This morning in USA Today, Clinton says:
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
And there it is.
Would there have been a better way to phrase this? Sure. She could have left out that first “Americans.” She could have stuck an “and” in there between the first “Americans” and “white.” She could have said “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on. [Look at this article] that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working-class white Americans is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
That’s the truth. And that is potentially a problem for the Obama campaign and might be something Democrats might consider*. And it addresses frankly and openly what folks have been hinting at this whole campaign.
But, come on.
What she said isn’t frank and open. It’s mangled politician-speak that came out racist and jingoistic and kind of in direct opposition to her stated goal of building a broader base. Because, really, once you’ve insulted the non-whites and the white folks with college degrees who work hard and non-hard working white people, who exactly is left? Some guy named Joe on an assembly line in Peoria? Francine in Tampa?
I don’t think the next President is going to be some miracle worker. We sat by for eight years and let George Bush strip from us a whole lot of what it means to be an American. And a lot of the power he consolidated for himself is going to be incredibly tempting for the next President to keep. We have gone far off course and the next president is not going to be able to fix it all. He or she may not even be inclined to fix it all.
I’m not trying to elect a perfect savior.
I’d like to elect a person who gets that the absolute worst thing Bush has done in his presidency is to bring out in the open and repeatedly codify this notion that “Us v. Them” is the way to run a country–that you can do whatever you want to “them,” that our laws don’t apply to “them,” that if “they” aren’t smart enough to get out of the way of whatever, “they” deserve whatever happens to “them.” That if you aren’t the right color or the right religion or thinking the right thoughts or saying the right things, even in the privacy of your own home, if you’re fucking the wrong people, if you’re protesting the war or the WTO or police brutality, if you’re too smart or too dumb or too urban or too rural or too poor or too foreign and so on and so on into long choruses of “Song of Myself,” then you aren’t “us” and you deserve whatever you get.
I’d like to just start there, with an end to the overt “Fuck ’em, they’re not with us” of American politics. And statements like that from Clinton make me think that she doesn’t see a problem with “us v. them.”
I don’t like it.
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*Although, I should hope that Democrats also take into account that no one wants to vote for McCain, not even people in his own party. In places where they’re still having Republican primaries, he can’t even secure 100% of the vote, and he’s the only choice. It’s not as if this is a situation where the country is almost evenly split Democratic voters v. Republican voters. We’re turning out a shit-ton more folks who are excited and enthusiastic about voting. We don’t need a broad coalition to beat McCain. The dude calls his wife a cunt in public, wants to call in the League of Nations to help win the war on terror, and views the Iraq war as a war for oil. If we lose to him, it’s time to give up and split into 50 autonomous tiny countries, because we are a nation of idiots. (see Braisted)
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Unless, of course, this is yet another step in the “Blazing Saddles”-ification of our culture.
Tiny Cat Pants 
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Is she really bragging that she’s only appealing to uneducated racists? Or is she saying “You can’t win this thing with just eggheads and lazy uppity niggers”? Either way, bad. She knows she’s going to get killed in Morgantown and Charleston (and Lexington and Louisville), but she’s hoping that plays to a really hard-pressed group of white West Virginians and Kentuckians outside those areas with a strong “I’m just as damn good as you are” streak. I want to think that she doesn’t understand what’s making those people tick, but maybe I’m wrong and she does. There’s tremendous anxieties about immigration (even though there are precious few jobs to “take away”) and the population is rural, poor, and under-educated. I understand why she’s doing it (because she would rather win than be a leader, which is a big problem with her candidacy), but it’s just bad.
As much as I like certain things that Dean’s done in the DNC (like the 50-state plan and the concentrating on building the party from the local and county-level up), I think that there’s serious long-term problems brewing with the “go where the votes are, ignore the Midwest, don’t talk about class inequality because you don’t want the reputation of being the hater party…” strategy. Because they have decided only to talk about class inequality in coded terms and because they’re trying to pick up the meritocracy people, that racist language is the only thing she has at the ready when she wants to talk about why white people work so hard and yet wind up scratching their ass for money at the end of the month.
That high-pitched sound I hear from Clinton is either a racist dog-whistle or nails clawing at the deck of a rapidly sinking campaign ship. Or both.
