Race Matters

Would someone tell Gwen Ifill that most black voters are not racists?

Appearing this past Sunday, April 26, 2008, on NBC's Meet The Press, PBS' Gwen Ifill, after sympathisizing with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, stated

But what the, the numbers have shown us, the exit polls have shown us in the last week is that what we don't want to talk about is racism, which is, I think, a, a, a real issue. The people who said they--that race mattered to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm not calling the voters racists, but I think, at some point, we have to get back to a word that we're very scared of using in our society, which is the reason why people vote against someone because of their race is not a positive reason, it's a negative, and racism is a negative quality.

To summarize, Ifill says: A lot of people to whom race mattered voted for Clinton. I'm not calling them racists but people voting against someone because of race is a negative and racism is a negative quality.

Now, here are the results by percentage and race (black and non-Hispanic white only, so as not to complicate the issue) in a few Democratic primaries, as indicated by NBC exit polls (not all add to 100%):

New Jersey: whites: Clinton 66, Obama 31; blacks: Clinton 14, Obama 82
Mississippi: whites: Clinton 70, Obama 26; blacks: Clinton 8, Obama 92
Ohio: whites: Clinton 64, Obama 34; blacks: Clinton 13, Obama 87
Pennsylvania: whites: Clinton 63, Obama 37; blacks: Clinton 10, Obama 90

Bloc voting clearly has been more common among blacks and apparently race has played a part in the overwhelming majority of blacks voting for Obama. Therefore, if among people who said "that race mattered to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton," I think we can conclude that among people who said that race mattered to them, a lot of people voted for Obama. But I believe that most of these voters are not racist, yet Ifill cites strong white support for Clinton as suggestive of racism. I suppose, then, that Ifill believes that strong- no, overwhelming- black support for Obama suggests racism.... except she doesn't say that. So does this prominent journalist believe that Obama's support among blacks can be attributed to racism (I don't)- or is she a firm believer in double standards?

The Republican Media- No. 16

Thanks go out to Republican strategist Alex Castellanos and Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of NBC News.

Two days after I reprinted the 1999 article in slate.com by Timothy Noah which described the Republican effort to tar Al Gore with responsibility for the Willie Horton hit job in the 2000 election, along comes Castellanos practically bragging how the GOP is going to replay this tactic in 2008, immediately followed by McCain enthusiast Andrea Mitchell reminding us how routine bias toward the Republican Party is.

Here are the two comments from the April 27, 2008 edition of NBC's Meet The Press:

MR. RUSSERT: Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, was on TV the other night and said this: "Clinton's running the ads Republicans would love to be running so--now, so we don't have to because Hillary Clinton is doing it. Yes, it could--would be hard for a Republican to run an ad with Osama bin Laden in it. Not so much now because Hillary has already done it against Obama.

"It would be difficult for a Republican to run an ad questioning does Barack Obama have the strength of character to lead the country. Well, not so much now because Hillary has already done it."

Is that a Republican sort of protecting his flank, getting ready for a rollout, or has Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama paved the way for McCain if Obama becomes the nominee?

MS. MITCHELL: She's written the playbook for John McCain. They've done all the opposition research. I think that Obama has also had some self-inflicted wounds, notably in San Francisco, the bitter comment, which just didn't play right, and I--you know, obviously I don't think he's handled Jeremiah Wright, we can talk about that. I don't think he anticipated the impact of that and the way it would be perceived out of context or in context. But Hillary Clinton has laid out a road map for the Republicans, and that is one of the Obama arguments. The Obama supporters are arguing that she is destroying him, even if he is the nominee, and he is the presumptive nominee and the front-runner, certainly

Note Castellanos claiming "It would be difficult for a Republican to run an ad questioning does Barack Obama have the strength of character to lead the country. Well, not so much now because Hillary has already done it."

