The Candidates Truce; The Media Continues The Conflict
By Big Tent Democrat, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Tue Jan 15, 2008 at 08:13:13 AM EST
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Posted on Tue Jan 15, 2008 at 08:13:13 AM EST
Tags: (all tags)
Update [2008-1-15 9:28:58 by Big Tent Democrat]:
And the great Charlie Rangel, now is not the time for this nonsense. Kindly can it please.
As Jane Hamsher notes, the Media seems unlikely to take the candidates' graceful truce on the race issue as the final word. Jane excoriates Matt Bai's silly blog post but today in the Washington Post we see two columns trying to keep the fires burning. One is not surprising - Richard Cohen's playing of the Farrakhan card against Obama was as predictable as the sun rising imo. The second piece is surprising to me as it comes from the usually invaluable Eugene Robinson, who irresponsibly accuses the Clintons of playing the race card:
[I]t's surprising that the Clinton campaign has been so aggressive in keeping the race issue alive. On "Meet the Press," Clinton didn't just seek to explain her remarks about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in landmark civil rights legislation . . . Instead, she went on the attack, accusing the Obama campaign of "deliberately distorting" her words in a way that was "unfair and unwarranted."Keep the issue alive writes Robinson. He fails to consider how the issue may have come into prominence. It seems to me that is what Clinton was driving at. One assumes that Robinson would have preferred Clinton just stood by while being accused of racebaiting. That seems unfair of Robinson to me. Indeed, Robinson's studied avoidance of what might have been behind this race flareup becomes apparent in the next graf:
That seemed a curious tactic to employ just two weeks before the South Carolina Democratic primary, in which African Americans are expected to cast about half the total votes. . . . With most polls showing Clinton well behind in South Carolina, it was unclear how this approach would do anything but put her further behind.That sort of makes Robinson's theory that this was the Clintons playing the race card seem absurd. People have accused the Clintons of many things, but being political idiots is not one of them. So what then of Clinton's theory that the Obama campaign was behind this? The campaign memo, Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s awful comments, Michelle Obama's speech on fairy tales, Bill Burton's faning of the flames, etc. demonstrates there was evidence to support Clinton's contention. And the political logic, as Robinson himself acknowledges, is there as well. Are we to believe, as Robinson implicitly surmises, that the Obama campaign is made up of boy scouts? But Robinson ignores Occam's Razor:
The charitable explanation would be that the Clintons are, in their political position, simply disoriented. . . . This is politics, however, which means that less charitable explanations have to be considered as well.That's funny as Robinson seems incapable of considering a less charitable explanation regarding the Obama campaign in these events. But let's face it, Robinson seems intent on fanning the flames here. It is surprising and disappointing. Consider this from Robinson:
. . . Bill's "fairy tale" crack about Obama's record on the Iraq war (which some African Americans took as a dismissal of Obama's candidacy as mere fantasy). Instead, she went on the attack, accusing the Obama campaign of "deliberately distorting" her words in a way that was "unfair and unwarranted."But it is clear the Obama campaign DID deliberately distort Bil Clinton's words, just as Tim Russert did on Meet the Press and as Michelle Obama did in her Trumpeter speech. This is not a good piece from Eugene Robinson and it only serves to fan the flames. But that seems to be the Media's strategy here. I know Robinson can do better and expect that he will in future.
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