At the beginning of this campaign, I tried very hard not to associate Sen. Clinton with what I consider to be her husband’s political faults: the triangulation above all, secondarily the need to win without a compelling cause to win for. She is not him, and I didn’t want to assume that she would have the same flaws. And, as a human being, she doesn’t. But as a politician she has shown me that she does. Triangulation* is all she has left now. And that saddens me. And it’s hard to defend her against the genuinely sexist attacks that some people make on her when she’s doing things that are just as awful.
*I’m calling it triangulation rather than racism because I don’t think she has fundamental impulses to harm others based on race. Obviously, her willingness not to care about harming others based on race, if it will get her elected, is racist, but it’s an instrumental racism rather than an inherent racism. That only makes it worse, of course — to have that message come out only because it’s a way to win elections? Ugh.
Bridgett, I think that’s spot on. I don’t believe Clinton is racist or that she even intended that statement to be racist. But, yes, exactly, that racist language is the only language she has at the ready. But isn’t that the same problem that we white folks in general have?
Yes, there are a lot of us who are racist, but there are a lot of us who only have these racist tropes at the read when we’re trying to talk about complex issues we face, especially when those issues hit us so damn close to home.
NM, you’re getting at what makes me so angry about this, too. I didn’t for a second associate what Steinem or Jong or the endless other list of people have said that is racist with Clinton. You can’t control what people who like and support you will say. As much as I have thought that the people who support Clinton have said some fucked up racist things, I didn’t think that was Clinton’s problem.
But this?
This makes me think it is her problem, too.
And, yes, the people surrounding Obama have been saying some damned fucked up things about gender and I know that some folks have even found stuff Obama has said to be misogynist. And maybe I’m too quick to let them off the hook on that stuff because I just figure that’s the default language we go to as a society, so no big surprise.
But it doesn’t make it right, either thing.
And when it’s not obvious to the speaker, I expect them to listen generously when it’s pointed out. And if it is obvious to the speaker–as this must have been obvious to Clinton–I expect them to be better than that.
I’d like to elect a person who gets that the absolute worst thing Bush has done in his presidency is to bring out in the open and repeatedly codify this notion that “Us v. Them” is the way to run a country–that you can do whatever you want to “them,” that our laws don’t apply to “them,” that if “they” aren’t smart enough to get out of the way of whatever, “they” deserve whatever happens to “them.” That if you aren’t the right color or the right religion or thinking the right thoughts or saying the right things, even in the privacy of your own home, if you’re fucking the wrong people, if you’re protesting the war or the WTO or police brutality, if you’re too smart or too dumb or too urban or too rural or too poor or too foreign and so on and so on into long choruses of “Song of Myself,” then you aren’t “us” and you deserve whatever you get.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!
Hillary is a racist. So is Obama. So am I. That term is pretty damn useless to me, because, like calls of sexism, it gets used to explain undesireable behavior, and often assumes we know someone’s motivation. We rarely do.
I’ve experienced outright racism. I have been told I couldn’t play with certain kids when I was younger, wasn’t allowed in their homes, there were girls who couldn’t date me. (or, couldn’t bring me home)
I’ve also been guilty of telling race oriented jokes, which, of course, is a form of racism, but there are degrees of racism, and it is hard to have THAT conversation. I’ve perpetuated stereotypes of certain ethnicities, though I don’t believe I’ve ever, for even a second, looked upon those people as “less than”.
All of the above is a long winded way of saying that I believe Clinton’s campaign has been run poorly from the jump, but i don’t believe that she nor Bill harbor any latent dislike of people of color. In addition, i don’t think there is some veiled “message” coming from her campaign that says”the Black Guy can’t win because he’s black.
I have always liked Hillary, I went to Obama for two reasons, one, that as a Constitutional scholar, he will be less likely to further infringe on our hard won rights, and the other is actually because of you B, when you talked about your discomfort in having a two family dynasty here in the U.S. That resonated with me. You are right so infrequently, it really rang out! ;)
Now, I am off to pee on someone’s lawn, eat a tamale or two, then take a siesta…
I probably won’t articulate this very well, because I haven’t really wrapped my head around all of this, but HRC strikes me as a person who feels that she is entitled to the Presidency – entitled because she’s been in public office, entitled b/c her husband was president and I sense this entitlement as a payback in her mind for “look at all the stuff we did for black people and poor white people.”
