blogger interrupted

Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania by 10 points.  It is precisely the margin by which she won Ohio.  Where’d the margin come from?  Much is being made today about how Obama outspent Hillary in PA by 3 to 1.  What force could be so resilient, in a primary between two largely policy-identical candidates, that it could resist this kind of imbalance?   

Bigotry.

An AP-Yahoo poll conducted April 2-14 found that “about 8 percent of whites would be uncomfortable voting for a black for president.”  I don’t know if 8 percent sounds high or low to you, but I was amazed that 8 percent of respondents were willing to admit this to a pollster. And I figure that the true figure is much higher.  The same poll, by the way, found that 15 percent of voters think Obama is a Muslim. He is, in fact, a Christian. 

It isn’t even something Obama’s opponents are shy about anymore, at least not the GOP.

The Republican shook his head. “You’re missing the most important one,” he said. “Race. McCain runs against Barack Obama and the race vote is worth maybe 15 percent to McCain.”

The 8 percent number is low.  I’d say the most precise (and recently measured by votes) figure is 10, the margin by which Hillary won both Ohio and Pennsylvania.  

Let’s look at OH-17, Tim Ryan’s district, where Hillary’s big margin on March 4, 63-35, literally forced Tim Ryan to endorse her after the fact.  There is simply no reason other than race (and perhaps Rush Limbaugh) for a primary campaign between two largely identical candidates on policy to split so dramatically in white areas like OH-17.  

And now, even Democratic primary voters are coming right out and saying they’d rather vote for white John McCain than black Barack Obama in the fall…ON TV….from OHIO.

This strain of residual bigotry in the electorate doesn’t just pop up, it needs to be ginned up.  And this is what the Clinton campaign has been doing for months.  The entire point for Billy Shaheen and Marc Penn, bringing up cocaine, for Bob Kerrey saying Barack’s middle name, for Bob Johnson, etc. etc. etc, was to make sure that OBAMA IS BLACK had long enough to seep in so it would affect Ohio and PA.  

Bill did it again yesterday, as if referring to Jesse Jackson’s electoral performance in comparison with Barack Obama’s has anything to do with anything other than their skin color.

I noticed this the moment it started.  Called it out.  Because I’ve seen this game played so many times before, its stench is so strong, you can see it a mile away.

Anyone who’s grown up in big city politics can sniff it out from a mile away. Whitey is running for something. Whitey starts losing to a black guy. Whitey starts the racial coding in their campaign, a nuclear weapon so powerful, all it takes is the slightest hint of it, from a surrogate, or a leaflet, or a commercial, to trickle down into the target electorate - i.e., other whiteys.

That was in January.  It took two months for that message from the Clinton campaign to deliver a 10 point victory in Ohio, and 3 months to do the same in Pennsylvania.  And it’s now to the point where the bigotry is so ginned up, fully 25% of Hillary DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY voters are saying to POLLSTERS they would vote for whitey over Barack in the fall.  

The picture in this post is Renty the slave.  His picture was taken in the 1850’s as part of an effort by some kook to prove that Negroes were less human.  Stare into that picture for a while, and then take a look at this presidential campaign, and you will be staring into the gaping maw of what Condi Rice herself has said is America’s founding birth defect.  It is the central question of the Obama candidacy, and the obstacles Barack now faces are the same that any black man who got this close to the presidency would have to face, at any time.  If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were running for president, he’d have to slay these same demons. 

It’s why I made this video to warn Hillary that her legacy will be as simply another manifestation of that founding birth defect; simply another obstacle in the long line of people who used racial division for their own ends.  It didn’t have to be this way.  But she made it so.

We are watching what may be one of the final acts in America’s 400 year passion play over race.  It’s no longer a secret.  It had to be expected.  I’m sure Barack expected it, too.  And the resolution of the 2008 campaign will be placed alongside the 3/5 compromise in Philadelphia, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Selma, and all the rest.  Whether as Americans we are proud of the end result in November, or ashamed, is an open question.

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