Showing posts with label race card. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race card. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Another Notch On Hillary's Belt of Lies & Deception

Once again, Hillary Clinton demonstrates she is a stranger to truth.



If Hillary Clinton believes that hers is an honest representation and assessment, her fitness for the job of President of the U.S. needs to be questioned.

Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence interviewed Hillary Clinton for USA Today:
Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

"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."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Clinton's blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions.

The Obama campaign, looking toward locking up the nomination, stepped up pressure on superdelegates who have the decisive votes in their race.

In both states, Clinton won six of 10 white voters, according to surveys of people as they left polling places.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that in Indiana, Obama split working-class voters with Clinton and won a higher percentage of white voters than in Ohio in March. He said Obama will be the strongest nominee because he appeals "to Americans from every background and all walks of life. These statements from Sen. Clinton are not true and frankly disappointing."

Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton's comment was a "poorly worded" variation on the way analysts have been "slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms."

However, he said her primary support doesn't prove she's more electable. Either Democrat will get "the vast majority" of the other's primary election votes in a general election, he said.

Clinton lost North Carolina by 14 percentage points and won Indiana by 2 points after competing full-out in both states. She had loaned the campaign $6.4 million in the past month. She said she might lend more.

"We should finish the contests we have and see where we stand after they're over," she said, referring to the six remaining primaries that will end June 3.

There were signs of unrest Wednesday, even among Clinton allies. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein wondered to The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, "whether she can get the delegates that she needs." Former South Dakota senator George McGovern, whose 1972 presidential bid gave Clinton her first political experience, switched his support from Clinton to Obama.
Can you spot Hillary Clinton's deception in the May 4, 2008 AP article she was citing?:
Barack Obama's problem winning votes from working-class whites is showing no sign of going away, and their impression of him is getting worse.

Those are ominous signals as he hopes for strong performances in the coming week in Indiana and North Carolina primaries that would derail the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. Those contests come as his candidacy has been rocked by renewed attention to his volatile former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and by his defeat in last month's Pennsylvania primary.

In an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in April, 53 percent of whites who have not completed college viewed Obama unfavorably, up a dozen percentage points from November. During that period, the numbers viewing Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain negatively have stayed about even.

Huge preference for Clinton

The April poll — conducted before the Pennsylvania contest — also showed an overwhelming preference for Clinton over Obama among working-class whites. They favored her over him by 39 percentage points, compared to a 10-point Obama lead among white college graduates. Obama also did worse than Clinton among those less-educated voters when matched up against Republican candidate John McCain.

"It's the stuff about his preacher ... and the thing he said about Pennsylvania towns, how they turn to religion," Keith Wolfe, 41, a supermarket food stocker from Parkville, Md., said in a follow-up interview. "I don't think he'd be a really good leader."

Just before the Pennsylvania primary, Obama said many small-town residents are bitter about their lives and turn for solace to religion and guns.

Recent voting patterns underscore Obama's continued poor performance with these voters, who are often pivotal in general election swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In Democratic primaries held on or before Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, whites who have not finished college favored the New York senator by a cumulative 59 percent to 32 percent, according to exit polls of voters conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks.

In primaries since Feb. 5, that group has favored Clinton by 64 percent to 34 percent. That includes Ohio and Pennsylvania, in which working-class whites have favored Clinton by 44 and 41 percentage points respectively.

The AP-Yahoo poll shows less educated whites present a problem to Obama in part because of who they are. Besides being poorer, they tend to be older than white college graduates — and Clinton has done strongly with older white voters.

'Lacks content'

Yet political professionals and analysts say more is at play. They blame Obama's problems with blue-collar whites on their greater reluctance to embrace his bid to become the first black president, and his failure to address their concerns about job losses and the battered economy specifically enough.

Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., said Obama lost among working-class whites in the state because his message of how this generation's time has come did not address their economic needs.

"While it's incredibly motivating and passionate and compelling, it lacks content," Madonna said. "Hillary would come in and relate to them, talk about the specifics of her policy."

Pennsylvania also illustrated the problems racial attitudes among less educated whites are causing Obama.

In exit polls, one in five of the state's white voters who haven't completed college said race was an important factor in choosing a candidate, about double the number of white college graduates who said so. Eight in 10 of them voted for Clinton over Obama, and only about half said they would vote for Obama over McCain in November.

