Hey, there really IS a pattern to the stuff coming out of the Clinton campaign

The pattern is that it isn't coming out of the Clinton campaign; certainly not as a planned strategy of pissing off black people every chance they get. It doesn't help Hillary to have black people mad at her. And it is lethal to Obama's broad support with white people to inject old-school racial politics into the mix. It is damaging to both candidates, in different ways, and damaging to the Democratic party.

The media (MSM and internet) exists to gin up controversy. If two candidates don't want to fight, the media will damn sure make sure they fight, like a mean kid shaking bugs in a jar. And when push comes to shove, the MSM does the bidding of the big money interests, aka the Republican Party.

We have the Democratic party on the brink of a realigning election, and we see an endless series of instances of anonymous sourced stories and spitefully, intentionally out of context quotes that all have the effect of sowing racial division within the Democratic party. And we partisans of candidates are so caught up in the take-no-prisoners mentality of campaigning that we don't see that this whole racial division story is ginned up from a lot of nothing.

Remember the ABC News blog characterization of Biden insulting Obama by offering him a cruddy job in the Justice Department? And when someone came up with a full transcript, it was obviously no insult at all in context... Obama certainly didn't take it that way.

And Politico puts out a completely fake story about Andrew Cuomo insulting Barack, except when you get the whole transcript, he wasn't talking about Barack at all.

Bob Novak puts out a story with anonymous sources about how Hillary is ready to drop a scum-bomb on Barack.

Karl Rove puts out a piece calling Barack "lazy" while reinforcing a general misinterpretation of something Bill Clinton said.

Hillary is interviewed by Fox News and says something about Martin Luther King that isn't objectionable, but the excerpted clip Fox shows over and over makes it seem like she's diminishing MLK gratuitously.

News outlets run a clip of Bill saying "fairy tale" over and over, implying he was talking about Doctor King's dream or the idea of a black man being President, which he wasn't. (Thanks to Keith Olbermann for providing some perspective on that tonight, and thanks to Josh Marshall for his fair-minded refereeing of some of these incidents. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ is a wonderful refuge of common sense these days.)

You are damn right there's a pattern here!

We are being manipulated into a Democratic Party race war because divide-and-conquer is the only hope the Republicans have of retaining power.

Any other time we would see it plain as day, but in the hostility and dogmatism of the campaign mind-set where supporters on both sides are more eager for dirt and talking points than for truth we are vulnerable to the most ham-fisted manipulations. I don't know which candidate will win, so I don't want either of them to be damaged goods. We, every one of us, is INVESTED in Barack Obama. And we, every one of us, is INVESTED in Hillary Clinton. All of our hopes are now bound up in those two people... not just one or the other. There is no point in winning a battle to lose the war. (I have never supported Obama, but I feel very protective of him today because he may be my candidate and I will want him to win.)

Something to keep in mind: The Rove philosophy is to attack someone where they are strongest. With Kerry it was his war record. Ask yourself, where have the Clintons always been strongest?

Answer: In the black community. "Bill and Hillary are racists" is this year's version of "John Kerry was a coward." (And where is Barack strongest? In his post-racial new-politics appeal to people from every group. Injecting race is a two-fer... Republicans gain, all Democrats lose.)

Republicans are on the edge of losing everything and this is the only plan they have left.

go back to the old statement Charles Barkley ex NBC player and the more I see what is happening out in realtime and see it being played out in DU it is damn scary. Oh and the statement by Charles, " In this election we are really going to see just who the racist and sexist really are."

spiel fit into your theory? He was sent out by Obama and I hope

he is out there 24/7. He is da bomb

Jackson Jr.'s remarks really hurt Baracak.

Obama doesn't want to be an ethinic niche candidate, he want's to be PRESIDENT.

We need to stop pretending that every word said by either candidate's surrogates is official campaign strategy.

People say stupid shit all the time.

Who are they? I've never even heard of them before the campaign.

"cozying up" to Fox because he'd supposedly told O'Reilly he'd appear on his show.. and I had just watched the freakin CSpan coverage of the incident and that is SO not what happened. Any journalist would know that.

