SPAM: What "those people" are saying

[Harlan Huckleby]

I'm interested and slightly concerned by the angry reaction of the leading black columnists to the Clintons. Suffer along if you wish.

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/02/opinion/ts-herbert-190.jpg
Questions for the Clintons
BOB HERBERT, NY Times
January 26, 2008

Joseph P. Riley Jr. has been mayor of this historic and often tense city since the mid-1970s. He’s a Democrat, highly respected and has worked diligently to heal racial wounds that have festered in some cases for hundreds of years.

He has endorsed Barack Obama in today’s Democratic primary. But what struck me during an interview in his quiet office in an exquisitely restored City Hall was not the fact of the endorsement, but the manner in which the mayor expressed it.

He went out of his way to praise the Democratic field, including some of the candidates who have dropped out, like Senators Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd. He talked about his fondness for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said: “It’s tough when you have to choose between friends.”

The mayor’s thoughtful, respectful, generous assessment of the field echoed the tone that had prevailed until recently in the Democratic primary campaign. That welcome tone has been lost, undermined by a deliberate injection of ugliness, and it would be very difficult to make the case that the Clintons have not been primarily to blame.

Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.

Andrew Young, for instance.

This week, while making the remarkable accusation that the Obama camp was responsible for raising the race issue, Mr. Clinton mentioned Andrew Young as someone who would bear that out. It was an extremely unfortunate reference.

Here’s what Mr. Young, who is black and a former ambassador to the United Nations, had to say last month in an interview posted online: “Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

He then went on to make disgusting comments about the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton defended themselves years ago against the fallout from the former president’s womanizing. That’s coming from the Clinton camp!

And then there was Bob Kerrey, the former senator and another Clinton supporter, who slimed up the campaign with the following comments:

“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Pressing the point, Mr. Kerrey told CNN’s John King: “I’ve watched the blogs try to say that you can’t trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite.”

Get it?

Let’s start with the fact that Mr. Obama never attended a madrassa, and that there is no such thing as a secular madrassa. A madrassa is a religious school. Beyond that, the idea is to not-so-slyly feed the current frenzy, on the Internet and elsewhere, that Senator Obama is a Muslim, and thus potentially (in the eyes of many voters) an enemy of the United States.

Mr. Obama is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. And if he were a Muslim, it would not be a legitimate reason for attacking his candidacy.

The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.

Consider, for example, the following Web posting (misspellings and all) from a mainstream news blog on Jan. 13:

“omg people get a grip. Can you imagine calling our president barak hussien obama ... I cant, I pray no one would be disrespectful enough to put this man in our whitehouse.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign was always going to be difficult, and the climb is even steeper now. There is no reason to feel sorry for him. He’s a politician out of Chicago who must have known that campaigns often degenerate into demolition derbies.

Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.

What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?

These are questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned.

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2006/07/11/PH2006071100579.gif
What's Gotten Into Bill?
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
January 22, 2008

Six months ago, Bill Clinton seemed to be settling comfortably into roles befitting a silver-maned former president: statesman, philanthropist, philosopher-king. Now he has put all that high-mindedness on hold -- maybe it was never such a great fit, after all -- to co-star in his wife Hillary's campaign as a coldblooded political hit man.

No, scratch the "coldblooded" part. At times, in his attempt to cut Barack Obama down to size, Bill Clinton has been red-faced with anger; his rhetoric about voter suppression and a great big "fairy tale" has been way over the top. This doesn't look and sound like mere politics. It seems awfully personal.

Obama's candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question Bill Clinton's legacy by making it seem . . . not really such a big deal.

That, I believe, is the unforgivable insult. The Clintons picked up on this slight well before Obama made it explicit with his observation that Ronald Reagan had "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

Let's take a moment to consider that remark. Whether it was advisable for Obama to play the role of presidential historian in the midst of a no-holds-barred contest for the Democratic nomination, it's hard to argue with what he said. I think Bill Clinton was a good president, at times very good. And I wouldn't have voted for Reagan if you'd held a gun to my head. But even I have to recognize that Reagan -- like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union -- was a transformational figure, for better or worse.

Bill Clinton's brilliance was in the way he surveyed the post-Reagan landscape and figured out how to redefine and reposition the Democratic Party so that it became viable again. All the Democratic candidates who are running this year, including Obama, owe him their gratitude.

But Obama has set his sights higher, and implicit in his campaign is a promise, or a threat, to eclipse Clinton's accomplishments. Obama doesn't just want to piece together a 50-plus-1 coalition; he wants to forge a new post-partisan consensus that includes "Obama Republicans" -- the equivalent of the Gipper's "Reagan Democrats." You can call that overly ambitious or even naive, but you can't call it timid. Or deferential.

