Is this the last day of the Long War? No, not that long war. The one within the ranks of the Democratic Party.
And sadly, like at the end of WWI it seems one side feels they are being treated extremely unfairly. Not that anyone in the Obama camp has imposed reparations on Clintonland. Indeed, the Obama campaign, by all accounts, has been reaching out to the Clintons, and to high ranking members of Clinton’s campaign, bearing gifts to the dismay of many of the most fervent Obama supporters. Yet, everywhere you look, Clintonistas are in full bore outrage at the way their candidate has been treated by the DNC, the sexist media, Obama’s former church, Obama’s supporters and Obama himself. Oh and they don’t like BooMan much, either. Reports from Politico.com claim they are determined to fight on into August at the convention.
Who knew going into the 2008 presidential race that the Democratic primary season would become so bitterly divisive and destructive? Certainly not I. Last year it was the GOP candidates who regularly savaged each other on the campaign trail and at the televised debates. Yet McCain wrapped up the nomination rather quickly among a weak field, and only Ron Paul adherents seem to have truly abandoned him. The sad truth is that the Democrats had too many good candidates, and when two emerged after Iowa as the top contenders this race took an ugly turn. And lest we forget, that was the choice which was made by the Clinton campaign, not by Obama or his supporters.
I’d list all the ways the Clintons took the lowest of low roads this year in the effort to defeat that uppity, inadequate black male who dared to challenge her, but Jack Turner at Jack and Jill Politics has already done that nicely for me:
(cont.)
It began in January, shortly after Obama’s Iowa victory. Many of us Obama supporters, especially black folks, were euphoric about his win in that state. On CNN I stated, “I felt like I won,” after seeing the results come in. With that one victory, the world shook for a moment, and I could actually see new, previously unimaginable possibilities for the future.
Within weeks, however, a troubling pattern began to emerge from the Clinton campaign. It was as if the Iowa loss set off an explosion on a snowy mountain, and a political avalanche was unleashed. Obama was accused of being a potential drug dealer, secret Muslim, “cool black guy” and other derogatory things usually tied to his race. […]
Then came South Carolina. The black vote, which had been reliably behind Clinton, looked certain to move to Obama after his strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. Rather than stress the positive Clinton brand (if not results) among black voters, the Clintons decided to minimize the black vote and Obama’s pending victory. Bill Clinton’s comparison of Obama to [Jesse] Jackson was the statement that finally put the media on to what many of us were seeing. The Clinton’s star had fallen tragically and unnecessarily among black people. […]
Over the next months, the situation escalated. Geraldine Ferraro called Obama the affirmative action candidate. Clinton campaign officials sewed dangerous seeds of discord between black and Latino constituencies. And of course, there was Reverend Wright.
In most of these instances, I saw two battles. One was with a media ill-prepared to moderate a national discussion on race at any point, much less during a presidential election. Most of these organizations were unable to competently guide us through the decision to invade a country, so my expectations on their understanding of the black experience were low, and they met those expectations well.
But what came as a shock, yes an actual shock, to me was to witness Hillary Clinton and her campaign, time and again, join in the ugliness. From “he wouldn’t have been my pastor” to “he’s an out of touch elite” to “he only has two years of experience” to “he’s not a muslim as far as I know,” I was repeatedly disappointed in the decisions she and her campaign made. Each one seemed designed, not just to win, not just to hurt the other candidate, but to attack the very people who, through the darkest of hours, had stood by the Clinton family in the past.
For a more complete list of all the racist and other derogatory attacks on Obama by the Clintons and their surrogates go to the Clinton Attacks Obama Incident Tracker page. The anger and despair and deep sense of betrayal among African Americans towards the Clintons, people who had once been their most fervent supporters, people who insured that the Bill Clinton won two terms as President, and the core of the Democratic coalition that allowed the party to retake control of Congress in 2006, cannot be underestimated. This is not to deny that some Obama supporters reacted to the Clinton attacks on Obama with sexist attacks of their own, as Jack Turner, to his credit, acknowledges:
Once this bridge was crossed, I fell into a heightened state of battle, and I saw everything through this lens. I became obsessed and I often became nasty. I found a community at JJP that often felt exactly as I did, and we supported each other in our justified outrage and incredulity.
So the name-calling escalated: Ice Queen, Borg Queen, Tonya Harding, and beyond. Many of these terms were used in jest. All were used out of frustration and a sense of absurd, tragic comedy. As Hillary escalated her claims and false calculations (Michigan, Florida, popular vote, sniper fire, Obama voters as delusional), there was very little room left for me to escalate on top of that. I was fueled by anger and sometimes hate. Proud of me Yoda would not have been.
Yet many of us who did not support Senator Clinton rejected the sexism we saw in the media which was directed at her candidacy. Booman and myself both had occasion to criticize the media’s misogynistic attitude toward Hillary Clinton on the front page of this blog, and other non-Clinton blogs did as well. And though there was no evidence that any of these sexist attacks originated from the Obama campaign itself, nonetheless, they were very real, very offensive and added to the anger and hurt we now see in so many Clinton supporters who are lashing out in all directions seeking to find some greater conspiracy to deny Senator Clinton the Presidency based on her gender among the Democratic establishment, African Americans, the media and party activists such as Moveon.org.
I’m sorry for their grief at the loss by their candidate, one in whom they had invested so much of themselves and their political identity. I’m sympathetic to their claim that sexism played a role in this campaign (as anyone who watched MsNBC’s bizarre coverage, and especially the actions of Chris Matthews can attest), but no, she didn’t lose the nomination because of some grand conspiracy to see a black man become President, or to deny her the opportunity to become our first female President.