And you watch a speech or campaign stop.. and see with your own ears what happens.. then the next day come here and see a headline and a story that says "X Attacks Y", or watch the crawler under the pundits scream some outrageous headline like " X Campaign Dead?"

This post is spot on, but you know what, we're buying it hook, line and sinker.

K&R!

exactly right. I wish I could rec this more than once.

Excellent post, particularly the point about hitting the various campaigns where they are strongest, i.e. Kerry's military record. That has become quite obvious in the media coverage during this campaign.

....by these attempts to take this election down to a gutter level that will kill the Democrats chances of taking the White House ....

....and possibly even keeping the Congress.

but the shit out of the Clinton campaign needs to stop.

And it was the Guardian that reported the "imaginary hip black friend" stuff.

If nothing else is said. All Done. But nothing else better be said.

There's no more shit coming out of the Clinton camp than there is from Obama's or Edward's camp. This affects ALL of the candidates.

The media is perpetuating all the negative crap and blowing it up beyond recognition just to get people riled up.

'Course, you don't can't see that through those blinders you wear.

I hope more DUers red this.

I know we're being played.

this seems to be related to the IP


Forum Name General Discussion: Politics
Topic subject Bill Moyer’s quest was Shelby Steele who talked of “A bound man” (Obama)—his new book
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4040012#4040012
4040012, Bill Moyer’s quest was Shelby Steele who talked of “A bound man” (Obama)—his new book
Posted by rodeodance on Fri Jan-11-08 10:49 PM



Bill was Excellent at the interview. Catch it if you can. Most interesting:


Shelby Steele

Watch Video
Read Transcript
Comment
January 11, 2008

With the wildly vacillating predictions about the viability of the Obama candidacy in the news, Shelby Steele's most recent book is getting a lot of attention. In A BOUND MAN: WHY WE ARE EXCITED ABOUT OBAMA AND WHY HE CAN'T WIN, Steele assesses the potential impact of Obama's campaign in terms of white and black America's presumptions about race and politics:

As a symbol, he raises several remarkable possibilities. Is America now the kind of society that can allow a black -- of whatever pedigree -- to become the most powerful human being on earth, the commander of the greatest military in history? Have our democratic principles at last moved us beyond even the tribalism of race? And will the black American identity, still so reflexively focused on victimization, be nullified if a black wins the presidency of this largely white nation?

Cover of A BOUND MAN

Enumerating the cultural and political constraints that keep Obama — and the nation — bound over race, Steele's answer is a qualified no.

…………Is America really ready to see beyond race? Read more from Shelby Steele below and talk back on the blog.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01112008/profile2.html


And much of what Shelby said is below:
http://www.discriminations.us/2007/10/shelby_steele_on_obama_and_oth.html


At and after a recent lecture in Toronto Shelby Steele had some interesting things to say about Obama ... and others.

... he believes Barack Obama will not win the Democratic nomination for the presidency, in large part because he is caught between pleasing blacks and whites and can never please all Americans at once....

“He needs a self. There’s no self there. I think it comes from a lifetime of being bound up and playing one side, and another side, and never feeling that he had the right to be his own man,” Mr. Steele said in a hotel bar this week. “This is the tragedy, certainly, of the black intellectual class in America. They don’t think they have the right to be individuals, so they’re all just predictable, victim-focused, old line. It’s a generation that’s failed to really take us further. Obama is a part of that. There’s nobody there.”
....
He argues blacks in America typically wear one of two “masks”: They are either challengers or bargainers. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are challengers: Such blacks assume whites are racist until they prove otherwise. Bargainers, on the other hand, make a deal with whites by not rubbing their faces in a history of racism — think of Louis Armstrong or Oprah, he says.
Mr. Obama is an archetypal bargainer, says Mr. Steele, whose forthcoming book on the Democratic contender, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win, will be released in time for the primaries.

“The question that hovers over Obama to this day: Is he really black enough? If white people like you, it’s very likely you’re not black enough. Black people are very suspicious of that. To prove himself to black people, he has to be a challenger,” Mr. Steele says.

“White America loves him because they think he’s a bargainer. And so if he goes with whites, blacks don’t like him and say he’s not black enough. If he goes with blacks, whites say, ‘He’s not the guy we thought

what is Sen. Obama's campaign song? Is there one?

