Posted by
Michael Goodell on Thursday, March 13, 2008 2:23:35 PM
Not since Jimmy Da Greek’s brief foray into eugenics has anyone had the audacity to suggest that somehow being black is an advantage in this world. Yet that is precisely what the Billary campaign did when they dusted off Geraldine Ferraro and sent her out to remind people of their uppity opponent’s race. According to the old criminal’s wife, generations of selective breeding by slaveholding Southerners had the effect of producing much longer and stronger thigh muscles in African-Americans. This explains Obama’s impressive ability to leap ahead of Hillary in the delegate race. Or was that Jimmy’s line?
Geraldine is merely the latest Billary operative to step forward and remind Americans that the junior Senator from Illinois has a darker pigment than you or me. First Hillary pointed out that it wasn’t black leaders who signed the Civil Rights Act, it was a white man. The firestorm of criticism quickly convinced team Billary that the candidate herself shouldn’t go there. Instead, it was left to various operatives to do the dirty work.
It was their task to bring up race, and then to gracefully resign once Hillary announced that she was shocked, shocked to find there was gambling going on. First it was Bill Shaheen, then hubby Bill himself, and now Ferraro. The proper response once the deed was done, was for the operative to fall on his or her sword. Shaheen did. Ferraro did. Rumor has it they wanted Bill to fall on his sword too, but apparently he was busy using it in some trailer park.
It’s an interesting ploy, strapping operatives in rhetorical suicide vests and launching them at their opponent. One wonders how many martyrs Billary has left, though considering the wreckage which her campaign has become, it is possible that staffers are lining up for the opportunity.
As the commentariat mounts their mighty steeds to lay waste the land of racial politics, a counter force emerges, which claims that it is Obama, not Clinton, who is playing the race card. While this line of reasoning might seem tortured, remember that it comes from those who first embraced Hillary for her inevitability, and stayed around to celebrate her scrappy underdog status. Inured to such logical contortions it requires no great leap to condemn a black man trying to rise above race and run a campaign based on hope and potential.
And this is the tragedy of the Democrat party campaign. Obama has transcended race. He speaks of hope and change, and empty sentiments though they are, they have resonated with a large number of Americans who see in him, among many other qualities, the potential to put race behind us. He has risen above race, and by embracing him we might, too. Yet the Clintons can’t let it go. They have to remind us, constantly, that he is black.
This may seem like stupid, petty, bitterly divisive politics, but lets face it, these are the Clintons we’re talking about. This is a woman who has spun a self-abasing ability to endure her husband’s recidivist public humiliation of her into a track record of achievement. This is a woman who ought to have a cage in the Washington Zoo, with a sign identifying her as a Giant Pander.
Yet stupid and self-defeating as this tactic may be, it is possible that they can’t help it. They can’t help but point out that Obama is black, because when they look at him, that is what they see. This is the ultimate price of identity politics. Rather than a misguided tactic, their constant recourse to race may well be borne of frustration and resentment. They see a black man. He should be running as one. He should be marching beneath the banner of resentment. It is entirely conceivable that they Clintons aren’t trying to remind us that Obama is black; they are trying to remind him.