Both Clintons have trouble hiding their annoyance at Obama's impertinence. Bill, especially, gives the impression that Obama has gotten under his skin. His frequent allegations of media bias in Obama's favor recall the everybody-against-us feeling of the impeachment drama, when the meaning of the word "is" had to be carefully parsed and the Clinton White House was under siege.

Obama hit back in an interview that aired Monday on "Good Morning America," saying the former president "has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling" and promising to "directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate."

For Obama, it's clearly an added burden to have to fight two Clintons instead of one. But at the same time, there may be benefits in having Bill Clinton take such a high-profile role in his wife's campaign that the missteps and disappointments of the Clinton years are inevitably recalled along with the successes. Whatever the net impact, there appears to be no plan for Bill Clinton to tone it down -- not with the nomination still in doubt. The Clintons don't much like losing.

So forget about the Bill Clinton we've known for the past eight years -- the one who finds friendship and common ground with fellow former president George H.W. Bush (a Republican, last I heard), who dedicates most of his time and energy to the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, who speaks eloquently about global citizenship, environmental stewardship and economic empowerment. Forget about the statesman who uses appropriately measured language when talking about transient political events, focusing instead on the broad sweep of human history. Forget about the apostle of brotherhood and understanding whose most recent book is titled, simply, "Giving." That Bill Clinton has left the building.

There's a battle to be fought against an upstart challenger who has the audacity to suggest that maybe the Clinton presidency, successful as it was in many ways, didn't change the world -- and that he, given the office, could do better. Some things, I guess, just can't be allowed. Bill Clinton obviously has decided that history can wait.

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/09/09/PH2007090901700.gif
Billary's Adventures in Primaryland
Colbert I. King, Washington Post
January 26, 2008
"Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

-- The Duchess in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"


Which gets me to that superficially charming, self-absorbed couple Billary, ever so possessed with an outsize sense of entitlement. What else to call Bill and Hillary Clinton as they partner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, tag-teaming Barack Obama with alternating blows both above and below the belt? It's an act the twosome plans to take all the way to the White House.

If they make it there -- a big if -- the only unanswered question is where Bill will choose to hang his hat. Will it be in her old space in the East Wing, or will he set up shop in the West Wing?

Smart money is on Billary settling in the Oval Office with "his" and "hers" desks.

Who would have thought, eight years ago, that the country might get back Billary, two people reeking of self-pity and spoiling for fights with anyone who has the temerity to stand in their way?

As with the Queen in "Alice," it's all about them. Witness their attempts to devalue Obama.

But don't point that out to the Clintons. They are always right and see no reason to apologize or take back anything they have said or done. And, as we have seen, Billary will say and do anything to come out ahead.

Item: Hillary's claim to "35 years of experience." Subtract her years spent as first lady of Arkansas and in the White House, and her time working as a lawyer in the Rose Law Firm and in other jobs. As Reason Magazine's Steve Chapman reported in November, Hillary Clinton has "just under eight years of experience in elective office -- one more than John Edwards and four fewer than Obama." And, to boot, Hillary the Feminist has her man to fight her battles.

Item: Bill Clinton's jab at Obama's lack of experience. To elect Obama would be to "roll the dice," sniffed the former president. When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he was governor of a small state, had no foreign policy experience and didn't know how to salute. He got his on-the-job experience in the White House.

Item: Hillary's complaint that it's hard to pin down Obama. Look who's talking. For a refresher, read Stuart Taylor's Dec. 11 column in the National Journal, " Honesty: Hillary's Glass House." Taylor carefully lays out Hillary's estranged relationship with the truth and her tendency to resort to lies and deceptions when caught in a tight spot. He takes us down memory lane, citing examples of her dishonesty in episodes such as Travelgate, cattle futures, the removal of the Vince Foster documents, Castle Grande, billing records and her husband's philandering.

Item: Her putdown of Obama's oratory and her suggestion that he's only interested in talking, while she's a "doer." "Dr. King's dream began to be realized," she said, "when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act. . . . It took a president to get it done."

Hillary grabbed the wrong talking points. It took more than a president to get it done. Without leaders of the civil rights movement working with Northern Democrats and their Republican allies in Congress, there would not have been civil rights or voting rights bills in the '60s.

Her remarks betray an ignorance of what happened back then. For a better understanding, pick up a copy of Nick Kotz's "Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America." Chapters 10 and 11 and the section "The President Under Fire" help shed light on all the people who actually did the heavy lifting.

