Thursday, March 13, 2008

This Is Just The Warm Up

"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."

A bunch of people much wiser than me have posted and commented on the latest Clinton campaign race-baiting, courtesy of Geraldine Ferraro. You can find a few of them here, here, and here. Believe me there are plenty of others out there too so I won't bore you with my own diatribe.

I will say that this really doesn't surprise me, and I think the Barack Obama campaign is responding in exactly the right way by keeping it low key while pointing out the absurdity of the comments. There's really no need for over the top histrionics on this because it was too be expected all along, especially as Obama started to gain momentum. Not to mention he's getting in some good practice reps against the Democratic amateurs for the general election when the professional race-baiting Republicans come after him. In the long view, that's probably a good thing.

One other thing, if Hillary Clinton "wins" the nomination, it should be plainly obvious that the Democratic Party is willing to say screw you to its most loyal voting constituency (Black folks), and that same constituency should think long and hard about voting for her at the top of the ticket.

There's nothing that says we have to dutifully fall in line to vote for a national candidate who has stooped to Republican levels of race-baiting, and has shown a willingness to destroy everything in her path in order to secure the nomination against the candidate we know has the better chance of pulling this thing off. That would be voting against our own long-term interests.

Now I'm not saying don't vote at all because local politics are too important not to. But it doesn't make sense to me to vote for someone willing to throw me under the bus at the instance they deem it necessary for their own political survival.

Call me crazy, but that's my plan. But hey, I'm an Independent so what do I know?

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