Is Bill Clinton Really Lee Atwater? You Betcha!

Cliff:

Scott - You have certainly called out Bill Clinton, haven't you. But is this article at all fair, much less balanced? Absolutely not. From your racist reference to Bill Clinton coming from Arkansas, to your wholly inaccurate reference to the use of Willie Horton, your position is not only unfair, but absolutely unsupported by the facts.

Since Bill isn't going to come out and say "Hey white people, Obama is a black guy and you know you can't trust them because they take drugs and commit felonies!" then, yes, I did have to put together a wide range of incidences committed by Bill, Hillary and people that are directly connected to them to paint the entire strategy of what Bill is trying to do to Barack. And that strategy, as I pointed out, is to make Barack just another black guy trying to be President instead of the transformative, unifying and groundbreaking candidate that he is.

It is funny that you, who constantly claims that I need to look at something when I provide facts, and constantly assert that I am being unfair or shading things, would provide us with a story this distastefully inappropriate.

Cliff, I don't think it is distasteful or inappropriate to shine a light on the Clinton campaign's strategy to win the Democratic nomination. While I'm sure that it is uncomfortable for people to read (I know that it was uncomfortable for me to realize they were doing this and then write the piece because I had great respect for Bill Clinton as a statesman prior to this), I do think that people need to know the truth and understand it when they are weighing whom to support for the most important elected office in the land.

The level of your hate is palpable. But let's take one important fact that you completely misrepresent as a signally important one in this entire polemic of yours. Although you repeat the wild claims in this article as fact, you fail to indicate even once that it is articles like yours that create the artifice upon which the lies of racism are born.

It is not hate. I don't have hate for Bill or Hillary Clinton. I reserve my hate for people like Osama Bin Laden. Also, articles like this do not create the artifice and foundation upon which racism rests. It holds a mirror up to America and, particularly, the people who want to exploit America's flaws for their own profit. Can you really say that the Clintons are making a concerted effort to argue that Hillary Clinton's policy stances and plans for this nation are better than Barack Obama's? Or are they making a concerted effort to "compliment" her black opponent on how far he has come?

If there is any racism here, it is anyone who would make racism claims against white people who are not and have never been racists. And by the way, the reference to the "first black president" was made by someone who is black, and was one of the first questions in the South Carolina debate. This statement is not raised by Bill Clinton or his wife. It is at times addressed in response to someone else's question or statement. But that too is racist, I am certain, from your perspective.

I am not making racist claims. I am revealing that the emperor has no clothes. Bill Clinton is not a racist. I did not say he was a racist. Bill Clinton is utilizing a political parlor trick that has been used for 200 years in this country with great success: illustrating that your opponent is black. A great deal of white people are comfortable with black people who do not tout their race. They are willing to accept and embrace a black person that does not define themselves as black, but rather define themselves as a person. That division is easy to see when you compare Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton's presidential bids to that of Barack Obama's. The former's led to abject failure because they loudly proclaimed their race and talked about their race and made their race an issue in the campaign. The latter had great success when he avoided talking about race. Obama from the beginning has been unpretentious and has avoided like the plague talk that he would be the first black president. He hasn't trumpeted what a great accomplishment that would be, even though it would be a great accomplishment. The reason he hasn't is that he knows there are white people that came of age in a time that gives them mixed, visceral feelings about race that make them not like candidates like Jackson and Sharpton. The Clintons realized that Obama had found a way to receive the support of these white people who had reflexive negative reactions to candidates like Jackson and Sharpton which made their candidacies a joke from Day 1 and set about recasting and redefining Barack Obama from a candidate whose race didn't matter into a candidate in the mold of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The Clintons aren't racist, but clearly they aren't above exploiting the country's troubled past with race to defeat the first black candidate with a good chance to make it to the Oval Office. I find that troubling and disheartening, particularly coming from someone like Bill Clinton who has been considered a great friend to black Americans. And yes, I also know that Toni Morrisson is African-American and I have known that ever since I read her literature as an undergrad at Miami University of Ohio.

Dennis:
Thanks for dropping in! I think that Clinton playing the race card in South Carolina to polarize Obama in the black community and bottle him up has started a domino effect of negative consequences for Hillary's campaign. It has played a role in both Caroline and Ted Kennedy's endorsements of Obama (Clinton reportedly called and implored Ted to stay neutral but Ted declined because Bill did not listen to Ted when Ted told him to stop playing the race card.) It has also ostensibly played a role in Toni Morrison, the author that labeled Clinton as the "first black president", endorsing Barack Obama for president just today. I don't think that this is going to end soon or end well for Hillary and Bill Clinton.