Obama rips up the race card
By Brendan Loy
Hey, maybe he did read my letter, after all. :) Okay, probably not, but in any event, Barack Obama is finally doing the right thing -- disavowing the race-card nonsense and criticizing the Clintons on the substance of what they said, not on racial innuendo that plainly wasn't there.
Sen. Barack Obama told ABC News Monday there is nothing in Sen. Hillary Clinton's record that would give him any cause for concern about her in terms of racial politics.
Asked how Obama interpreted two recent remarks by the Clintons that prompted an angry reaction from some in the Black community, Obama sought to damp down the racial dynamics of the controversy. ...
"I don't think it was in any way a racial comment," Obama told ABC News [in reference to Hillary Clinton's comment about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]. "That's something that has played out in the press. That's not my view."
He then proceeded to criticize the substance of Hillary's comments about experience versus ideals, and similarly, to criticize the substance of Bill's description of Obama's Iraq position. Bravo. You can read all that here.
Later, according to the article, Obama "stress[ed] that he, former Sen. John Edwards, and Clinton all share the same goals when it comes to civil rights and equal justice issues."
Amen. (Hat tip: TPM.)
Of course, some will argue that Obama is playing the old Clintonian game here, letting his surrogates do his dirty work for him, then taking the high road once the damage is already done. And maybe that's exactly what he's doing. On the other hand, the race-specific rhetoric was never coming directly from anyone high-level within his campaign. (His wife did distort Bill's "fairy tale" comment, but she didn't take it to an explicitly racial place; she just suggested that Bill was calling Obama's campaign a "fairy tale" rather than only his Iraq position.) My issue was always that, for all his rhetoric about a more hopeful, less divisive brand of politics, Obama hadn't taken the lead in putting this thing to rest, even though it was some of his supporters and surrogates who got the ball rolling. Now he's actually displaying some leadership to match his lofty rhetoric. I'm not prepared to let him totally off the hook, but I'm a lot happier with him than I was 24 hours ago.
UPDATE: More from the New York Times:
“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,” Mr. Obama told reporters at a news conference here. “We’ve got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness. I expect that other campaigns feel the same way.”
Mr. Obama was seeking to be seen as taking the high road in the ongoing feud between his campaign and that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. First, he conducted three back-to-back interviews with the major television networks here. Then, he hastily called a news conference at the Reno Events Center.
After speaking to hundreds of Nevada voters at a rally here, Mr. Obama urged Democratic voters not to become embroiled in racially-charged or motivated discussions.
“If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading or in some way is unfair, I will speak out forcefully against it,” he said. “I hope the other campaigns take the same approach.”
Hurrah! I couldn't have said it better myself.
P.S. That last part is, it seems to me, incredibly important. Obama is now on the record pledging to "speak out forcefully against" future race-baiting by his supporters. That means that when something like this happens again (and you know it will), Obama won't be able to rely on the argument that it's "not his job" to "bail out" his opponents -- nor, seemingly, on the argument that he "can only be responsible for what he says or what his paid campaign staff say." He has now assumed an affirmative obligation to have Sister Souljah moments whenever his "supporters" engage in race-baiting.
Will he keep that promise? Maybe, maybe not -- but if he doesn't, the media and his critics will be able to throw this quote in his face -- "Senator Obama, you pledged in January that you would 'speak out forcefully against' any misleading or unfair racial criticisms by your supporters. Why haven't you spoken out against _______?" -- and it'll be much harder for him to duck the issue.
The skeptics, I'm sure, will remain skeptical. But just imagine the possibilities, if he's actually sincere. President Obama, America's first black president, making a habit of actively debunking his supporters' attempts at inventing fake racism for political purposes -- and thus giving himself all kinds of moral authority to speak out against real racism when it occurs. That would be fantastic for the country.
In any event, we'll have to wait and see how things play out in future race-baiting incidents, but his statement sets an excellent precedent going forward. And he has to know people will be watching closely to see whether he's true to his word. I certainly will be.
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