Many people have consistently accused Sen. Clinton of running a campaign straight from the Republican Party play-book, although lately that means the 3 a.m., national security nonsense and not the racial nonsense. But now, it seems increasingly clear that we're dusting off Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and having a go at the working class white racists that formed the core of George Wallace's support in 1968 and 1972.
The not-too-subtle message underlying Geraldine Ferraro's recent unhinged comments is a typical lowest common denominator bait and switch. It's the type of politics that attempts to scare up a few votes by laying the blame for whatever is wrong in someone's life somewhere else.
It's not that Republican policies of union busting, total deregulation and incessant tax-cutting while increasing spending is placing you in a perilous economic condition.
No . . . it's the unqualified black folks that are taking your jobs away from you. It's the notion that to be gay or black or a woman is to have been conferred "special rights" in our society.
It's the kind of politics that George Wallace practiced in 1968. It's the type of politics that sends Reagan to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980 to kick of the fall campaign; and, it's the type of politics in which Bill Clinton "disses" Sistah Souljah in front of an almost all black audience or signs DOMA into law. It's crass political posturing to score a few extra "Bubba" votes
It's a politics of code words, such as "states' rights" and "law and order." It's partially the type of politics to which Barack Obama refers when he states that we have to quit fighting the same fights we've been fighting for forty years.
Except now, it's not Lee Atwater or Karl Rove. We're not dealing with Nixon's "Southern Strategy." No--we're talking about a Democrat employing these tactics. A Democrat that cut her teeth on 60's cultural issues and has seen, first hand, just how destructive these tactics can be.
And any of us--and I do mean ANYONE, that support these type of tactics are complicit in the subjugation of other human beings. I'm not going to pussy-foot around the issue. When Geraldine Ferraro states that Barack Obama wouldn't be where he is if he weren't black, she is tapping into that forty year old working class white fear that unqualified blacks are taking white jobs by getting government advantages.
Although, on some level, Ferraro has a point. If Barack Obama weren't half black he probably would have locked up the nomination by now. He certainly wouldn't have been forced to "prove himself" in Texas and Ohio after reeling off eleven consecutive landslide victories.
He wouldn't have been forced to counter email smears that he's a secret Muslim that won't say The Pledge of Allegiance.
He wouldn't have to spend any time talking about the fact that he's been a member of the same Christian church for twenty years.
He wouldn't have to respond to the Clinton campaign sending a picture of him in African garb to Drudge.
He wouldn't have to defend either his, or his wife's, patriotism.
I'd say there are quite a few places he wouldn't be if he weren't half black.
Folks, we cannot, as Democrats--Americans--or people countenance this style of politics any longer. There are too many issues to tackle to have to respond to this nonsense. It's time to cast this type of exploitative, racially-tinged politics aside.
If we support the people that practice this style of politics; we are just as guilty as the practitioners of them.
We have to choose. And the choice has consequences. It's time to say goodbye to George Wallace, and Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Sistah Souljah, and Geraldine Ferraro.
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