In an interview earlier this week with USA Today, Hillary Clinton said the following:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
I think this is the most offensive statement to come out of the Clinton camp in the entire campaign - a campaign marred by several thinly veiled appeals by highly placed surrogates (such as Bill Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro) to racist thinking and attempts to define Obama by his race alone. If this were an isolated gaffe, I'd be willing to let it go. But this is part of a clear and persistent pattern. How sad that she is choosing to end her candidacy on such a sour note.
Hillary will have some serious damage control to do with her constituents in New York City before she runs for reelection to the Senate in 2012.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Have You No Shame Ma'am?
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 8:56 AM
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5 comments:
I just posted elsewhere about the "hard-working Americans, white Americans" quote. If McCain had said that, he's be pilloried as a racist. Blacks aren't hardworking?
Does it matter that Clinton only won Indiana because she got 2/3 of the over-65 vote, and they are largely retired, i.e., not working?
She's got to stop herself before she (or Bill) cries out, "For God's sake, y'all can't nominate a negro and expect to win!" Seriously.
I apologize for being late to the party, but I direct you to Matt Yglesias's take on it. I think that this isn't as nefarious as it sounded (or as everything Mark Penn ever did.) Rather, I think it was simply Clinton wanting to talk about working-class white Americans, and working-class should always be called "hard working" so they know you're not looking down on them. She just didn't successfully negotiate the minefield of saying "hard-working", "working class", and including "white" because otherwise she'd be accused of denying the working class black people, like she thinks they're all unemployed or something.
It could have been said better, but I don't think it's as overtly racist as it's been interpreted.
In the context of an entire campaign full of "I misspoke" or "I was taken out of context" defenses of racial appeals, I just don't agree.
Imagine Clinton had said only this:
"I should be the nominee because I have more support among White Americans."
Now do you see the problem??
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