I haven't posted a diary in over a year here, but I thought, in light of Sen. Obama's distancing himself from the remarks of his pastor, no one's really talking about why Hillary Clinton remains such a polarizing candidate whose tactics threaten to destroy the Democratic Party, as well as pull the covers off as to whether or not the Democratic Party is all inclusive.
Read it thoroughly before making a determination about what you read.
If you're Hillary Clinton (aka "The Borg Queen"), no matter how "non-threatening" you are as an African-American (Negro for ol' school), you're still considered a "Threat".
Senator Barack Obama, as stated by my colleague, Big Man at Raving Black Lunatic, played by every rule flung at him and some that fall into the "making ish up category"; yet, thanks to the Borg Queen, he has been made Blacker than Willie Horton.
You remember Willie Horton, don't you? Eh, some of you may be too young to remember when the elder Bush was running for POTUS, his opponent was a short Massachusetts governor named Michael Dukakis. Since Poppy wanted to portray Dukakis as soft on crime, during a debate, he brought up a brotha named Willie Horton, who was imprisoned for rape, got paroled, only to commit the crime again. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts had released Mr. Horton back into society, and he commits another rape while on parole.
Dukakis was asked by Poppy Bush to explain what he would do with Willie Horton if Horton had attacked his wife, Kitty.
As Dukakis tried in vain to respond, the collective groan of the Democratic Party could be heard from coast-to-coast. Twenty years later, I can still hear that groan, because we knew it was over and another ReThug was going to get the White House for at least another four years.
At the time, we had a "Rumsfeld" moment within the Democratic Party. We couldn't go with the candidate we wanted (Colorado Senator Gary Hart, cause he got busted cheating on Mrs. Hart) or Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy (the squeals about Mary Jo Kopechne and Chappaquidick are still being sung almost 40 years later), so the party was forced to go with who was left: Mike Dukakis.
Poppy Bush won in a landslide because he trotted out the "Threatening" Negro as Boogey Man extraordinaire. This, after the Democratic Party squeezed out Jesse Jackson with the <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">"it's not your turn, yet, Negro"</span></span> speech (and remember, Jesse picked up at least a million votes nationally both in 1984 and 1988)
Fast forward to 2008, and it appears we have an African-American bound and determined not to repeat what was considered the mistakes of Jesse, or Al Sharpton, or even Mike Dukakis. He was fresh and clean, articulate, too. Harvard-educated (affirmative action can get you in, but your merit and intelligence to do the work keeps you there), civil rights attorney; constitutional law professor. Married to a beautiful, career-oriented, got-her-own-thang-goin-on bonified SISTA. Total family man with two equally beautiful little girls. Throw biracial in the mix, and you have the perfect, appearing, non-threatening Negro in Senator Barack Obama.
He made White, Asian and Latinos comfortable with him. He could relate to them and they to him. We African-Americans were naturally suspicious - because every Black person other races embrace, we get suspicious because our history has been that one of those Negroes are usually sent into our communities on reconnaisance missions to infiltrate and destroy the community from within and sell us off as chattel to their assigned masters.
If Hillary Clinton sticks to the issues, that would have been enough to continue facilitating our suspicions about Obama. But the moment she and the Big Dog (Bill Clinton) started playing the race card with Obama (this after she lost nine straight contests at the time), all hell broke loose and all bets were off the tables.
First shot across the bow: the husband of New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, implies Obama may have been a drug dealer in his youth.
Like Shaheen wasn't sitting on some college campus during the 1970's tooting on some blow or passing a joint in college. Cause that's what most kids did (I went to a liberal arts Catholic college in Northern Cal and those kids majored in keg parties, so I know of what I speak).
After we raised a fuss, the Borg Queen gets rid of Mr. Shaheen. But the words have been flung and the damage done; but pretty minor at this point.
Second, Andrew Cuomo, the son of former New York Gov, Mario, describes Obama as a speaker full of "shuck and jive".
OOOOkayyyy, but what does Mr. Cuomo know about "shucking and jiving"? Don't tell me he's hanging out with Champagne Charlie Rangel down on 125th and Lennox Avenue, learning street slang from the brothas. After more firestorm, Cuomo protests his comments were "taken out of context".
To me, "taken out of context" is code speak of "I didn't know I'd get caught sticking my foot in my mouth for saying what I really mean."
Third, after South Carolina, the Big Dog disses Obama's win, and comes pretty close to calling him "boy" when he called him "kid". Cue the torches from Black folk at this point because we are shocked that the "first Black POTUS" would diss his peeps that way.
I think we revoked Bill Clinton's honorary Black card after that - many of us say we never gave it to him and that Toni Morrison should have checked with us before passing it out to him just because he blew sax on Arsenio's show, and eats fried chicken, collard greens and Big Mama's peach cobbler.
Fouth, someone from the Clinton camp (Campaign Manager and the Biggest Potential Crab in the Barrel, Maggie Williams, perhaps) starts circulating a picture of Obama in native land dress and whispers he's Muslim.
Ah, I think Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is in a better position to identify who's a Muslim, isn't he?
There were other incidents which are being tracked by my friends over at Jack and Jill Politics, and the list keeps growing and growing.