Item: Billary loves to whine about the "politics of personal destruction." But Billary's campaign has taken to the low road, running ads falsely accusing Obama of supporting federal deficits and private Social Security accounts, and distorting his position on hot-button issues such as abortion. Newark Mayor Corey Booker, who branded the attacks "outrageous" and "dishonest," told Newsweek's Jonathan Alter: "We're trying to offer an alternative to the Republicans' fear and smear campaigns, and now we're being dragged down to their level by the Clintons."

One thing's for sure: A Clinton administration will be a four-year co-presidency with all of the drama that Billary has managed to bring to every undertaking.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves and start worrying about tomorrow. Billary gives us enough to worry about today.

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://www.newsday.com/media/thumbnails/columnist/2004-02/369969.jpg
Rev. King's legacy demands better
Les Payne, Newsday
January 20, 2008

The spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has pitted his disciples supporting the White House run of a promising African-American against his former aides favoring the candidacy of a white woman.

Race and gender are adding interest to a campaign that would otherwise be just another white man's brawl for the White House.

The diminishing of King's work was "implicit" in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's crediting its success to the president's signing the civil rights bill, said Joseph Lowery, the president emeritus of King's organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Slavishly defending Clinton's reputation on the same news show, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) countered that Sen. Barack Obama's camp had "deliberately and systematically" fanned "the flames of race."

Clinton's persistence in painting President Lyndon B. Johnson as the key enabler of civil rights for Negroes smacks of a telling irony. One could just as easily praise President Ronald Reagan for forging King's birthday as a national holiday.

As a nickel-plated, white Texan of his times, LBJ considered King's movement a nuisance early on; then, grasping its inevitability, the opportunistic president seized upon it. His view of King had Johnson referring to him as "that goddamn nigger preacher," according to a close White House aide. The Nobel laureate's anti-Vietnam War stance was blamed for helping sink Johnson's re-election chances, and LBJ likely took to his grave the notion of King as an uppity, N-word ingrate.

Another top King aide recently betrayed his leader's dream altogether. Andrew Young, a former United Nations ambassador, suggested that Obama, the best black hope for the White House to date, should forestall his candidacy to make way for Clinton.

Such a withdrawal would soil the urgent spirit of King's anti-racism credo that was the title of his second book, "Why We Can't Wait."

Yet, nearly a half-century later, Young champions the distaff side of an increasingly mean-spirited, dysfunctional Arkansas couple with an unlimited sense of white entitlement. The duo - she now claims - ran the country during most of the '90s, and the 75-year-old Young would have them run it again for eight more years.

"I want Barack Obama to be president - in 2016," Young said. "It's not a matter of being inexperienced. It's a matter of being young." With unwavering support from Young, Bill Clinton won his party's '92 nomination at the same age, 46, Obama is now.

And Young was also the key national promoter of the unknown white peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., who became the 39th U.S. president. Although Jimmy Carter went on to make something of his life, this hero of Andy Young's is considered one of the most ill-prepared, ineffective presidents in modern history.

Young joins King's other timorous, former aides in misreading their leader's message to his people and his vision for the nation. The African-American senator from Illinois seems to get it. By thrusting his campaign against all challengers - and he is nothing if not bold - Obama declares why his campaign cannot wait. The challenge to the country, he says, quoting King, is seeded by the "fierce urgency of now."

Indeed, the nation has been gravely wounded by a Bush-Cheney regime that is plotting now to ensure that the cancer of the Iraq War eats away years after they leave office. Billions more are to be raked in by Halliburton and Texas oil; ditto insurance firms and Saudi sheiks. So many more GIs and Iraqis are yet to die, so little time.

Meanwhile, the '08 candidates - to say nothing of Congress - tie themselves into knots over the irrelevant. Race and gender do matter in presidential politics, and greatly so. However, the Bush administration has gifted the Democrats with such a national calamity that the disaster may even override Americans' alleged disinclination to vote for a presidential candidate who happens to be a white woman or an African-American.

The clock is ticking.

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/thumbnails/columnist/2007-10/295609.jpg
Arguing themselves to death
Democrats must keep cool to win
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
January 23, 2008

Democrats are so well positioned to take the White House and even win additional seats in Congress this year that it raises an intriguing question: How will they manage to blow it this time?

"My hopes are high," one Democratic friend put it, "but this wouldn't be the first time that we have managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not even.

If a feared Democratic Party crackup were to happen, my guess is that it would come in the same way that deep divisions have splintered Republicans: They will argue themselves to death.

Republicans have been squabbling among themselves over ideological purity. One way or another purist conservative pundits and other talking heads point out that Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City fall short of true conservatism.