I'll never forget the Big Dog, and HE WAS A GREAT PRESIDENT.

Not saying nuthin' bout Hillary.

Just curious, really. If there is one, that CAN make a difference.

Watch, if you haven't
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUUYo9o9eg&feature=PlayList&p=B03F10C0072F4762&index=3

WHERE IS THE LOVE
Black Eye Peas
What's wrong with the world mama?
People living like ain’t got no mamas
I think the whole world's addicted to the drama
Only attracted to the things that bring YOU trauma
Overseas yeah we trying to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here living
In the USA the big CIA
The Bloods and the Crips and the KKK
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And if you hating’ you're bound to get irate, yeah
Madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
You gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all

People killing people dying
Children hurtin’ an’ ya’ hear them crying
Can you practice what you preach?
An’ would you turn the other cheek?

Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?
Love

Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love, the love, the love.

It just ain't the same
Always have changed
New days are strange is the world the insane?
If love and peace so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don't belong
Nations dropping bombs
Chemical gases filling lungs of little ones
With ongoing suffering as the youth die young
So ask yourself,
Is the loving really Gone?
So I can ask myself,
Really what is going wrong?
With this world that we living in
People keep on giving in
Makin’ wrong decisions only visions of them livin’
And not respecting each other
Denying thy brother
The wars' going on but the reasons' undercover
The truth is kept secret
Swept under the rug
If you never know truth
Then you never know love
Where's the love y'all? come on(I don't know)
Where's the truth y'all? come on(I don't know)
Where's the lovey'all?

People killing people dying
Childrenhurtingan’ ya’ hear them crying
Can YOU practice what you preach?
An’ would you turn the other cheek?

Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?
Love

Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love?
Love

Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love? (The love)
Where is the love, the love, the love?

instrumental

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm getting older y'all people gets colder
Most of us only care about money making’
Selfishness got us following’ the wrong direction
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna’ act like what the see in the cinemas y’all

Whatever happened to the values of humanity-ah
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality-ah
Instead of spreading love, we're spreading animosity-ah
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling under
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling down
It's no wonder why sometimes I'm feeling under
I gotta keep my faith alive, until love is found
Now ask yourself

Where is the love?
Where is the love?
Where is the love?
Where is the love?

Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?

sing with me yo
one world one world
we only got
one world one world
dats all we got
one world one world
and something wrong with
yeah
somethings wrong with
yeah
somethings wrong with the w w world
yeah
we only got
one world one world
dat all we got
one world one world

It just doesn't get mid-white-America.

I was thinking part of Imagine would be good.

Or Queen doing "We are the Champions" but someone else co-opted that.

How about Cat Stevens doing "Where Do The Children Play?"

both are excellent!

Suggest 'em!

I've heard that several times after his campaign events.

However, only HRC and BHC seem to be able to captivate or possibly influence the MSM's choice for the Democratic nominee. Not surprised here.

The dems will have a hard time losing in November, no matter the candidate, imo. It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest they have much of a shot, and they all know that!

And, exactly which candidate would you have us rally around? Clinton?!

Nice try

The great likelihood is that either Clinton or Obama will win the nomination.

I can live with whichever one wins... it won't be my decision who wins. I may well vote for Biden out of cussedness.

But whoever wins, I will want them to become President, so it would be a plus if we, as a party, didn't go through primary season racial division. Particularly since such division doesn't really help either candidate in the long term.

I really do.

maybe they are asleep. I think that's where I'll head. Hopefully later today, this thread is on the greatest page!

:hi:

like a defense of Clinton vs. Obama, if you see these race flaps as a legitimate Clinton vs. Obama issue.

But it is only a matter of time before everyone realizes that the OP is not pro-Clinton in electoral terms.

The "Clinton is a racist" meme is liable to cripple Obama's candidacy. I would have thought that Obama understands that.

If I were being a Clinton partisan I would be saying, "bring it on" because it's terribly damaging to Barack.

But I think Barack has a decent chance of being the nominee, so I am now quite protective of him as a general election candidate. I don't want him to be tagged as "the black candidate." None of us should. And I don't want the black community mad at her. None of us should.

