This is quick angry post about the escalating nonsense of the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton, who seemed to be moving a little to the left in her proposal aid homeowners threatened with foreclosure, has now jumped on Pastor Wright in Pittsburgh, saying that she would change churches in response if she had a minister like Wright. She, the daughter of a rich Republican Illinois businessman, even had the effrontery to say that you don't choose your family but you can choose your church.
Senator Obama answered the criticisms eloquently in his speech on race in America. The issue is dead except for those who want to beat Senator Obama up with it, to make him grovel before them and denounce Pastor Wright over and over again. The hidden message in these comments as I see it is Obama won't denounce Wright completely eave his church, that he formerly served because he is Black and Wright is Black and the yall stick together and they all deep down "hate whitey." That is crude, but accurate I think, to explain why and who the Clinton campaign beating this issue to death.
James Carville, a roguish Clinton guy, political "consultant," and inside dopester, called Governor Bill Richardson a "Judas" for endorsing Senator Obama around Easter Time and then said he wasn't misquoted. First of all, Bill Richardson is a man with substantial achievements as a politician and diplomat and James Carville is a non New York Damon Runyon character who has accomplished nothing except to manipulate media to his own and his client's advantage. In a rational world, one might conclude that Carville is comparing Hillary Clinton to Jesus, which would of course mean that rational people would immediately realize that he is not rational. Also, according to Carville, Richardson endorsed Obama symbolically for "30 pieces of silver" (this from a guy who is an expensive hired gun for politicians).
If anything, this sort of demagoguery should help convince Democratic Super Delegates to begin to endorse Senator Obama and end the contest before the Clinton campaign continues to hurt the Democratic party and its leaders (like Bill Richardson) in its selfish and unprincipled assaults on Senator Obama and his supporters.
5 comments:
Like you, Norman, I have been getting pretty worked up watching the news these days. Guys like us multiplied umpteen times must make them smile at CNBC.
But perhaps in your anger, you should have paused to reflect why she chose to drag up Reverend Wright again, who has already died and been partially resurrected?
It was because Hillary had been caught telling a very ridiculous lie. She has claimed in several major speeches that she once landed in war-torn Bosnia, deep in enemy territory, and that as she scrambled off the plane clad in a flak jacket, she had to dodge a barrage of sniper fire as she raced to an armored vehicle. However, the real footage shows Hillary and Chelsea ambling off the plane, greeting everyone warmly. Did she kiss a baby or do I misspeak? There was no flak jacket, only an elegant camel's hair coat.
We also need to remember, as history recedes in a cloud of sound bites, that the Clinton administration bombed Belgrade for days on end, killing many innocent civilians, including Yugoslav TV station employees and 10 or more at the Chinese embassy. It pushed the war over Kossovo when there could have been a peace agreement in Dayton. The bombing tactics were the shock-and-awe model for Iraq and proof of irresistible US military might. Then, after it was all over, Hillary could saunter off her private jet to lunch with Sindbad the comedian and Chelsea.
Yesterday, Senator Clinton had to deflect the sniper fire from the media and the public about her downright lie. "Keep this lady away from the red phone!" So what was the Wright thing for her to do? "Get me that Reverend on the line," she must have screamed! And to claim that she couldn't choose her rich white family but she could choose her pastor! Isn't it very unlikely that a person like Hillary would ever choose the pastor of a predominantly Black congregration for her own?
Lastly, James Carville's hateful comparison of Richardson to Judas Iscariot at Easter was gutter politics at its worse. I wonder if he got that line from his wife, Mary Matalin, chief advisor to Vice President Cheney.
The Clinton camp is doing desperate things. It is really time for her to throw in the towel, unless she wants to catch a lot more flak!
What is also at the root of this is that Clinton Knows she won't get the nomination. She is doing her best to wound Obama and help McCain win the election so she can run against him in 2012. She puts her own career ahead of the Democratic Party and the nation. As for her attack on Rev. Wright, her own connections of a right-wing evangelic organization is well documented.