And Rep. Ron Paul of Texas? He appears to be well positioned to start his own party.

As a result, no clear front-runner has emerged after the early primaries. Nor is there any standard-bearer in the bunch who stands ready to pick up the banner of the conservative movement in the way that Ronald Reagan did. Yet, it is a tribute to the power of Reagan's memory that he seems to have risen from the grave to splinter Democrats -- over a tribute to Reagan.

One of the most memorable of disputes in Monday's Democratic debate in South Carolina came when New York Sen. Hillary Clinton accused Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois of committing a liberal sin: He allegedly talked about "admiring Ronald Reagan."

Further, she said, Obama "said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote."

Well, not quite, as Obama was quick to point out. Obama made the remarks in question during a meeting the previous week in Nevada at the The Reno Gazette-Journal. He was seeking the paper's editorial endorsement, which he later received. He did speak positively of Reagan and called the Republicans "the party of ideas," but he did not say that he admired Reagan or Reagan's ideas.

At the debate, Obama also noted that the former first lady had "provided much more fulsome praise" of Reagan in Tom Brokaw's new book, "Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today." Indeed, she is quoted in the book as saying Reagan "played the balance and the music beautifully" as he raised taxes after lowering them and negotiated arms-control with the Soviets after calling them an "evil empire."

Both the Clinton and Obama views should sound sensible enough in the real world. Even if you found plenty about Reagan to criticize, as I did, you could respect his skills at building winning coalitions of voters.

But, in the world of political ideologues, it is not enough to be factually correct. You also must be politically correct. As a result, the liberal blogs and punditocracy is all abuzz with critiques of Obama's Reagan remarks, including "ill-advised" and "stuck on stupid."

Clinton apparently saw her opportunity to retaliate for the trashing she took after her recent remarks that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "dream" was not realized until President Lyndon B. Johnson turned it into legislation and shepherded it through Congress. Although she was historically and legislatively correct, a number of black Democrats sensed an effort to devalue King's heroic efforts. Election year politics sometimes rub sensitivities raw.

The irony here is that candidates Obama and Clinton obviously learned a lot from Reagan and King in terms of tactics and pragmatism. It is one thing to have great ideas, but if you can't turn those ideas into elective office and legislation, you run the risk of yielding power to your ideological adversaries.

Instead, you should try to build winning majorities with voters who are not so committed ideologically but just want to see some change. It beats arguing.

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2007/10/27/1193507522_4272.gif
Hillary and the Race Card
Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe
January 15, 2008

HILLARY CLINTON'S surrogates constantly remind us of Barack Obama's youthful cocaine use (which Obama himself wrote about to emphasize the power of redemption). Former President Bill Clinton said of Obama's Iraq war opposition, "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

more stories like thisIt is time to take a break to remember the fairy tales spun by the House of Clinton.

It increasingly appears that Hillary is unable or unwilling to break from the racial patronization of Bill. In 1993, in the same Memphis church that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from 25 years earlier, I noted that Clinton spoke as "if African-Americans had full run of the promised land in the last 25 years."

Clinton told the church, "We gave people the freedom to succeed." Clinton said King would have said, "You did a good job . . . letting people . . . live wherever they want to live, go wherever they want to go . . . without regard to race, if you work hard and play by the rules."

I wrote back then that in the broad context of the nation, no one "let" us do anything or "gave" us anything. Yes, African-Americans made progress and many white Americans aided in that progress, but it still came in the face of continued, documented redlining, workplace discrimination, and the decline of funding of public schools.

Bill Clinton hugely betrayed that progress by doing nothing as Draconian, and ultimately racist federal sentencing laws took full effect, punishing crack possession far more harshly than powdered-cocaine possession. Even though Americans use illegal drugs close to their racial percentage of the population, young black men made up the vast majority of those sentenced under crack laws. According to the Justice Policy Institute, the rate of black male imprisonment under Clinton grew from 2,800 per 100,000 to 3,620 per 100,000. As a result, 14 percent of black men lost the right to vote.

What was it that Bill Clinton said about "we gave people the freedom to succeed?"

Now, it appears that the House of Clinton, seeing that the race for the Democratic nomination is not an adoring coronation, is trickling with tricks that raise questions about how much she will toy with the race card and overplay the gender card. Her aides tried to peddle a kindergarten "essay" by Obama to mock his ambition to be president. She had to fire two volunteers in Iowa for peddling hoax e-mails about Obama being Muslim.

New Hampshire co-chairman Bill Shaheen had to resign for wondering aloud if Obama's self-revealing cocaine use made him unelectable. Even after Shaheen's departure, Clinton strategist Mark Penn claimed with crocodile words, "The issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising."

