At 7:10 PM yesterday, a good three hours after BHO's press conference on the same topic, HRC tried to put the lid back on the Pandora's box of slander and innuendo she and surrogates unleashed in the days after the Iowa caucuses. I need to be careful here, lest I likewise be accused of speaking in the code of indentity politics. In Greek mythology, as my caveman brain understands it, Pandora was the very first woman, created by Zeus to punish humanity for the theft of fire from Olympus. (Zeus did it Catholic school-style--collective punishment, but all the mooks knew it was Prometheus and didn't see nothin)
In the story, Pandora's curiousity/ambition got the best of her and she managed to uncork a jar (apparently very hard to make good right angles with clay) that she had been warned never to open by the all Gods on Olympus. Out rushed our vices -— greed, vanity, slander, envy, pining— into the ether. The only item remaining once she had managed to put the stopper back in was--and this is the poetry-- hope. David Axelrod couldn't have written it better himself.
As with all good parables, we can each do our own extrapolation. The sins of the forebears are visited once again on Democratic Party, the first home of Jim Crow, the Dixiecrats, and the Klan. HRC's strategists are perhaps a little more elegant and urbane than Lee Atwater but even in his prime, Atwater had nothin on them. Let me lay this out more clearly--what the Clinton campaign has managed to do is the equivalent of Atwater blaming Mike Dukakis for airing the Willie Horton ad. It is breathtaking in its hubris. The Clintons are not racists. They want to win. It is how they win that anyone concerned about the future of the Democratic party needs to be paying close attention to. If she is not careful, Hillary will save the village by destroying it.
Obama's hastily arranged press conference yesterday afternoon was by all accounts I've seen, statesmanlike and exactly what I would expect from our next commander in chief. He was a leader on this, and Clinton followed. Here's how the AP covered the Obama event:
"Obama was the first to try and quell the controversy that flared in the Democratic campaign in recent days, calling reporters together to say he didn't want the campaign 'to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this.' Referring to Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards, he said that while they may have disagreements, 'we share the same goals. We're all Democrats, we all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights.'"
"I've been a little concerned about the tenor of the campaign," Obama said during a hastily called news conference. "I thought that it would be useful for me to just air this out a little bit."
Obama said he does not want the issues to be lost in a battle over personalities and statements about matters tangential to the race, a tone that Sen. Hillary Clinton quickly took as well in a statement issued by her campaign.
"We've got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness," Obama said. "I suspect that other candidates may feel the same way."
During the question-answer portion, Obama was asked whether Bill and Hillary Clinton have shown racial insensitivity in recent days.
"I don't want to rehash that," he said. "Here's what I can tell you: I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues. I think that they care about the African-American community and that they care about all Americans and that they want to see equal rights and equal justice in this country….That is something that I'm convinced of and I want to make sure that the American people understand that that's my assessment."
Earlier, Obama had said that he wanted to "stipulate to a couple things," including that his chief rivals are good people with solid civil rights records.
"Over the last couple of days, you have seen a tone on the Democratic side in the campaign that is unfortunate," he said. "I may disagree with Sen. Clinton or Sen. Edwards on how to get there, but we share the same goals. We're all Democrats. We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. We all believe that regardless of race or gender that people should have equal opportunity. I think that they are good people, they are patriots and that they are running because they think they can lead this country to a better place. I don't want the campaign at this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this."
and here is HRC's response:
Statement of Hillary Rodham Clinton
“Over this past week, there has been a lot of discussion and back and forth - much of which I know does not reflect what is in our hearts.
“And at this moment, I believe we must seek common ground.
“Our party and our nation is bigger than this. Our party has been on the front line of every civil rights movement, women's rights movement, workers' rights movement, and other movements for justice in America
.
“We differ on a lot of things. And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where we stand. But when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity, when it comes to our heroes - President John F. Kennedy and Dr. King – Senator Obama and I are on the same side.
“And in that spirit, let's come together, because I want more than anything else to ensure that our family stays together on the front lines of the struggle to expand rights for all Americans.”
More on this later...
