The Palestinians have the precise same mentality.
Such groups are disgusting and dangerous because they make threats of violence and widespread destruction if their needs are not met.
And all this while claiming to be "religious" people.
Posted on 04/27/2008 12:06:28 PM PDT by The_Republican
The most senior black congressman in America had a tough warning for Hillary Clinton this weekend as she fought to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from Barack Obama.
“We’ll be playing with fire if we interfere with the voters’ choice,” James Clyburn, the party’s chief whip in the House of Representatives, told The Sunday Times. “African-Americans will feel cheated.”
Clinton is hoping to win by persuading superdelegates – the party officials with a free vote and the power to tip the nomination at the Democratic convention in August – to back her, even if Obama is in the lead once all the primaries and caucuses have been held.
But Clyburn, who has yet to endorse either candidate, believes this path would be suicidal for the Democrats. African-Americans were not the only ones who would feel betrayed, he said. “Barack Obama has brought in a lot of young voters for the first time, and they’ll feel cheated too.” Many Clinton supporters are equally adamant that their candidate must win because white Americans are not going to elect a black president. Either way, Democrats are on a collision course.
“When it comes down to it, they are not going to vote for a black man,” said Jim Whitworth, 43, who wore a Harley-Davidson motorcycle T-shirt and a chestful of Hillary for President buttons to a Clinton rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He said the more he learnt about Obama, the more he found him “scary”.
“I don’t feel like I’m a racist, but this country is. People say they will vote for a black person, but when they get to the polls they won’t.”
The Democratic party is splitting over the most ugly, divisive issue in America. The contest began as an exciting, inspirational battle between two widely respected candidates with the potential to make history as the first woman or first black president. Yet it could end in bitterness and defeat at the hands of the Republicans if the breach is not healed.
In Florida, 27% of voters said America was not ready for a black president, according to exit polls. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, race was an important factor to 20% and 19% respectively. These three swing states are critical to the Democrats’ prospects of winning the White House this November – and Clinton has beaten Obama decisively in all of them.
When Obama won in Iowa, a predominantly white state, in early January, it was a moment of promise. Some people were moved to tears as crowds chanted: “Race doesn’t matter.”
Clyburn has a different opinion. “Race always matters,” he said. “That slogan was more about young college graduates telling people, ‘Race doesn’t matter to us’.”
Obama was defeated by a nine-point margin in last week’s Pennsylvania primary after losing the support of white voters by 63% to 37%. He won 90% of black voters.
His defeat followed a series of unforced errors, such as calling working-class and rural Americans “bitter”. Incendiary speeches by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his pastor – now famous for saying “God damn America” – were played repeatedly on television.
Wright reemerged on the airwaves this weekend to the consternation of Obama’s camp, which fears a further round of hostile publicity. Wright claimed he had been painted as a fanatic or “wackadoodle”.
North Carolina, which holds its primary along with Indiana on May 6, is the most populous state that has yet to vote. Clinton, 60, is campaigning hard there, but her rallies – following a well-established pattern – are almost exclusively white.
She is unlikely to win the state, given its large black population, but is hoping to prevent Obama from running up a big score in the popular vote and regaining the ground lost in Pennsylvania.
Ashley Rozier, a 50-year-old African-American community health worker, said he had been “ridiculed and persecuted” by black people for supporting her. “It’s unbelievable how we accuse other people of being prejudiced while we’re doing the same,” he said.
Shelby Steele, a black conservative intellectual and author of A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win, believes the Illinois senator, 46, is becoming unmasked by the rigours of the long election campaign.
“His whole glamour was based on the idea that we did not know him,” Steele observed. “I’ve always regarded Obama as a ‘bargainer’ – someone who made whites very comfortable – and that is what accounted for his initial success. But after Reverend Wright, he’s losing his ability to bargain and looking more like a black guy – a ‘challenger’.”
Clyburn blames Bill Clinton for stirring up the issue of race in South Carolina back in January, when the former president put Obama firmly in the box of ethnic minority candidate by comparing his success to that of the failed presidential contender Reverend Jesse Jackson in the 1980s.
