The Clintons’ Unforgivable Crime
Nearly two weeks after a crime had been committed in South Carolina, the prime suspect, Bill Clinton, was finally “tracked down at a local diner” in Maine February 8. Wagging his familiar finger, Clinton informed a reporter from Maine TV station WCSH that he “learned a very valuable lesson. … I have to let her defend herself.” And just in case the old familiar wagging finger was not enough, Bill added the biggest whopper of all: “I don’t want to be the story.”
But if the polls are to be believed, hiding Bill up in Maine was too little, too late. Democrats are abandoning Bill Clinton — and Hillary — like rats from a sinking ship. The Clinton-Obama near-tie on Super Tuesday was the line of Obama’s ascent crossing that of Hillary Clinton’s demise. Barack Obama has proceeded to defeat Hillary in every state since. Bill Clinton’s power is no longer “crackling through his jeans.” The sudden loss is the Clintons’ Ceausescu moment.
Is racism the unforgivable crime finally ending Democrats’ 16-year love affair with Bill Clinton? No, it’s worse: from New Hampshire to South Carolina, Clinton’s carefully calculated and racially tinged attacks on Obama risked setting black America free from the Democrat Party.
It was the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy which brought the majority of black voters out of the Republican camp and into the Democrat Party — for 95 years the party of segregation and before that the party of slavery. In spite of the fact that Republican support was required to overcome Democrat segregationists in both houses of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson’s role in forcing passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act sealed the deal. But black voters are also Democrats’ Achilles heel. Even a 10-20% shift by black voters back to the Party of Lincoln could prove fatal to the Democrats. History lessons won’t do that, but Clinton’s big mouth could.
Bill Clinton’s campaign strategy comes right out of Hillary’s infamous and long-hidden 1969 senior thesis on radical organizer Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s 13th Rule for Radicals is: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” For three weeks in January, the Clintons and their backers did their best to polarize non-black Democrat voters against Obama, bringing up Obama’s admitted past drug use and firing off one-liners like “Lyndon Johnson,” “fairy-tale,” “shuck and jive,” and “spade work” to increasing choruses of anger from liberals and conservatives alike.
But it backfired. America’s leading radio host Rush Limbaugh focused the spotlight on the racially divisive subtext of what he called the Democrats’ “uncivil war.” Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) apparently phoned Clinton several times warning him to tone it down. Al Sharpton said Clinton should “shut up.” But Clinton took no heed, willing to gamble his own party for a return to the White House.
Going after black senators is a long Clinton tradition. Life Magazine gave Hillary an initial taste of nationwide media exposure after her 1969 Wellesley commencement speech in which she denounced the first black man to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 100 years. But that was different. Her target then was a Republican, Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts.
Today’s Clinton problem is not that their remarks are perceived as racist or as racially divisive. The problem is that they could drive some black voters out of the Democrat camp. In the eyes of Democrats, the Clinton attacks on Obama are wrong for exactly the same reason that Hillary’s attack on Brooke was right.
Ted Kennedy himself once in 2005 famously appeared to slip and blurt out “Obama bin Laden”. But when three weeks of racially tinged Clinton remarks ended with Bill comparing Obama’s victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, Kennedy had heard enough. Endorsing Obama, Kennedy told a cheering Obama rally January 28, “With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.” Caroline Kennedy, in a January 27 New York Times essay, called Obama “a president like my father.” The Kennedys couldn’t deliver Massachusetts for Obama February 5, but that’s secondary. The focus is keeping the black vote Democratic.
“Old politics” is a veiled reference indirectly accusing the Clintons of taking the Democrats back to the pre-Kennedy/Johnson days when the southern white segregationist vote was solidly Democrat. The term found an echo in January 24 remarks by former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich: “Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former president, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic Party. … Now, sadly, we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.”
Unleashed, the Democrat media is choosing to run some of the juicy Clinton material they have been sitting on. The New York Times January 31 attacks from the right with a feature on Bill’s 2005 diplomacy-for-profit uranium deal with a Kazakh dictator. On the same day ABC News attacks from the left, taking a look at Hillary’s “silent” role on the board of directors of the “union-busting” Wal-Mart. The flow of exposes stopped as soon as it was clear that Bill Clinton was to be silenced.
