Is the Clinton Team Stark Raving Mad?

Posted by Pam Spaulding, Pandagon at 6:38 AM on March 11, 2008.

For the life of me I just don’t understand the thinking inside the Clinton campaign (and insided the heads of surrogates). Strong supporters of Clinton — please clue me in; I don’t know how the following developments make any sense in terms of political strategy that’s helpful to the candidate:

* Bill and Hillary continuing to promote the idea of a Clinton/Obama ticket with her at the top when she’s behind in delegate count;

* Promoting the idea of Obama as VP after spending time and money on ads to convince voters he’s not ready to answer the 3 AM phone call - why would she want someone she’s declared unqualified on the ticket?

* The assertion by Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson that somehow Obama could cross the imaginary 3AM-ready “threshhold” that Hillary has by the convention and thus be qualified for the VP slot.

* And the latest misfire - Geraldine Ferraro, 1984 VP nominee, claiming Obama has only gotten as far as he has because he is black.

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) 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.

In any case, using this particular line of thinking…

* If Clinton were a black man, Hillary would have been told to drop out of the race after losing 11 contests in a row, after all, John Edwards had to get out after losing only 3.

* If Obama were white, as it has already been noted elsewhere, he’d already be the nominee, because it’s pretty clear that while there are blacks voting for him because of his race, there are certain demographic groups who didn’t vote for him because he’s black, and those are the Reagan Democrats that Hillary is chasing.

In any case, since he’s biracial, does that factor into Ferraro’s deluded thinking? What would happen, for instance, if Obama were not visibly identifiable as black (as in, he could pass), but identified as such — does that make any difference in perceived advantage? It’s crazy-making. DHinMI at DKos:

It’s not a fringe belief. It’s at the heart of the belief system of the so-called Reagan Democrats--swing voters and even some Democrats who were cradle Democrats but defected to Reagan and have been up for grabs in most elections since 1992.

>Some of these Reagan Democrats will hear Ferraro’s comment, and they’ll think about the job they didn’t get because, they believe, it went to an affirmative action hire. They’ll think about the guy promoted over them because, they believe, he’s black. And they’ll think “here we go again.”

Believing African-Americans are affording unfair advantages certainly isn’t a belief that prevents people from voting Democratic. In 2006, for instance, Michigan Democrats picked up offices and a weak Democratic governor won reelection, but at the same time 40% of Democrats voted to ban race from being a factor in state government hiring or university admissions.

One can give Ferraro the benefit of the doubt, and assume that her comment was just a “slip of the tongue.” One can assume that the wife of Bill Clinton--the man from Hope known for his passionate desire to bring about racial reconciliation in America--would never hope to benefit from racist envy and distrust.

I know there are a lot of white people who believe that blacks have some kind of advantage (and I hear from them on occasion, for those willing to step on the third rail), but somehow these folks choose not to see the incredible mountain of institutional and social white privilege that exists. The denial is deep; I mean really, would these folks like to trade places, to wake up and live as a black person for a month to put these perceived advantages in daily life to a test? To make it more interesting in this “post-racial world,” have them live in a town with few minorities, perhaps one of those classic Reagan Democrat towns or a heartland neighborhood in Sally Kern’s or Steve King’s districts.

All of my professional life I’ve had to bear the burden of being “the first” (black woman) in so many of my jobs — the world of publishing has always had a dearth of minorities — and trust me, it’s no fun. I was — and am — always aware that my performance could, fairly or unfairly, be a standard to prejudge other POC that would follow me in ways white job candidates don’t have to worry about in competing for a position. I think many affirmative action efforts while laudable, should place additional focus not just on race (or any other oppressed minority or gender), and on socioeconomic opportunity. After all, a poor black kid who is achieving in spite of crap schools is certainly more disadvantaged than a child of upper middle class black parents, but they are often given the same weight if race is all that matters in that program.

Anyway, it’s an interesting topic in the abstract — the backlash effect of affirmative action (on whites and blacks), that is discussed in detail in Randall L. Kennedy’s Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, a book I did a Firedoglake salon for last month, but living it, as we can see, results in yet another aspect of the third rail of race that few people are willing to put themselves out there to discuss their fears and issues with it openly.

Lobbing this grenade about so carelessly, as Ferraro did, does zero to help the party, let alone her preferred candidate.

***

Even former Clinton adviser and weasly consultant/columnist Dick Morris said last week that the continuing charade needs to come to an end.

Will Hillary win Pennsylvania? Who cares? Even if she were to sweep the remaining primaries and caucuses by 10 points, she would move just 60 votes closer to Obama's total of elected delegates. And she won't sweep them all. Even if Hillary wins Pennsylvania, the largest prize up for grabs, Obama will probably win North Carolina, which is almost as large. He's likely to win Mississippi and Wyoming and has a good shot in Oregon and Indiana. The most likely result of these coming contests is that Obama will be roughly where he is now, about 140 elected delegates ahead of Hillary.

Suppose that Hillary will carry those states by enough to offset Obama's delegate lead. The proportional representation system makes a knockout impossible and so mutes relatively narrow victories as to make them almost inconsequential.

Will the leaders of the Democratic Party be complicit in its destruction? Will they really kindle a civil war by denying the nomination to the man who won the most elected delegates? No way. They well understand that to do so would be to throw away the party's chances of victory and to stigmatize it among African-Americans and young people for the rest of their lives. The Democratic Party took 20 years to recover from the traumas of 1968 and it is not about to trigger a similar bloodletting this year.

If we change the names of these candidates to anonymize them without anything that might cue you to race or gender — oh hell, just make them two white guys since that’s all we’ve ever had has president — and you had one candidate, John Doe with an insurmountable delegate lead (but not enough to win), and the other, James Smith, who is running a fairly close second, but cannot win either without swaying superdelegates to go his way — you’d have Gary Hart and Walter Mondale all over again.

Gary Hart, in fact, weighed in on this mess last week. Sigh.

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Tagged as: racism, clinton, obama, hart, wolfson, mondale, superdelegates, ferraro

Pam Spaulding blogs at Pam's House Blend.