Posted by
Sapper on Monday, January 14, 2008 11:22:03 PM
Well, I thought that he didn't need to do it -- and he probably didn't -- but Barack Obama has played the race-card. It may be a powerful trump card within the cloistered halls of the liberal Democrat Party in order to secure a primary victory but
I doubt that it goes over too well with the folks in "fly-over country" come November.
The sad thing for Obama is that it was hardly necessary. With everyone from Oprah to the New York Times desperate to run a likeable African-American candidate who doesn't have the race-baiting baggage of Jesse Jackson (and also desperate to find a viable candidate without the negatives of Hillary Clinton), Obama didn't need to take the low road. But he did.
(Barack Obama Courtesy of Reuters)
As morbidly gleeful as I may be to watch the Democrats lash themselves with their own favorite whip, I am in a way saddened that Obama would so reflexively respond to Bill and Hill's smear machine in the all too familiar race-game. He could just as easily stood back and let Bill and Hill put their feet in their smarmy mouths and let John Edwards prove how dim he really is. The bulk of the left-leaning press was always in his camp.
Obama supporters like
Donna Brazile attacked Bill Clinton for calling the Obama phenomenon a "fairy tale":
"For him to go after Obama using 'fairy tale', calling him a kid, is an insult," she said. "As an African-American, I find his words and his tone very depressing."
Comments by Hillary Clinton about Lyndon Johnson's role in realizing the Civil Rights Act after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, despite being generally accurate, were taken as blasphemous by many in the African-American blogs, radio and even commented upon by Mrs. Obama as they were taken -- conveniently, I think -- to be dismissive of King's role in the Civil Rights Movement.
However, instead of immediately squelching the furor on his behalf as beneath him, he let it play out and do maximum damage to his chief rival.
He attacked her subtly, yet viciously, through surrogates and mouthpieces like Former South Carolina state Rep. "I.S." Leevy Johnson:
"It's offensive that Sen. Clinton literally stood by and said nothing as another one of her campaign's top supporters launched a personal, divisive attack on Barack Obama," he said in a statement released by Obama's campaign [emphasis mine]. "For someone who decries the politics of personal destruction, she should've immediately denounced these attacks on the spot."
before meekly suggesting after several days that the tenor of the debate should change:
"I think that I may disagree with Sen. Clinton or Sen. Edwards on how to get things done, but we share the same goals. We're all democrats, we all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights," said Obama. Obama may have overplayed his hand though, even within the Democrat Party. There have been
rumblings of a backlash from certain black voices including Rep. Charles Rangel:
"How race got into this thing is because Obama said 'race,'" Rangel, the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, said on television station NY1.If one thing is certain, Joe Six-pack -- I use the term tongue-in-cheek, of course -- won't be buying it in November and neither will I. Not because we're racist or small-minded, but because we recognize
convenient outrage when we smell it. Modern-day
Boss Tweeds that they are, the Clintons probably deserved a taste of their own medicine. But that doesn't make it right. For us spectators, it's somewhat of a guilty pleasure, like watching the criminals being mauled by lions in the ancient colosseums.
-
Michelle Malkin takes aim.
-Hugh Hewitt
lashes away at faux-conservative John McCain.
-Revie's
Ramblings.
-The Liberal Blog "
The Clintons played race first". No argument here. But Obama played it last.
-David Limbaugh
unloads on Hillary.
-
The Great Race Pile-on at Captain's Quarters.