Via the Angry Black Woman. As a commenter at that site pointed out, what really clinches it is that "hard-working." If she doesn't know who she's talking to with that comment, she's too naive to be elected. And the last thing HRC is is naive.
Before this campaign, I didn't really like Hillary Clinton, but I thought that right-wingers' bizarre animosity for her was unfathomable. Not that I agree with that crowd, but the tenor of her campaign over the last month or so has made their perspective a bit more understandable. Their anti-feminism is intolerable - but their suspicion that Clinton will do or say anything to get elected seems more and more accurate every day.
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3 comments:
As I've said elsewhere, like it or not, Senator Clinton was stating a basic fact about Obama.
That fact is that since the Pastor Disaster, the "untrained ear" comment in his Philadelphia speech (in the biggest Civil War abolotionist State no less), his "typical white person" comment a day or two later (again in Pennsylvania), and his racist "Bittergate" comment (against Pennsylvania's working-class), Obama's been bleeding white working-class Democrats by the second. In other States, he was doing relatively well with these voters before these self-inflicted wounds and since that time, he's been getting hammered by these voters who have moved in large numbers to Senator Clinton.
The "white working-class" are the vast majority of Americans. If you don't even have their support among Democrats, you stand little to no chance of gaining "white working-class" Independents and crossover Republicans. Do you what that means? It means you get blown out in the key States that you need to win to put together an Electoral College victory. That's her point--and she's correct. They're the hardest and most important constituency to win over, and once they turn against you, they're the hardest to get back. Parenthetically, they also love their War Heros. Get it?
Lexi
As always in politics, how you say it is more important than what you say. Clinton was not stating an objective fact, she was making a direct appeal to those voters uncomfortable with the idea of voting for an African-American with that "hard-working" comment. Also, "white voters" is such a huge, diverse bloc of voters, with almost nothing in common collectively...except their being "white."
As to the objective fact of Clinton's statement: the idea is that you win primaries to get the nomination, the primaries supposedly being a measure of your appeal to the public. Her argument (even without the race-baiting language) falters given that she simply has not won over those voters in terms of their actually voting for her.
Yes, Obama's faltered...or more accurately, been faltered: one of the huge problems of the structure of the primary process is its potential to drag out for months, which bores the media, which causes it to find something, anything else to talk about. Thus the parade of inanities about breakfast selections, bowling scores, flag lapels, and what some guy Obama once worked with fifteen years ago did when Obama was eight years old. Absolutely none of that crap is relevant - and even though Clinton's been subjected to some of the same (honestly, I don't care much about runways and guns and the other photo ops), the brunt of this scrutiny of the inane has focused on Obama. And it's affected people's perceptions of him, to be sure.
But does Clinton not recognize that if she were to become the nominee, the same people attacking Obama now would be doing it to her? Those Republicans who are backing Clinton do so because they know that, whatever the merits of her positions, she also has huge negatives...and they're the sort of negatives that are likeliest to bring people relatively disaffected with McCain roaring back to the voting booth to cast votes against that she-devil Clinton: the religious right, etc.
What most concerns me is that Clinton is failing to recognize (and has done so for a couple of months now) that she's all but mathematically eliminated from the nomination, and that her quixotic continuation of her campaign, and her encouragement in the "let's get Obama" tactics, ultimately hurts the Democrats' chances in November. And this is the basis of the claim, being heard louder and louder lately, that Clinton's ambition is larger than her concern for the welfare of the nation. A McCain presidency would be a disaster: more of Bush's policies, plus the likelihood of Iran? People use the word "disaster" freely - but the impact of starting yet another war would be huge, and not just for the duration of that war but in the long term. Have you seen figures about the cost of caring for those injured or damaged by their battle experience in Iraq and Afghanistan?
When Clinton makes remarks like the one she made (and again: "hard-working whites" is a phrase that almost any African-American is going to recognize...), she contributes to the sort of mindset that thinks a McCain approach is best. And that would be devastating to the US.
Oh, as for Obama "getting hammered": funny how he then won NC by more than predicted, and closed the gap in IN to within 2 percentage points...even though HRC was predicted to win that state by several more percentage points than that. Funny hammer, that.
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