzel Washington, playing Malcolm X, says: "I'm gonna tell you like it really is. Every election year these politicians are sent up here to pacify us! They're sent here and set up here by the white man! I say and I say it again, you've been had. You've been took. You've been HOODWINKED, BAMBOOZLED, led astray, run amok." Barack Obama repeatedly echoed: "Don't be hoodwinked! Don't be bamboozled!"
Other claims have either been either outright fabrications or hysterical distortions: false charges leveled by one popular pro-Obama website, Daily Kos, that the Clinton campaign "blackened" their candidate to make his look menacing by purposely darkening a another photograph of him; and the strained Geraldine Ferraro fracas, in which an awkward remark buried in the Torrance, California Daily Breeze was trumpeted nationally by prominent Obama supporters such as Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown into accusations said that the Clinton campaign had descended into the politics of a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. Then there was the false claim by one of Obama's best known supporters in academia, Orlando Patterson of Harvard, published on the op-ed page of the New York Times, that there was no black child in Clinton's "3 a.m." television ad on national security, a supposedly racist move worthy of D. W. Griffith and Birth of a Nation -- when, in fact, there was a black child in that commercial.
Which brings us back to Representative Clyburn, on the eve of North Carolina, which some have called Obama's firewall state -- a state he must win convincingly in order to head off his latest slide in the primary race. Last week, Bill Clinton belatedly observed that the Obama campaign "played the race card on me" in South Carolina, and cited a conversation he had had with Jesse Jackson to prove his point. Clyburn jumped back in, getting the attention of The New York Times by charging that "black people are incensed" at Clinton and claiming that it is "an almost 'unanimous' view among African-Americans that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are "committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win." Clyburn may well be correct about perceptions of the Clintons among some black voters; but he simply hides how Obama, his campaign, and their supporters have willfully created that impression.
Remarkably, reports about the Clintons' alleged race-baiting have been reproduced so often and so uncritically in the press that they have attained the status of incontrovertible truth. Evidence and arguments to the contrary can expect either to be ignored (with their arguments dismissed, as Ryan Lizza recently and sarcastically did in The New Yorker, as "mysterious"). Or they can expect to be greeted by ad hominem attacks which do not engage the evidence, and which can even stray (as I have learned directly) into attacks on the author as a racist -- the sort who, back in 1860, sneered at Abraham Lincoln as a "Black Republican." There is no honest dialogue on this issue: only constant reiteration by Obama's supporters of the undeniable truth of the charges against the Clintons, and the personal disparaging of any who dare call the charges into question.
Yet, there are, to be sure, some stray signs that the press may be catching on to what is going on here. After Rep. Clyburn's latest tirade, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times -- who has until now been consistently anti-Clinton and pro-Obama -- raised an eyebrow in her column about Clyburn's endorsement of what Dowd called the "Tonya Harding conspiracy theory," that the Clintons and their supporters were out to destroy Obama by the foulest of means. And playing the race-baiter card runs the enormous risk of deepening the racial divide that will make it more difficult for Obama to appeal to white voters, as it has in the past.
But there may not be time for the Obama campaign to worry about that, given the Pennsylvania results, given the possible outcomes in Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky, and given the growing perception (deepened by the continuing outbursts by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) that Obama may not be electable in November. Incensing black voters in North Carolina -- as well as college and university liberals in the Chapel Hill-Durham area -- would be one way to gain the large majority that Obama needs to regain his footing. And so, yet again, the by now routine charges against the Clintons as race-baiters reappear -- with Representative Clyburn of neighboring South Carolina happy to play his by now familiar part once more.
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On CNN and other media they play just a para from Bill Clintons remarks but they do not show the part where Bill says that for those who do not know his office happens to be in Harlem. And from the funds that his foundation collects millions in low cost drugs ( prescriptions ) are provided to those suffering from HIV in Africa. Bill Clinton deserves better.
Bill Clinton deserves the criticism and should know better. Having heard all of the entire statements and all of the arguments that this columnist has made which have all been said before it is a shame that the statements as spoken are certainly not blatant racial judgments. President Clinton is very smart and I do believe that he is making these comments that are not as subtle as he would have hoped intentionally to harm the Obama campaign but not because his views have become negative but because he wants Senator Clinton to win. They have become much less subtle at this point because they want it to be understood that they are making implications about Senator Obama that will harm him.
Clarify my sentence in previous: that it is a shame that the statements are intended to be racially divisive and because they are not blatant in the intent does not disguise the subtle intention of the statements. The statements by the Clintons taken out of the context can be argued by anyone, as this columnist has, that they were innocent. But it is impossible to further this discussion because two such opposing interpretations will never be reconciled. I am sorry wasted any time on this argument because it is pointless. President Clinton was held in such high esteem and apparently the Clintons thought they would not be found out in what were their true intentions.