"The scab is peeled back off," Democratic pollster John Anzalone, not working for either presidential candidate, said of the latest attention focused on Wright and Obama's denunciations of him. In video clips of past sermons, Wright has damned the United States for its history of racism and accused the government of spreading the HIV virus to harm blacks.

Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said that while working-class whites have favored Clinton, the fact that huge numbers of them and other voters have participated in Democratic contests boded well for the November election.

"I don't think there's going to be erosion in the fall of a core group of Democratic voters," Belcher said.

While less educated whites tend to vote less frequently than better educated voters, they are important because of their sheer number.

Exit polls show they have comprised three in 10 voters in Democratic contests so far, a group that cannot be ignored in a contest that has seen Obama maintain a slim lead. They made up 43 percent of all voters in the 2004 presidential contest, when they heavily favored President Bush over Democrat John Kerry.

Underlining his need to connect with these voters, Obama has geared some television ads in Indiana toward economic issues. In recent days he has turned to small events, rather than his trademark huge rallies, concentrating on the economy, including lunching with a blue-collar Indiana family while discussing their problems.

He has let cameras record him playing basketball in hopes of connecting with the passionate fans of the sport who populate Indiana and North Carolina.

The findings from the AP-Yahoo News poll are from interviews with 863 Democrats on a panel of adults questioned in November and April. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it free.

The exit poll is based on in-person interviews with more than 36,000 voters in 28 states that have held primaries this year in which both candidates actively competed. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1 percentage point, larger for some subgroups.
Setting aside some serious reservations about the methodology of this poll, it's more than a month old, and it was done before the Pennsylvania primary. Hillary Clinton makes these remarks citing this poll weeks after the Pennsylvania poll, after the Indiana and N. Carolina primaries which she lost.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

The Clinton Campaign Goes [SUBLIMINAL]


ALERT: Racially offensive language ahead!

Thursday's release on YouTube.com of a doctored clip from the 1992 documentary,"War Room" which has Clinton advisor Mickey Kantor disparaging Indianans to George Stephanopoulos and James Carville, first by saying that "Indianas are shit", and then that Indianans are "white niggers" was an inside job by the Clinton campaign.

How do I know and why did they do it?

The answer to the latter question explains the former:

The Clinton campaign did it to get the word "nigger" out into the public. The intention wasn't to offend Indianans or to have Indianans think that people within the Clinton campaign think Indianans are the scum of the earth (because it's so obviously a fake and can easily be denounced): It was just to get the n-word out into the public arena. Ideally, in a news venue where the word itself would be repeated again and again. Even reported as "the n-word", our minds know what the reference is to. The purpose is to create a sense of discomfort in some white voters (the undecideds) at the idea of a black man becoming President of the United States. You don't even have to connect it with Obama, because the effect is that voters see Obama and the word "nigger" becomes synonymous with him.

The effect on voters doesn't have to be much. It can be mild, but the people who are being targeted are the undecideds voters who, when they walk into the voting booth, literally are not sure which button to press/name to check off. The word "nigger" provides the motivation for choosing Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.

If only one out of a hundred voters is influenced by a feeling that they have, for example, thinking of Barack Obama and thinking "nigger", and being uncomfortable voting for him (and because they're not even thinking of it consciously, it's just a slight increase in their physical discomfort, the effect may be mild and not even register consciously), it's enough to throw the election to her. In a neck and neck race a change of one to two percent can make the difference between victory and defeat.

It's not a conscious experience. It's a gut reaction, a slight increase in discomfort. Particularly for those people who aren't aware of the issues, but who just vote based on whether they like somebody. There's a certain percentage of people who vote that way, who voted for Bush that way, over Al Gore and John Kerry. "Which candidate would you prefer to have a beer with?", as if there's even a possibility of that ever happening.

These are people who won't vote for somebody they get uncomfortable thinking about.

The diabolical 'beauty' of this plan (unlike other critically negative campaigns, such as saying that Hillary is "polarizing" which is an overt connection that people will consciously reject or accept) is that on the surface there's no connection between the phrase "white niggers", the word "nigger" and Barack Obama. You're not using the term in any way directly connected with Obama but you are getting the word into the public awareness.