Then she gets a platform to make nice to us at Tavis Smiley's Negro Super Bowl, better known as the "State of the Black Union" - where she proceeds to give us a "My Husband did a lot for you ungrateful Negroes" speech.
Yeah, Hillary, we need to thank Bill for "Mend It, Don't End It" attacks on Affirmative Action, the three strikes rule on law enforcement where if you have a $10 crack rock you get 25 to life in the joint, while someone with $1 million dollars of blow can walk away with the slap on the wrist. We'd also like to thank him for the growth of the prison industry complex, and I'm sure the gays and lesbians want to thank him for putting that bulls' eye on their backs when he had the chance to fully integrate the armed forces by implementing a non-discriminatory policy to include protection of gays - but he exchanged it with that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" BS and thought they wouldn't notice. We'd also like to thank him for deregulation in the media that guarantees monopolization of the airwaves and non coverage of real news because we have to suffer Fake News and Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly.
But the biggest play of the race card yet, has come from another Clinton surrogate, former Rep. and VP candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, with her "Obama is lucky to be a Black Man in America" comments, for which she has only apologized because Hillary has slung her under the bus. And if that wasn't enough, some enterprising individuals in the internet world, dug up similar comments she made about Jesse Jackson 20 years earlier.
The Borg Queen responded by saying Ferraro's comments were "regrettable"; but when Obama's foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, called the Borg Queen a "monster", she was fired from the Obama camp before sunrise the next day after Hillary whined.
We have been treated to crying, throwing fits, and now, racial politics that threaten to destroy what's left of the Democratic Party. I say "what's left" because Hillary Clinton just tore the covers off that sucka and exposed the Democratic Party in all of its' glorious bigotry and exclusion that we Black people suspected was there, but didn't want to believe it was true.
The evidence has been presented and we must render a verdict. We can no longer be silent on the things that matter like our vote, or where we are included in the Democratic party platform. For Hillary Clinton to resort to race-baiting, scorched earth, kitchen-sink tactics, with a "win at all costs" mentality, she doesn't seem to care that in slinging Black people under a bus for her personal agenda, she sends the Democratic Party back to where it was preferable for Black people to be Republicans.
She doesn't seem to realize that if she eviscerates Obama, she still needs to come back to the Black community and beg for our votes. What happens if 99% of 36 million people (and that's the estimated Black population, y'all) decides that we won't vote for her, and we can't vote for John McCain, we'll decide that we'll just sit the 2008 elections out?
I'm not prepared to sit out 2008, but I am past ready to send a loud message.
Senator Clinton, you're not ready to be POTUS. You don't DESERVE to be POTUS simply because you put up with Bill's cheating behind for 35 years, cause from what I can see, that's where your experience lies. If you were sitting up taking phone calls at 3am in the White House, maybe it's because Bill was in the street and you didn't know which ho's bed he was coming from.
I've already said your voting record and Obama's are almost mirror images; however, he's not on record as authorizing money for a war that we were lied into. Former Senator John Edwards, as well as current Senator John Kerry, have apologized for their vote, but when you get asked, you raise a lot of hell and change the subject.
This campaign has demonstrated that you are highly emotional, and use a blowtorch to light a cigarette, when a match will do the job. You would rather destroy it for others, if you can't have it yourself. A good number of women in DC are really pissed at you right now, because they wanted you to be a strong woman in challenging Barack Obama. They are upset that you decided to channel Karl Rove, and think that when the dust clears and you have the nomination in your pocket through back room deals that thwart the will of the voters, you can make a nice speech to the African-Americas you've ridiculed and insulted, and we'll fall back onto the plantation, line up and happily vote for you.
I've got news for you; we Negroes have woke up. Like the Japanese said when they bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, "you have awakened a sleeping GIANT".
That's what you've done. Even Blacks like me, who are still suspicious of what Obama's bringing to the table, are willing to send you the message, if you didn't get it from the smackdown Keith Olbermann put on you on "Countdown" Thursday night. And he was worked up about it, too, because you could hear it in his voice; that he didn't want to have to be the one to administer that can of whip-ass on you. Olbermann's sense of decency demanded he call you out. The problem is: WERE YOU LISTENING?
That's how stank your campaign has become. That's how stank you have become. You even broke a cardinal rule in the Democratic Party: THOU SHALT NOT TRASH A MEMBER OF YOUR OWN PARTY. You did that when you said McCain was more qualified than Obama to be President. If you think that sets you up for 2012 if you don't get the nod this year. I've beachfront property in Arizona to sell you. We don't forget, and we won't be fooled again.
Obama was a non-threatening Negro who managed somehow, some way, to be a threat to your ambition and your agenda. After all, why did you stay with Bill unless it was part of your agenda to get the White House in exchange for being humiliated as a wife?
You don't get the White House cause you got cheated on. You're not ENTITLED to it because you suffered Bill's inability to keep it in his pants. And now, you'd rather destroy an otherwise decent human being politically, personally, morally, spiritually and career-wise, to get your way. We've had eight years of that under the current POTUS; we don't need another four years of that coming from you, nor do we need another four years of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" from John McCain.
If you go away quietly and with grace and dignity, you create an opportunity to rehab yourself back into the liberal we thought you were. If not, just quit the party, turn Republican and take Harold Ford and Joe Lieberman with you, because the Party can't afford you any more.