Revisiting The Race-baiting Question

So, I was having a conversation with some friends the other night and one asked if we liked Bill Clinton. I'm not sure what others said because I jumped right in saying "I used to, but now I can't stand him." They asked why. I explained that I didn't like the way he and Hillary were acting during her campaign, especially the race baiting that they and their surrogates engaged in in the run up to South Carolina's primary.

One friend, another Obama supporter, interjected to say she didn't think that Hillary's MLK/LBJ comment was racist. Well, the conversation was moving elsewhere so I didn't really get a chance to make my case and, besides, I didn't really want to get into a list of grievances, many days after the fact.

But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me that I didn't fully respond. Many of us liberals are convinced that the Clintons deliberately engaged in a race baiting strategy—one designed to goad Obama into playing the race card, thereby triggering resentment among white or hispanic voters—and are angry about it. And before we go on to the next round of voting I feel it's important to get a little refresher course to help illustrate what the Clintons will stoop to (whether by themselves or through their surrogates) in order to win.  

So although it wasn't the first incident, I'll start with the MLK/LBJ comment since that was the moment referred to in the conversation. Here goes:

MLK vs. LBJ?
• Clinton told Fox's Major Garrett that while Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on behalf of civil rights, President Lyndon Johnson was the one who got the legislation passed.

"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."

Now, in and of itself, the statement is merely stupid, a strangely myopic reading of history that shows terrible political judgement*. But spoken in the midst of several comments (listed below) over the period leading up to the SC primary, it takes on a different hue.

(* MLK did more than merely "speak" on behalf of civil rights, of course. He, and thousands of other brave souls, put their lives on the line—literally—to advance civil rights. LBJ's achievement, while important, could never have taken place if the groundwork hadn't been laid by blood, sweat and tears of the people actively involved in the civil rights movement.)

Dismissiveness
• Not long after New Hampshire, a Clinton advisor says derisively, "If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

• Around the same time, Bill Clinton calls Obama a "kid," which sounds an awful lot like "boy" to a lot of people.

• Clinton supporter, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, says of Obama, "You can't shuck and jive at a press conference." (For those who don't know, the phrase "shuck and jive" refers to mischievous blacks behaving innocently in the presence of an authority figure, so as to get out of trouble.)

Past Drug Use
• Campaign advisor Billy Shaheen makes various arguments about how Obama can't get elected due to his past drug use (as a teen, mind you).

• Campaign strategist, Mark Penn, continues to reference past drug use, even while ostensibly decrying the use of such tactics.

• BET founder and Clinton friend, Bob Johnson, references Obama's drug use back in the 'hood at a rally. Worse, Johnson compared Obama to Sidney Poitier's character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, considered by many to be the modern equivalent of calling somebody an Uncle Tom.

Indentity Politics Marginalization
• Former senator and Hillary supporter Bob Kerrey politely suggests that Obama is a Muslim (he's not) as though that will tar him in the eyes of many voters, saying:

“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.”

You know, just a nice little backhanded compliment.

• After Obama's SC victory, Bill Clinton waves it off saying, "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here." Thus suggesting that Obama is a vanity candidate, who can only appeal to other black voters and maybe a handful of whites.

• The campaign begins exploiting latent tensions between African-American and Latino communities, suggesting that Latinos won't vote for a black man. This was most famously done by Clinton advisor Sergio Bendixen, who told the New Yorker that

"the Hispanic voter - and I want to say this very carefully - has not shown a lot of willingness to support black candidates."

******

None of this is to suggest that I think the Clintons are actually racist. It's pretty evident in the way they've lived their lives that they aren't. But they've certainly shown a willingness to engage in some pretty sleazy tactics when it suits their needs, including sadly, using racially charged language. And that not only disgusts me, it has irrevocably spoiled my view of them, and called into question their (okay, Hillary's) ability to lead the country into the future.