Yeah...and David Duke trotted out a black man that was working on his campaign for president. It's not what you say...it's what you do...
All you Clinton defenders are very ignorant as to whether Bill Clinton injected racial overtures in the campaign against Senator Obama. I'm African Amreican, and was for Clinton, and voted for Bill Clinton twice. After they started to talk down to Senator Obama after the Iowa primary. And continued through the South Carolina primary. Is when I and a majority of African Americans started supporting Senator Obama.
Obviously you weren't paying close enough attention to the media because Mr. Wilentz's detailed article is exactly what factually transpired. Perhaps you drank the kool-aid and were too dizzy to see what was really happening--that's giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Bill Clinton in S. Carolina:
Obama = Jesse Jackson * 3
That paying close enough attention 4 you?
Typical Clintonite trying to convince all up is down and black is white.
So you're saying that Jazz42, who just admitted to supporting Obama, is a typical Clintonite?
With supporters like that the Clintons don't need opponents.
Indeed, I concur. Prior to Bubba jumping up and down on his soupcoolers, I thought he had been the absolute best president ever. Even when Hillary was first lady, I admired her so much I sent her an email suggesting that she run for president.
However, after seeing how desperate, greedy and utterly tacky they are, if she is the nominee, I will vote Ralph Nader. No way would I ever do anything to support their perceived monarchy.
Now this is about as low as any snake can go and that is to pit blacks against one another for the sake of winning:
Was Jeremiah Wright's speech set up by a Clinton supporter?
Well, here's a most interesting connection we just came across.
Everybody is talking today about how much the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's latest unrepentant militant remarks hurt his most prominent parishoner, Sen. Barack Obama, and his chances to win the Democratic presidential nomination and the general election. So much so that the Obama camp realized the latent danger overnight and the candidate was forced to speak out publicly a second time today, as The Ticket noted here earlier today.
(continued)
Do you really think Americans needed Obama's people to make the judgement for them that the Clintons were using racial innuendo to attack him? Of course, it was all a fabrication made out of whole cloth! No way would the Clinton's try to paint Obama as "The Black Candidate"
When Bob Kerrey, big-time Dem figure and Clinton surrogate, said that Obama was Muslim and went to a madrassa nobody in their right mind would think the Clinton camp was racist or xenophobic
I met a local white politician at a fundraiser for Obama before he won SC. He'd heard enough of this subtle racial crap out of the Clintons to switch his support to Obama before Bill Clinton stuck his foot in his mouth.
What Clinton did was point out that Jesse Jackson had won SC, and left the listener to infer the rest: Another black presidential hopeful won that state, and didn't get the nomination, so it doesn't mean squat that this black candidate has won it. The racial innuendo is unmistakable; John Edwards also won SC, and would be a more natural example in an uncolored sneer. But it wasn't.
It's amazing how the Clintons can belittle entire sections of the country--and of course, the voters in those parts as well--without occasioning the outcry that the "cling" comment did. They still do this, citing "the important states," as if the rest of them are chopped liver.
page 4
In another entry, Reynolds notes critically of Obama, "It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray, the senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement."
Louis notes himself about the Wright appearance: "It's hard to exaggerate how bad the actual news conference was. Wright, steeped in an honorable, fiery tradition of Bible-based social criticism, cheapened his arguments and his movement by mugging for the cameras, rolling his eyes, heaping scorn on his critics and acting as if nobody in the room was learned enough to ask him a question."
It is truly amazing that one would try to sell the point that the Obama campaign was injecting race when it is such a backward argument designed to fit the narrative being pushed. It certainly points to the seriousness race relations in this country because this point of few is not one of logic. And the party believes that reconciliation is possible once this nomination is decided. I am yet again amazed that people can convince themselves, and unfortunately others of a theory that is so ridiculous based on the facts. Do people want to even know the facts. This actually coincides with the arguments that Senator Clinton makes herself. She'll look you straight in the eye and with utter conviction in her tone she will tell untruth after untruth and often if the situation warrants she will be inconsistent with her own previous statements. I do not understand how so many people are fooled so easily. The Clintons have done and said anything they can to win and that includes interjecting race despite destruction they are causing. Amazing.
The truth is biased against your candidate.
Whatever you're trying to do here won't work Sean Wilentz unless you're trying to drive an even deeper wedge between Hillary and Obama's supporters. Obama has to wonder why he doesn't appeal more to rural, white working class voters and he can't just fall back on tired racial explanations in learning to become a more attractive candidate to this demographic. Even more so, considering she's winning less than 10 percent of their vote, Hillary has to wonder why she doesn't appeal more to African-Americans and she can't fall back on similar racial explanations.