HRC strikes me as having a sense of being owed by the black and poor white community the same way I see GWB feeling entitlement to votes from the Evangelicals. It’s almost like they sense election to the office as a birthright.
On another note, I’ve always cringed when Bill Clinton was referred to as “the first black president” — I find that really offensive and have never understood why the African American community wasn’t up in arms about the statement – perhaps it’s because the statement was from Toni Morrison, and it get some sort of credence because it came from one of the members of the AA community.
Also, her camp seems to me as too focused on what everybody else is doing, they should focus on her strengths and her strategies, rather than nitpicking everyone elses. Her campaign has been very reactionary, and should just sweep her own front porch, rather than trying to sweep Obama’s.
As for the racial stuff, and the gender stuff, it’s inevitable to come out as we no longer just have a bunch of older white guys running for the office. It’s a dialogue that’s going to come out sooner or later… and it’s very easy to have a soundbite pulled that is going to insert a foot into a mouth.
Beth, i thought that was very well articulated. I agree that we will see an uptick in the amount of these long overdue discussions on race and gender.
Everyone who runs for president — or at least anyone who gets very far — feels entitled to be president. I don’t have any problem with that. The question is what reasons any of them would give (if s/he was being honest) to explain why s/he was entitled to the job, and what any of them would claim to be entitled to do, once elected.
So far as I can tell, Clinton feels entitled because of the vilification she’s had to put up with, Obama feels entitled because he can make people feel good, and McCain feels entitled because he’s outwaited everyone else in his party and it’s his turn. Not the greatest range f choices.
Thanks Mack.. I have a lot runnning around in my head on this, and didnt’ want to get too off tangent.
NM, well said in 2nd paragraph. You nailed it.
oy, you silly americans. you can’t have such a thing as a two-family dynasty, because the whole POINT of a “dynasty” is that power remains within ONE (extended) family. now, if Hillary were elected, and then Chelsea rose to the corridors of power after her, and then her child by some Bush scion or other became important in D.C., and… then you could start talking about a dynasty.
but less than thirty years, shared between two bitterly rivalrous families? barely more than a single generation of time, and two generations in one of those families? pfft. that’s not long enough to even be called a tradition yet.
what a truly awful statement from HC! And your summation is spot-on. how depressing this whole campaign has been.
But I have to disagree about calling someone’s statement racist “assuming we know someone’s motivation”
Racist statements perpetuate racial inequality, they reinforce racial stereotypes, they are harmful in themselves. It doesn’t matter whether you mean it, or you hate “those people,” or anything. I mean those things might matter in terms of how I feel about someone, but racism can exist without intent or knowledge. That’s what makes it such an effective system – it can be perpetuated without thought.
a kind of academic take on this here:
http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/michael-omi-on-racism/
the same is true for sexism/sexist statements. I really like Shakes’ take on this (less formal):
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/feminism-friday-feminism-101-sexism-is-a-matter-of-opinion/
but less than thirty years, shared between two bitterly rivalrous families? barely more than a single generation of time, and two generations in one of those families? pfft. that’s not long enough to even be called a tradition yet.
It didn’t take the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen even that long to get thier rivalry started. Not that I especially want to disagree with you, but I felt that a medieval reference was called for, somehow.
Ripley, exactly. It is perpetuated without thought. Do I know what was in Clinton’s heart? No. But you know what? I still don’t. She hasn’t clarified.
I don’t think Clinton is racist. I think what she said was racist. Do I think it was “I hate black people” racist? No. Was it “I think white people are more valuable than black people” racist? Yes.
yeah, and does it make it easier for people to think nonwhite people aren’t americans? and report their neighbors to the INS/stop and search them at the bus station? hell’s yeah it does. grrrrrr.
Right, which is exactly why the “I think white people are most valuable” racism is so damaging. The segment of people in our country who are okay with “I hate them” racism is very small. A city would be outraged, for instance, if cops were caught on tape saying “I pull over black guys every excuse I get because I hate them so much.” But if black guys just get pulled over by the police every excuse the police have because the police just kind of assume white people are out there causing less trouble than black people or are less likely to be here illegally than brown people, then that’s a huge problem that most people have a hard time addressing.