Not true. Hillary Clinton's 3:00 a.m. foreign policy ad (courtesy of The Huffington Post) and her more recent buy with images of Franklin Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor, Castro, gas prices, and, yes, bin Laden emphasize her credentials for handling a crisis. They do not criticize or demean Barack Obama in any way, but merely suggest that she is the candidate best able (and I use "best" rather than "better" because it is not a direct comparison with her current rival) to handle an emergency. Disagree with her on that point if you choose, but paranoia about either ad is neither attractive nor flattering to the frontrunner, merely indicating a naivete that it the spot is somehow beyond the pale. However, it is not surprising that a Repub consultant has spilled the beans, revealing that the GOP this autumn intends to do a "Willie Horton"- run a venomous campaign and blame it on Democrats.

Similarly, Andrea Mitchell, wife of one of the most important Republicans, Allan Greenspan, of the last 20 years. She now has said of Hillary Clinton "she's written the playbook for John McCain. They've done all the opposition research." Fortunately, we have a Weekly Standard blogger ("fortunately" the Weekly Standard- something I'm not used to typing) quoting John McCain on a conference call as claiming

All I can tell you, Jennifer, is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare....If senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly.

Did Mrs. Clinton run an ad I missed about Danie Ortega and Hamas, linking them to Barack Obama? No, but that doesn't stop Mitchell from claiming "she's written the playbook for John McCain."

And "they've done all the opposition research?" Did Senator Clinton force Senator Obama to refer on the first of his two interviews with WIP Radio in Philadelphia to his maternal grandmother as "a typical white person?" Did Senator Clinton infiltrate that meeting with campaign donors and insinuate Senator Obama into contending that small town Americans "cling" to their guns and religion? Has Senator Clinton been asking the silly question about why Senator Obama doesn't wear an American flag pin? Was it Senator Clinton or George Stephanopoulos who asked Senator Obama about William Ayers- or whether Obama's former pastor "love(s) America as much as you do"? And was it Senator Clinton who dug up video of Reverend Wright- which would be a huge surprise to conservative Repub talk show host Sean Hannity who claims to have uncovered the Wright story first?

No, Andrea, Hillary Clinton isn't laying out the road map for the Grand Old Party. But you seem to be trying to.

Quote Of The Week

"Anyway, dot-communism? The Xinhua News Agency reports that, in China now, there are 221 million Internet users, tying the United States for the most web users in any country. The trouble is, it means that China is growing and advancing, but, let‘s not forget, our Internet users have access to the entire Internet.

In China, sites that show protest videos in Tibet, like YouTube, are blocked by the government. Glasnost has yet to hit China, and the First Amendment is nowhere in sight."

-Chris Matthews, MSNBC's "Hardball," April 24, 2008

After Two Days, New York Times Proven Foolish

On April 23, 2008, in an editorial which instantly looked silly, the august editors of The New York Times actually wrote:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

Then on April 25, 2008, Michael Goldfarb on "The Blog" (creativity from our conservative Republican friends at weeklystandard.com) wrote

Earlier this month, Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to the Prime Minister of Hamas, told WABC radio, "We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy."

Responding to a question during an interview with bloggers on 4/25/08, John McCain declared

All I can tell you, Jennifer, is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare....If senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly.


There you have it: two days after The NYT slammed Hillary Clinton for "demeaning the political process" with a campaign "even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it," John McCain simultaneously links Barack Obama with both Hamas and Daniel Ortega. No Democratic nominee yet, no (Democratic or Republican) convention yet, no general election campaign yet, and John McCain already has made a more vile charge than Hillary Clinton has over the course of her entire campaign for the nomination. So will the New York Times "acknowledge" that the "negativity" for which Senator McCain "is mostly responsible" (actually, totally responsible) "does nothing but harm.... to the 2008 election"?

Willie Horton And The Republican Slime Machine

"Al Gore is the one who first brought up Willie Horton." So sayeth Bruce Bartlett, now an author but described by Wilkipedia as an economist associated with supply-side economics. He was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and was a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush." Yes, that supply-side theory, which has helped bring us an increasing trade deficit, increasing budget deficit, gas and food prices rapidly spiraling upward, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Bartlett, spinning his web of right-wing, highly partisan paranoia, was on the Friday, 4/25/08 edition of Laura Ingraham's syndicated talk show and has written "Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past." (It's not me saying conservatives always live in the past; Repubs apparently say it about themselves.)

