Check out Paul Krugman’s blog entry and column from today.
Now lest you think he is defending Hillary Clinton, bear in mind that his criticisms have focused exclusively on policy and on the actions of the candidates on the campaign trail — he has not made personal attacks. The blog entry deals with false accusations of race-baiting by the Clintons. And it is tied in with today’s column, which has to do with a new book by Rick Perlstein called Nixonland.
From the blog entry:
I’m starting to get emails from angry people who tell me that I’m ignoring all the terrible race-baiting the Clintons have done. I think I’ll just outsource my response to Clive Crook — who is, by the way, an Obama supporter.
Some commentators accused Bill of playing the race card when he called Obama’s account of his position on the Iraq war a “fairy tale”. How so? What did that have to do with race? And does Hillary’s comment about King, the only instance Morris bothers to offer, even qualify? She merely said that getting the job done required a can-do president as well as an inspiring and visionary champion. And so it did. I cannot see that this subtracts anything from King’s stature, or that it was intended to. Whatever its merits, this is the Clintons’ old theme, not a sinister new one: if elected, she would hit the ground running, whereas the inexperienced Obama would be out of his depth. It took a hyper-sensitive press to turn that comment into a racial slur.
I think the press played the race card, not the Clintons.
And he’s right. Make no mistake, the Clintons are playing dirty politics — the same kind they’ve always played, the kind that has divided the Democratic Party and brought it to its currently weakened and fractious state. Because in the end, it’s never about country or party, it’s all about the Clintons. But they’re not playing the race card; Obama is. If you think he is any different than the Clintons, and that he isn’t the one exploiting race in this campaign, think again. Obama’s own actions on the campaign trail — and those of his followers — have been equally as divisive and based on the man himself instead of what’s good for the country or the Democratic Party. As Krugman writes in his column:
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.
What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.
The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.
I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.
Sorry for the long quote, but it was necessary. Not everyone is able to read NYT content online. Krugman also warns that if Obama is the nominee, he shall most certainly be subjected to the same rules of mistreatment set down by Republicans and the corporate-owned media. As he points out, “progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.”
That’s a lesson we all should have learned by now.
“I’m starting to get emails from angry people who tell me that I’m ignoring all the terrible race-baiting the Clintons have done.”
Does anyone have a problem with that statement? Of course the Clintons are playing the race card just as they played it in the 1992 presidential election. Remember “changing welfare as we know it?” Yes Clinton play the race card and, strangely, still bcame known as America’s first Black president. The cover here I gather was the jazz sax, which Bill sometimes got out of the attic. But who doesn’t remember Reagan’s associations of “welfare,” not with “Black poverty,’ but with cheating welfare queens driving around in Cadillacs in Chicago? Those kinds of associations created the racist Reagan Democrats, who never left us.
Today, where is Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary in Maryland? To the large Black areas of Baltimore? No way. He’s in Dundalk, a white working man’s suburb of Baltimore, no where near the Black areas of the city. Why? Because all of those aging still anti-Black Reagan Democrats are ready to come out for Hillary. We can’t have a “nigger” in the White House, can we?, if you will excuse the expression.
No, the Clintons are going anywhere they need to go in order to win this election, even the same place that Bill Clinton went in 1992: the way of the racism that Reagan created with his 1980 Southern Strategy platform when campaigning in the southern states. There’s plenty of it remaining up north to make a racist fight of it today. Slick Willie is what Bill used to be called.
for some strange reason and troubling too, Krugman has been overly pre-occupied with criticizing Obama. Seems to me Krugman is hung up on a colorful something he just has trouble articulating or is afraid of or is running away from.
Strange indeed. There’s nothing nice to say about or find in any Obama’s policies? That’s a strange dark mind maybe his problem, if you get my pun.
Last week, Pollack, his peer, in a column over at Huffpost took him to heel.
There are many Krugmans in this world.
Fuck the “fairy tale” quote. Their race-baiting went on way before that. No matter that everyone decided to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening. The “fairy tale” thing and the LBJ remark were nothing compared to the Clinton’s previous sad attempt to ghettoize Obama. I wrote this before the “fairy tale” and LBJ remarks were made. Why do people insist on focusing on the innocuous remarks and ignore all the stuff that came before?
The funny thing, is that after Thanksgiving, I decided to really pay attention. Chris Dodd was my first choice, Obama was a very distant second for me, closely followed by Clinton. The statements from the Clinton campaign in Dec. Pushed Clinton far, far away as a 3rd option. By the 8th of January, Clinton was no longer an option for me, at all.
This has got to be the Bill Clinton strategy. He got away with it in 1992, and I suspect he thinks he can get away with it in 2008.
America’s first Black president, indeed.
Tell me the Clintons are not playing the race card.
Here is Hillary speaking “outside of Baltimore,” a heavily Black populated city, in a factory, about her losing this past weekend:
Tell me.
Yes, I saw that one, too. She was clearly trying dismiss Obama’s support as a mere African-American phenomenon. Maine, a very blue-collar state with less than 1% African-Americans, produced a 59 – 40 win for Obama yesterday. I’d like to hear them explain that loss, and I’m sure it will involve the caucuses are bad argument, another one I’m still struggling to understand.
I’m really sad to see this from Krugman. He’s the guy who got me interested in economics and set me on the path to where I am today, and to see him behave like this is, frankly, embarrassing.
I think it’s generational. Krugman is an old, us-vs-them Boomer. He wants a fight with the Reps just for the sake of having a fight with the Reps, instead of concentrating our efforts on actually getting work done and choosing our battles wisely.
His ignorance of the political reality of “going after people’s wages” and the like is also painful to read, as someone with some background in the history of campaigns and elections. Clinton crippled herself with that comment, just as she did with her stubbornness in the health care fight of the early 1990s. She’s learned nothing, and, unfortunately, Krugman seems to have fallen for her bullshit.
Depressing. Krugman is one of the greatest economists on the planet, but he’s lost, politically.
I guess you haven’t realized that this site is rabid hate Hillary and anything she says or does, not my view but sure is the prevailing one here. anything can be twisted to make it sound like race or whatever the current issue of the day is…apparently if she even uses the words African American, she is using the race card.
I just read the Krugman article, right before I saw this here and I think it is very relevant,.
I guess no one but me saw the debate in No. Carolina where Russert asked Obama if he is sure his campaign has not been involved inflaming the “race” issue with Hillary, Obama said “no,but staff may be (can’t control the staff or surrogates)” after Russert said they had received 4 pages of these items (where HRC supposedly used race card) from his staff that day.
With all due respect AM, Krugman clearly went off the deep end in his support of the Clintons and I seriously doubt it had anything to do with healthcare proposals.
Robert Reich has addressed Krugman’s stance on the healthcare debate vis-a-vis the Clinton v. Obama race.
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/02/krugman-still-has-it-wrong-on-obamas.html
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/01/democrats-should-stop-squabbling-over.html
Krugman’s comment about “faking evenhandedness” borders on the absurd. No informed observer would believe that Krugman was evenhanded in his approach to the issue. Nor would any informed observer believe that Krugman’s stance was based on economics rather than his partisanship on behalf of the Clintons.
Here’s two more economic analyzes that bolster the point that Krugman’s critique of Obama’s healthcare plan is mere partisanship.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=02&year=2008&base_name=krugm
an_wrong_on_obama_and_man
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_health_law_with_holes