The Obama campaign sent their national co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr. to tear down Hillary Clinton on MSNBC the other night. He took it too far over the top. His comments on Hurricane Katrina seemed to indicate he was saying Hillary Clinton doesn't care about black people. It's one thing when Kanye West says that about George Bush, it's another when it's Obama's spokesperson saying it about Hillary Clinton. That is out of bounds.
Jackson's appearance on MSNBC and our analysis of why he was wrong to say it is in the video below:
What's even more interesting is what happened after we played this clip on the radio this morning. Calls poured in for nearly two hours -- and the results were frightening. It appeared that people have started to split up in different camps based on their identity. Obama supporters were accusing Hillary of not doing anything to help black folks. Hillary supporters accusing Obama of not being sensitive to gender issues.
Yes, there were definitely exceptions. A black female caller voiced strong support for John Edwards. But overall, the sense I got is that the race issue (and less so the gender issue, but that is also growing) is out of the bag. Once that genie is out of the bottle (to mix my metaphors here), it's hard to put it back in. For the first time, I think Democrats are on the verge of doing serious damage to one another. This thing could get real ugly, real soon.
They have got to reel this back in. It isn't going to help anybody. This negative campaigning definitely turns off voters, especially Democratic voters. It's one thing to attack someone's record (which I am actually in favor of), it's another to do these personal and identity based attacks. The candidates are only hurting themselves in the primaries and their opponent if he or she winds up in the general election.
One last thing, this particular strategy by Obama is short-sighted. Yes, it might help in South Carolina. But you could win that battle and lose the war because you turned off so many other voters by playing the race card in South Carolina. As a guy leaning toward Obama, I hope he reconsiders this terribly misguided strategy.
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Barack Obama's Campaign Plays the Race Card
Posted Jan 11th 2008 10:46AM by Cenk Uygur
Filed under: Young Turks, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Video, Race Relations
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Reader Comments ( Page 4 of 4)
46. E, congratulations on getting absolutely NOTHING right.
Captain Negative at 3:54AM on Jan 14th 2008
47. The Clinton stategy, with the help of CNN, and others, is to use language that will align Barack with stereotypical racist ideas. By contrast, they're trying to associate Hillary with femininity. The idea is to racialize Barack, to inspire rejection, while femenizing Hillary, to inspire protection.
It began with a CNN interview of Barack's African grandmother on the day before the New Hampshire Primary. One would think that the primary would be the focus of CNN's interview. One would expect questions about Barack’s campaign, and that his grandmother would be asked about her expectations respecting the New Hampshire Primary. But there were no such questions. As I watched, I came to understand that the viewer wasn't suppose to learn anything from Obama's grandmother, the point was to for us to see Obama's grandmother. We were to see how black she is, and how poor she is, and impute that to him.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/248558
Hargrove at 10:36AM on Feb 16th 2008
48. Obama had my vote until he started playing the race cards. The final blow is his issues now with MLK statements by Clinton. Give me a break! I don't even like the Clintons but he has taken a statement out of context overblown its meaning and played a race card. I have lost any respect I had for him.
Maybe we just saw his true nature and agenda or maybe he just has poor judgment either way he has lost my vote.
Joe at 6:53PM on Jan 14th 2008
49. These hideously expensive and laboriously drawn-out campaigns are counterproductive. None of the candidates ever come out looking good in the end, and these campaigns seldom bring out the best qualities in many of their supporters.
Hillary has black supporters, by the way. So I guess they, at least, can to be excluded from being defamed as being among "the most racist people on the planet." And not only does Obama have white supporters, he had a white mama, too.
Why can't Obama and Hillary just be Democratic candidates for the presidency, like John Edwards?
Hal at 2:27PM on Jan 17th 2008
50. I had not made my choice between Clinton, Obama or Edwards until the Obama camp played the race card. Obama can claim he didn't authorize such a tactic, but in a subsequent speech... he appeared to agree with it. And now that the race cards been played and the damage done, he wants to kiss and make nice with Clinton. Strike Obama from my list! As for Edwards, he's was struck for my list of candidates when he became a total kiss ass for Obama.
Audie at 6:25PM on Jan 21st 2008