Was Al Gore really the first to bring up "Willie Horton" (reason for quote marks to come up eventually)? In the article, entitled "Did Gore Hatch Horton?" posted 11/1/99 in slate.com and reprinted here, Timothy Noah points out that this notion had, apparently, already been spreading.


Conservative commentators have taken to repeating the mantra that Al Gore introduced Willie Horton, the inflammatory racial symbol who enlivened the 1988 presidential race, to political debate in America. On Oct. 24, William Kristol, editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard, said on ABC's This Week:

Gore's a mean, tough political fighter. Gore is the one who introduced Willie Horton to American politics in the 1988 primary against Mike Dukakis.

Kristol repeated this, almost verbatim, in a "Memo to Bill Bradley" that appeared in the issue of Newsweek that hit newsstands the following day:

Big Al can be a tough, mean player. After all, he's the guy who introduced Willie Horton to the American public in his primary campaign against Michael Dukakis.

Four days after that, Paul Gigot wrote in his Oct. 29 Wall Street Journal column:

Recall that the candidate who first raised the prison furlough (Willie Horton) issue against Mike Dukakis in 1988 wasn't George Bush. It was Al Gore.

Horton, you may recall, is a black man who, while doing prison time in Massachusetts for murder, escaped from a weekend furlough and committed a particularly brutal assault and rape. Dukakis hadn't started the state program that allowed prisoners like Horton, who were serving life sentences without parole, to take furloughs--that would have been Dukakis' Republican predecessor as governor of Massachusetts, Francis Sargent. But Dukakis, even after hearing what Horton did on his furlough, was resistant to ending the program, which the state legislature finally did after much crusading by a local newspaper. Horton's story was subsequently offered up by Vice President George Bush's campaign as evidence of Dukakis' softness on crime, and--less directly--of the Democratic party's excessive fondness for black people. (It was an ugly election.) Introducing Willie Horton to American political discourse would not seem to be something to be proud of. Is it true that Gore did so? And if it is true, was Gore's 1988 campaign guilty of injecting cryptic racist messages into the debate? The answers to these questions are, respectively, yes and no.

Gore did ask Dukakis, in a debate right before the 1988 New York primary, about "weekend passes for convicted criminals." Here is how Sidney Blumenthal, now a Clinton White House aide but then a reporter for the Washington Post, wrote it up a few months later:

An uncomfortable Dukakis, after dispassionately reciting statistics, conceded that the Massachusetts furlough program for murderers sentenced to life imprisonment had been canceled.

The issue did not take for Gore, but the exchange attracted the interest of Jim Pinkerton, the research director for the then flailing Bush campaign. "That's the first time I paid attention," said Pinkerton. "I thought to myself, 'This is incredible' ...It totally fell into our lap."

In reviewing this history, it's important to make some crucial distinctions. Gore never mentioned that Horton was black; indeed, he never mentioned Horton by name. He merely drew attention, correctly, to the damaging fact that Dukakis had tolerated a furlough program for especially violent criminals in his state even after a horrific incident strongly suggested this was a bad policy. It's conceivable, of course, that Gore was warming up for more explicit and racially tinged use of Horton's story later in the primary fight. But that would have been uncharacteristic of him. In any event, Gore dropped out of the race shortly after the debate.

Now recall what the Republicans did with Horton's story: An "independent expenditure" group aired an ad for Bush showing a picture of Horton. A Republican fund-raising letter in Maryland showed pictures of Dukakis and Horton alongside the following text: "Is this your pro-family team for 1988?" Horton told Playboy magazine in 1989 that a woman who identified herself as working for "an organization affiliated with the Bush campaign" phoned him and wrote letters to him up in prison trying to get him to endorse Dukakis. The official Bush campaign, of course, kept its distance from such efforts, and claimed to use Horton only in race-neutral ways. But there is plenty of evidence that it was heartily appreciative of the racial subtext. In his book about the 1988 campaign, Pledging Allegiance, Blumenthal quotes an anonymous member of the Bush campaign team as saying, "Willie Horton has star quality. Willie's going to be politically furloughed to terrorize again. It's a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist." Although Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, always insisted publicly that for the Bush campaign Horton was never a racial symbol, Atwater slipped in a speech he gave to southern Republicans right before that year's Democratic convention:

