What’s the most obvious difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama?
Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).
“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”
Rather than march on the man most responsible for the extreme unemployment among Black Americans, the CBC made the strategic decision to target someone else.
Rather than targeting Obama’s leadership, many CBC members aimed their fire at the Tea Party movement over the summer’s congressional recess. Waters said in a public meeting in her district that the Tea Party “can go straight to hell.” Another member, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), called the Tea Party “the real enemy” seeking to hold Congress “hostage.”
How are both of the CBC’s decisions here — to decide not to protest Obama, and then to target the Tea Party for a hate campaign — not explicitly racist? It’s pretty obvious that Cleaver et al aren’t working for a world in which politicians are judged by their character or their actions, but by the color of their skin.
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