http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/05/09/clinton_remarks/index.html
Was Hillary channeling George Wallace?
Hillary's reckless exploitation of racial division could split the
Democratic Party over race -- a tragic legacy for the Clintons.
By Joe Conason
May 9, 2008 | As long as Hillary Clinton is willing to spend the money
and energy needed to continue her campaign, she certainly can ignore
the pundits who insist that the Democratic nominating contest is over.
What she should not ignore, however, is the damage that her
increasingly reckless behavior is inflicting on her reputation and
that of her husband -- especially when she starts to sound like a
reincarnation of the late George Wallace.
When Clinton blathered on about "totally obliterating" Iran in the
event it made a nuclear strike against Israel, and then reiterated
that same statement last weekend, she made what was, until then, the
single most ill-considered comment of the campaign. But now USA Today
has published an interview in which she explained again why she
regards herself as a more viable general-election candidate than
Barack Obama -- except that this time, she crossed a bright white
line.
Citing an Associated Press analysis "that found how Senator Obama's
sup****t among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is
weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed
college were sup****ting me," she went on to say: "There's a pattern
emerging here."
There is indeed a pattern emerging -- and it is a pattern that must
dismay everyone who admires the Clintons and has defended them against
the charge that they are exploiting racial divisions.
As Sean Wilentz and others have argued, there was no ugly subtext to
her innocuous remark about the different roles of Martin Luther King
Jr. and Lyndon Baines Johnson in the civil rights crusade, although
several prominent Obama sup****ters promoted that smear. And if Bill
Clinton's comparison of Obama and Jesse Jackson was badly timed and
clumsy, that too fell within the bounds of acceptable commentary.
Indeed, the discussion of ethnic and racial voting preferences is not
only fair but unavoidable and utterly mundane in American politics.
But this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake.
It was her offhand reference
to "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" that raises the
specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was
she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?
While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious
meaning, she seemed to be equating "hard-working Americans" with
"white Americans." Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used
to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative
action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon's Southern
strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying
such things in public.
Of course, Nixon enjoyed a more commanding position politically than
Clinton must now endure. She has been reduced to extolling her sup****t
from hardworking white folks -- especially those who have "not
completed college" -- in an effort to prove that she can build a
"broader coalition" in November than Obama.
On the merits of that argument, she could be correct. Despite Obama's
appeal to a substantial number of independents and a dwindling number
of Republicans, her chances to build an Electoral College majority may
well be better than his are, owing to his difficulty in attracting
white working-class voters. Yet the chance to make that case where it
counts, in the ballot box and the caucus room, expired many weeks ago,
when Obama's skillful operatives were organizing circles around the
incompetent Clinton team.
It would be awful to see the Clintons depart this campaign with the
stain of racial division among Democrats as their legacy. Over the
past several months they have found themselves standing against the
ambitions and talents of the first black American who could become
president. In a situation that demanded sensitivity and caution, both
they and their associates have too often spoken and acted carelessly.
That the same charge can plausibly be made against the Obama camp does
not absolve them.
The tragedy is that neither Clinton carries even the slightest racial
animus, as their many African-American friends and colleagues would
testify, no doubt. Bill Clinton's first and most dedicated political
adversary in Arkansas was "Justice Jim" Johnson, a Klan-backed
Democrat turned Republican who was that state's version of Wallace.
The Clintons spent years working to defeat Johnson and everything he
represented, and he repaid them with years of plotting, scheming and
smearing as a cog in the Arkansas Project. He hated them, first and
foremost, because they represented the Democratic Party's rejection of
white supremacy in the South. As governor, it was Bill Clinton who
erased the last vestiges of Jim Crow from the Arkansas Constitution.
So the Clintons probably understand the essential evil of racism
better than most white politicians. They have certainly done more than
most of today's white politicians to combat that evil. That is why, as
they contemplate the conclusion of this campaign, they deserve better
from themselves than to encourage doubt about their decency and
character.
"I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that
said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'"
- G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care.
It's not that im****tant. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
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