This weekend, a prominent black surrogate did Shaheen's dirty work. Robert Johnson, the shameless founder of Black Entertainment Network, the man who became a billionaire off grotesque, booty-shaking, thug-glorifying music videos, boasted at a Clinton rally in South Carolina how the House of Clinton is so "deeply and emotionally involved in black issues." He said they were involved while "Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book."

Obama has not been without fault in the patronization game. He made a dumb move in the New Hampshire debates by telling Clinton, "you're likable enough" when Clinton was answering a question about her likability quotient. But this pales next to the steady drip, drip, drip of stereotyping from the Clinton camp of a lazy, drug-using, Muslim black man who believes in fairy tales. It also pales to the gender-card whining of Bill on Hillary's behalf, saying in the 11th hour in New Hampshire, "I can't make her younger, taller, male." You have not yet heard Obama surrogates moaning they can't make Obama older or female.

Hillary Clinton herself fanned the fumes of patronization when she reached clumsily for an analogy that appeared to link Obama and King to simplistic hopers and dreamers, while it took a white man, President Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Up to now, the Democratic race has been a victorious story of Americans saying they found it hard to choose between Obama, Clinton, and John Edwards, with issues and personality mattering more than gender or race. Let us hope the candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, remember that, before they divide the Democrats into a bitter, weakened bunch for November

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/art/mugs/2eugenekane.jpg
Don't count on votes by race or gender
Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Jan. 23, 2008

No question, it's a banner election year for firsts.

Hillary Clinton is the first serious female presidential candidate in American history. Barack Obama can make the same claim for African-Americans. Next month's Wisconsin primary election will likely continue the debate over the importance of race and gender for respective voters as Clinton and Obama battle it out for the nomination.

Regardless of which one wins, it's one for the history books.

But the emergence of a surprisingly bitter feud between both camps appears to have pitted two "minority" groups - blacks and women - against each other for the first time. Which means, African-American women might have the toughest choice of all.

A good person to ask about all this is state Sen. Lena Taylor, an African-American woman running for Milwaukee County executive in this historic election year. If elected, she would become the county's first female county executive as well as the first African-American. Pitted against two-time incumbent Scott Walker, Taylor isn't taking anything for granted.

Particularly not votes.

Taylor said she doesn't expect African-American women - or women in general - to make decisions on their elected officials solely on matters of gender or race.

"I think it's a matter of listening to the person talking about the issues and deciding who can best get the job done," Taylor said Thursday. The longtime Democratic legislator said it was wrong to single out black women specifically as having any particular allegiance to a candidate based on race or gender.

"I see black women as individuals; they make their own decisions as individuals," she said.

Taylor pointed out that black women are often the main person in the household in touch with pocketbook issues that determine how they vote. Black women pay the bills and look after their children, she said, so they want candidates to talk about the things that matter most in those areas.

Despite all the talk about the importance of black women in the election, Taylor said young voters of all races might make more of an impact on turnout nationally.

"I hear Obama is getting the highest turnout among young people," she said. "They are really excited about him."

She noted Obama has garnered impressive support among local politicians, including Mayor Tom Barrett and Gov. Jim Doyle as well as numerous local black politicians. Taylor said Obama would likely make a strong showing next month, but she was more excited about the prospect of the Wisconsin primary playing a significant role in the presidential elections.

"This will be very interesting to see how things turn out," she said.

In regard to her own race for county executive in spring, one Democratic pollster gave Walker only a single-digit lead over Taylor last December, which surprised most observers in town. Taylor said she's looking forward to having conversations with voters during her campaign and she hopes the excitement of the current election year will interest more people in the prospect for real political change.

As for the fact that the black and female vote has become so prominent in 2008, Taylor acknowledged that in her case, it's a win either way:

"Each morning I get up, I'm both."

[LL2]

I'm wondering if all of this mud slinging will hurt both candidates and whoever is the democratic presidential candidate in the fall. Could it benefit Romney, Huckabee or McCain?

[Harlan Huckleby]

http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/01/36/09/image_3709361.jpg

The myth of color blindness
CYNTHIA TUCKER, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
01/20/08

After a recent column describing Barack Obama as "a presidential candidate who happens to be black — not a black presidential candidate," I received countless responses from readers, a handful of them odd. That odd handful declared they take no notice of superficial traits such as skin color, and they took me to task for making any reference to Obama's race.

"I thought of [Obama] as a person. I did not see black or white or Hispanic or that he was a man — I saw a person! If people really, truly want racial equality — then the first step has to be to STOP looking at skin color," wrote one reader.


