Frank Rich has a brain. I used to enjoy reading him and watching him stick it to whatever Republican talking point that most raised his ire on a given week. But I don't understand why he has chosen to be so subjectively hateful of late to Senator Clinton. For example, after discussing her recent Town Hall event in a tone dripping with sarcasm, Rich says (link):
What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.
Then, in a manner very uncharacteristic for those of us accustomed to reading Frank Rich over the years, he wanders through a litany of other complaints (all of which seem non-objective to my admittedly biased eye) and gets completely off point. When he finally gets back on track to talk about what he meant when he referred to Clinton nastiness, the first thing he says is that the show was on a set that was "a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992." OK, I'm not even sure he is right about that part, but even so that is hardly "nastiness."
Then Rich continues by pointing out that the Wil.I.Am youtube video was probably seen by more people than Hillary's Town Hall Event. He may well be right there, but how is that making his point that Hillary Clinton is being nasty? Is his point that she over-hyped her event? If that is his point then he contradicts himself elsewhere in the same piece when he says that it was intentionally designed to not get Network News Coverage:
The same news media that constantly revisited the Oprah-Caroline-Maria rally in California ignored "Voices Across America: A National Town Hall." The Clinton campaign would no doubt attribute this to press bias, but it scrupulously designed the event to avoid making news.
Rich also says the event was scripted. Here I think there is a rational explanation that makes more sense than comparing it to a Bush Town Hall where softball questions are picked. Yes, the campaign did select questions from among those submitted on the web and at the various locations. But at each location it was the audience who determined which of them would ask what question. And the Clinton campaign allowed them to do so without any interference as far as I can tell. Unlike a Bush Town Hall, where the questions are designed to promote some halftruth talking points, Hillary's team took questions and her supporters picked questions that allowed her to show her mastery of a wide array of subjects. The Clinton campaign thinks this compares her favorably with Obama because he doesn't know the issues as well. So the format was intended to display what they see as her biggest strength. That is hardly nasty.
Rich also accuses the Clinton team of playing on the sympathies of supporters with the loan Hillary took out and revisits a story about Bill Clinton's profits from one deal. That latter story was all through the media last week and fell with a thud because the public saw it as a non-important issue. The usual suspects played it up but it got no traction. But Frank Rich wants to bring it up again for some reason. It seems obvious that are a lot of objective explanations of the loan Hillary took out and the non-importance of "Bill's Deal," but today Frank Rich wasn't interested in objectivity.
Finally, Frank Rich gets around to what he really meant when he said Hillary's team is nasty. He says repeatedly that they are playing the race card:
The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. This was all too apparent in the Hallmark show. In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically diverse cast members — young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members — African-Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meeting’s nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton’s top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner, whether to toss a softball or ask about the Clintons’ own recent misadventures in racial politics.
Let's address this piece by piece. First, I watched this Town Hall too and I certainly didn't get the impression that Carole Simpson was in a servile role. Second, I know for a fact that the Clinton Team was out beating the bushes looking for supporters to fill these Town Hall events. The most logical explanation for the lack of black voters and an abundance of Hispanic is that black voters seem to have chosen Obama and Senator Clinton is very popular among Hispanics. So if the Town Halls are full of Clinton supporters, one could rationally expect more Hispanics and less African Americans. How Frank Rich missed so obvious a point is a mystery to me.
As to why there were no African American questioners, Frank Rich implies that the Clinton camp avoided them so they would not get asked about "why they played the race card." Since, as Rich already noted, there were not as many African Americans in the audiences, and since supporters in each location (not the Clinton team) picked the questioner from among themselves, it isn't hard to figure out why there might not have been any African Americans picked to ask a question. But since the Town Hall also featured questions submitted over the internet, I am curious to know how Frank Rich divined the race of those particular questioners when he says no African Americans asked questions.
And I have to note that in her rallies in California before Super Tuesday, Hillary had a lot of African Americans on display, including Magic Johnson and, most importantly, Maxine Waters. They played very prominent roles in the rallies, which seems to contradict Rich's accusation that the lack of African Americans in the Town Hall was intentional.
The main thing that Frank Rich charges the Clintons with nastiness with is race-baiting. I am curious to know why he thinks the mention of cocaine by Mark Penn is race-baiting, though I did find Penn's comment unappealing to say the least. But that is really neither here nor there. Here is Frank Rich's takeaway point to go with his title about a "Brewing Civil War in the Democratic Party":
A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.
And to this I have to respond that Mr. Rich is giving a very one-sided version of the story. Tim Russert did actually catch the Obama team playing the race card in South Carolina with a four page list of talking points, despite denials by Barack himself that they were doing so.
That list included things that were pointedly not racist in nature, like Bill's use of the word "fairytale" to talk about Obama's record on the war and Hillary's discussion of LBJ and MLK. The most obvious Obama camp person twisting Bill Clinton's word "fairytale" out of context to play the race card against the Clintons was Donna Brazile.
Michelle also got into the act on this one. (link):
Sometimes we feel it's better not to try at all than to try and fail. These are complicated emotions, left in our heads and hearts from years of struggle, emotions we must face if we're going to overcome as a community if we want to lift ourselves up. We must do it in the face of those who will attempt to play on those emotions for our own purposes, to discourage us from believing what is possible...to dismiss this moment as an illusion, as a fairytale.
Michelle also played the race card on the stump in other ways. She said "America needs a black president" despite claims by both the Obama campaign and the national media that the Obama candidacy transcends race. This did get picked up by the media, but they never rode this story like they did some of the Clinton stories they manufactured.
If Frank Rich wants to say there is a war brewing, it seems fair to point out that the Obama camp seems interested in using false charges of racism to inflame black voters against the Clintons.
And if there is a Civil War, it is being fought on two fronts. In some instances race has played a role. Hillary won all of MO except for St. Louis and Kansas City. African American votes gave Obama such a large margin in those two cities that he carried the whole state. And in other instances it has been a generational war with youth mainly voting for Obama. In California young Hispanics voted for Obama and older Hispanics for Hillary. Sometimes it is both racial and generational, as it was in South Carolina. If there is a war within the party, let's be honest about the full nature of that war.
