Posted on 05/04/2008 10:58:18 AM PDT by The_Republican
AS this historic Democratic primary season enters its next grueling phase, the party has become embroiled in a conflict between antagonists who would seem better cast as allies. Senator Barack Obama is a black candidate who has built his career on de-emphasizing race, while Senator Hillary Clinton is a white liberal who has been sensitive to minorities, and the issues facing them, during her long years of political activism.
And yet, in contest after contest, particularly in large states with diverse ethnic populations, support for the two candidates has reflected the sort of splits that normally divide Democrats from Republicans. And the pattern is likely to be repeated on Tuesday, when voters go to the polls in Indiana, a predominantly white state and North Carolina, which has a substantial black population.
How did this happen in the party that identifies itself with racial reconciliation?
The answer may begin in identities, and ambitions, of the two candidates, but it reaches back to the tangled roots of modern political history.
As long ago as 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson foretold that the landmark civil rights legislation he engineered would be met with a powerful backlash from aggrieved Southern whites. He was right. Even though he won the election, defeating Barry Goldwater, who opposed the legislation, in a massive landslide, President Johnson lost five states in his native South — states that had historically voted for Democrats.
Initially, some thought, or hoped, that a Democratic majority in the Solid South could be reclaimed. “It’s so important to get Negroes registered to vote in large numbers in South,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told Mr. Johnson two months after the election, predicting it would be “this coalition of the Negro vote and the moderate white vote that will really make the new South.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Anwser = Live by identity politics, die by identity politics. You reap what you sow.
It never ceases to amaze me how dense people are about the DEMOCRAT party. My dear late mother, a born and bred Mississippian told me in the 60s that Democrats have ALWAYS been on the wrong side concerning integration and all things "racial". I didn't quite understand what she was telling me at the time (young and dumb you see...) but I caught on through her teaching to always look at what people do, how they run their lives, not what they say.
Yes, the Democrats pretty much invented identity politics, and for a while, at least, they will pay the penalty. But this characterization of the two candidates is a flat-out lie, as well.
Hillary is an ambitious Marxist/Lesbian/feminist who has used blacks to climb her way to power, but can scarcely be said to have helped them in any significant way. She has just climbed on their backs, while ensuring that they remain on the plantation.
And Obama used his black ID card to climb his way to power through Harvard and then in a black district in the Chicago area, with the help of his good friends Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan--and the Chicago machine, of course, which needed a useful black for that district.
All that stuff about coming together is nothing but empty talk. Try to question him, and he pulls the race card every time.
If Obama truly had been colorblind, he wouldn’t have had a problem. but when it became known that he identified with reverse racist attitudes, nearly fifty years of work to erase racial prejudice in our society came partly unraveled in a hurry. Before, whites just suspected the hatred; with Obama it recame an incontrovertable reality.
Very interesting watching the DemocRATS reap what they have sowed.
If the races reconciled, the Democrat party would be dead in the water.
The Republican party is the true party of racial reconciliation, because it measures people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Very interesting... yes. The Democrats lined up to support Clinton after his affair with a White House intern and then lieing about it but they’re divided by race.
Where is the BARF alert?
Very true.
How stupid does this guy think we are? He may have spent his campaign de-emphasizing race, but his career???
I hardly freakin think so!! 20 years of hate monger Jeremy Wright in a church of black theology, a wife who wrote her college thesis on race and why won't Whitey accept her as an equal, and she'll always be on the fringe in those social circles??
Yeah right. I was born at night but it wasn't last night.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Note to NYT:
HUSSEIN NObomba always has been, and always will be, about race, race and nothing more than race. He got where he’s at because of it and will sink or swin because of it.
“De-emphasis” . . . laughable.
The Black Family structure has also been reaping what they have sown by supporting Democrats as a Block for all these years .
I love the line that Hillary has been sensitive to Black issues ,what the hell does that mean ,LIP SERVICE,I guess ,because 70 percent illegetimate births ,50 percent dropout rates in school ,oh yeah they will give them a 50 increase in Minimum wage once in awhile ,or maybe if they do survive school a Nice Government job where no one ever gets fired ,just relocation and raises
Man, I despise the Democrats.
I really am repulsed by John McCain, too, but I’ll take that jerk over the disgusting socialists in the Democrat party.
Hopefully McCain won’t blow it by embracing another RINO for his Veep.
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