Both of them would start the genral election with handicaps, and I don't want either of them to be damaged goods.

There has been only one official statement from his camp and even that was probably issued only after considerable pressure from the African American community. He's walking a tight rope, but if anyone can manage it, it's him.

Trying not to stir up shit. Sleep well.

Once and for all. Forever.

Now.

Why not unite with Clinton or Edwards?

The only real remedy is to debate the issues and not the personalities. Not to LOOK for insults that are not there or certainly not intended. The media thrives on division and we've been feeding that. Time to starve that particular beast.

:rofl:

Sometimes I think you're putting us all on.

Next, it'll be a Jewish conspiracy. Talking about race relations by Obamanuts, just screams loud enough why the guy doesn't have a chance. We're all racists, he loses: it's racism. Typical. Obama is not MLK, is not Jesus, but he's preaching using their names. Just because he's black, it does not mean he gets a free ride using icons' accomplishments, when he's yet to do anything.

I believe he's a Hillary supporter, and is relating this for the good of the Democratic party, and eventual nominee. Maybe read a little more and laugh a little less?

just like it did in 1992. Did Bill make the fairy tale comment? Yes he did. Did Hill make the LBJ comment? Yes. The fact that the RW press (basically the entire press) cheerfully echoes the propaganda simply reinforces what we already knew, i.e. that HRC is the RW candidate of choice.

:kick:

"Something to keep in mind: The Rove philosophy is to attack someone where they are strongest. With Kerry it was his war record. Ask yourself, where have the Clintons always been strongest?"

The Clintons (as opposed to stray supporters) are working overtime to bat this stuff down. It's not what they want.

The Obama campaign (as opposed to stray supporters) is doing very little to keep this stuff alive. It's not what they want.

Clyburn has back-peddled some, simply urging that everyone be careful in their comments. He doesn't want a race explosion either.

The only people that want this stuff are the Matt Drudges of the world.

In the short term, these attacks might give people pause.

After all, when public figures are attacked, the minions (including myself) weigh
what is said. Some of it might stick a bit while people process the information.

However, in the long term----this stuff will backfire against the Clintons--because
they will witness Obama operating above the fray and the Clintons backstroking in
the mud.

They're widely known attack machine and win-at-all-costs ploy will only solidify
the notion that they're about 'yesterday'.

A fresh start with an uplifting, intelligent, reasonable, diplomatic candidate will
win in the end.

Don't get down Obama supporters. The truth always surfaces and the masses will
reject the politics of destruction.

so they said in a recent editorial -- Let me see if I can find the URL..........


Here's the money quote and the URL:

<i>In Mrs. Clinton’s zeal to make the case that experience (hers) is more important than inspirational leadership (Mr. Obama’s), she made some peculiar comments about the relative importance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson to the civil rights cause.</i>

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09wed1.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Martin+Luther+King&oref=slogin

The editorial ran on Jan 9, and was titled "Unite, Not Divide, Really THis Time

Similarly the Andrew Cuomo quote was NOT just a media frame-up. Any politician as savvy as he would know better than to insinuate that Obama was employing "shuck and jive" tactics.

Sure, it IS possible to stretch the interpretation of these remarks as innocent. But more to the point, they are remarks that highly professional politicos know would stir the pot of the race issue.

The notion of trying to blame this one wholly on the media just doesn't hold water -- "Isn't it pretty to think so" as Hemingway wrote..........

It seems he wasn't talking about Obama at all, if that makes a difference.

I believe the insinuation that he was came from Ben Smith of Politico who posted the one comment, and described as being about Obama.

When you create a circular firing squad all the enemy must do to win is to keep feeding you more bullets.

It's real and attacking those admitting it won't change the facts or the consequences.

My impression is that the Clintons are BAITING the media into a frenzy on race, while also undermining him on substance. They arent engaged in a frontal racist assault, but they are trying to stir up a feeding frenzy focused on his race (and lack of substance).

It isnt that they even have to "attack" him as much as just make race into the topic.

That alone hurts him and alienates voters.

It's disgraceful, especially coming from the Clintons of all people. =(

great post, btw....