Campaign follies: Condescension, race talk, and Sinbad's return
Ok, so I haven't been commenting much on this here Democratic horse race. Mostly because the comedy from it has been pouring out with the ferocity of a broken dam.
But my latest strike against Hillary comes from this past weekend, where she and her camp said a few times that Obama could be her running mate so that "nobody's forced to choose." This, coming from someone still in second place, who has won some state primaries but has yet to crush Obama in a single primary. After spending all this time trying to scare us into thinking Obama would shrink into a corner at the whiff of red phones ringing and buckle under the weight of his inexperience, but if she wins the primary, she'd extend a hand and say, "You can be my boy." Con-de-scen-ding.
Of course, having a campaign that blames Obama's success on his being black doesn't help, either. Clinton spent her day with the National Newspaper Publishers Association (aka the Black Press of America, of which my former employer The Philadelphia Tribune is a distinguished member) apologizing.
And Geraldine Ferraro can go back into obscurity, but first let's remember that she said this before 20 years ago about Jesse Jackson. Perhaps Ferraro strikes a little to close to the overal race-jittery attitudes of Democrats' white liberal contingent?
I think race could play some part in Obama's rise, but it's neither the jump-off nor the deal-sealer. It's all part of the calculus of time and place and actions and consequences - simply, it's his time to run.
But you know it's really bad when Sinbad crawls out from under a rock to refute some of your foreign policy claims: On her 1996 trip to Bosnia with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow in tow, he says, "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife ... oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'" He does make a fine point about "Saturday Night Live" being totally unable to have an actual black man play Obama.
But my latest strike against Hillary comes from this past weekend, where she and her camp said a few times that Obama could be her running mate so that "nobody's forced to choose." This, coming from someone still in second place, who has won some state primaries but has yet to crush Obama in a single primary. After spending all this time trying to scare us into thinking Obama would shrink into a corner at the whiff of red phones ringing and buckle under the weight of his inexperience, but if she wins the primary, she'd extend a hand and say, "You can be my boy." Con-de-scen-ding.
Of course, having a campaign that blames Obama's success on his being black doesn't help, either. Clinton spent her day with the National Newspaper Publishers Association (aka the Black Press of America, of which my former employer The Philadelphia Tribune is a distinguished member) apologizing.
And Geraldine Ferraro can go back into obscurity, but first let's remember that she said this before 20 years ago about Jesse Jackson. Perhaps Ferraro strikes a little to close to the overal race-jittery attitudes of Democrats' white liberal contingent?
I think race could play some part in Obama's rise, but it's neither the jump-off nor the deal-sealer. It's all part of the calculus of time and place and actions and consequences - simply, it's his time to run.
But you know it's really bad when Sinbad crawls out from under a rock to refute some of your foreign policy claims: On her 1996 trip to Bosnia with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow in tow, he says, "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife ... oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'" He does make a fine point about "Saturday Night Live" being totally unable to have an actual black man play Obama.