To suggest that the accusations of racism against the Clintons are baseless at the same time that you allude to "coded racial" appeals on Obama's part in his use of the words "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked" before mixed-race audiences is shockingly hypocritical. To lump the comments of Obama's "supporters" like Keith Olbermann and James Clyburn, with Obama and his campaign is poor journalism. You've twisted the comments of Jesse Jackson Jr. Also, with no justification, you've strangely used Clyburn's admonition to Bill Clinton to "chill' as some evidence of racial politics while simultaneously dismissing Clinton's "fairy tale" and "Jesse Jackson" comments as potentially similar racial ploys.
Hillary Clinton has a major problem with black voters, but also white, educated and high-income voters, Independents, and Republicans. More than half the country think she's dishonest and the exit polls consistently show that voters believe that she attacks Obama unfairly more so than the opposite. Explain that!
(bleustatelib)
Great post.
I agree with you completely.
Brilliant observatio
Couldn't have said it better myself.
wait a minute, you complain that the author attributes comments from Obama supporters to Obama while at the same time the Obama campaign has used the comments of Bob Kerrey, Bob Johnson, Bill Shaheen, Geraldine Ferraro and many others to smear the Clintons.
And, if you want to talk about Jesse Jackson Jr. He directly threatened black super delegates if they didn't support Obama. He told them they MIGHT just have a primary opponent in their next election if they didn't get on board. And, Jesse Jackson is an official member of the Obama campaign. He is not a surrogate. So, the Obama campaign deals in directly threatening other politicians.
Finally- a breath of fresh air.
Thank you.
As to the comment about LBJ and MLK, Jr., Hillary Clinton was trying to dismiss Barack's message of hope by making the case that she was a woman of action and not just words. To say it took a president to get the Civil Rights Bill through Congress was not so much a racial remark as elitist. For President Johnson could not have engineered through Congress a Civil Rights Bill without the work of civil rights leaders like King.
This is not to dismiss LBJ's achievement which was immense and important. But it took voices of hope for decades to persuade the black community them that a new and better day was ahead. President Johnson happened to be in the right place at the right time to pass the Civil Rights Act. He deserves credit, but again, so did all those civil rights leaders.
But even if we accepted Hillary's analysis that it took a president to actually get things done, she suffers in the comparison, because when she had her one chance to act with the health care crisis, she failed. She may be a doer, but she doesn't much to show for it to date.
Truly, the Clinton’s have done their level best to dismiss Barack Obama. Perhaps, they may have been misunderstood. But what is clear is that they lack the courage, nobility and courage of leaders like King who gave their lives to do what was right and not what was politically expedient.
Now, I would like you to read Clinton's entire remarks and show us where she ever said that the work of LBJ was MORE important than the work of MLK.
even if I were to accept your analysis, for one candidate to make the case that her record of action and experience are more important than the other candidate's speeches and hope is not racial. It is dismissive. But, not on the basis of race.
You may not agree with her assesment or her record. But, that doesn't make her attempt to contrast the two campaign's different messages a racial message.
But, that is exactly how the media and the Obama campaign promoted it. And, they did it intentionally. They had to in order to gain the support of the black community and take the support away from Clinton.
For as much as you want to deny it. If Obama was a white first term senator from ILL, he would have lost SC to both Clinton and Edwards. No one would have cared when anyone talked about his drug use. No one would have cared about the fairytale comment. And just like Ferraro said, he would not be leading this race.
Well, that is one way to look at it, if I had enough space I'd take your post apart point by point, I guess the main element that I disagree with is that until the loss in NH the Clinton's specifically and the race generally were Race neutral. They were not. The conversation about race in the democratic primary process started when the DNC gerrymandered the early races in the primary process. NV was included even though they did not have a strong caucus tradition because of the Hispanic vote, and SC was included specifically because of the large black population. So the DNC in an attempt to safe guard Iowa and NH limited which states could come forward and asked the candidates to pledge to campaign "vigorously" in those states. Did Hillary Clinton Campaign vigorously in SC after it became apparent Obama was going to get 60+ percent of the vote? Oh sure we saw her there when it was 60 40 her way but as it evened out and it looked like Obama was going to crush her in SC Hillary made the decision to ignore and MARGINALIZE the state. Now perhaps blacks took this tactic too personally, after all Hillary and Bill have marginalized every singe state Obama has won so perhaps this wasn't a shot at blacks but Bill Clinton and HIllary Clinton engaged in some insanely offensive rhetoric.
The argument that the rhetoric was just offensive and not race specifically offensive could be made but I don't know if I buy it. Here is why, if Obama decided to marginalize and ignore every state where women were the majority what would people say? While people here may talk numbers I argue that the black vote while not as numerically large is specifically significant to any dem trying to win national office. We are a part of this party as well. We help elect presidents govs senators congressmen and we aren't the reason Al Gore and John Kerry lost, blacks turned out and voted as a block for the dems. Where were women, where were these blue collar wonder boys... they were voting gay marriage and who do I want to have a beer with rather than economics and smart foreign policy.