In a certain number of people, the word will automatically be associated, not consciously but viscerally, with the African-American candidate. They will think "nigger" and then they will think of the candidate. They will think of the candidate and then they will think "nigger". They become interchangeable. And the voters to whom this is happening may believe that they're not racist (and consciously they may not be), but they will be uncomfortable voting for a "nigger" for President.

In a tight race such as this, enough voters may be swayed by this tactic to make the vote go one way rather decisively.

And it's feasible, given the kind of campaign Senator Clinton has chosen to run, to think that this was intentionally done with that result in mind.

It certainly dovetails into the whispering "He's unelectable"-campaign that superdelegates have been telling journalists they're being subjected to by the Clinton campaign. And also the truly bizarre comments made in the last three days by N. Carolina's governor Mike Easley ("Hillary makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy"), Paul Gibson, president of the Sheet Metal Workers' Union in Indiana, who said of Hillary Clinton, she has "testicular fortitude", and James Carville who said if Hillary gave Obama "one of her cojones, they'd both have two". These are not spontaneous utterances, they don't just pop out these mens' mouths. These are carefully crafted and intended for the same undecided voters who, if voting for a woman as president creates similar unease as voting for the black man, the Clintons want them to think, "Worry not, this woman makes Sylvester Stallone look gay".



There is no conceivable way that the Mickey Kantor clip benefits anyone but Hillary Clinton. Once the word ("nigger") is 'out of the barn', so to speak, the voters' discomfort has been created. All that is left for the Clintons to do is to keep up the whispering campaign, that "Obama is unelectable", only they don't have to whisper anymore because it's being discussed openly in the media. It will ring true for voters because they assume others are having the same feelings of discomfort, and won't vote for him.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Crazy? Or Crazy Like A Fox?

What Bill Clinton's Odd Denial of Previous Day's Comment ("They Played the Race Card On Me") May Be About....Because He Surely Did Say It

Here are Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd talking about on Pennsylvania primary day:



MSNBC's pundits have a habit of bending over backwards to give the Clintons every benefit of doubt (or ignore the obvious entirely), and Chuck Todd doesn't break with that tradition.

Let's look at the story as it unfolded on Monday.



CNN reports:
Former President Bill Clinton denied Tuesday he had accused Senator Barack Obama's campaign of "playing the race card" during an interview Monday.

Bill Clinton is facing tough questions Tuesday over an interview with a Delaware radio station.

A recording of the former president making the comment is posted on the WHYY Web site.

It says he made the comment in a telephone interview with the Philadelphia public radio station Monday night.

Clinton was asked whether his remarks comparing Obama's strong showing in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson in 1988 had been a mistake given their impact on his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"No, I think that they played the race card on me," said Clinton, "and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along."

"We were talking about South Carolina political history and this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere. And you know, do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you really got to go some to try to portray me as a racist."

After the phone interview, a stray comment of his on the issue was also recorded before he hung up: "I don't think I should take any s*** from anybody on that, do you?"

But outside a Pittsburgh campaign event Tuesday, a reporter asked Clinton what he had meant "when you said the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?"

Clinton responded: "When did I say that and to whom did I say that?"



"You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your games today," Clinton added.

"I said what I said -- you can go back and look at the interview, and if you will be real honest you will also report what the question was and what the answer was. But I'm not helping you."

Clinton did not respond when asked what he meant when he charged that the Obama campaign had a memo in which they said they had planned to play the race card.

Meanwhile, at a Pittsburgh press availability on Tuesday, Obama was asked about Clinton's charge that his campaign had drawn up plans to use "the race card."

"Hold on a second,'' he said. "So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?"



"You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were words that came out of his mouth. Not words that came out of mine.''

Clinton commented just before the South Carolina primary that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Question for Bill Clinton: Is your knowledge of these memos (the "memos from the campaign and everything" that you spoke about with Susan Phillips in the WHYY interview that you claim "show that they planned to do it all along") connected to the break-in of Obama campaign offices in Allentown on April 19, 2008, where laptops and cell phones were stolen?

The memo on the subject of race from Amaya Smith, S. Carolina press secretary for Obama for America lists news accounts of events during the campaign, and nothing else.