Clyburn is still seething. “The last time I talked to Bill Clinton I told him, if he doesn’t watch it, we could make this nomination worthless.”
He had the same message today for Hillary. “Absolutely. She needs to chill out,” he said. “I’ve heard from three different sources this week that part of what the Clintons are doing is making it impossible for Obama to win this November. That may be true . . .
“The speculation is that the Clintons are trying to stop Obama succeeding in order to keep control of the party. If he gets elected, the Clinton era is over. If he wins the nomination and loses, they’ll still be standing and can come back in four years’ time.”
Steele discounts the suggestion that a black man could never win, “I firmly believe that Colin Powell [the former secretary of state] would have been president over Bill Clinton in the 1990s if he had been willing to run, but white working-class voters need something more concrete that the high-bargaining rhetoric that Obama is offering.”
Obama largely retains the coalition of young voters, black people and independents that he assembled early on in his campaign, but without the votes of blue-collar “Reagan Democrats”, his candidacy could be doomed.
The polls show that Obama is able to perform well in largely white states with little history of racial conflict, but is vulnerable in those with large urban centres, a mixed population and a reputation for tension.
The danger is that the Republican candidate, John McCain, with his independent streak and military background, could capture a significant portion of the white, working-class vote and slam the door on a Democratic victory for another generation.
In Florida, McCain outperforms Obama by 50% to 38%. Clinton, however, would beat McCain by 45% to 44%. In Ohio, McCain also beats Obama but loses to Clinton In other states, including Pennsylvania where Obama and McCain are currently level, there is fear of the “Bradley effect”, named after Tom Bradley, an African-American candidate for governor of California in 1982, who scored highly in the polls but lost the election. In several contests, Obama has performed worse than the exit polls have suggested.
Nevertheless, Obama retains a virtual lock on the nomination. With just nine contests to go, the electoral arithmetic remains problematic for Clinton. Under the Democrats’ system of proportional representation, she has little or no chance of erasing his lead of 156 pledged delegates. According to Clyburn, the battle is over unless Obama makes “a big misstep or suffers a blow-out loss in a big state like North Carolina”.
But neither candidate can reach the magic number of 2,024 delegates needed for victory at the national convention without the backing of a majority of the roughly 800 superdelegates.
Clyburn believes the superdelegates should have at most “two or three days to make their position known” once the last primaries are held in early June. After that, he said, the party must reunite if it is to beat the Republicans. “The most important part of this is the person who is in second place,” he cautioned.
Steele believes Obama is likely to “limp across the finish line” first, but his candidacy is wounded, perhaps fatally. “He is now going to have to run as a normal politician without that veneer of charisma. He’s been pretty hurt and he won’t be able to run a campaign based on his original high-flown rhetoric. McCain is an old down-to-earth white guy with a very concrete message.”
The vexing question is whether the superdelegates are willing to countenance a civil war in the party by throwing the nomination to Clinton even if she lags behind Obama in delegates. Some equate this to telling black people to get to the back of the bus, as they did during the years of segregation.
Kevin Marsh, 57, an Obama supporter in Fayetteville, said: “If Hillary wins, there are countless numbers of people of colour who are going to say she stole the election – and they’ll say, ‘I’m not going to vote at all’. It could get really, really bad.”
One leading Clinton supporter said: “In the end, whatever their private thoughts, the superdelegates will not want to risk that reaction.” He believes Clinton will ultimately be gracious in defeat. “If she is seen as sulking in her tent and he loses by one point, that’s a catastrophe for her. She will never be forgiven.”
Funny, I don't remember that contest at all.
Hitlery will hang on through the primaries. Then Pelosi and Dean will try to reach an agreement between the two candidates. The goal is to have this settled before the convention.
Funny how the “Black leaders” still consider black Americans as a group to be bought or negotiated with. They would certainly have more respect in America if they behaved like stand-up AMERICANS, sans color, and not racial separatists.
But the Jesses, the Als, the Rev. Wrights of America don’t want that, and niether do the Dim leaders. Gotta keep them VICTIMIZED, and “on the plantation”, to keep those votes, power and money coming in.