The Clintons represent the worst of a corrupt political system and will stop at nothing to achieve their foul aims.
Peter especially makes very good points. Besides her attempt to portray herself as "heroic" in Bosnia, the Clinton administration's military intervention with the NAT0 states in the Yugoslav Civil War and their crude demonization of the Serbian people fighting to preserve Yugoslavia in some form was an atrocity. It was essentially a continuation of the cold war(once the Soviet Union was dismembered there was no longer any reason to tolerate Yugoslavia, a country led by Communists which had broken with the Soviets, gone its own way, and sought a policy of non alignment from the late 1940s on.
It was also important in establishing the NAT0 bloc, which had been created as a military force to fight a general war against the Soviets and their allies, into a global military force for imperialism.
Jaded Prole's comments are also reasonable. I don't know if Clinton has really accepted the fact that she won't get the nomination, but like her husband, she is willing to wound Obama, the Democrats, and put McCain in office to advance her campaign. If, as I think is likely, Obama not only becomes president but there really is a huge progressive upsurge and sweeping reversal of the policies of the last thirty years(as there was in the 1930s) Bill and Hillary Clinton will probably end up like Al Smith, John W. Davies, and James Cox, the Democratic presidential candidates of the 1920s who ended up allying themselves with the rightwing Liberty League and fighting against the New Deal once mass forces had routed the politics that they represented.
Norman Markowitz
It is true that the Campaigns have been getting more savage and more silly. But the problem in all the scandals is how to get the Dem nominee elected in November...The rest is just tittle-tattle of the season.
And the big scandal in the eyes of a large section of Independent and working-class Dem voters minds is Rev Wright. I know it shouldn't be this way -- but it is. And the Republicans will be swift-boating
Obama on this and on Michelle's phrase about not being proud of her country. So we should be thinking about damage-control now because all hell is going to break loose after Obama is the nominee.
Damage control begins with educating working people to understand that the patriotism is about working for the people of your country, not using the flag as a cover for militarism, greed, corruption. While I understand Wilfredo's points, it is important to remember this.
If Pastor Wright was a Marxist or a Communist, he would denounce the U.S. ruling class and its policy of using racism, which is "white racism" in this country, to divide and conquer the working class. If Michelle Obama were a Marxist or a Communist, she would say that neither she nor anyone else should be proud of slavery, the genocidal policies carried out against indigenous peoples, segregation, and imperialist policies which have cost millions of lives through the world, as a result of the policies of the U.S. ruling class and their "America." But neither one of them are Marxists or Communists and, more importantly, whatever they say, however innocuous it is, it will be distorted by the rightwing propaganda machine.
What we can do is to say over and over again that the America, the flag, the national heritage, doesn't belong to the the people who have exploited and oppressed the American people and that working people, white working people have understood that in the past. It is the rightwinger flag wavers who have reduced real incomes for working people, have brought our America to the bring of a disastrous depression. spend more than half of the world;'s official military spending and have at least a third of the world's official state debt, and for working people, that is a very high price to pay to the flag wavers and the "Love America or Leave It" demagogues.
People are judged by both what they say and what they do in context. Those who dergulated our economy, have given us a ten plus trillion national debt, have starved social programs and the public sector for nearly thirty years, have encouraged the loss of millions of decent and stable jobs for Americans have shown us that they "hate" our America. What are they proud of. Homeless people in the streets? 3 dollar a gallon gas prices. A declining dollar which is and will continue to make everything more expensive for consumers. A Mortgage debt crisis that may cost millions their homes and help bring about a general recession. Private companies with their own security forces looking billions in the Iraq occupation while ill-prepared National Guardsmen and regular army troops go without necessary supplies and things in reality go from worse to worse.
When it comes to baiters, Red and otherwise, I always think that the policy of Vito Marcantonio, the militant left Congressman from East Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s who was closely allied to the CPUSA was the best. Never be defensive but always hit back fast and hit back hard, which he did, answering the libels and the slanders by pointing to who was making them and what they were really about.
Norman Markowitz
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