"When I look at a person, the last thing I think about is skin color or heritage," wrote another.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. While I am sympathetic to any desire to get past dated and useless habits of mind — especially the contentious politics of the color line — that's just nonsense. Not one of us, black, white or brown, is colorblind.

Those readers may think they don't notice skin color, but it's just not so, says University of Washington psychology professor Anthony Greenwald, an expert on implicit biases and common stereotypes. "Even if they can't see anything out of their eyes, they're not colorblind."

That's not a condemnation, not a presumption of malicious bigotry. It's just an acknowledgment of the peculiar burdens of humanity, especially in these United States. Assumptions about race and ethnicity are so deeply embedded in our culture that we can hardly help noticing skin color.

Some evolutionary psychologists believe humans are hard-wired to distrust the stranger, or "other" — a holdover from primitive man's tribal allegiances. But Greenwald believes the biases that he sees are of much more recent origin, the product of American cultural influences.

"Blacks don't show the same automatic preference for blacks that whites show for whites" in Greenwald's Implicit Association Test, which uses word association to detect unconscious bias.

Each of us is stuck with prejudices, and I'm using the denotative meaning here — "an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason," according to Webster's. But we don't have to be governed by them.

Cutting-edge work by Greenwald and his colleagues suggests there may be a way that people can learn to put aside their biases to make rational, fact-based judgments. "To the extent that we can influence what we learn and believe, we can influence less conscious states of mind," says Harvard University's Mahzarin Banaji.

But the first step is to own up to the problem. Many people don't know they're prejudiced because, well, they really don't know they're prejudiced. That self-knowledge is not necessarily difficult to acquire, but it's quite often hard to stomach.

Racial bigotry is a social taboo in this country, so much so that only an extremist fringe — assorted neo-Nazis and skinheads — admits its rank prejudices. That may explain why some volunteers who have taken Greenwald's Implicit Association Test are furious when the test shows they hold hidden negative views of black Americans.

"Some people have a concept of themselves as nonprejudiced, so anything indicating a chink in that armor is threatening," Greenwald said. But his research has also pointed out that most people simply aren't aware of their implicit assumptions.

Take the current Democratic primary. Greenwald and colleagues modified the Implicit Association Test to search for unconscious biases among Democratic voters. When asked who they planned to cast ballots for, a sample of voters reported strong support for Obama, who held a 42 percent to 34 percent lead over Hillary Clinton among the sample, with John Edwards coming in at 12. But when the same people took the Implicit Association Test, measuring their unconscious preferences, Clinton was "the runaway winner," favored by 48 percent of them, and Obama was dead last, with 25 percent. Edwards was favored by 27 percent, according to the researchers.

And here's one finding that fits Greenwald's research on American cultural biases: According to the test, black voters, too, held implicit biases that worked against Obama. Black Americans are products of the same culture, with its myriad stereotypes of black incompetence, as white Americans. And black Americans have internalized many of the same stereotypes.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a day when his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." But that day has not yet arrived. We might hasten its dawning if we'd admit that what we see is not necessarily what we believe.
[/img]

[Harlan Huckleby]

I'm wondering if all of this mud slinging will hurt both candidates and whoever is the democratic presidential candidate in the fall. Could it benefit Romney, Huckabee or McCain?

I fear the black vote could be down a bit if Clinton is the nominee.

I think the Obama supporters are being unfair, they are throwing just as many punches, some of them very foolish, but I guess that is besides the point.

[packinpatland]

In all honesty, I would like to see a woman as President. Just not Hillary.

[Deputy Nutz]

Harlan hates black people.

[Harlan Huckleby]

In all honesty, I would like to see a woman as President. Just not Hillary.

I dare you to name a female you WOULD support for president. I double dare you. Oprah? Olympia Snowe? There aren't many candidates at this stage.

But there is one excellent one: Diane Fienstein is the best. I would support her above even my beloved Hilliary Clinton.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Harlan hates black people.

not exactly. I dislike all people of color. And paradoxically, I completely detest albinos.

[Kiwon]

This guy has a blog. Does he count as "those people?"

http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2008/01/26/vote-here-pkg.jpg

[Jimx29]

George Bush hates midgets (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v24/numbnutz/?action=view&current=george_bush_hates_midgets.flv)

[Kiwon]

George Bush hates midgets (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v24/numbnutz/?action=view&current=george_bush_hates_midgets.flv)

Shocking! I'm NEVER going to vote for George W. Bush again!!

Chris Rock said it. I believe it. That settles it!

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/art3/0714051dui1.jpg

[packinpatland]

In all honesty, I would like to see a woman as President. Just not Hillary.