And when she needed a win, Obama wasn't a Muslim... as far as she knew. She has taken every opportunity to subtly inject race herself, or have her surrogates do it openly. It is the only way she can win. Stir up the racial fear in people, and have them run to her.
Obama was raised and loved by white people who are his blood relatives. He is not racist. When he started stumping, I kept waiting to hear him bring up race, and I never heard it. I was very impressed that he was treating us a a nation of people with needs, not just a race of people having needs. He was forced to speak to it because of Wright, the media and the Clinton camp.
He is a man of integrity. It speaks for itself.
Vote Obama Vote for a better world.
Didn't BO publicly call HIllary he Senator from Punjab?
Because Clinton made a racist joke about meeting Ghandi while he was working at a gas station. Better hope that ones not rehashed. Don't worry...Ob
Barry has been attending a racist church, and preached to by a racist for 20 years. He never gave a speech on race until AFTER this embarassment was found. In that speech he said he could no more dismiss that preacher than he could his family. Today he dismissed that preacher. Integrity? Not so much.
OK...not that he's a great guy...but tell me what Wright said that was racist against anybody? Oh, that's right...yo
The church is not racist.
Both the speech and dismissal were in response to an action.
Both the initial introduction of Wright, and the change in dynamic of the relationship between him and Obama required a response.
He is a man of integrity. It speaks for itself.
Amazing that you were able to post this article at all due to the anti Hillary slant accredited to this blog. And I agree that the race baiting first came from the Obama camp which left Bill stuttering and therefore labeled "bizarre". No sacrifice of principles is too low to ensure that if you do not want to be labeled racist you must support Obama. I'll stick with Hillary to the end and if she is not nominated then we'll see. It won't be that easy to get my vote come November since I have been marginalized by his supporters. I am not convinced he has the experience or judgment to carry this off.
Clinton in S. Carolina:
Obama = Jesse Jackson.
Who inserted race?
Like the first Romney, does a person so easily fooled( by Rev. Wright) have the maturity of judgment to be President of The United States.? Look how Bush was fooled by Chaney. I don't think so.
He was his pastor in his church; not his sensi or his pope or his Yoda or his councillor or his guardian or his mentor or his spiritual advisor or his leader or his political patron.
We join churches for the fellowship of the congregation, pastors come and go.
Trinity did not BELONG to Rev Wright.
After listening to many of his taped sermons; Rev Wright did not speak in those 30-sec soundbites for every sermon for every Sunday of his career.
If he had there would be more soundbites to work with - methinks.
He's not a muslim..."
'nuff said.
Very wise of her to phrase it that way. A few months later and he's throwing the man who "brought him to Jesus" under the bus. I'm "fairly certain" myself that Obama is not a Muslim, but given his lack of character, I wouldn't be willing to bet anything of value on it. (Note: I don't find anything inherently wrong with being a Muslim but I would find something wrong with falsly denying it.)
Lack of character???? He didn't throw Wright under the bus intitally when he was told to because he felt a bit a gratitude. He threw him under after Wright threw him under 1st.
Talk about character.
Why won't you Clinton people answer to this every time I've brought it up?
You do know you will be flogged here (verbally) for not hating the Clintons and defending them from the charges of being racist. This blogged was dripping with joy at the accusations and spin regardless of the source or regardless of the factual history of the Clintons work with the African American community for years. It was a Rovian tactic. Attack your opponents strength. Axlerod knew the Clintons strenght in the African American community had to be destroyed just like Rove knew that Kerry's service in the military had to be destroyed. Surrogates and bloggers did a fine job. Despite the "above politics" spin of the Obama campaign, this was absolutely low gutter ball tactics.
You sound as delusion as the white women clintonista that called Thom Hartmann show today complaining that older white women in New York have problems getting Cabs too.
I heard that. As an Black Male I found it HILLARIOUS!!!
If you are choosing not to vote for Obama because you think Hillary is the better candidate then you are not a racist. If you are choosing to not vote for Obama because he is half black then you are a racist. Wright speaks about the ones who continue to hate, attack, and or deny rights to an entire group of people based upon the color of their skin. Racism still exists in this country and just like the Republicans used Gay Marriage against the Dems in 2004. Team Clinton has decided to play the race card in 2008. What Bill and Hill apparently cannot seem to fathom is that we are in an information age when everything they say can be looked up and replayed within moments. Bill lied about having sex with that woman. Hill lied about Bosnia sniper fire. Nobody accused the Clintons of being racists, they have been accused of playing to the fears of low-income with less education whites in an effort to win their votes.
Continued
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