She did this to herself.
At the start of the campaign last year, she had most of the campaign money on hand, the majority of the big campaign donors and establishment figures in her pocket, and the omnipresent message from the media that her campaign was inevitable, that no one in the Democratic field could possibly beat her. She had the overwhelming support of the African American community. To the extent activists in the party had any candidate they preferred over her, it was John Edwards or, among the most liberal of us, Dennis Kucinich, two white males. Obama was seen as a lightweight by many, including me. Glamorous yes, but more likely to be Clinton’s choice for Vice President than to head the top of the ticket. He was seen as too young, too centrist and frankly too black in a still racially divided America to have much of a chance of obtaining the nomination.
In short we all seriously underestimated his abilities as a politician, his charismatic appeal, his message and his organizational skills. Despite blows that would have felled many another campaign — the six week nightly media drumbeat which was the Jeremiah Wright saga, the Clinton 3 am attack ad, the “bitter” comment controversy, and the direct racial appeal by Hillary Clinton herself that she was the candidate of hard working class white people — he survived and even elevated himself by rising above the merciless assault on his character with responses such as his seminal speech on the issue of race in America, “A More Perfect Union,” at the height of the Wright controversy. He out raised the famed Clinton money machine, and out organized the Clintons in state after state.
In short he came from way off the pace to defeat the overwhelming favorite and he did it with such grace and dignity that he gave hope to millions of Americans of all races, creeds and political affiliations that we could make a difference, that we could restore the country and raise it up again after the venal, corrupt and deceitful politics which have ruled over our Republic for a generation. To say his appeal is based on sexism is to do him a disservice, and to unfairly denigrate most of his supporters, both those who were on board his bandwagon early, and those who joined late.
At the beginning of this campaign I was resigned to having Hillary Clinton as the Democratic party’s nominee. I have long disliked her as a politician, being sorely disappointed in her performance as my senator. I voted for her in 2000 in the belief that she would be more progressive than her husband had ever been as president. Regrettably, that was not to be the case. Everything she did in the Senate seemed calculated to keep her name in the news and not to alienate anyone, least of all conservatives, and especially not to do anything which might hurt her chances as a future Presidential candidate. Her vote for the Iraq war was just one of many flawed decisions that she made, in my opinion, to advance her own ambitions at the expense of our country’s best interests. The fact that she could or would not apologize for that vote after all we have learned about the lies Bush told to get us into war spoke volumes to me regarding her integrity.
Nonetheless, I was prepared to hold my nose and vote for her if she became the nominee. I don’t believe she would have made a particularly effective President, but I’ve been known to be wrong before. And she would have been light years better than any Republican, including John McCain. I would have been happy for my wife, and especially for my daughter, to see a woman in the oval office at long last. That would have been a particularly inspiring and proud moment for them and for our nation, regardless of my personal opinions about her suitablilty for the job.
But my daughter is not just a female. She is a child who is biracial. Just like Barack obama, she has one white parent, and one parent who is non-white, in her case a mother who is a Japanese American. Her grandparents came to this country as foreigners, and she has great pride in her Japanese heritage, much as Barack has pride in his African heritage. And so Barack Obama’s nomination is something that she can be equally as proud of, and equally inspired by, even more so should he win the Presidency.
You see, I have a stake in seeing Barack Obama win that has nothing to do with his politics, and everything to do with who he is. A biracial individual who can bridge two cultures, and who can show the world that America really is changing for the better, really is that magical country of tolerance and opportunity for all people, even people who aren’t born with “white” skin. I want my two children, my son and my daughter, to grow up in a country where their racial, religious or ethnic heritage will not be held against them. I want them to be empowered by this country, not held back because of bigotry or unreasoned prejudice.
Barack Obama’s candidacy is the promise and the symbol of a better future for our country just as much, if not more than, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was such a symbol. We as a party now have to decide if we are to stew over that which divides us as a people, or embrace that which unites us in the hope for a better future for our country and our families.
Senator Clinton can do a lot to lead the way toward a reconciliation for our party, and to help promote Obama’s message of hope for the future, as well as bring about the much ballyhooed realignment of our politics prophesied by BooMan on so many occasions here at this blog. Or she can engage her supporters with the same divisive and bitter rhetoric that has marked so much of her campaign.
For the sake of my children, my daughter and my son, and for all of you who have suffered under the Republican Party’s corrupt domination and misrule of our country these past three decades, I hope she does the right thing. I hope that in the next few days she works to the best of her ability to reconcile her supporters and Obama’s supporters so that a Democratic President can once more sit in the White House working with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. A President and Congress dedicated to restoring our nation and providing for the general welfare of all of its people, not just those who can write the big money campaign contribution checks or who represent the multinational corporations and the wealthiest 1% of Americans who have become parasites on the body politic of this nation ever since the reign of Reagan.
That would be the best way for her to end this “long war” between herself and Obama which at times has seemed likely to destroy the Democratic Party’s hopes this Fall, rather than insure a much needed changing of the political guard.
Please Senator Clinton, do yourself, your party and your country a great service tonight. Use your speech to begin the healing process, first among Democrats and then among all Americans. If you don’t you will be letting not only your party and your country down, but also the hopes and dreams of my most precious daughter. And history will not look kindly on you if that is the path you choose.