I dare you to name a female you WOULD support for president. I double dare you. Oprah? Olympia Snowe? There aren't many candidates at this stage.

But there is one excellent one: Diane Fienstein is the best. I would support her above even my beloved Hilliary Clinton.

She's out there..........somewhere. :wink:

[The Leaper]

But there is one excellent one: Diane Fienstein is the best. I would support her above even my beloved Hilliary Clinton.

Leader of the Do Nothing Congress?

No thanks.

[Kiwon]

Harlan hates black people.

Wisconsin hates black people (6.48% of the population). So out of liberal guilt, you have to support Obama to wash away the shame.

Obama '08 (Korea chapter)

[Freak Out]

Harlan hates black people.

Wisconsin hates black people (6.48% of the population). So out of liberal guilt, you have to support Obama to wash away the shame.

Obama '08 (Korea chapter)

I call bullshit Kiwon.

[Harlan Huckleby]

But there is one excellent one: Diane Fienstein is the best. I would support her above even my beloved Hilliary Clinton.

Leader of the Do Nothing Congress?

Know your California female Democrats:

http://img.timeinc.net/time/time100/2007/images/nancy_pelosi.jpg
Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. She's OK.

http://images.politico.com/global/070619_boxer.jpg
Barbara Boxer is a combative, unimpressive Senator

http://progressivepatriots.com/images/diannefeinstein.jpg
Dianne Feinstein might be the most effective person in the whole Senate. She glows with intelligence, and is a rock of integrity and good judgement. She is like Richard Lugar on the Republican side - quietly the most respected person of their parties. Lugar & Feinstein are the toughest questioners in hearings because they are so smart, polite and unflappable.

[Joemailman]

The reason there is a do nothing Congress is because of the gridlock in the Senate where you need 60 votes to get anything through. The House can pass all the bills they want but if doesn't matter. Hopefully the next President will be able to get the Senate to change their ways a bit. Obama and McCain would be the best bets as far as being able to accomplish that.

[Kiwon]

HH, got any hot Barbara Mikulski pics?

[Tarlam!]

Great thread to tell my Rat buds, "No, Tarlam! is not lost!!

Sorry for this self indulging post, but shit, in the old days I woulda started a thread!

Ziggy messaged me that I am AWOL and demanded to know if I am in intensive care, since this is the only reason not to be posting. Well, I am! That Care is in the form of an incredibly beautiful (hey, you can't argue taste) lady that has absolutely blown me away; my life is a blast and I can safely say, I have never been this intesively cared for ever before.

So, there you have it. Tarlam! in love. A sad sad case. And yes, I will be bringing her to the Rats Gathering II.

[MJZiggy]

Are you stopping into town this time for a decent visit? How am I supposed to play tour guide if you don't stop in for the tour?

[packinpatland]

Great thread to tell my Rat buds, "No, Tarlam! is not lost!!

Sorry for this self indulging post, but shit, in the old days I woulda started a thread!

Ziggy messaged me that I am AWOL and demanded to know if I am in intensive care, since this is the only reason not to be posting. Well, I am! That Care is in the form of an incredibly beautiful (hey, you can't argue taste) lady that has absolutely blown me away; my life is a blast and I can safely say, I have never been this intesively cared for ever before.

So, there you have it. Tarlam! in love. A sad sad case. And yes, I will be bringing her to the Rats Gathering II.

Good for you!

See......good things do happen to good people. :wink:

[Harlan Huckleby]

Within minutes of exiting South Carolina, Bubba compared Obama's landside victory with that of Jessie Jackson's in '88.

Obama has gotten roughly 3/4 of the African American vote in the last two primaries. Obviously he is the black people's champion. There is nothing wrong with theorizing there may be white misgivings, and no harm in saying it if you are a nobody like me.

I believe that the criticisms of the Clintons voiced by the black columnists are groundless. The Clintons' attacks on Obama's suitability for office have not been a bit racially based, they are normal campaign positioning. But now Bill has blatantly played the race card. It effectively legitimizes their suspicians.

I wonder if it is too late in the campaign for Hillary to divorce Bill.

[HarveyWallbangers]

So, there you have it. Tarlam! in love. A sad sad case. And yes, I will be bringing her to the Rats Gathering II.

Nice!

[Joemailman]

Within minutes of exiting South Carolina, Bubba compared Obama's landside victory with that of Jessie Jackson's in '88.

Obama has gotten roughly 3/4 of the African American vote in the last two primaries. Obviously he is the black people's champion. There is nothing wrong with theorizing there may be white misgivings, and no harm in saying it if you are a nobody like me.