One of these days, I think that black Americans will wise up, get tired of being played as patsies and pawns, tell the Dims to go screw themselves, and become INDEPENDENT, RESPECTABLE AMERICANS free of victimization and racism. They will prosper GREATLY when they do.
Actually, whites are the LEAST race conscious voters in America. Blacks have been elected in predominantly — and in some instances overwhelimgly — white cities and states, even when the opponent was white. Think Tom Bradley in Los Angeles, Doug Wilder in Virginia, David Dinkins in New York, Barak Obama in Illinois, just to name a few. Conversely, in predominant and majority black cities (they are not a majority in any state, though they are in Washington, D.C.) never has a white been elected over a black.
Clinton’s don’t care about anything but themselves - she’s staying in until the convention - do or die! And I would bet even money that she’ll call in every FBI file from every last superdelegate and threaten their political careers unless they vote for her. I think Obama is done.
“The goal is to have this settled before the convention.”
I agree that is the goal. The question is, is it a reality? I don’t know. There is a lot of bad blood developing among the Dims, which is the natural consequence of a party that lives and dies by identity politics.
Toni Morrison’s stupid and ill-considered anointment of Bill Clinton as “the first black President” was an insult to all decent Americans.
...and to her own intelligence.
what a ridiculous statement... Hillary has actually received more votes than Obama overall... so which voters are the ones being cheated?
The Palestinians have the precise same mentality.
Such groups are disgusting and dangerous because they make threats of violence and widespread destruction if their needs are not met.
And all this while claiming to be "religious" people.
Obama has said as much about himself in his own book!
> Would anyone care to predict "how" this will be settled? I don't think either would except the VP spot behind the other one. I cannot imagine how the Dems will get out of this one. Everyone keeps saying it will be settled; but how?
One takes VP. Look, no matter how much posturing is going on now, it's perfectly clear that Clinton/Obama would be an acceptable compromise to the Dems. Obama/Clinton is harder to imagine, but still not impossible.
I predict Clinton/Obama.
Just watch -- the Dems will have a dream ticket, all will be forgiven, and the Dem voters will hand them a landslide.
Meanwhile, over at the GOP, how many "I swear I'll never vote for McCain" folks are going to fold, swallow their pride, and vote for him because he's got an "(R)" next to him? MOST OF 'EM, that's how many.
This is politics. Unless one of the two Dems literally dies before November, we will see that dream ticket or I'll eat my hat.
LOL. The irony of it all.
I think so too sometimes. However, Obama has been attacked in a manner, from Muslim, to Bigot, to anti-semetic, to terrorist sympathizer, to unpatriotic, that any man with even an iota of self-respect could accept their invitation now.
Unless he is a low life like Sharpton and Jackson, who would sell their mothers if they could get few bucks, I don’t see why he would accept it.
And you think he is NOT such a low-life politician... WHY?
He craves power. He will go for it, if it is offered, and the alternative is not having power.
He might wait four/eight years. But I bet not. His socialist shrew of a wife claimed it's "now or never"; she might mean it.
Sharpton and Jackson are race-based extortionist and use it as a Hammer to make money and get few favors. Obama on the other hand, if he could would avoid race based discussion all together, he would.
Hillary’s campaign injected race because they saw that as their last hope. Obama doesn’t come across as hater to me. Especially since the most vicious accusations has been made against him and he still doesn’t resort to same tactics. People like that do not profile as Hitler or Saddam. Hillary has lot more in common with those two Dictators than Obama. She I am sure dreams of a world where every Conservative has been locked up or killed. Perhaps a GIANT ranch like the one in Waco, and most of mankinds’ problems will be solved in her view.
There is no politician who runs for office who doesn’t crave power. That is not ncessarily a flaw.
The fact I put him above Sharpton/Jackson/Hillary is the reason I don’t expect him to accept VP candidacy if the nomination is taken away from him.
Such groups are disgusting and dangerous because they make threats of violence and widespread destruction if their needs are not met.
And all this while claiming to be “religious” people.
::::::
Yeah, just spend a little time listening to the CONGERSSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS. They sound like the Black Pathers....
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