The recent racist comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have once again moved the real ideals and attitudes of the wealthy, powerful, white liberals who run the Democratic Party out from behind closed doors and directly into the national spotlight.
But Reid’s remarks about President Obama were not the first disparaging comments to be made about him by powerful Democrats. We all remember Vice President Biden’s embarrassing “articulate and bright and clean” gaffe, but do you remember these other major racial blunders that occurred during the 2008 Presidential campaign?
Geraldine Ferraro: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell: “You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”
Bill Clinton: “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.”
Racial tensions ran so high during the campaign that Obama supporters accused the Clintons of employing a new “Southern strategy” to galvanize white voters around Hillary; in other words, a vote for Hillary was an antidote to the supposedly near-universal support of Barack Obama by black voters.
And in a new revelation gleaned from the upcoming 2008 campaign tell-all book Game Change, The Politico’s Ben Smith writes:
I’ve finally gotten my hands on a copy of Game Change, in which John Heliemann and Mark Halperin report:
[A]s Hillary bungled Caroline, Bill’s handling of Ted was even worse. The day after Iowa, he phoned Kennedy and pressed for an endorsement, making the case for his wife. But Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.
Whew. But seriously, what should we expect from someone who was mentored into politics by none other than Sen. William Fulbright, one of Arkansas’ staunchest defenders of segregationist policies?
Obviously there is a lot more to the Democrats’ supposed open embrace of African-Americans than they want us to know.