I believe that the criticisms of the Clintons voiced by the black columnists are groundless. The Clintons' attacks on Obama's suitability for office have not been a bit racially based, they are normal campaign positioning. But now Bill has blatantly played the race card. It effectively legitimizes their suspicians.

I wonder if it is too late in the campaign for Hillary to divorce Bill.

Sounds like he slipped up and said what he'd been thinking, but figured he better not say. A little like Mel Gibson's drunken anti-semitic tirade.

[MadScientist]

Within minutes of exiting South Carolina, Bubba compared Obama's landside victory with that of Jessie Jackson's in '88.

Obama has gotten roughly 3/4 of the African American vote in the last two primaries. Obviously he is the black people's champion. There is nothing wrong with theorizing there may be white misgivings, and no harm in saying it if you are a nobody like me.

I believe that the criticisms of the Clintons voiced by the black columnists are groundless. The Clintons' attacks on Obama's suitability for office have not been a bit racially based, they are normal campaign positioning. But now Bill has blatantly played the race card. It effectively legitimizes their suspicians.

I wonder if it is too late in the campaign for Hillary to divorce Bill.

Bill has been putting this crap out there for a while, trying to paint Obama as just the black candidate. Combine that with the lying that they both have been doing about Obama's record and Clinton will have a very tough time winning over the Obama supporters, let alone any independents. If it's her vs. McCain, McCain will win easily. She won't even win Wisconsin (she has very little support in Madison, and a democrat must get a big turnout in Madison and Milwaukee to win Wisconsin).

[Harlan Huckleby]

Bill has been putting this crap out there for a while, trying to paint Obama as just the black candidate. Combine that with the lying that they both have been doing about Obama's record.

Whaoooh, Nellie! Bill attempted to paint Obama as the black candidate on exactly one occasion: his Jessie Jackson remark as he boarded the plane out of South Carolina. The other accusations of race-baiting were groundless whining by the Obama camp.

Lying? They stretched the truth on one occasion I am aware of, when they represented Obama's expressed admiration for Reagan as an endorsement of his policies. Obama had the opportunity to confront Hillary directly on this point during the last debate, and Clinton nimbly made him look bad.

McCain pulled a similar stunt on Romney, taking his use of the word "timetable" out of context and saying Romney was for a withdrawal from Iraq.

Both these instances are hardball politics, mildly dirty, worthy of some criticism. But pretty small beer, and easily corrected by the offended party.

But perceptions are more important than facts. A lot of people in the media don't like the Clintons, and more importantly, are moved by Obama's charisma. Bubba has been rough, and the media has spun the Clintons as sleazy, the perception is set. Obama has the momentum.

[MadScientist]

Bill has been putting this crap out there for a while, trying to paint Obama as just the black candidate. Combine that with the lying that they both have been doing about Obama's record.

Whaoooh, Nellie! Bill attempted to paint Obama as the black candidate on exactly one occasion: his Jessie Jackson remark as he boarded the plane out of South Carolina. The other accusations of race-baiting were groundless whining by the Obama camp.

Bubba's also made comments like 'I think a woman president is more of a change that a black man. Also putting out comments before SC to the effect that a black winning in a state full of black voters isn't a big deal.


Lying? They stretched the truth on one occasion I am aware of, when they represented Obama's expressed admiration for Reagan as an endorsement of his policies.
No, they also put out a flier that was a total distortion of Obama's abortion record. When her NH campaign manager was called on this, she said that it was just politics as usual.

If Clinton wins by making enough people think she's better, or by running a better organized campaign, there will be a lot of disappointment among Obama supports but they will rally around the democrat in the fall because the republicans are just so horrible. But if she wins by dividing the party by race and gender, and smearing Obama with lies and distortions (the tactics she's been using since NH), she will create deep chasms in the party which will take a hell of a lot of effort to repair, and many of the new people that Barack has brought in will just say 'Fuck it, I just won't vote for her or anyone if this is what politics is.'

[Harlan Huckleby]

Bubba's also made comments like 'I think a woman president is more of a change that a black man. Also putting out comments before SC to the effect that a black winning in a state full of black voters isn't a big deal.

Sounds believable. I heard a lot of awkward comments, but not these. I don't have any problem with these opinions, they are just too oportunistic for him to say them publicly. Odd that they evidently received little news coverage (and therefore didn't matter.)


No, they also put out a flier that was a total distortion of Obama's abortion record. When her NH campaign manager was called on this, she said that it was just politics as usual.

"politics as usual" - sounds like the NH campaign manager was an Obama plant! Obama's mole has penetrated the highest level. :shock: :) I didn't hear about this one either.