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Ferraro's clearly tried to insert race more overtly as a campaign issue, and that's absolutely unacceptable in a Democratic primary. But her boneheaded-comments also bothered me because they smack of the sort of entitlement mentality which has beseiged so many old-guard Democrats who support Hillary: The idea that she's earned her shot, while he's just "lucky," in Ferraro's words. Those are the sounds of a rat on a sinking ship.
Off all the chatter I've seen on this topic, maybe the best rebuttal to Ferraro came buried in the comments section beneath an item on the Huffington Post:
BrooklynLager: Imagine a goodlooking, charismatic graduate of Columbia, Harvard Law School who becomes the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He decides he wants to go into politics, so he moves back out to Chicago, but no one will back him for any office, despite his resume, obvious political skills, and talent. So he works for a while at a law firm to build up contacts and pay the bills.
Years go by, and FINALLY he's able to get financial backing to run for state senate in a heavily black district, because that's all that's available to him. He works there for years, forming alliances, meeting with people whose support he's going to need (some of which will come back to haunt him later, but he has no other options), and finally almost 20 years later, he wins in a tightly contested primary for Senate and explodes on the national scene. As we've all seen what Obama is capable of in strict terms of electability - the guy is a phenomenon - his lack of experience in Washington should be striking. The man is 46 years old, not 36.
Now consider Bill Clinton, someone with comparable charisma and a similar educational background. Three years out of Law School, he's the Attorney General of Arkansas. Two years later he's Governor. It's as easy as that.
Agreed: Ferraro is just wrong. There's no excuse for a Clinton to so bungle race issues that she loses 90% of the African-American vote in Mississippi. Hillary is half of a political partnership which has made huge commitments to improving the economic opportunities of black America, to appointing blacks to positions of power and influence, to healing racial divisions. It is so sad to see them walk away from that here, in this chapter of their lives. It's deeply short-sighted, and reinforces my conviction that for the Clintons, all is calculation, and nothing is principle.
Black candidates have to deal with the reality that a real chunk of the electorate is just never going to vote for them. And while it may be true that some voters are excited about Obama because he's black, history clearly shows (Jesse Jackson, for instance) that you can't win just by being an exciting, eloquent black leader. There's so much more than that to Barack. He's sharp, graceful, shrewd, hard-working, and pretty clearly running a campaign which taps into all of the pent-up RAGE at what's been going on in Washington. He doesn't have to run against Bush -- it's so fucking obvious that Barack Obama is Bush's antithesis.
Now, Hillary Clinton is an intelligent and talented politician, who excites a lot of people (not me, incidentally, but no matter). And she was at her best when she was showing positivity, humanity, humility, energy and even a little spontanaiety. To me, she's always been a bit like meatloaf (the food): You know, it's fine, it fills you up, not really objectionable. I'd choose meatloaf over plenty of other options, but it doesn't get me really excited. If she were the nominee, I'd vote for her in November knowing that, you know, at least she'd run an Administration where people had some respect for the Constitution and the law, and that counts for a whole lot.
But while Hillary Clinton is an adept politician and a really good senator, Obama shows the promise of greatness. He offers America a chance to really break with he political tropes of the past few decades, to heal some of its wounds, to mend its fences with neighbors, and to really build a vision for America into the 21st Century. Hillary, like George H.W. Bush, has trouble with "the whole vision thing."
This is it in a nutshell: Ferraro needs to stop fighting the political battles of 1984.
2 comments:
Here's one more opinion of dubious merit, coming as it does, from me.
I think: Mrs. Ferraro, as cool as she is or may once have been, is NOT a candidate for the presidency and what she has to say about Mr. Obama is of no greater significance than what most anybody else might say, except that the press has chosen to swat it around like a badminton birdie. I can't remember that her opinion has been asked about anything else by the media in the past ten years, so why this? Even if her commentary was a ploy from Hillary's campaign, it has no credence.
We do not have an ethically responsible press corps any more. It has no more prestige or moral force than common American business management these days. Both fields are governed by a contemporary social ethic akin to video game aficionados... opportunity to whack without a cautionary sense of restraint.
So, mischievous people that they are, the media folks have decided to heave Ferraro's opinions into the stew just to watch it bubble.
Hmph.
Hilary has all the political acumen and intelligence of her husband (maybe even more), but absolutely none of the charisma.
Her campaign is losing and she knows it. It's been obvious for about a month now. They are getting desparate.
-Marty
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