The Clinton Foundation has been in business for 11 years, protected by a fawning media. There are many more “Kazakh uranium deal”-type stories in the media’s ammo locker, kept at the ready in case the Clintons attempt to make a final stand.
Preoccupied with wrestling in the South Carolina mud, Bill skipped the annual World Economic Forum shindig at Davos, Switzerland. Writing from Davos January 23, Financial Times columnist John Gapper pointed out, “Up here in Davos, in the mountain air, the usual philanthropic suspects have gathered for the World Economic Forum. Bono, George Soros, and Bill and Melinda Gates are all here. One old hand is out of town, however: Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president and quintessential Davos man. Davos is a place ideally made for Mr. Clinton in his post-presidential incarnation. … Just lately, however, Mr. Clinton has been back on the campaign trail in the U.S. in support of his wife Hillary. He has adopted tactics that, if he does not curb himself soon, may tarnish his global brand irreparably. … If he carries on in the same vein, he may not find so many fans attending him in the future.”
The reporter in Maine also suggested that Clinton leave the country, saying, “What you ought to do is … pull back and spend time on (your) foundation work, and humanitarian work around the world, and stay out of the campaign. Would you consider doing that?”
The 90% solid black vote tips the balance in favor of Democrats in Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. Without these votes, Democrats would simply cease to function as a national party. The Clinton Foundation’s multi-million-dollar foreign slush funds are what Democrats would be sacrificing to keep that percentage at 90% and stay in power if the Clintons cannot learn to go gracefully.
Just three weeks of faux-casual racial remarks by Bill Clinton were enough to suddenly cause Democrats to panic. By early February, exit polls clearly showed Democrats divided along racial lines. The AP’s Alan Fram captured the hypocrisy, writing February 6: “Though insisting race and gender have little to do with it, many Democrats are supporting the presidential candidate who looks most like them.”
After a stream of Clinton losses and a round of defections, even white Democrats are slipping into the Obama camp. Hispanics seem to be holding out, perhaps unwilling to become what Democrats repeatedly ask them to be — “natural allies” of blacks — with a common fate of misery and dependency under Democrat domination.
It is not at all clear that the Clintons and their supporters have got the message. After nearly a month of damage control, Clinton-backer Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell February 12 returned to the racial theme: “I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate. … Had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking — but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so.”
Over at the New York Times and the Washington Post, editors are likely reading through unpublished Clinton Foundation or Clinton Library exposes: Saudi? China? Russia? Ukraine? Mexico? The list of donors is a treasure trove of foreign operators and Islamic states, many of whom were at the root of Clinton presidential scandals.
A 90% voting pattern is almost unheard of in democratic societies. It is an inherently unstable situation. Invoking the dead segregationist Democrat that Bill Clinton calls his “mentor,” Rush Limbaugh mocks the coming collapse: “Senator J. William Fulbright … asks from the great beyond, ‘Why did this take so long to happen?’”
And it is only beginning.
Andrew Walden is Editor of the Hawai`i Free Press in Hilo, HI and may be reached at andrewwalden@email.com.
Brilliant!
out of the nearly 100 articles and Op-Ed pieces i’ve read since super tuesday, this one is at the top of my list.
just brilliantly written, lucid, candid, bold. and astonishingly accurate describing the political machine.
i hope this piece finds its place in the annals of history.
“The focus is keeping the black vote Democratic.”
The Democrats need every bit of that ninety percent of the normal black vote. Even a relatively small drop of six to ten points will likely prove disastrous. Nevertheless, I am increasingly becoming convinced that John McCain has the odds in his favor regardless of which Democrat ultimately faces him. The middle of the road voters should reject “Barry” Obama and his wife, Michelle, as a bit too weird for their taste. If Hillary Clinton somehow captures the nomination—then minimally ten percent of the black vote will stay home on Election Day.