There is a story about a fellow named Willie Horton who for all I know may end up to be Dukakis' running mate. Dukakis is making Hamlet look like the rock of Gibraltar in the way he's acted on this. [This was a reference to Dukakis' search for a vice-presidential candidate.] The guy was on TV about a month ago and he said you'll never see me standing in the driveway of my house talking to these candidates. And guess what, on Monday, I saw in the driveway of his house? Jesse Jackson. So anyway, maybe he'll put this Willie Horton guy on the ticket after all is said and done.

As was noted at the time by Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post and others, Atwater was pretty clearly equating Jesse Jackson with Willie Horton because both happened to be black. Gore never did that. He never did anything close to that.

The major point seems to be this: Gore never mentioned Horton by name, never mentioned that Horton was black, and dropped out of the race shortly thereafter. But to the evident pleasure of the Repub Party, an "independent expenditure" group acting on behalf of the GOP ticket ran an ad featuring a frightening-looking black rapist and associating him with Michael Dukakis. In this, as in so many things, the GOP has at best a tenuous grip on reality, and on the truth.

Straight Talk About The Church?

Sometimes I get to thinking: is John McCain, confused, temperamental, or self-conscious about his own hypocrisy? Fox News reports an extraordinary, if disarmingly simple, response of the presumptive Repub nominee to questions posed to him in New Orleans aboard his bus today, April 24, 2008:

Q: What is your reaction (to Hagee Katrina comments)?

McCain: It’s nonsense.

Q: Would you withdraw accepting his endorsement?

McCain: It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. I don’t have anything additional to say about that. It’s nonsense.

Q: Do you regret accepting his endorsement?

A: It’s nonsense. I don’t have anything more to say about that. Of course–I apologize for that. It’s nonsense. I reject that categorically and I would point out there’s a lot of people who have endorsed me. They support my views. That does not mean that I support–would I consider repudiating his endorsement? I certainly condemn those parts of his remarks. I continue to appreciate his support for the state of Israel and for many of the good things that he and his church has done. But I repudiate as strongly as possible those remarks and those of the Catholic church as well.

At first glance, the fun response (to the second question) is "it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense. It's nonsense. I don't have anything additional to say about that. It's nonsense." This is, of course, a perfect description of McCain's response and means nothing.

But McCain's response to the third question may be more revealing. First, he refuses- or, rather, avoids- repudiating Hagee's endorsement. And then he says something astonishing which is not going to be noticed. McCain said "I repudiate as strongly as possible those remarks and those of the Catholic church as well" (emphasis mine).

What remarks of the Roman Catholic Church does the Senator repudiate? Did he really mean that? Before you conclude that he couldn't possibly have been taking a shot at the Church, remember: this is all about John McCain's admiration of someone who has publicly referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore of Babylon."

Not So Straight Talk On Endorsements

ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper, writing on the Political Punch blog on April 20, 2008, pointed out that McCain senior campaign adviser Charlie Black last month stated

What Senator McCain has said repeatedly is that these candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them. ... He believes that people who endorse you, people who befriend you, are entitled to their own views, but you are not held personally accountable. That when somebody endorses you or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views, not the other way around.

To summarize: candidates cannot be "held personally accountable" for "all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them."

But on the 4/20/08 edition of ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, the Repub candidate himself said of Barack Obama

I'm sure he's very patriotic. But his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question. ... if you're going to associate and have as a friend and serve on a board and have a guy kick off your campaign that says he's unrepentant, that he wished they had bombed more.

To summarize: Barack Obama must be held accountable for the views of someone who endorses him.

Is this the "Straight Talk Express" we still keep hearing about? Or is this a guy whose only extraordinary quality is doubletalk?