Absolutely on target! I don’t know if the ‘average’ voter thinks this deeply so I question if it would impact the results but I agree with what you are saying. The question is will blacks be so offended that they will stay home on election day in a Clinton/McCain match-up? November is a long way away and people never seem to remember why they were upset.
I think this article has a lot of parallels to the article by Pam Meister Conservatives: Licking Their Wounds or Looking Ahead?
As the article says, Blacks have voted 90-95% Democratic since the 60′s and because of that they have zero political power. Monolithic voting blocs have a long history of being pandered to and then ignored. Worse though, Blacks have paid a very high price for their allegiance to the Democratic Party and will continue to do so until they actually vote their interests instead of the Party’s interests.
Now consider Conservatives and the Republican Party. There’s been a lot of talk and type about RINOs that I think is 180 degrees out of phase (as Rush might say). John McCain is not a RINO. John McCain, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giuliani are the Republican Party, or at least, the Republican Party that the RNC wants.
Conservatives are the RINOs.
“Holding your nose and voting” for the Party Nominee gets you where the Blacks are today. Political Parties exist to acquire power. Ideally, they’re philosophically or ideologically constrained and won’t “do anything” to get more power. But even ideological parties need reminding by the voters that the Party must serve the interests of the voters, not the other way around. The longer you “hold your nose” the more irrelevant that you become and there’s always some pending crisis that will require you to “hold your nose”.
Ideologically, Blacks have much more in common with Conservatives than they do with the Democrats or Republicans. Bill Clinton’s Unforgivable Crime may well unravel both major parties.
The Clintons are great friends of the African-American community. They are entitled to make the case for Hilary’s candidacy by defending the role of whites as important players in the civil rights movement. It is despicable to vilify the Clintons in order to salve one’s conscience for abandoning them and switching to Obama.
“Clinton’s carefully calculated and racially tinged attacks on Obama risked setting black America free from the Democrat Party.”
This is how you started off your piece. I went through it in its entirety, looking for the facts behind it. But you offered absolutely no evidence that blacks were abandoning the party because of anything the Clintons did or said.
And why would they, with a charismatic black Democratic candidate to turn to? As you yourself said: “even white Democrats are slipping into the Obama camp.” That’s the OBAMA camp. Not the REPUBLICAN camp. See the difference?
The intro to the piece insists: “setting black America free from the Democrat Party” – and Dems are choosing survival over the Clintons.” No doubt, considering where this piece is being published, that is the HOPE of the editors, publishers and writers of PJ Media. But you need to either clarify that this is merely what you’re hoping for, or offer some hard proof of your ‘facts’.
I for one would find it a major and important story, to learn of evidence that black Democrats were ACTUALLY ABANDONING A PARTY FEATURING THE FIRST-EVER BLACK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO WAS AN ODDS-ON FAVORITE TO WIN!! Wow! What a scoop THAT would be! I mean seriously – that’s Pulitzer Prize stuff. But it’s nothing but a fairy tale. (Or, since it’s Pajamas Media, maybe bedtime story is a more apt analogy.)
Without even a shred of anecdotal evidence to back your contentions, this piece is all style and no substance.
Isn’t that precisely what you find ‘wrong’ with Obama?
It is amazing that Democrats only got 41% of the white vote in 2004. Thus, the Democrat voter base draws on just two pillars, the loss of either of which will finish them.
1) Blacks : Blacks vote 90/10 for Democrats. If just 15% switched over to make in 75/25, Democrats are finished.
2) Mexicans in California : Note that I don’t simply use the broad term of ‘Hispanics’, they are NOT homogenous.
California was a GOP state as recently as 1988. Without the Mexican vote in CA, CA would become a swing state again, as would the huge total of 55 EVs.
If the GOP can chip away at either of these two pillars, the Dems are finished.
I figger it is pretty obvious that If H. Rodham wins the nomination with the aid of racial slurs against Obama, that she may have, to some extent, queered her pitch for the black vote. Bill: ok with that, because, after all, who else are black voters going to vote for?
If Hillary wins, a substantial portion of the black electorate will stay home. I don’t see a big black vote for McCain no matter what. But people change as they move through time. When I was young, nearly all the Irish and Italians voted Democrat, but now they vote more along class lines. This isn’t the end of the monolith, but it is the beginning of an awareness that the monolith can end.
This issue will only resonate if the convention is divisive.
If Obama is leading at the end by more than 100 delegates (maybe 150 will be needed?), the super-delegates will come together enough to deny Hillary the insider overturn. And the Clinton Machine will go into that night. Not quietly, no sir! It will not be pretty, all the sound and fury of a political nuclear temper tantrum – but the Clinton machine will go.
If he doesn’t have a sufficient lead, it will be war. And then all the discussion about Blacks and the Democrat establishment, all of the discussion above, will become relevant.
When I see a writer referring ungrammatically to “the Democrat Party”–thereby self-identifying as an ignoramus, it is difficult for me to take that writer’s comments seriously. Why do critics of the Democratic Party employ this Joe McCarthyite rhetorical trick–or should I say this Joe McCarthy rhetorical trick?
It’s a valid point on the broad strokes, but as currently stated, completely inaccurate.
The Democratic voters (aka the Democrats) are simply reacting for Obama & against the idiotic, 30+-years-out-of-date racism of the campaign. It’s not the Democrats as a whole but only the party leaders and media who are consciously considering the importance of retaining the black voting bloc.
The thing is, if Hillary does manage to pull out a win here by using coded racial messages to attack Obama, the only way for her to win in the general election will to be to try and scare blacks turned off by her tactics back to the polls in November by convincing them that a McCain presidency would be a return to the old segregationist ways of the South (or worse).
Scare tactics are nothing new — the NAACP ran that infamous ad in 2000 linking George W. Bush to the James Byrd dragging death in Southeast Texas in an effort to get Al Gore elected (never mind that two of the three participants got the death penalty in Texas courts and the other got life), and as Julian Bond’s recent statement showed, that group is still in the Clinton camp. Tarring the pending GOP nominee is going to be tougher, because Arizona doesn’t have the same stigma of racial animosity that East Texas does, but if Hillary does end up with the nomination, I expect the GOP nominee to be portrayed as John McKlan by the time the election is over, in order to drive black turnout the Clintons need to win the swing states in November.
So which is it? I’ve been trashed for using both DemoCRAT and DemoCRATIC.
Great article here. It would be fitting that the Clintons’ final work is driving a final, fatal stake through the heart of the party that thought the Clintons were “theirs”.
It was never about the party. It was always about the Clintons. They saw the Democrats of 1998 the same way a car thief would see a Lexxus idling at the curb with the window down. They hopped in and went for a spin. The first price the Democrats paid was the house, then both house and senate. Then the White House for eight years.
And now after running almost exclusively against Bush until just this last few months, the Democrats are going to find out they aren’t going to be able to field a candidate that beats ANY Republican – not even a RINO like McCain… because of the wake left behind the Clintons.
I’ve been waiting for this election since ’92. It will almost have been
worth the wait.
“…the Democrats are going to find out they aren’t going to be able to field a candidate that beats ANY Republican – not even a RINO like McCain.”
That is likely correct. John Mccain could even win by a substantial margin. Heck, we may even be talking about a landslide victory. Too many elitist white professionals wanted to prove that they were not racists. This desire was so overwhelming that common sense was thrown out of the window. The middle of the road voters will not cast their ballot for Barack Obama. His race has nothing to do with anything. Obama is simply is not ready for prime time.
I see the mention of Hillary Clinton’s denouncement of Senator Edward Brooke in 1969 during the Wellesley College commencement. It’s fascinating that the amazing hatchet job done on Brooke – a black Senator – was never fully examined or explained. Now there is a real example of Media and Party coverup cheerfully ignored.
While this may be true I don’t think it’s what is killing the Clintons – the Clintons look like they’re stuck in a time warp from about ’94 – they dress funny, talk funny – it’s like they can’t adjust to how the world has changed.
“hiding Bill up in Maine”…
Not exactly hiding. He was here that Friday and Saturday, for the Maine caucus, at some very public events.
More importantly, what diner was he at? I may not like his politics, but when it comes to eating, his endorsement carries weight with me.